Ken's fiddles at home
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 10:24 pm
Everyone having a great Easter at home?
My big electronics project is a fizzer so far.
Sent my battery monitoring circuit off with Pete to take to his 'shack' at Morgan, after working on it and the software til 2.30am Fri morn.
(Fortunately he didn't get arrested or fined for actually going somewhere with his partner for Easter.)
He connected it up. It sent one set of readings to the cloud (my server), then died. Bugger.
Will have to see if I can find its problem when he returns it, or just put a new one together.
The idea is that the circuit monitors stuff like battery voltages, air temperature, battery temperature, and sends the values to my server every 10 minutes. Then Pete can see whats been happening with his solar-charged batteries from anywhere, viewing web pages I wrote. And if he deems it useful, the server can email him if a voltage goes too low. The circuit is powered by one of the batteries it's monitoring.
-Worked alright on my desk. Dunno why it failed in the field.
That was an Arduino board which can send & receive WiFi. Last night I had a very quick play with a bit more expensive board which can do both WiFi and Bluetooth. A very small sample program allowed me to pair my phone with it, and send text to and fro, typing on the attached computer, and the phone. Not sure what I can use the Bluetooth feature for, but nice to know I can do it.
3D printing:
We have a suspicious hole in the backyard behind a moss rock. To try to figure out what made it, I wanted to put some bait in front (nuts), and leave the Gopro camera videoing it. (There is a resident rat I'm trying to eliminate, could be him.)
Got out a little tripod. Kit of Gopro bits doesn't include a tripod mount.
So I looked up 'Gopro' on thingiverse.com, found a design. 3D printed it on my cheap small 3D printer.
Works a treat.
The camera videoed until the battery went flat. The only thing eating the nuts was ants.
Other possibilities for the hole-digging culprit are a blue tongue lizard or a snake. Either maybe wanting to hibernate.
So that's the sort of stuff that amuses me. And at the moment I have plenty of time to do it, with Ulysses duties and riding totally suspended for a while.
Anyone else like to tell us what they've been up to while secluded at home?
-Its not totally isolated here. Yesterday we had a neighbour over for a drink. Her at one end of the patio table, Michele & I at the other.
My big electronics project is a fizzer so far.
Sent my battery monitoring circuit off with Pete to take to his 'shack' at Morgan, after working on it and the software til 2.30am Fri morn.
(Fortunately he didn't get arrested or fined for actually going somewhere with his partner for Easter.)
He connected it up. It sent one set of readings to the cloud (my server), then died. Bugger.
Will have to see if I can find its problem when he returns it, or just put a new one together.
The idea is that the circuit monitors stuff like battery voltages, air temperature, battery temperature, and sends the values to my server every 10 minutes. Then Pete can see whats been happening with his solar-charged batteries from anywhere, viewing web pages I wrote. And if he deems it useful, the server can email him if a voltage goes too low. The circuit is powered by one of the batteries it's monitoring.
-Worked alright on my desk. Dunno why it failed in the field.
That was an Arduino board which can send & receive WiFi. Last night I had a very quick play with a bit more expensive board which can do both WiFi and Bluetooth. A very small sample program allowed me to pair my phone with it, and send text to and fro, typing on the attached computer, and the phone. Not sure what I can use the Bluetooth feature for, but nice to know I can do it.
3D printing:
We have a suspicious hole in the backyard behind a moss rock. To try to figure out what made it, I wanted to put some bait in front (nuts), and leave the Gopro camera videoing it. (There is a resident rat I'm trying to eliminate, could be him.)
Got out a little tripod. Kit of Gopro bits doesn't include a tripod mount.
So I looked up 'Gopro' on thingiverse.com, found a design. 3D printed it on my cheap small 3D printer.
Works a treat.
The camera videoed until the battery went flat. The only thing eating the nuts was ants.
Other possibilities for the hole-digging culprit are a blue tongue lizard or a snake. Either maybe wanting to hibernate.
So that's the sort of stuff that amuses me. And at the moment I have plenty of time to do it, with Ulysses duties and riding totally suspended for a while.
Anyone else like to tell us what they've been up to while secluded at home?
-Its not totally isolated here. Yesterday we had a neighbour over for a drink. Her at one end of the patio table, Michele & I at the other.