Project Log 2013 - Temperature to Thermostat Part 1

It's finally time to start my little electronics log. Unlike a fancy blog this is just a way for me to jot down a bit about each project I work on. Honestly I have no idea what to expect--in fact because life was so busy I gave up on blogging anything at all (it's really just for me and some friends anyway).

This blog is all about learning curve. I'm a decent programmer but I'm just getting a handle on assembling electronics. Fortunately there are now wonderful toys, er, tools to make my life easier!

We've gone from this:

 [Source: 1977 Radioshack Catalog, Page 154]

To this:

[Source: Adafruit, Arduino Uno R3]

[Source: Adafruit, Raspberry Pi]

Now, I don't mean that the fundamentals are all that different--but now very advanced computing tools are cheap and incredibly small. And also, they're getting pretty easy (lego-like) for both professionals and hobbyists to play with.

So, when I was a kid I played with electronics. Today I'm relearning some old stuff but also lots of new stuff. I have at more appreciation of the technical details today since I've been working with technology most of my career now. It's very exciting to actually hands-on with the physical stuff that uses electricity and spits out both raw electricity and data.

One of the things I have for my test projects is an Arduino Uno R3. My second ever project was to build a thermometer with the Uno microcontroller, a 74HC595 shift register, a TMP36 analog temperature sensor and some LEDs.

The thermometer was super easy to put together for prototyping. To get an nearly instant start I used the Adafruit tutorials "TMP36 Temperature Sensor" and "Arduino Lesson 4. Eight LEDs and a Shift Register". The fun really came in writing the code for it... I was now writing code for something I'd "built" myself (even if by "built" I meant assembled kind of like Legos).

My second project with the Uno

Everybody actually got a kick out of having the project on display--especially because we all love arguing about how hot or cold it is in the house. The LEDs range from about 62°F to 76°F. Note that since I like it cool in the house the first red LED represents ~70°F. Heh.

Here's the circuit diagram. Ridiculously simple but I was very excited at the time!

I'm not going to go over the prototype more now. I have no doubt I'll show breadboarded circuits with my Uno in the future. Also, I'll show you the code for the thermometer project later on or you can check it out [here].

Right away I knew I wanted to use thermometers for a few things. First was just to have my own home-made thermometer I could set around the house. The next was I'm about to build a peltier cooler for my computer and I want to be able to turn it off and on with either a switch or a thermostat (which of course requires a thermometer). I'm also interested in creating wireless data collecting devices--more on that later, too.

Of course it's one thing to have a breadboard soft-wired to an Arduino. It's even more something else cooler to have a more compact microcontroller and all the circuitry soldered. Something I could attach everything to and mount in a project case.

Enter the Menta [got it at Adafruit]:

My Menta, after soldering all the pieces onto the board

The Menta was fun to put together. You get a PCB board and you solder everything onto it. Plenty of room for stuff on the Arduino-style headers (the Menta uses a standard Arduino ATMega328P chip with a custom bootloader written by Adafruit).

Here's some of my rustic assembly and soldering skills at play (scary):

Pro-Tip (this took me a few minutes to figure out):

When programming for the Menta using the Arduino IDE (as of when I'm writing version 1.0.5) you need to set the board settings (under the Tools menu) to "Arduino Duemilanove /w ATMega328".

Now that I have the Menta assembled and tested out (I lived in constant fear of whether I'd soldered everything) it's time to make the thermometer.

Actually, I'm leaving a little room on this project board to both display the temperature and switch a relay to turn other things on/off depending on temperature. I plan on using the headers so I can maybe modify what I do with this board... but basically this Menta is all about temperature. I may add a SD card board later so I can data log the temperature.

For Part 2 I'll discuss a bit more about the actual project and go into a bit about the display I'm going to use.

Intrusion Detection Weather Clock!

In my insane quest to play with electronics I came across this instructable: Visual Network Threat Level Indicator. I was instantly interested because I could see using this in my work. Intrusion detection is one of those things that is important but once the initial excitement wears off doesn't get closely observed. Who has time?

So, now I'm debating between using Snort or Suricata.

Also, I'm thinking of expanding the Arduino project to include more than just a "threat meter". I'm thinking a little "top report" on a screen.

Lastly, because the Beagle Bone is so cool I'm wondering if I can't get the IDS itself running on this little mini-linux computer and dumping the data to an online drive or, as usual, a database on one of the servers.

Who knows where this will lead, but like all the projects I've listed so far I will provide all the details on what and how far I get with it.

On Crank! Power options part 2

http://www.instructables.com/id/USBIphoneIpod-Dynamo-Charger/

Now here is the actual project I'll be trying for my power needs. This gives me a "green" option to get power to my mobile devices without need for sunlight. So basically my battery life on my tablet can now be extended using Rocket Donut power (http://www.rocketdonuts.com/ | http://g.co/maps/5sjnu).

One look and I ditched the plans for the solar powered power unit (for now).

Powertoids (from the sun)

I just stumbled across this and figure I need to build it. Not only would I learn something but having just traveled all over the place with my Android tablet I can imagine a USB solar charger being very handy. Of course it's winter and here in Bellingham the sky is pretty much 95% rain between 100% rain.

Nevertheless, I am adding this to my to-do list.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Altoids-USB-Charger/

Explorations involving scribbling and bones

As part of my new life I'm about to hit the stores for a couple of gadgets.

First up is the Piccolo mini-cnc-artbot. The possibilities here are just too enticing for making stuff. My first thought was using one or more of these to create interpretive or even interactive artwork. But you can see how this little guy could, say, be trained to play games as well.

Next up is a geekier gadget, the Beagle Bone mini-computer/controller. This little guy has gotten smaller and more useful. I'm just too tempted to play with it for robot projects (see the Piccolo above!) and diving into sensor technology.

The Beagle Bone is designed for a variety of robotic and 2D and 3D interaction projects so even without a solid plan I know this will be fun.

Weird ideas:

Use Beagle Bone and Piccolo (3 or 4 of them) to create "isometric" face cartoons of an object you set on a scanning table that rotates and object through 3 or 4 views.

Use Piccolo and computer or Beagle Bone to create "remote notes". You write something remotely and the note appears on paper at your home or office.

Nobody said weird ideas were practical--just fun.

Projects to Come! YetiCam and Scanalyze

I've just moved and for a long time I've wanted to have a couple of hardware/software projects to play with. So, new place to live fresh time to start some projects!

Here are the two projects I'm starting as we settle into our new area.

Project YetiCam

Yeah, yeah--we all know about catching animals with cameras. But it seems like a fun thing to do "on the cheap" with an old webcam and some software. Take time-sequence shots, movement shots--all that.

I'm starting with a piece of software called Motion http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome which seems like a great piece of hobbyist software. The idea is going to start some indoor pets (birds, my dog, chinchilla or guinea pigs).

Originally I wanted to set something up like this because where we lived had plenty of visitors outside. We had a huge collection of birds that we kept fed and it was fascinating to watch. Better to have them on our own video channel. Further out into our backyard was a field where deer came to hang out. It was a popular spot and was also an inspiration to get a webcam project going.

Where we live is in some ways even wilder so I'm going to get this project rolling and start capturing things--including Yeti.

Project Scanalyze

Another thing that's been interesting to me is barcodes. Simple little series of lines or dots that store a handy blurb of data--most often for products as you already know. The idea for this project arrived when I started using a barcode app for my Android tablet. I'd scan stuff in my house or at the store and product ID's would link to Google Shopper or to a web search.

That's OK and cool and whatever but I want some other kinds of information when I scan a product. Comparisons between products (ingredients, quality as well as costs) and information about what goes into making the product outside of the seller's "BUY ME NOW" page.

So, some ideas have been to create some custom analysis that would tell me things about ingredients in soap, toothpaste or food. Like what is the difference between the different kinds of fluoride in toothpaste? What goes into making those pots and pans from China?

I have no idea where this will take me. The good news is that I just need to find databases that exist out there. An example for ingredients is http://www.upcfoodsearch.com/. You can also glean quite a bit of info from the FDA at http://www.fda.gov/food/foodingredientspackaging/ucm115326.htm.

So I wonder what kinds of serialized data I can find. This project is part trivia and part informatics. For example, I might want to know who supports the actual chain of production for a product--even expose connections between companies and other political interests. Yup, the project is that bizarre.

So, you may be asking yourself "what exactly is he doing this makes no sense?" Well, I just want to see if I can find informatics data out there in interweb land that is serialized (in some format preferably XML) and launch queries based on a product UPC. The project may go nowhere but I'm bent on learning a bit more about where product data can be found =).

The good news is that I'll post my findings and project code and details here! You laugh now...

Essentially Null?

So basically I'm not a huge blogger. I don't use Facebook or other social media much. I use G+ a lot because it lets me dump updates to a few people that I really care about and oddly enough that's what "social media" really means to me. So much of interweb life seems to be more like a giant chain-letter with people pinging other people and people-of-people in a giant game of "I'm alive are you alive?"

So yeah. Uh.

That said I'm about to revamp this blog and one other. I'm going through major life-changes--almost all for the better--and I want to dump fun tech projects here and life changes there.

This message is here for my few friends who are aware I even put something on this blog at vast time-scales. May they laugh in peace.

I've already started pulling old posts. No, this isn't censorship it's just house-cleaning. Nobody read this blog anyway LOL.

The first posts to go were ongoing posts about using Perl to monitor stuff and analyze data. Some of that will be back but this blog is going to be about projects rather than just blurbs. Details of the projects will involve whatever I need to make it work.