Where is the time going?

It often seems that time is always slipping away. While I have received the particle photon and played with it some, I now need to design the garden sensor that I decided to build based on that microcontroller. I haven’t delved too deeply into it’s code and capabilities as I have gotten caught up on trying to power it while deployed. The plan is to have it solar powered. Well, while I have a small panel for testing purposes, it is not powerful enough to operate the microcontroller.  While the microcontroller only pulls about 80ma on it’s own, it can peak up to 450ma while the wireless is operational. The plan is for the wireless to be operational so I need a panel that can handle that with ease.

 

Solar power is not cheap. I have seem some cheap panels here and there, but most if not all have some problems I would consider fairly major, such as the coating bubbling up and obscuring the panels while it is in full sun reducing the potential light hitting the cells. The idea of solar cells is that they are in fact in the sun, so to design a product that cannot take the heat of the sun seems a little short sighted.  Anything of decent power or better will be about $20 for half the capacity I need, going up to many hundreds depending on quality and company.  I will likely choose a lower price point to prove the concept, but I need them to last at least a little while.

 

On top of needing the solar cells themselves is the system designed to harness that power. Almost all applications that I can find are battery based solar designs.  Cell charges battery, battery happy and provides power when sun power wanes, and it will wane. One of the big design challenges is dealing with the variability of the sun’s output. General idea is for the batteries to provide power unless the solar cells are producing enough voltage to power the project and start charging the batteries and for the batteries to take back over when the sun power wanes. There are many different ways to go about this.  I can buy an off the shelf controller, battery, and solar cell or I can learn to do it myself.  O can certainly save some frustration by buying a set unit, but will it do what I need? Will it be overkill? For now I am trying to design my own and see where it leads me, other than the brick wall to bang my head on.

 

Working with EveryCircuit to do the design. I think I may have moderately workable solution, but I know there is better and will continue to try and refine it, then comes the real world tests …

Particle Photon

Received a new Particle Photon to play with yesterday. I plan to use it in a garden monitoring application that is solar powered, but we’ll see how far it goes.  Ordered a stepper motor so it can help keep the solar panels mostly aligned. Need to look at power draw of the motor and see if a smaller one will do if power draw is too high. Currently only have one panel to play with and it has a max of 200 ma, so I imagine I will need a couple of these, or a separate panel that can yield what I need for a remote station. The photon alone uses 80 ma when active and a bit more when taking readings, but only needs to take readings once every 5 or 10 minutes. While the core sleeps, the battery can charge during the daytime.  With a sufficiently sized battery, it should last all night and ready for recharge in the morning light. powering the motor on the battery will be the biggest draw and will need to be tested. Having the stepper motor physically connected directly to the solar panel would be the easiest, but it would also be the most wasteful of energy.  More efficient may be to have the stepper motor attached to a worm gear with the panel geared to the worm gear. This will prevent the solar panel from back stressing the stepper motor and allow it to turn off for a small duration and maintain position. This design requires more planning before attempting to build, but I feel that is the right path. Programatically the Photon uses the same ‘accent’ of C as the Arduino. I have often avoided the Arduino for multiple reasons, one being so that I didn’t need to learn a new accent.  It seems that time has past now and I’m committed now to learning the various nuances of the language.

I’m focusing a bit more on working on the VTOL project for the time being.  Specifically, getting the tools for the precision I need to even build a prototype model.  While the electronics and automation will be an extreme challenge, so will just mechanically building the parts. I don’t even know if my propulsive method will work as I envisage.

More to think on …

Styrofoam Glider

Styrofoam Glider project uploaded for reading.  Need to add pictures. I think back now and should have taken pictures of all the damage and repairs, but this will have to do for now.

Styrofoam Glider

Leprechaun Trap

Updated the project page for the history on the “Leprechaun Trap”. This was a school project for my Son that was supposed to be a family project. As such, everyone in the family pitched in. I was in charge of the trapping mechanism.  I of course, chose electromechanical.

“Leprechaun Trap”

Tracked Vehicle

The historical data for the Tracked vehicle has been uploaded in full. In seeing this I noticed there are some omissions near the end as there were updates that did not get documented. For now though, it will do.

Tracked Vehicle

Started copying my notes from my first distraction while working on the Boe-Bot. This was my first foray into the bigger brother Propeller chip. I’ll post what I have and continue to update until done. Initially will seem a bit disjointed.

Tracked Vehicle

History

I started getting into the microcontroller scene about 5 or 6 years ago with the Parallax Boe-Bot kit. This was a wonderful starting kit for me as I had some programming exposure from the few college classes I had taken and wanted to get my hands on the hardware. I remember during my microcontroller class in one of my first years of college wondering what the heck I would need to know the insides of a processor for.  If I only knew. Back then I was more focused on learning programming and didn’t care about the hardware.  I was going to make a game and that was that.

As I was taking classes and learning how to program and get the core classes out of the way (as I saw it then) I started to get a feeling that programming alone wouldn’t satisfy whatever it was I was feeling.  I wanted to build. I loved LEGOs when I was young along with robotic and RC toys.  I played computer games since I was 8 for better or worse. I built models as well … which at a later date ended up being destroyed by slingshot marbles or set ablaze for more realistic enactments to planes being shot down.

Both parents are electrical engineers and in hindsight, that is the path I should have chosen. But the rebellious teen wanted only to do with computers not quite understanding the desire to build within. I remember wanting to make computers do what I want.  That was empowering so programming was the way to go … I didn’t take that the step further to make the computer move a motorized arm to pick things up or any number of things that could be done. Better late than never I suppose.

 

First blog post

I decided that I should start documenting my projects where other family members can see and comment/help. The main idea is to just document the things I have worked on more than I already have on my private documents. While I have documented things so far, somewhat sparingly within my own tablet, I note that I could use more pictures and will strive to add them.