Steve’s Junk | A showcase of Steven Mackaay’s stuff

Many Dev Boards… what to do?

Posted on January 11, 2012 by smackaay

First, an update about the annoyo, it worked perfectly and maximized irritation while making itself difficult to find. Anyways, I just received my BeagleBone and I promptly thought to myself, what am I going to do with this? Then I thought, hmmm, I have a bunch of other boards too.

These boards aren’t including the mps430 board, the pic boards, the mikroelectronika board or the Friendly ARM. Too many boards, not enough time. I’m sure I’ll use them for something I guess. Tomorrow begins the fun of interfacing the LS7166, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged arduino, arduino mega, arduino nano, arduino uno, beaglebone, chipkit | 4 Comments

Another pic10f200 project, the Annoyo!

Posted on January 9, 2012 by smackaay

I had this cool idea for a prank at the office, a device that generate sound every 6 minutes. This device generates 4 different sounds at 6 minute intervals. The idea is that the sounds are short, familiar, difficult to find and infrequent enough to prevent a hunt for the offending noise. This device has been done before and obviously much more professionally by others but it’s fun to make since all you need is 2 caps, a 10f200, a speaker and a battery.

The device itself is dead simple, simply find an old speaker you never use, preferably a small one so that you can drive it from the output pin. Using a small battery like I have there, you could probably let the device run for about 30 days. Here’s the design:

dead simple, once again. Only one output is used on this device, I even disabled MCLR so that there is no extra resistor. Just one cap for decoupling and one cap for producing a larger waveform for the speaker. You can change the cap size if you want, you may want a larger cap for a bit of a smoother wave. So, here’s the pinout and the source code and .hex file

GP0,1,3 -> Not connected
GP2 (pin 3) -> to speaker

Source and hex: 10f200 annoyo src.zip

Anyways, a couple of notes. This program was written with Oshonsoft basic. Also, it could have been written a bit smaller if I tried but as it stands it takes up 253 of 255 bytes available in flash.

Hope somebody has fun with this!

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged annoyo, basic, diy, oshonsoft, pic10f200, prank, sound | Leave a comment

Building a quadrature generator with a PIC10F222

Posted on January 8, 2012 by smackaay

I need to start my new project with my digital RTJ gage and in order to do so I need to use the quadrature decoder chip LS7166. I could use the actual encoder I’m going to use for the project but it is large and unwieldy so I decided to build a generator for it.

The concept is simple, have a knob that produces no waveform in the middle of it’s stroke and as the pot deviates from the center, the speed of the signal increases also changing direction based on which side the knob id turned to. I couldn’t use a PIC10F200 much to my chagrin because it doesn’t have an ADC module built in, the PIC10F222 does however. It still works within my concept of low-end mcu’s doing valuable jobs since they’re still only 55 cents in quantity, from digikey of all places.

Overall, it’s a pretty simple design.

GP3 -> unconnected
GP2 -> Channel B out (Digital output)
GP1 -> Channel A out (Digital output)
GP0 -> 10k Potentiometer in (Analog in)

Dead simple. I did program a bit of a dead spot in the middle so that one can stop the quadrature from advancing quite easily. I put 2 LEDs on it to indicate that it is in fact working. Anyways, here’s the source (again it’s in Oshonsoft BASIC)

10f222 quadrature src.zip

I didn’t bother drawing up a circuit diagram since it’s such an easy circuit but here’s an additional image if you’re really curious. keep in mind that the board I’m using is Stripboard (aka Veroboard) so the traces run along one direction

Now for the fun challenge of making a simple serial interface MCU to the LS7166.

Posted in Electronics, Work | Tagged circuit, electronics, microchip, microcontroller, pic10f222 | Leave a comment

10f200 debouncing and a new compiler

Posted on January 7, 2012 by smackaay

I’ve noticed some people doing search terms for debouncing and I figured I would post my method of debouncing inputs from switches. Some people have a big thing with using caps and resistors and gates with hysteresis but I prefer to simply use a cheap microcontroller because the result is programmable, MCU’s are cheap and there are fewer parts than the usual arrangements. Here is a crude circuit diagram of the debouncer. for this circuit the arrangement is (Input GP3 -> Output GP1)(Input GP2 -> Output GP0)

The problem with some other MCU methods is that people often try checking every 5ms to see if two successive input were high. This is a faulty approach since it can be computationally wasteful and can still produce noise. My approach is as follows:

read the input on a loop
if the input is high, increment a counter up to a certain maximum (say 90)
if the counter goes above a certain amount (say 60) then turn on the output
if the input is low, decrement the counter until it reaches 0
if the counter goes below a certain amount (say 30) then turn off the output
Don’t change the value of the output between 30 and 60

What this does is ensures that there is an area of hysteresis where the noise or bounce of the switch will not generate noise on the output. You can play with the rules to suit your specific need and improve responsiveness or make the output resilient to accidental triggering. This is the reason why for some more important things I have used this method. I have used a pic16f505 for this purpose as well with larger arrays of buttons. Having a programmed method that you can change easily can give you an easy ‘jellybean’ solution for these kinds of problems. Mind you of course when dealing with switches in high noise environments you may need to optoisolate or run TVSs on the switch.

If you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know that I like the PIC10F200 MCUs simply because of their simplicity and the fact that a lot of people write them off as useless. This design is pretty crude as you can see and that leads me into the topic of the compiler. First, here is a sample hex file for debouncing - debounce. This hex is programmed to premit a pressed switch to activate after 11ms.

I recently bought a suite of compilers from OshonSoft since I drifted over there out of pure chance. This company is a one man show who sells a variety of BASIC compilers for PIC, Z80 and 8085 processors. I tried the 10f compiler and was immediately impressed with how, for so inexpensively, there was a useful tool for simulation and programming.

I’ve only used the 10f compiler so far but it beats the tar out of PicBASIC Pro, as far as I can tell thus far. Not a lot of frills or gimmicks but it outputs very tight code. Here’s the source for the debouncer pic10f200. You can download a demo version of the 10f simulator at his website.

debouncesrc.zip

Well, anyways, that’s my little treatise on the subject. Also, for those of you on a tight budget and just getting into microcontrollers, Oshonsoft might be a good place to buy a compiler that’s reasonably simple.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged basic compiler, bounce, debounce, oshonsoft, pic10f200, switch noise | Leave a comment

Ugluino, the ugly Arduino powered robot

Posted on January 1, 2012 by smackaay

So, even though I’ve built a wide variety of crap over the last few years, all of them with varying utility, I’ve decided to build a quick robot. With oodles of free time and the feeling of having to go back to work on the horizon after what feels like an eternity of holiday (1 week) I quickly grabbed a bunch of stuff I had sitting around and put this guy together with all the grace of a kindergarten macaroni art sculpture.

Ugluino Being Built

Based off of an Arduino Nano, this guy works just fine. I don’t like using Arduinos for the following reasons.

Perceived lack of control of what’s going on inside
Feels like cheating since it’s so easy
Arduino UI is kind of shitty, especially for larger source files.
When dealing with AI routines, making it difficult to use multiple files is a minus

Anyways, i plugged ahead and quickly pounded this out with the following IO

Input – The only one, the Echo pin on the ultrasonic sensor
Output – Trigger on ultrasonic sensor
4 Digital output – for controlling direction on SN754410 Quad half h-bridge driver. These go to two gear motors which are attached directly to wheels
1 PWM out for duty on motors
1 attached servo out of the servo to turn the sensor

The back end of the Ugluino

Most everything worked out swimmingly until I fucked around with some wiring and produced a short. I hooked the robot on to the USB supply on my computer, I noticed after a few second that the power to the unit wasn’t running… hmmm POOF! Well, as it turned out, there was a problem with the wiring to the ultrasonic dealy and it blew what I beleive was a zener diode

I wasn’t able to figure out exactly what it was, I suspect that it is a zener diode that selects between main power and USB since it is on the output of the VReg. I could be wrong. Since I didn’t have any more Arduino Nano’s I simply tried to fix it and soldered a wire across the offending gap. The device seems to work fine…? Anyways, if anyone know what that part was on the Arduino Nano v3.0, I’d like to know ’cause I couldn’t find the 3.0 Schematics and the design has moved those parts around.

Anyways, The robot moves around based on a very simple algorithm.

Stop Moving
Scan from 40Deg Right to 40 Deg Left in 10 deg increments
return appropriate movement from a function that analyses it
execute proper movement (Forward, Backward, Right, Left, Hard Right and Hard Left)
rinse
repeat

It seemed to work reasonably well. I’d like to build a more sturdy version for shits and giggles so that I can play with the algorithms. I’m probably gonna build one with a PIC18F2685 instead of an Arduino. Also, instead of a single sensor, I will use IR proximity sensors to detect low lying objects. Moving the sensor with the Servo make the robot seem more intelligent than it actually is like it’s ‘looking around’. I quite like that.

Anyways, it’s my first post of the year, considering it’s January 1st and 3:52 am as I write this. maybe I should go to bed. Here’s a video of it getting around.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Programming | Tagged AI, arduino, arduino nano, microcontroller, pic18f2685, robot, Ugluino, youtube | Leave a comment

Some neat devices for the hobbyist

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smackaay

Ok, well, the year is coming to an end and I’ve seen a number of neat devices out there but here are some that I own. The next year coming up is a going to be an interesting year methinks especially since there’s gonna be some big changes in my life, not to mention the fact that I’ve quit smoking for some time now.

Anyways, here they are:

Arduino NANO

Arduino NANO

This nifty little device is the Arduino NANO. Now, me being me I believe that the arduino’s are something akin to cheating since you don’t need a programmer, it runs right off USB and communicated directly with the computer. The small size of this device and the ease of use make it truly a neat device. Call me lewis ’cause I am starting to like the arduinos. They sell for as little as $14 on EBay (they are probably knockoff but work fine) and are strangely useful for bashing out simple stuff.

Mini PIR Unit

PIR Sensor

This little guy can detect motion (heat difference) up to 5M away. it only draws .15mA and costs only about $4 on Ebay. The interface is simple with two trim pots, one to set the sensitivity and one to set how long the signal stays high when triggered. I bought a whole bunch of these for a project I never finished (A distributed monitoring system) and I might make something cool out of them.

2.4Ghz Transceiver

2.4GHZ transciever

This little guy seems to work really well. Based off the nRF24L01 chip, this transceiver will draw about 15mA at continuous load. If you’re using it intermittently, it’ll run at about 2mA. Alos, it was really hard to get an image of the pinout for this device since the seller kept saying they’d give it to me and never did. Here’s an image of the pinout.

transceiver pinout ripped from somewhere I don't remember (sorry)

You can get these devices for about $4-5 each. A real steal.

CP2102 USB to Serial out

CP2102 USB to IO

These guys are useful because you can plug a test device directly on to the usb port and not need a max232 or equivalent. It features a 3.3 and 5v port and works like a damn. Concievably you could use this with an intermediary to provide the SPI interface to the 2.4GHz Transceiver and use it to provide communication to other transceivers to the computer.

UltraSonic Transducer

Ultrasonic Transducer

This is the ultrasonic transducer. I was playing with it last night and it works really well. It measures anywhere from about 1 inch to 16 feet or so. Simply provide a short 10 to 100 us pulse to ‘trig’ and measure how long the ‘echo’ pin remains high. the ‘echo’ pin will go high after a delay once the trigger pin has been pulsed. I was able to get pretty good accuracy once I calibrated it and with some averaging routines I was abble to get resolutions of about .01″. Surely it wasn’t THAT accurate but it was close. These again were only like $6 each. It should be said, that with full measuring duty this device draws about 15mA.

Anyways, that’s what I’ve been playing with. Hopefully other people may purchase these little trinkets and have fun. EBay sure is an awesome place for the hobbyist like myself for weird knick-knacks!

Posted in Personal Projects, Programming | Tagged arduino, arduino nano, cp2102, nRF24L01, PIR Unit, transceiver, ultrasonic | 1 Comment

RTJ Gage prototype update

Posted on December 21, 2011 by smackaay

Here we go, some images.

Overall Profile of Gage dial side

Overall Profile of Gage

Gage A

The unit itself is a bit too heavy, doesn’t have stroke limits and is a bit ugly. It is but a prototype after all though. The next iteration should be more appropriate for a high end RTJ groove gage.

Posted in Work | Tagged machining, rtj gage | Leave a comment

Pre-Christmas things I’m workin’ on!

Posted on December 18, 2011 by smackaay

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything (I think every post starts like this) so I’m gonna document a few things I’m working on right now. Things that are both for work and some things that are not.

First off, the Mikro C compiler deal. A few days ago I went over the the mikroelectronika site and noticed that they had a sale on their compilers, a large develpment board for free if you get the compiler. I already have the PIC-C compiler but I figured it’s time to buy a new on since I haven’t actually purchased one for years.

So, for $250 you get both the compiler and the large development board.

Lot's of buttons and lots of stuff.

So there is the BIGPIC 6 board. It’s a well built board, .120″ thick and the parts and overall quality are top-notch. Granted, I haven’t used it much since I’ve only had it a couple of days, but if you’re going to try out a compiler and want a development board to test out your compiler, this may be your ticket.

The BIGPIC 6 in profile

The only thing I was disappointed about was the lack of inclusion of the displays. They’re not that expensive and from the site has them for way too much money. You can buy them off EBay and wire them yourself if you want though.

Ok, and now for another item of interest of things from the work front. Gages! RTJ gages, BX groove gages and RX gages.

I’ve been tasked with designing our new series of RTJ groove gages. My primary idea is to make it completely electronic and build a non-referential gage. Basically my electronics version is a linear bearing attached to a DRO slide

My Digitial Gage Design. I have most of the parts and am working on the electronics

Doesn’t look impressive, it’s just a prototype really. Here are the actually slide and dro scale. Right now I’m working on interfacing the LS7166 quadrature interface controller but that’s going to take a while since I have to work on the dial indicator version of the gage since the old design has started to reveal problems.

Dial Gage for RTJ Grooves

Anyways, I have all of the materials and I am working on the varieties of things needed to complete these things.

Linear glass encoder

Linear bearing

Yes, an Arduino!

Anyways, these things are all coming along nicely and not in a vaporware kind of way. I shall keep things updated.

Posted in Electronics, Work | Tagged arduino, ls7166, rtj groove | Leave a comment

Electronics lab on the cheap

Posted on December 11, 2011 by smackaay

Now, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a total cheapskate. I hate paying good money for good things and wind up buying lots of crap for lots of money. Over the years I’ve seen the question asked by fledgling electronics buffs ,”What should I get to outfit my lab?”

Now this innocuous question is usually asked by people who either don’t have money or are cheapskates like me. I have purchased all kinds of cheap and slightly-less-cheap stuff from a variety of sources over the years and I’ve seen the quality and lack thereof. I’ve worked with it and I’ve had my problems with it. What I figure might be informative is a general guideline of some things I’ve bought over the years, especially the cheap shit, also my opinions on this stuff for people who are starting out.

It should be stated that I’m no expert on electronics and perhaps that makes my opinion suitable for the new hobbyist like myself. Sometimes acceptable is good enough.

The Multimeter

Every hobbyist needs a multimeter. They tell you voltages, resistances, current and often times things like frequency, diode voltage drop, continuity and various other things. This will be your most important tool when things don’t work as they should or when building a circuit.

The cheap chinese multimeter

Above is the cheap chinese multimeter. They come in various colors and designs and you can pick them up sometimes for $5. While they seem like a good deal, they are not. I have had a great many of these and they have all been a problem in one way or another. Either the voltage shown is wrong, or the fuse inside is pre-blown or sometimes certain functions simply don’t work. If you just want one around your house to check to see if something is live, buy one but otherwise I would stay away. Now for the hobbyist, there is the middle of the road multimeter, these are the ones I would get if you want a blend of quality and cost effectiveness. Some brands to consider are :

Agilent ($99 to $150)
Extech ($50 to $100)
Uni-T ($35-$100) meh..

There are others but those are the ones I have experience with. Obviously the more money you spend, typically the better product you’re going to get. If you’re gonna cheap out on anything in your lab, don’t cheap out on your multimeter, it is the single most important tool in your lab. Remember to get one that’s auto-ranging and don’t bother with ones that aren’t auto ranging or have those transistor testers on them. Transistor testers are the mark of a shitty multimeter.

The Power Supply

Whenever you do electronics work you need some source of power. This can range from using the USB port on your computer (like with an Arduino) to getting fully programmable supplies.

From a diy site on a refitted computer power supply

Some people try to save a few bucks and use a computer power supply for their projects. This isn’t bad since it outputs a whole lot of different voltages (3.3v, 5v, 12v, -12v) and can usually supply a whole lot of current. Only problem I have with them is the fact that they don’t tell you much about how much juice you’re using and you can’t limit the current.

Some people are really cheap and use wall-warts (like I did) for power. This is almost universally a bad idea because wall warts can fail spectacularly when shorted out or exposed to weird power loads. If you value your time and parts, don’t experiment this way.

A regulated DC power supply. This is basically the standard model made in china and is marketed under like 30 different brand names.

The best way that’s cheap is simply an analog adjustable power supply. They go for about 110 to 140 bucks and will last you a long time under normal use. You can adjust both maximum voltage AND maximum current so you can perform various tasks with it and save yourself headaches sometimes by limiting current. Trust me on this, for most things this is the best option.

Oscilloscope

Everyone wants to be able to diagnose problems with their circuits, see if there is actually changes going on over data lines, or see if there’s noise on your power supply or something. Also it just looks cool to have a 50′s mad scientist’s lab for when people come over.

This is one item that I see people cheaping out on all the time, and frankly myself as well. While I don’t have top end equipment at the moment, I have second hand equipment that is pretty good.

Your basic analog scope

Above is your general, all purpose analog scope. For most things this guy will serve you well. Buying a new one is often almost as expensive as buying a digital storage scope so buying one like this should be second hand. You can get an analog scope for a song on EBay sometimes and even around town at universities and college, they have extras kicking around. Using an analog scope correctly is a good skill to have and will serve you well with your digital storage scope, if you decide to get one.

a Digital Storage osciloscope

These may be your ticket to have in your lab. Some companies like tequipment sell GW Instek oscilloscopes for $300 or so. While it can be a bit of an investment, this may be your ticket to having decent equipment for your hobbyist lair. The one shown above is obviously an older one and similar to my tektronix 100mhz scope. I got mine second hand for $400 and it’s been a great investment. To be fair, there are other economy brands such as OWON, Rigol and others but I only have experience with the instek ones.

An example of the DSO Nano

The DSO Nano. They are cheap and tempting but they are not worth the money. From what I can tell, they have very low bandwidth and aren’t that great. There is a new model out for about 180 bucks, I may buy one to see what it’s all about. There are other portable DSOs out there but anything that’s any good is a fair amount of money such as the Fluke 123 and various others. OWON makes one for about $500 I believe.

An example of a usb oscilloscope

Well, some people like Dave from EEVBlog warn people away from these USB oscilloscopes but I wonder why sometimes. The only difference really is that the display is now standard hardware instead of the company having to engineer a whole interface on custom hardware. It should be noted though to stay away from the cheap ones on EBay. The ones for about 60 bucks have a bandwidth in the low KHz, yes, not MHz and they suck. Stay away from cheap USB oscilloscopes. somebody who appears to make good ones is Picotech, but that said they are the only company I have experience in that regard.

Anyways, You can get away with $300 oscilloscopes for hobby work, don’t cheap out if you can help it. It’ll make your life easier.

The Rest

Well, I don’t know if I can say “The rest”. there are so many things you can buy to accompany your lab that it’d take many tens of pages of writing to cover even in a very cursory fashion.

I’ll list a few things in point form you could need in your lab to make it both workable and useful.

Breadboards – Cheap and effective, get at least 2. You can get them for 5 bucks each on EBay
Soldering iron – Spend 100 dollars and get a temperature controlled one. Weller or Hakko. Those cheap 20 watt soldering irons suck and you’ll waste more time than anything with them.
Side nips, you can get these for like 3 dollars.
Wire strippers – Again, EBay, Cheap. Get the lower gage ones 20-30 gage unless you do a lot of speaker wire and power stuff.
Wire – get some rolls of solid core wire in both 22 and 24 gage. get different colors. red, black, green and white are recommended. more colors the better.
Resistors – you can get sets of resistors off EBay or from Jameco for cheap. Get 1/4 watt ones, that’s standard.
Diodes – a pack of diodes off ebay might cost you upwards of 2 dollars. yes. cheap
component packs – These carry a whole slew of random parts you might need. Everything from switches and caps to potentiometers and other goodies.
Alligator Clips – Get some alligator clip wires, very handy for everything.
A good light – Get yourself some adequate lighting, only costs a few bucks but makes working much more pleasant.
Arduino – Personally, I hate arduinos but if you’re new to things, get one. It introduces things in a much more pleasant way and allows results quicker.

The DON’T List

Don’t get random resistors in a bag, waste of time and money. the standard set is fine
Don’t get bags of transistors, you’ll never use them. You’ll never really know what they are. You’ll never really know if they’re any good.
Don’t get IC grab bags. You will very rarely get anything good. Trust me, I’ve bought them before.
Don’t buy Stick Irons for soldering, they suck!

Anyways, that’s what I have to say. I’m sure I’ll get comments telling me how painfully incorrect I am and that I’m a subhuman monster for saying such things. If I’m terribly wrong, tell me, perhaps I’ll change it.

It should be said that I started out with damn near nothing but a bench and a $10 multimeter. I struggled and struggled and bought nothing but cheap crap because I’m a cheapskate. I didn’t buy a compiler and there was no such thing as an Arduino (At least not to my knowledge) so I wrote all my programs in assembly which is extremely time consuming.

Anyways, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if I can learn it, anyone can. even on a limited budget. If you’re serious about it though, spend the extra few bucks and get something decent.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged agilent, electronics, exetech, extech, jameco, laboratory | Leave a comment

A test of GMHTML5

Posted on October 21, 2011 by smackaay

Well, let’s try it out, here’s an html5 program. see if it works. you need javascript enabled to see it. Tell me if it works!

http://smackaay.com/gm/t1/index.html

(update nov 9, 2011)

http://smackaay.com/gm/t2/index.html

Posted in Other/misc | Leave a comment

Preliminary version of …. Game

Posted on September 27, 2011 by smackaay

Well, I dunno what it’s called but this is my new game. It is extremely preliminary… extremely!

download it here

booya grandpa!

Posted in Other/misc | Leave a comment

Stuff I’m playing with

Posted on September 24, 2011 by smackaay

Well, since I posted a bit of stuff yesterday I’m gonna post a couple of other things I’ve been playing with. Since I finally have a day off. may as well.

The FPS I’m making

I don’t know what I’m gonna call it, I don’t even like FPS’s anymore. I dunno. Anyways, heres a screenshot

FPS a la' Steve

Nothing spectacular.

Arduino and ChipKit

Like I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been playin with both the Arduino and ChipKit. Frankly, I need to get over my personal bias over these arduino based things. The way I feel about them is that it’s like cheating, where very little learning is required to make some sort of result.

I am however wrong. With the progress of technology we use technologies that are based off of previous technologies. Even using MCU’s would technically be cheating by my reckoning since we should be using a CPU and related chips. Then even deeper we should be using nothing but transistors in order to not cheat. So, by that reason, I am wrong. Using an arduino and premade shields shouldn’t reduce the feeling of accomplishment at all. Now that we don’t have to worry as much about hardware, application becomes top dog.

Anyways, Here are the Arduino and ChipKit

ChipKit and Arduino

Now, as it might seem, the chipkit is quite a bit more advanced. It uses the same arduino software for compilation. It is also substantially faster. There was a comparison done, here on hackaday. It is a really neat device despite the fact that the software isn’t optimized.

The only problem though, as I have already mentioned is the voltage difference. So, it can be said that many shields would not be compatible with the chipkit. They do have similar layouts though.

ChipKit and Arduino from the top

A problem I did have with the chipkit was that the software wouldn’t write to the chip. apparently I had to download and burn the new bootloader to the MCU that was on board. lucky thing I have a pickit3 and was able to burn it, otherwise it would’ve been a brick. I think it’s odd that they didn’t test for that (apparently it was a certain batch of pic32 mcus that had a problem)

Something I do like about the chipkit is the extra IO and the fact that it uses a miniB plug rather than a massive printer usb plug.

Wireless units

At 4$ shipped per piece, these are wireless units. they have a variable frequency selectable by software and have a range of about 100m. I was going to make some of the centerpieces with them but since people take them home, it’d be pointless.

Wireless modules

Well, I’ll keep on truckin’

Posted in Electronics, Programming | Tagged arduino, chipkit uno32, fpsc, wireless | Leave a comment

Life keeps a changin’!

Posted on September 23, 2011 by smackaay

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated (which seems to be the standard intro for my posts) and I’;ve decided to state a little bit of what I’ve been doing as of late.

LED colored vases as centerpieces

Pretty self explanatory. Since I’m getting married later next year, I decided it’d be cool to have the centerpieces light up with the colors of our wedding, which are pink and orange. I’ve ordered a huge number of LED’s for this occasion for relatively cheap. I did a test a while back with a prototype board (the colors were purple and orange) and the result was very nice. I was going to make the light respond wirelessly with a module but that’s not going to happen since people bring them home and stuff, I want to keep the modules.

Playing with the chipkit

the chipkit is an arduino clone that runs a pic32 mcu on it. very fast!!!. Only problem I have with the unit is that it’s not really 5v compatible. I suppose 3.3 is quite high considering the speeds that these run. It also has more pinouts than the arduino UNO.

Very neat device

Burning with copper

Well, I just thought it’d be neat to post how we’re burning an almost impossible to machine thread into a set of master jaws. it’s not terribly impressive but I thought it could be interesting to some

the unfinished thread

the edm'ed thread

Burning with copper

I think it’s neat anyways. Anyways, there’s more to come in terms of neato projects, I just don’t feel like documenting them until they get to a certain point of completion.

Posted in Other/misc | Leave a comment

Old photocopiers and you!

Posted on July 21, 2011 by smackaay

So a company that shares a parking lot with out company sells and distributes photocopier services. One day I was told about a whole bunch of photocopiers that were just sitting there. Deciding to take the plunge and rip through them the bounty was great!

Stepper city

There you go. 33 steppers from only 10 or so photocopiers. I found the following things.

Stepper motors
brushless dc motors
stepper drivers
Microclutches
all kinds of plastic gearing, great for all kinds of things
opto-interruptors
proximity sensors
good limit switches
connectors
gear-motors

Everything an inventor could need. Amazing!

Well, tomorrow I got 15 more copiers to disassemble! Everyone should try disassembling them!

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged electronics, photocopiers, stepper motors | 2 Comments

HipStreet E-Reader Review… plus some

Posted on May 29, 2011 by smackaay

Well, I was in the local Wal-Mart the other day and spotted this little device in the E-book reader section. It is the HS-M700-4GBBK version of this particular device. Here’s a shitty picture.

It’s a reasonably well laid out device. It seems to function reasonably well but has some problems. Remember though, it has quite a low price of $78 so it was a reasonable purchase. First, let’s state the features stated on the product listing and write a review on each of the features:

7″ TFT Screen (800×480 res.)

Well, this was a bit of a disappointment. The screen works ok but it is pretty dim. Any kind of ambient sunlight, even near dusk, will render this screen dark.

The touchscreen itself is pretty bad too. Well, it’s not the touchscreen per say but the responsiveness of the software is pretty poor. When switching through stuff especially when running an app, the software doesn’t seem to register hits very well. That said, it does respond just well enough to function but it is frustrating.

4GB of internal storage

Yep, it does have that and the transfer rates seem reasonable. not much to say on this.

Built-in rechargeable battery

The battery is quite large as you’ll see in the pictures later. I haven’t been able to test it’s battery life but I would say it’ll last quite some time just playing music.

Loud internal speaker

Yes, they described it as loud. the speakers aren’t bad for how small they are and play loud enough so you can hear what’s being played. A point for Hipstreet.

Dual 3.5mm headphone jack

Yes, it has dual jacks. I suppose thats for if you have a friend that wants to listen in on another set. Both jacks appear to work fine for both line out uses and headphone.

USB 2.0 interface

Yes, it runs at USB 2.0 speeds, not much to say about this.

MicroSD slot (up to 16gb)

This too appears to function adequately.

Multi-task operation compatible

Yes, you can play music and browse through the menus or photos. not much else really to do. It does become a bit slower while this is occurring.

Ebook reader functions: TXT, PDF, EPUB, FB2, HTML

Ok, here is the real crux of the issue, the EBook capabilities. Let’s just say the reading is less than stellar for PDFs. While it does render them more or less properly, you can’t make it zoom page-wide . That means that even if you set the tablet to read sideways along the long portion, it’ll simply squish the pdf page into a smaller space. With a standard pdf you have two choices, barely readable and unreadable unless the text is large print.

With TXT, EPUB and PB2′s it seems to render OK, however the rendering is really slow. flipping pages can sometimes take quite a bit of time. Changing the font size with the +/- keys can take some time too, especially with a larger text file. Though, I must say, reading with it in the dark is quite OK.

So, in closing with this feature. Don’t use pdf’s.

Music: MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, APE, OGG

As one might expect with a device like this, the music playing is actually quite good. I tried MP3, WAV and OGG. They all played flawlessly. There is some lag between songs but it’s acceptable.

Video: MPG, AVI, MOV, RM

I tried some MPG’s and AVI’s. They played flawlessly. Some high resolution or low compression formats seemed to lag the player but it would get over it’s hiccups eventually. The player itself is decent, however, again, the screen is really dim so it’s really only good as a nighttime player.

Photos: JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG

Well, not much to say here, it displays all of those formats fairly well and has a slide show format. The interface isn’t terribly intuitive for panning but other than that, it is a picture viewer.

Voice recorder

Can you say “WSHHHHHHHsdgfsdgklfsdgjlfdg” That’s about all you’ll hear. The mic really suck so the recording suffers. Why they include these features is beyond me. Nobody uses them.

File Browser

Yes, you can cut, copy paste and delete. not a bad feature actually. Though there is no directory creation so I can’t fathom any real reason why you’d want to perform any of those operations.

Calendar

It really is just that. A calendar. No days of interest, no scheduling. Time and date. Nothing more. meh.

Summary

For a little under $80 bucks it’s not a bad device. If you have some EPUB books or something this might be OK. It does differ from the Kindle in the fact that you can use it in the dark, this may be it’s only redeeming feature in the EReader market. However, it does excel at playing music and video files so I suppose it has its charm there. So I give this device a 6/10 . I only give it a 6 because it was so cheap.

Plus some!!!

So decided to crack this puppy open. Here are some pics

This is the full unit open to the elements. As you can see the battery is quite large and the circuitry is quite minimal.

This thing is the CPU. I tried digging up info on the BOXCHIP F15 and it was unable to find a manufacturer. It looks as though this is a very common device for pre-packaged music/video players on the market today. It probably contains both a CPU and a bunch of decoding hardware for various file formats. While it’s running it does run somewhat warm to the touch but not very. must be quite efficient.

This is the K9GBG08u0a 4gb nand flash chip. this is what provides data storage. looks like you could put another chip on and extend the storage.

This is the K4H511638J-LCCC. It is a 64MB SDRAM chip. This of course provides the working ram for the BoxChip CPU.

Well, there ya’ go. The HipStreet Ereader.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged ebook reader, ereader, hipstreet, hs-m700-4gbbk | 24 Comments

It’s been 4 years!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by smackaay

Yay! this site has been around and updated semi-regularly for four years now. Having just paid the bill for another 2 years, hopefully it’ll be around for a while longer.

Looking back through this site I can see some of the things I’ve worked on and recall the state of my life at each of those times. I’ve gone through three jobs and one period of pseudo-unemployement. Some tough times and some good ones. I’ve learned a lot both professionally and personally.

Here’s to another 4 years of half-finished but fun projects.

Posted in Other/misc | Tagged 4 years, dreamhost, smackaay | Leave a comment

Timer lamp, Part Deux

Posted on May 7, 2011 by smackaay

Anyways, as I promised, here is the almost finished. A couple days later than I said but, still, I did finish it for the most part.

The lamp standing and working

So Basically what we have here is a $20 lamp that’s been outfitted with buttons to control its power status. I have to warn people first, the methodology of affixing the stuff in here is very sloppy. If you follow these methods of hot gluing stuff, use caution to support the boards in other ways.

Inside of the lamp, gutted out and re-purposed

As you can see, I busted the box off of a wall wart to use as the power supply and used a terminal block to handle all of the mains stuff. It got pretty crowded in the enclosure so I’ll have to make a new cover for the bottom. Also, without the weight that was inside of it, it’ll topple. Anyways, it seems to work well.

Buttons and light

So, after this is all done and a cover is made, I’ll also have to secure all of the boards a bit better and cut the prongs off of the wall wart, That’s a tad bit dangerous to have those prongs exposed.

So, whenever I get around to part three, I’ll take some pics and show them. Thus ends one application for the PIC10F200.

As an aside, I’ve been doing some of the work at a local hackerspace here in Edmonton. I was extremely surprised to find one here in Edmonton, land of the rednecks! Well, here are some pics of the place. It’s only been around for two years and could always use some new members.

Here it is on the outside, nothing to make note of here.

The outside of the Edmonton New Technology Society

And here is the inside of the common area of the ENTS.

Edmonton New Technology Society Pano Inside

Pretty messy, but that goes with the territory of a shared common use area I suppose. If anyone is interested, visit Ents.ca here in Edmonton.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged Edmonton New Technology Society, ents, lamp, mains, pic10f200, timer lamp, unsafe | Leave a comment

The timer lamp Redux, Part one.

Posted on May 4, 2011 by smackaay

Well, in the vein of the spirit of the low-end microcontroller, I decided to make a timer lamp based around the PIC10F200. I did one years ago and it was based on a pic16f505 which is a low end MCU as well but it has quite a bit more ram and rom. Also, oddly enough I shall actually share both the circuit diagram (which is dead simple) and the .hex file so people can use the program to make their own timer lamp if desired.

So here’s the quick rundown

The LED blinks very slowly so that you can see the lamp in the dark, but not so rapidly to become annoying. The power button turns the lamp on and off. the timer button turns on the timer. the increments are 1, 5 and 30 minutes.

Here is the circuit diagram.

Circuit diagram of Timer Lamp

Also, here is the HEX file: Timelamp hex file

Also, here are pictures of the boards in development.

Timer lamp on the breadboard

This is messy but, it worked for dev purposes.

Timer lamp Circuit on the PCB. Kinda tight but it works.

And here is the finished board. Not bad for a couple hours of work. Yes, it’s messy, like everything I do.

So, tomorrow I’ll be going to my Hackerspace and drilling the holes and installing switches into a lamp I bought. Part 2 tomorrow, or the next day.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged lamp, pic10f200, relay, timer lamp | Leave a comment

A die, proper

Posted on April 30, 2011 by smackaay

Well, it’s been some time since I’ve made a die. This is a relatively simple one for a customer. I had some problems with alignment and some mixed up number on my part, but it seems to work adequately. As always, some pics…

So, here is the unpunched pin.

The pin, un-flattened

And here it is flattened… all while maintaining the angular alignment of the reed and guard.

The pin punched flat

initially it was a pain because the material would mash in between the guard and the plate but I solved that. Here are some more pics anyways…

The die open

The die coming closed on the plate

Valve reed and guard in the pockets

Well, there ya go. Fun fun.

Posted in Work | Tagged die, punch die | Leave a comment

From start to finish, a cutter.

Posted on April 26, 2011 by smackaay

We had to build a certain cutter for a customer and I figured it’d be neat to document the drawing and then the finished product. This is a cutter I designed and I think it turned out nice.

Conception of the cutter

And here’s some pics of the finished result.

From the side

Overview of the cutter

Insert Installed

Anyways, nothing spectacular, but I like to document these kinds of things.

Posted in Work | Leave a comment

The new lab, again and a fish light controller

Posted on April 16, 2011 by smackaay

Nothing special in todays update but I figured I’d post a few things for the fun of it. First off I guess is my lab. I’ve been using it for a month or so. A little small, but at least it’s not at work.

New lab as of April 2011

Nothing to write home about I guess, but I feel comfortable here! Anyways, my little project for the day is the fish light. My bulb burnt out in my fish tank and since it was a high UV one I’ve decide to make an LED version. Since I have an array of LED’s I decided to go with some Whit, UV and a few red ones for good measure (I don’t like blue LEDs).

LEDs!!!

And here’s the breadboard, messy!

the LED driver on the breadboard

The LED’s are driven on 4 channels with PWM output on separate channels. The idea for me is to provide an on-timer for the cycles through the day and to provide a source of UV light for the plants. The diodes are driven by 4 TIP117′s so that each channel (White, UV, Red) can be controlled individually based on whatever profile I want.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered that the number of LED’s that I used is insufficient for use in the tank, not enough light. So I’ve ordered over 500 white LED’s and 150 UV led’s and 100 Red LED’s. I won’t use them all but it’s always good to have LED’s. One issue may be driving all of these LED’s. I have a maximum output of 1A on each of the PNP TIP117′s so an output of about 14W is all I can produce. Hopefully that’ll be enough!

Again, the LED Array

Anyways, here’s hopin’!

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged fish light, pic16f690, white led | 2 Comments

The magic of EDM machines

Posted on April 8, 2011 by smackaay

The other day we were asked to remove a section out of a valve. It’s not a huge valve but milling it would’ve been difficult all the way to the center so we put it on the EDM to blast out the side to make the inside visible. through to the stuff on the inside. Here are the images.

another view

And a view from the top. gotta love the clean edges with the rough gritty surface.

Here's a look at it from the side

This was all burned at 150 amps which is max for this machine.

A look as it was being burned, not much to see

Nothing crazy interesting, but I thought it may be neat.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Work | Tagged edm, ram edm, valve | Leave a comment

The underrated PIC10F200 (and 202/204/206 as well)

Posted on April 4, 2011 by smackaay

Sitting around looking through my collection of parts during a brief stint of illness I came across my stash of 30 or so PIC10F200′s. These were my entry into the world of microcontrollers. Granted I wasn’t very good at electronics (and probably still not very good) and I found the lowest end microcontroller i could in order to understand them on a more fundamental basis. I found all of the peripherals on other microcontrollers to be a distraction and complicating factor from what I wanted to learn.

My little batch if PIC10F200's, I got more in tubes

Nowadays, delving into 32bit architectures and whatnot, I’ve forgotten about the little MCU’s. Thinking about it they’re still incredibly useful in a myriad of circumstances. Only costing 59 cents or 30 cents at volume, and running at 4Mhz internally these have an amazing range of uses.

Consider the lowest end of the low end, the 10F200. Now it only has 256 words (12-bit wide instructions) and 16 bytes of RAM. It has 3 I/O and one input only pin. Now in a world of Arduinos and large pin count microcontrollers running at 40+Mhz , it may seem like this thing has no use but I beg to differ.

Today I was tinkering around with the little unit today and I was recalling some of the things I imagined I could do with the limited hardware. So today I wanted to see how well it could produce sound. Now this little thing is trivial for most MCU’s, simply output an appropriate square wave. My goal though was to produce a warble and program it in a C compiler. This was very easy and achievable.

The little sound circuit I was working on... using a LM2904 for amplification.

Now, granted, it’s not a very complicated circuit, but I found it to work admirably. The compiled code took up only 36% of the ROM and 38% of the RAM. That’s with 2 16 bit counters and an 8 bit function variable. it also used delay functions. Of interest to note though, I tried using floats, no go, the libraries filled up the ROM like boom!

Anyways, here are some used I dreamed up for the PIC10F200 over the years. They are mostly in support roles but I think they’re equally as useful as any other role within a project, especially given the MCU’s small footprint and low price. The applications I’ve thought up are as follows, keep in mind we only have 3 IO and one input.

A dice game: I actually created a prototype of this some time ago based on the idea that this would be my business card. It was simply a set of multiplexed LED’s (six in total) on a PCB that would show like the face of a dotted die. one input was used and the other three were for the IO. Bringing the IO to an input mode would turn off the leds.
Two button debouncing: Using a microcontroller for debouncing has been my favorite way to debounce inputs on a button. By using an internal count on the MCU you can simulate a charging/discharging capacitor and provide threshold values to simulate a ‘dead zone’
A little robot: Using the two output for motor control and the two inputs for sensing, you could potentially make a simply robot. the only problem with it may be the limited ROM for logic routines, but I suppose that’s the challenge.
Timer Lamp: The 10f200 has just enough IO for two buttons and two outputs (I = On/off, I=Timer function, O= LED out, O=Relay for lamp). my old project with a timer lamp was done with a PIC16F505 (a limited MCU in its own right) but the 10F200 would’ve done the job quite admirably.
Dimmers on AC lamps: This example is used by microchip extensively to promote the device, it is one of the many uses of this device.
Sound generation: Like I did today, it seems like a pretty worthwile use of the chip. Cheap and easy. small size also helps with the surface mount varieties.
One-wire wake up: You could use it as a separate node to watch a data line for signalling on the one-wire protocol. I have used this to fire up LED’s in a specified pattern and duration. With the SOP package tou can solder it directly to the LED and data line in a bizzaro single package.

Anyways, the uses are endless for such a limited but inexpensive device. I have no idea why such a limited device captivates my imagination but perhaps it’s the small size that makes it interesting and uncomplicated design and use.

So, for your troubles of reading a wall of text. Here’s a neat photo of an old diode for your perusal.

A bonus picture of an old school diode. Gotta love the little spring inside holding the junction together.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged applications, microchip, microcontroller, pic10f200 | 1 Comment

Little LCD tester

Posted on April 2, 2011 by smackaay

Well, after some playing around and getting my electronics feet back, I’ve finally rediscovered some passion. This little project is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. Basically it’s an HD44780 LCD tester. A very simple device but if you’re like me, when you receive an LCD in the mail, you want to be able to see the device in it’s glory.

The board inside the LCD tester

I just made it with a PIC16F690 MCU and some random components. The output is of course the LCD but also two LEDs. The unit has provisions for the backlight though it’s just straight 5v out, you have to worry about resistances when you hook it up.

The button on the back of the unit basically prints extra 20 character long strings so you can see how the memory is addressed and see how things scroll over in printing.

Anyways, here are pics:

Finished unit from the back. 5v barrel connector and a toggle switch for power

The unit from the front. just the LEDs and the pinouts. Also note the knob on the top for the pot. that's for adjusting contrast.

The text out. this one on a 2004 lcd

Well, there we go. This will be a handy little device for testing whether any of them are any good.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged ccs c, hd44780, lcd tester, pic16f690 | 2 Comments

Cheap chinese digital calipers and you

Posted on March 28, 2011 by smackaay

Some time ago I bought a bunch of cheap Chinese digital calipers and I was surprised to find that there is a port on almost all of them out the top. Now having looked up the format for both Starrett and Mitutoyo SPC formats, I have determined that it matches neither.

This one happens to be a Mastercraft one but you can buy one off Ebay for like 8 bucks delivered. You can see the connector is already installed with solder onto the first three pins.

the pinout is as follows, from left to right looking at the face:

Ground
Data
Clock
+1.5v (or whatever the battery happens to be)

Here’s a bit of a closeup:

A look at the pinouts, hastily soldered.

So I hooked it up to my oscilloscope and determined that there is both a data line and a clock. Here are the specs:

Data is sent in a packet of 6 nybbles.
Data is sent every 100ms
Data is LSB first
The numbers only seem to represent what’s on the screen. It represents units of the smallest graduation in the current display mode (inch/mm). For example, if values are converted to decimal: 1.5055″ = 3011 units or 3.45mm = 345 units

A look at my virgin Saleae logic analyser

And yes, I bought a Saleae Logic Analyser. Unfortunately it does not support synchronous serial analysis. This would’ve been a great tool, had the software supported it.

Anyways, I tried to get the output to work on the logic analyser but the signal was really spotty. I determined it was because it only output 1.5v. I quickly whipped up a breadboarded circuit with a 7014D op-amp setup like a comparator to amplify the singal to 5V

the board to amplify signals

Simple simple. This allowed me to run the signal onto my logic analyzer. It worked great except for the software not being able to decode the data. Wasn’t an issue though, I decoded it mentally.

Anyways, I hope this is useful to somebody. I can’t guarantee anything is correct but these device might make for interesting low-cost DRO units or something. There are some caveats however:

The cheap verniers are exactly that, cheap!
They don’t handle any kind of moisture, even a humid day is enough to screw them up.
The update rate is a paltry 10Hz
You can’t trigger the output when you want to, unlike SPC outputs of other manufacturers.
Battery life sucks
You can’t feed higher voltages to the battery compartment, no likey!

Again, hope this was helpful to somebody out there on the interwebs.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged calipers, chinese verniers, digital calipers, logic, SPC | 1 Comment

A look at a small solar panel set.

Posted on March 8, 2011 by smackaay

A while back I had found a bunch of little solar cells on Ebay for cheap. I hadn’t really looked at them or tested them in any real way but today I wanted to see if they could power even a small project. As it turns out, I would require a great number of them in order to make even an LED light up (Assuming no capacitor or storage device). Since the sun was going down, I needed a constant source of light so I used my desk lamp. Here are the comparisons.

The individual solar cell

Those are the units I bought. I think I got like 30 for $10 or something. relatively cheap, but not really. I was expecting some decent performance, which I got, but not nearly as much as I expected.

This is the competitor. It’s the old Archer 6-12V solar cell pack. It’s quite old (25 years), the lens is dirty but it still works quite well.

The old Archer solar panel

And here is the test cell/array that I soldered together.

The solar cells soldered in a group of 4

Now, keep in mind that this was all done with a desk lamp. I maintained a certain distance from the bulb and only used the maximum measurement received by moving the panel around. Also given are comparitive measurements for the overall visible area exposed to light.

	Old Archer Panel	Cheapy EBay panel
Measured Voltage	5.245V	.162V
Measured Amperage	305 uA	628 uA
Calculated Watts	1.6 mW	.1 mW
Measured Area	14.05 Sq.in.	1.6524 Sq.in.
Cell Sizes	.788in x .563in	1.063in x .433in
mW per Sq.in.	.113mW per sq.in	.06 mW per sq.in

That all being said,you could still run quite a few little things at that low current rating if you were to link together all of the cells for whatever reason. unfortunately, nothing that I want to do could use them. So the lesson for the day is “Quality over Quantity”

Also, as an aside, here’s my new Agilent U1271A multimeter. Works like a dream!!!

My new Agilent u1271A, yay!

Perhaps tomorrow or someday I’ll give figures for sunlit voltages/amperages.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged archer solar panel, cheap cells, ebay, solar cell | Leave a comment

Happy 2011! uuh, I guess a bit late though.

Posted on March 3, 2011 by smackaay

It’s been well over two months since I last posted. Frankly, not a lot has happened in the meantime anyways. Work is going well and life is pretty good. That said, I’ve begun to regain my inspiration for electronics again and I’ve been going hog wild building stuff in the evenings. Just some stuff to touch on I guess…

My Lab

Well, again I have a secluded labratory in the shop I work at. It consists of 2 desks, two shelves and all of my equipment. It’s nice to hang around and listen to music and stuff while having access to all of the manufacturing facilities I could ask for!

Here’s a picture of my lab as I was setting it up.

The new lab as of 2011, this is an early picture. there is more equipment, parts and shelves now

It’s a real treat here and I’ve been sitting up here for many hours on my projects lately. Yay!

A veroboard planner PDF

Not really a project per say, however, somebody might want it. It’s for printed pcbs from PCBIran which have a ground loop on the outside and sets of rows and columns. Somebody may find it useful. I dunno.

BOARD PLANNER 01

The Shop

The shop I’m at is investing in new technology (IE. CNC mill and CNC Ram EDM) and I figured it’d be neat to take an overview picture. Sure is crowded though. The mill, as was stated earlier, is a Haas VF-5 with a 40 taper and the Machine is a large CHMER EDM, more on that thing later in the post

The shop I work at is growing, but not in floor space.

It’s actually much tidier now, this is when we were installing the EDM.

Rotary Table and CHMER EDM

I am developing a rotary table interface for the CHMER Ram EDM. The fools at CHMER decided that the machine requires NO extra M-codes for interfacing to external hardware… WHY!!!??!?

So now I have to monitor the outrush current of the pump, turn it on and off a prescribed number of times and then the rotary table can index. I’m still kind of in shock that nobody has ever presented CHMER with this problem. Weird!

The TI Launchpad

I have just ordered the TI launchpad for $4.60 or whatever it cost. TI is attempting to break into the hobbyist market something fierce. unfortunately, after looking at the development tools available, they are all way overpriced.

While they do provide a code-size limited version, which is useful for most things, I think people like to have unfettered access to their chips and what kind they use from a particular vendor. When the development tools that allow this are in the $500 range, that’s simply too much.

Perhaps there will be some good 3rd party support like Atmel and Microchip has and they can really take their MCU’s to the next level. It’d be very cool.

The Rest

Well, there is probably still more to say after such a long hiatus but I can’t think of it now. I do have some other ideas banging around in my head like a new design of the coolant refractometer which won’t foul. A robot that is machined beautifully and function on sonar. And a new coolant nozzle design that will kick Spider Cool’s ass from here to main street (I’m actually pretty stoked about this one).

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Programming, Work | Tagged coolant, coolant nozzle, edm, general stuff, lab, refractometer, spider cool | Leave a comment

The new Haas Mill Features

Posted on December 22, 2010 by smackaay

The company I work for has recently purchased a Haas VF-5 40 taper machine to augment the capabilities of the shop. Seeing as they didn’t have one before, this will greatly improve the capabilities of the shop.

The item of interest to me is the fact that it’s brand new and Haas has made a number of changes to their CNC mill line. Aside from their new higher contrast 2-tone paint job and sharper featured shrouding, here are some interesting changes that they’ve made. This may not be new to some people but if you haven’t used a haas made in the last 4 years or so, this may be of interest.

The Control

The new haas control

Nothing amazing about this control aside from the fact that the screen has a lot more info packed on the screen. Selecting one of the screen buttons toggles between the panels rather than actually displaying a different screen. None of the buttons have changed their functionality otherwise. I do find the screen switchovers to be a bit laggy and difficult to read at a distance but it is otherwise OK. Also Probong has a much more integrated setup than in previous versions whereby you can offset tooling from the tooling screen.

The Jog Pendant

The Haas Jog Pendant now has an LCD screen and greater functionality

Like the image says, the pendant now has an LCD screen. It also features two sets of dials and a toggle lever for axis slelection rather than the rotary switch allowing you to use it without looking too much at the labels.

The larger dial on the face is an analog dial that allows jogging at various speeds and goes about a quater turn left and right that springs back. the smaller one serves the original purpose of increment jogging. Increments are chosen on the screen rather than on a dial.

Also, things like current program, offsets, and various other minutia can be displayed.

The Screen on the Haas Pendant

There are is a problem though. That being the noticable lag from the pulse encoder to motion occuring on the machine. Often times when you want to move there is a considerable time difference from when you turn either the analog wheel or the pulse encoder. Also when you use the pulse encoder at a high rate, it skips many of the ticks or gets “jumpy”. the motion is not smooth.

Overall though the functionality is greatly enhanced.

The rest of the machine

Here are some of the other changes I’ve noticed.

Quieter Spindle
Different Coolant arrangement
Different design on the programmable coolant
Larger casting
Side window locks
an additional set of shelves on the side with a light
Power saving settings
Different Shrouding and duo-tone paint.
Removal of coolant tray around table
Shrouding around chip spigot
Raised handlebars for moving coolant tray

There are probably more changes than are what is listed here. Here are some pictures of the machine

: The new haas control

: The new design of the Haas programmable coolant nozzle

: The Haas table has lost the coolant/debris guard that surrounded it

: The Screen on the Haas Pendant

: The Haas Jog Pendant now has an LCD screen and greater functionality

: The Haas comes with some shelves and a tool holder with a light.

: New haas/renishaw probe design w/o a wire this time

: The haas now has window clips instead of slots at the top of the window

: The new look of the Haas control interface

Posted in Programming, Work | Tagged cnc machine, haas, vf-5 | 4 Comments

Inside of a Yukiwa Rotary Table Control… and WTF!

Posted on December 2, 2010 by smackaay

So today I we got the power going to a brand new Yukiwa rotary table, unfortunately, it seems to produce dangerous voltages on the case of the actual rotary table itself… dunno why.

Anyways, if anyone’s interested in seeing the innards of the device, here’s some pics.

Unit and rotary table in behind

Inside of the AC3 unit

By the way, this is one of the most beautifully made rotary tables I’ve ever seen.

Posted in Work | Leave a comment

The finished result of an old project

Posted on November 29, 2010 by smackaay

A bout a year or so back I had designed an enclosure for a friend of mine. You can see the object here on an old blog post of mine. I’ve forgotten to take pictures of it for some time and when I visited him I decided to take a couple for documentation’s sake.

Here they are:

From the back of the enclosure

A look at the top of the enclosure

Of course, it wasn’t me who did the electronics work inside. You can see the site of the person who did do this at http://s2innovations.com/. It’s a pretty nifty device I must say.

Posted in Electronics | Leave a comment

Playin’ with the Canon G12

Posted on November 1, 2010 by smackaay

This weekend I just purchased my new Canon G12. What a delightful camera. It’s robust, effective and just small enough to fit in a pocket (A big pocket)

I’ve been re-inspired to start taking photographs again since I have a good pocket camera again. YAY! I’m also playing around with some different techniques on filtering. Just an attempt at some different styles and ideas that I’ve been staying away from such as B&W and Lomography.

Here be some shots me hardies!

Wal Mart

The Welder's Flare

Down Whitemud Drive from 122St

There we have it folks

Posted in Miscellaneous, Photography | Leave a comment

Some changes, some improvements, some fun.

Posted on October 14, 2010 by smackaay

Yes, it’s been some time, again. Every post I make seems to say the same things. anyways. Here are some things I’m working on and also no longer working on.

Viscometer

No, nope and no. They bore me now and plus I don’t think there’s much of a market beyond a select few. meh. No lonjger working on it

In-line refractometer

I’ve been slowly working on this. I had a sample of a special coating and tested it. Sadly it didn’t work as I had expected. The only way for me to figure this out would be for me to make the coolant into a mist or to pour it somehow.

EDM Wire Chopper

This is a relatively new idea for me. the Chmer CNC wire EDM here at work doesn’t chop the wire that comes out the back. Already I’ve had it bind up on me. So I’m developing a new chopper that doesn’t pull on the extra wire that comes out.

There are some criteria that are important here. The electrics of the chopper must not meet the wire and the frame of the chopper must not be conductive to the frame of the machine. Here are some pictures of my idea thus far. There is some work to do on it, no doubt, especially the chopper cutter, could be a bit more sturdy.

A view of the inside of the prototype chopper module

CNMG Facemill

I was thinking about this idea for a while. Since so many shops use CNMG432 for general turning, it’d be nice to be able to use the obtuse side of the insert for something. While there are turning tools that utilize the obtuse side, they are usually only for facing or OD turning. Not very convenient. So I designed a facemill for use with CNMG432 obtuse side inserts.

This particular design is of course only for facing, no shoulders allowed Here are some images of this cutter.

Another rendering of the CNMG facemill. Of course the arbor mount isn't correct

Anyways, things being what they are, I should have some new and interesting things to post in a few weeks since I have access to EDMs and soon CNC mills on a more unfettered level. YAY!

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Work | Tagged assembly, chopper, cnmg432, edm, edm wire cutter, facemill, wire edm | Leave a comment

55g servo drawing.

Posted on June 20, 2010 by smackaay

For anyone that needs the drawing for a 55g servo, here we go. It’s been some time since I’ve updated but never fear, more boring stuff is to be posted soon

heres is a link to the actual PDF if you want it! servo body.pdf
If anyone needs dimensions or drawings of the horns, I’ve got the 4 lobed horn drawn and the round one. I can’t guarantee that these drawings have no mistakes, i just quickly draw them. Hopefully they’re of use to some one though.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects | Tagged drawing, electronics, servo | Leave a comment

A quick review of the HPS10se portable Oscilloscope from Velleman

Posted on March 21, 2010 by smackaay

I ordered this device about a year and a half ago for about $130USD. When I got it, I wasn’t terribly impressed but overall, for the price it’s not a bad unit. I figured it’s be nice to provide a short review of the device since there aren’t very many useful reviews out there. I have also done a video review which is posted on this page and on my Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/ElectroTark.

HPS10se Velleman Oscilloscope on the bench

The HPS10se is a low cost oscilloscope with a backlit 128×64 screen. The video performance is actually OK and the waveform is reasonably easy to make out in most instances. This device boasts a 2MHZ bandwidth for analog signals and a 10MS/s sampling rate. While I have no doubt that these figures are true, my own tests show that any waveform shows severe degradation above about 1MHz, this is to be expected though.

HPS10se oscilloscope in the box

The unit comes with a single probe, no need for more since it only has one channel input.

There is an option on the probe for x10 measurement which can be handy for high voltage measurement up to 600V. I’ve never used that feature on this but it’s easy to access with only a single button press. The device takes 5 AA batteries and can be run with an external wall wart, though it isn’t included. I use an old 9V converter with a 2.1mm by 5.5mm barrel connector, seems to work OK. It is rated at 9V and you might be able to use a 12V pack, though it may generate extra heat on the DC converter on-board.
One problem I have with this device is the way it eats batteries, even when it’s off. Remember to remove the batteries when you’re not using it. As an extra note, it can charge NIMH batteries if they’re in there.

Oscilloscope with a square wave

The device has some standard measurement options such as V-Peak+, V-Peak-, V-Range and Watts and dB. Since this is a low cost unit, it does not have a direct measurement for frequency and you cannot set the trigger level, you can however set its slope (Fall and Rise). You have to measure the frequency indirectly either by looking at the ticks and counting or by using the markers that you set, moving the markers to the start and end of one waveform gives you a frequency measurement in Hz.
Here’s a quick video I made, watch it if you like…

Anyways, here are some pros and cons.
PROS:

Low cost, about $130 to $160
Reasonable feature set for the price
Screen is easy to read despite its low resolution
Good for general use, low frequency stuff in a pinch

CONS:

Eats batteries like candy, also an odd number to use, 5, which most batteries come in multiples of 2
Waveform display is kind of inaccurate
Stand flap on back is too short, tough to stand vertically
No trigger level function
No direct frequency measurement

In closing, I would recommend this for people getting into electronics but for doing anything else, spend the extra money for a good/decent oscilloscope. The price, again, is pretty good.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged hps10se, oscilloscope, review | Leave a comment

Coolant mixture sensor (psuedo-refractometer)

Posted on March 15, 2010 by smackaay

A bit ago I got the idea of trying to determine the mixture of coolant vs. water by detecting both light occlusion of the mixture and the wavelengths blocked / passed. This initial device is just a rough prototype that will assist me in determining a course of action in regards to overall design.
The idea behind the device is to have the sensor fitted on to any pipe attached to the machine where coolant goes through and give a live measurement of coolant mix and alert the operator if the mix gets too high or low. Also I’d like it to detect tramp oils that have been beaten in to the coolant.

Coolant meter board

The board itself is pretty simple, just a PIC16f690 hooked up to an rs232 driver and using three analog channels. I may in the future build a more sophisticated ADC board, but for now, this will do. The mcu is linked to the two rail to rail opamps, 7014D’s to be exact. they were needed to condition the signal from the LEDs.

Coolant meter test receptacle

The sensor area is basically a cup with a white LED as a light source for the sensor LEDs. The three LEDs are IR, Orange-red, and Green. The LED’s respond to wavelengths more energetic than the ones they emit, therefore, the selections I made. I did try a blue LED but the response wasn’t good at all. Hopefully it will provide useful data, hopefully.

Coolant meter terminal output

In order to make data easier to collect, I put rs232 communications on it. I can store and track data this way. Above is some of the terminal output. Notice that I’m taking 10000 samples… this has the effect of increasing, to a very limited degree, the resolution of the device. It is however fraught with error thus far…
Anyways, any data collected and the design of this is extremely preliminary. I’m not even sure it’s a valid or useful idea yet.
As an extra bonus, or punishment, here’s a video I made for this device.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged coolant, electronics, pic16f690, refractometer, sensor | 4 Comments

Long time no post. Machining and trying to get back on my feet.

Posted on February 8, 2010 by smackaay

Well, it has been some time since I posted, about a month and a half or so. There have a been a number of events that have occurred in that time that have both beneficial yet disappointing. I’m not really sure where things are going right now but I hope they get better.

Anyways, on to some things I’ve been working on.

Machining
While I am a decent machinist, it is a job that I vowed to myself I would never do again. Lo and behold, I am machining again in order to get some funds and to simply make it through the months in terms of rent and bills. Some of my previous stuff has left me bone dry in terms of money. Realistically, I should thank my lucky stars that I have a skill I can fall back on that pays well and is relatively easy, most others are not so lucky.

Luckily, the shop I’m working at is pretty decent, though I’m not the machinist I once was and my machining style doesn’t really match the pace and style of the jobber shop I’m working at. Hopefully I either get better soon or find something more along the lines of what I’ve become good at.

Stamping machine with the Haas mill
This is a little project that I came up with after thinking about dot-peen machines. Basically the idea is to take a Haas mill and allow full control of its machinery to turn it in to a makeshift dot-peen marking machine.
This feat is accomplished through the serial port with a pass-through interpreter box connected to a computer.

Here is how it is all achieved.

First Step: Computer -

This is where the points and fonts are generated and created. All of the end points are sent out from the computer at a lower baud rate than the mill uses. This allows for longer cable length on the RS-232. Of course I could use USB or RS-485 but RS-232 is more common an interface. A sample output might be:

MOVE X.455 Y1. (Basically a rapid move)
STMP X.461 Y1. (Stamp here)
STMP X.467 Y1. (Stamp here)
HOME (Go back home)

The communication is full duplex between the pass-through and computer so that the pass-through can request more data.

Second Step: Pass Through -

Despite its name, it does not actually pass data through. It interprets the data and controls the stamping head. It will interpret the data and send the machine the appropriate G-codes to perform the commands. The pass through will communicate with the machine at 115200bps whereas the computer <-> passthrough is about 9600bps. a sample output might look like this (based on the above text):

G00 X.455 Y1.;
G01 X.461 Y1. F200.; (move to stamp position)
DPRNT [S]; (Is at position, passthrough will stamp)
G01 X.467 Y1. F200.; (move to stamp position)
DPRNT [S]; (Is at position, passthrough will stamp)
G28 G91 Z0;
G28 G91 Y0;

Third Step: Stamping head -

Not really a step so much as device to peen the surface of the part. Here is a picture of an earlier design I made for a stamping head.

Solenoid head for custom dot-peen machine

I don’t know if I’ll ever do this one. Macros need to be enabled in order for this to work so a lot of machines won’t be able to take advantage of it. Also, my time is limited.

Programming a CAM system

Since the shop I’m at has no CAM system for the guys on the floor and I don’t want to use a cracked copy of say, Gibbs or MasterCAM. I’m writing my own. The going is slow but I am slowly developing a little 2.5D cam system. The math function are working and the object creation is starting to come on line. Now for an interface. I am thinking of migrating over the VB.NET for this program since it does have a lot of nice object handling functions and it is a little easier than creating a user interface from scratch.

Anyways, That’s what I’ve been up to for the last while. Hopefully I get a car soon so that I don’t have to walk in this anymore.

This was taken on my walk home the other day.

Posted in Electronics, Programming, Work | Tagged dot peen, electronics, haas, machining, machinist, marking | Leave a comment

A crummy little servo tester and other minutia

Posted on December 14, 2009 by smackaay

The little servo tester
Well, I needed a way to test all of these servos I got from EBay and I decided to spend a little time making a quick and dirty little board for doing that. It uses a PIC12F683 and has a linear pot attached to it. Simple.

Crummy servo tester

Viscometer Board and stuff
I’ve been working on the software for the viscometer. Every function appears to work, at least based on the rudimentary prototype I have currently running. I am working on a scripting system for this device. I could make it just a basic viscometer but, as anyone that knows me, I simply can’t do. Here’s a pic of the working board.

The prototype viscometer board

An EEPROM file system
After thinking about how to store files appropriately and trying to have a file system that can work easily with 1024B of space, I started coming up with ways of defining a reasonable file system. Here it is.

First 2 bytes are settings, things like block size, filename size and special behaviors like for EEPROMS that can only be written to with blocks.also defined is the address size 8b, 16b or 32b
Each file in the FAT consists of a name of either 2,4 or 8 bytes. this is determined by the setting.
Following the name is one byte detailing the flags such as read-only, archive, and whether it’s open or not.
After the filename and attribute byte, are the addresses. These addresses can be 8, 16 or 32 bits, however, an 8 byte address can address something larger, say 2k rather than 256B if you set the block size appropriately. This of course lowers the efficiency of storage space but allows for some growth in the file. The file can have any number of addresses in order to remove time wasted moving stuff around.

Anyways, that’s what I’ve been working on as of late. Fun!

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Work | Tagged diy, FAT, File Allocation table, pic12f683, RC servo, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | 5 Comments

Viscometer board proceeding, some RS232 fun.

Posted on December 1, 2009 by smackaay

Well, things have been proceeding apace, and I’m feeling pretty confident that I’ll have both versions done fairly soon. For debugging the device I’ve decided to create a kind of terminal, this allows one to directly access commands and see log information from a terminal program. This is handy for seeing data over time and for various other uses.

Here are some pictures…

Prototype viscometer board out futher

Prototype viscometer board

The early output of the sample terminal. I have created a kind of console, I will implement commands as they are created.

I think this is going to turn out well.

Posted in Electronics, Work | Tagged diy viscometer, pic18f4680, process viscometer, prototype, rs232, Stormer viscometer | Leave a comment

One last kick at the can, Viscometer Style!

Posted on November 28, 2009 by smackaay

Well, since funding for the viscometer has fallen through for various, understandable reasons, I have decided to take one last kick at the can before I shift my focus on to other ventures. The last kick at the can? Two similar viscometer heads, two very different purposes.

This is the rough mockup of the new head, it is the same for both designs

The hand-held stormer

  This device is designed to work in the field and provide readings in KU, Grams and perhaps Centipoise. The device itself doesn’t feature any communications of any kind. Also, there is no LCD display, instead a 7 Segment x 4 LED display is used since it’s a bit cheaper and more visible in various lighting conditions. Also, since it will be use tables of values rather than calculating it on the fly, I can use some slimmer hardware such as the PIC18F2620 Microcontroller or an ATMEGA8.

  Also of note is the fact that everything is fairly cheap to build, these low-cost viscometers could be used in paint shops in any size container. I am building one to go to Cold Lake where they’re going to try one out since they’ve been having trouble getting decent consistency using only a mixing stick to test viscosity.

  Here’s a rough mockup of what it will look like. Of course none of the boards or covers are shown, also the display isn’t visible, I haven’t decided the best location for it yet. I may actually put it inside of a separate enclosure to make the unit lighter since it requires 12 volts.

Mockup of the handheld viscometer

  This is probably the most marketable device thus far.

The Super-Visc

  Over the last 9 months or so I have developed a number of interesting methods for determining error and correcting for it, I have also develop methods for calibration and symbolic parsing. Since I would hate to come away empty handed and waste all the of knowledge accumulated over the course of 2+ years, this is the coup de grace of rotational viscometers.

  To my knowledge, most other rotational viscometers use a beryllium copper torsion spring to provide a fixed, known spring rate, or torque on the sensing shaft. The cheap ones like the stormer viscometer base it on time and run a fixed speed AC synchronous motor, whereas the more expensive ones use a variable drive and encoders on the top and bottom to determine the difference from top to bottom. My viscometer uses the cheaper method of determining difference and RPM by using the timing via ether opto-interrupters or hall effect sensors. By using a a very high sampling rate, I can get very precise measurements of the rotation, though some differences may occur during rotation. Accuracy is achieved through error correction in the form of running averages, temperature and friction compensation and angular displacement compensation. While this is places a heavy burden on the software side of things, it is extremely effective.

  This viscometer works on three key concepts: Variables, Equations and Test Programs.

Variables – These are variables that are calculated dynamically before any other calculations have taken place. These include ambient temperature, fluid temperature, angular displacement, spring length, time from test start, time from last sample and other mathematical constants such as PI and E.
Equations – These are the equations that determine the units. You may (and for basic units, must) include variables in order to calibrate the device. These equations are completely configurable by the user and includes every standard mathematical function such as Cos(), Sin(), Cosh(), Powers, Square Roots and many others, perhaps even logical equivalents say to multiply by 1 or 0, could be useful. While developing this I had a choice, either computationally expensive or memory intensive, I chose memory intensive symbolic storage in order to improve performance. This also allows one to develop any unit with any paddle one wishes!
Test Patterns – These are the patterns that develop the test. For example, let’s say you want to test for KU. You place the appropriate spindle in the machine and select the KU test run. KU test runs would appear as follows (200 RPM Fixed, Equation KUPU, Out->FLTP, Out->KU) or for Centipoise vs RPM (50-220 RPM variable, Equation CNTP, Out->CNTP, Out->RPM, Out->FLTP). These are a boon for the experimentor.

One key disadvantage of this device is the initial difficulty of calibration. However, if done en masse in the factory, it wouldn’t be an issue. One of the major advantages of this device is for the experimenter. You could put a hotdog on a stick, put it in a fluid, create a relationship via an equation and call it whatever you want. The device is very configurable and would probably be well suited to materials engineers and chemists who need either standard or non standard tests with a large amount of automation in terms of data collection.

Here’s a mockup of the finished laboratory device.

Potential mockup of finished device

The device will feature an RS485/232 output along with perhaps a touch screen or simply a keypad and 20×4 LCD display. The processor will either be a DSPIC33F or PIC32, I may stray towards Atmel since they have great throughput. My current prototype board however has a PIC18F4680, it’s enough to test on but its limits on RAM are starting to bother me.

Well, this was a long post… Whew

As always, anyone who has any questions can leave a comment or E-mail me.

Posted in Other/misc | Tagged Centipoise, general purpose viscometer, in-process, krebs units, KU, poise, process stormer viscometer, rheology, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

Stormer Viscometer Grams to Oz-Inch Conversion

Posted on November 10, 2009 by smackaay

Trying to make sense of the standard stormer viscometer and methods that could be used to calibrate a device, I’ve been looking at the original stormer viscometer in order to get an idea of what ‘grams’ actually means in the case of the stormer viscometer. Here are some facts.

The weight in grams is held on a pulley and pulls on a rotating pulley that is 1.125″ in diameter. That pulley rotates some gears or belts at a ratio of 11:1 (1 rotation of the pulley = 11 rotations of the spindle). Taking the torque applied on the main pulley and dividing it by 11 results in the actual torque to the spindle.

Simply because I use it in these cases, here is the conversion ratio for grams hung on the instrument to oz-inches. Also, one should keep in mind that there is some loss of torque due to mechanical limitations.

oz-inches == .00367056 * grams

therefore, using this formula, a KU meter ranging from 32 grams to 1099 grams ranges from .1174 oz-in to 4.0339 oz-in.

yay! Hopefully someone finds this useful as well.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Work | Tagged conversion, grams, krebs, oz-inches, Stormer viscometer, torque | Leave a comment

Grams to Krebs conversion formulae

Posted on November 10, 2009 by smackaay

After many a day scratching my head as to why I can’t get my viscometer to calibrate correctly, even assuming logarithmic and quadratic relationships, I find out why I have been having so many problems.

Krebs units are in not very linear!

I have found an old chart with lots of grams to krebs conversions on it and after painstakingly transcribing them, I have come up with the following graph.

Grams to Krebs (grams on horizontal axis, krebs vertical)

As you can see, there are a number of points of inflection along this graph. Here are some images of the various best fit scenarios regarding this set of points. These points encompass the KU values 40.1 to 141, just for reference.

Linear (0.0813637)*x+(64.5289)

Quadratic (-0.0000813007)*x^2+(0.173302)*x+(46.274)

Cubic (1.01193e-7)*x^3+(-0.000252971)*x^2+(0.253045)*x+(37.7895)

Quartic (-2.3958e-10)*x^4+(6.42986e-7)*x^3+(-0.000653817)*x^2+(0.359922)*x+(30.3868)

Quintic (1.93677e-13)*x^5+(-7.87171e-10)*x^4+(1.20087e-6)*x^3+(-0.0008998)*x^2+(0.403747)*x+(28.1763)

As you can see, a quartic relationship is quite passable though I still added a quintic relationship. It may be possible to make a simpler equation based on these values but I thought it prudent to stick to what I know.

You can see the dataset here. GramsvsKrebs.txt

Be warned, I may have made mistakes or the chart may have been wrong, Do your own research if you want to be certain of your results. Hopefully this is of help to somebody.

Posted in Electronics, Programming, Work | Tagged conversion, grams, grams to krebs, krebs, Stormer viscometer | 1 Comment

Working on new viscometer head

Posted on October 6, 2009 by smackaay

Well, I’ve been designing some new stuff since having a little wind of inspiration. This head weighs in at about 700g and provisions have been made to allow an attachment to a handle and therefore a hand-held version could be made. Here are some images.

Line Drawing

Fully Assembled visc head

Viscometer head opened

Viscometer head from the back

I’m going to use these design concepts on the next in-process version. I’m going to design the external case for the electrical portion and for possible battery storage. Since the motor only draws 100ma at 24v or 200ma with a 12v motor, a hand held version is definitely possible. This version will use a PIC16F767 for control and using a smaller LCD display to display info.
Now, on to developing some other devices. I’ve wasted far too much time in the last many months, time to get busy.

Posted in Electronics, Programming, Work | Tagged engineering, sensor, Stormer, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

Quick post, a couple of drawings.

Posted on October 1, 2009 by smackaay

The chill is in the air, October is here. I’ve been pretty busy with the viscometer and some other things, however I drew a couple of objects just for future reference. I figured somebody might need the dimensions of either a stormer viscometer paddle (as measured from a real one) or a QY-2004A white LCD display (blue backlit)

Anyways, here are the links to the drawings in PDF format.

stormer paddle drawing PDF
qy-2004a drawing in PDF

I’m going to draw up some of the rarer parts I have, I may need them later and somebody else might be able to make use of them. Keep in mind, these are rough drawings taken from measured features. Don’t assume that the measurements are the same for all units except perhaps the stormer paddle.

Posted in Electronics, Personal Projects, Work | Tagged drawings, pdf, qy-2004a, stormer paddle | 2 Comments

Getting closer to final completion

Posted on September 22, 2009 by smackaay

A long road behind and still some ahead, here are some pic of the viscometer in its state of completion.

stormer viscometer with cover looking in

viscometer from the back

viscometer standing up

viscometer laying down

stormer viscometer with cover

Now to implement the ModBUS protocol and finish up this project.

Posted in Electronics, Programming, Work | Tagged diy, diy viscometer, process viscometer, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

Krebs to Poise Formula

Posted on September 4, 2009 by smackaay

Looking for a decent formula on the net for a Krebs to Poise conversion I’m left empty handed. I found a chart that had listed direct numerical conversions.

Here’s the Best Fit value in the Quadratic form ax^2+bx+c=y

y=0.00419037x^2+(-0.306745)x+6.40025
y=poise
x=krebs

It may be somewhat rough, but since KU is a unitless value…

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged krebs to poise, Stormer viscometer | 3 Comments

In-Process Stormer Viscometer – Damn near complete

Posted on August 24, 2009 by smackaay

The viscometer is nearing full completion! YAY! To mark this occasion to mark the end of a long two years, I am placing a small gallery of the almost finished product. The only thing missing is the outside cover which consists of a 4″ od aluminum tube. Also, the springs I’ve ordered have also not arrived as yet, however, for now, the elastics will suffice. Here are some of the features and facts:

Can be used in-lab or in-process
Selectable RPM with a tight tolerance on RPM +/-0.5RPM
User calibration routines. This allows the end user to calibrate with 3 fluids of known viscosity
16 key keypad, used for calibration and settings, also for running special tests
Can be used as a laboratory gel-timer
Can be used for custom tests besides stormer viscometry
Low power consumption <100ma or <2.4W
RS-485 Serial output
Control electronics have complete galvanic isolation
24VDC supply required
repeatability (requires further testing) +/- 1.5%
Modbus protocol (not yet implemented)

Posted in Electronics, Programming, Work | Tagged completed, diy, diy viscometer, paddles, pic18f4685, pictures, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

Yay! They work!

Posted on August 21, 2009 by smackaay

Well, I got the power board and control boards done. They both work flawlessly. YAY!

Power and Control and LCD

The peripherals seem to work too.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged board, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

Spring Stormer Viscometer, proceeding, the board works.

Posted on August 15, 2009 by smackaay

Well, I recently recieved my boards back from ap circuits in Calgary and I’m pleased with the result. I kind of fucked up by ordering 4 of the same board and not 2 of the control board and 2 power boards. Oh well! I can use the current boards for the new ones. Anyways, here are some images of the board.

The two boards together, unpopulated and populated

The board, populate with SMD's

Posted in Other/misc | Tagged pcb, pic18f4685, smd, Stormer viscometer, viscometer | Leave a comment

An experiment in heat transfer

Posted on August 9, 2009 by smackaay

  After being apprised of an issue with heat transfer through PCB traces, being the stubborn idiot I am, I had to try and solve the problem. The issue is with a particular PCB that has a cutout section with a thermistor placed in a partially isolated section within the enclosure, unfortunately the traces themselves are serving as a heat transfer conduit especially so since copper is a particularly good conductor of heat.

  After thinking about it for a while I came up with a couple of ideas like calibrating the calculated output to accommodate for the temperature discrepancy, however that probably wouldn’t work without a second thermistor closer to the heat source, accounting for the difference. Another idea I had was to use an infrared thermopile but they’re kind of large and expensive and would require a heat channel mounted above it to prevent measuring the temperature of the case.

  After thinking for a while about it, the simplest answer I could come up with would be a heatsink to mitigate the heat transferred to the thermistor. While it is theoretically impossible to totally remove all heat difference, I believe that a large portion of the heat transfer can be eliminated. So I wanted to see if heatsinks actually help equalize heat much at all so I devised a bit of a rough experiment.

The Experiment

  I decided the quickest way to test this would be with materials I already had. I have a selection of thermistors so I used a glass axial thermistor.

This is the thermistor board used in the experiment. the thermal leads aren't attached.

The circuit used for the test. Beautifully illustrated

The thermistor used is a glass 10kOhm NTC Thermistor in series with a 1k resistor in order to detect current/divide voltage. With the setup above, the voltage detected from GND to the divider is 438mv. the temperature in my basement is pretty steady since the furnace isn’t running. So now I attach the leads.

This is the board with the two 22AWG leads attached.

I also performed the test with the leads closer to the thermistor.

I used Teflon coated wire to prevent conduction between the two sides and used my soldering iron as a heat source since it’s temperature controlled. I let the heat soak up through the lines for 10 minutes to ensure that the heat stabilizes at the thermistor. I also performed a test with the soldering iron closer to the sensor.

Finally, I decided to place a heatsink on the line. I was going to solder aluminum shims to the leads in order to provide for heat sink. That turned out to be difficult at best, so I used coiled up copper wire and soldered it to the leads. I performed the same two tests with the position of the soldering iron. Anyways, here are the results of the test.

Test Type	Voltage Recorded
No leads, ambient	438mV
With Leads, ambient	438mV
Pressing thumb on thermistor ~33.1c	554mV
Heat with long leads, No sink	496mV
Heat with short leads, No sink	625mV
Heat w/ long leads, w/ sink	476mV
Heat w/ short leads, w/ sink	544mV

It should be said that this test is far from perfect and doesn’t prove anything quantitatively with any real degree of accuracy, however I wanted to see how effective even a rudimentary heat sink would be in a situation like this. It should be noted that while thermistors are inherently non-linear, we have voltage drops of 43% and 34% with the short and long leads respectively. I simply thought it was an interesting experiment. I have a few ideas on how to sink the heat or account for it but I think the heatsink is the easiest plan.

Here’s a beautifully rendered image of the idea to reduce thermal linkage between the PCB and the thermistor

The thermal isolation idea. By placing a heatsink on the exposed traces one could mitigate the heat transferred to the thermistor.

If there were a heatsink over the exposed traces and the traces made as long as possible, it should be possible to bring the traces fairly close to ambient. Like the experiment showed, even a rough heatsink was able to reduce the heat going to the thermistor by a substantial degree.

Feel free to comment.

Posted in Electronics | Tagged heatsink, pcb, temperature, thermal isolation, traces | Leave a comment

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