So talk to me about your projects....

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Yeah, it's summertime and we know you have either been in the pool, or on vacation, but it's also HOT outside! Time to come back inside and cool off at your workbench!

I want to know what projects you are working on! I've probably posted my Double Propeller/PMC project to death, so I won't list it again here, but...

What projects are you working on this summer?

(Bonus points awarded for pictures, extra bonus points awarded for videos!)

Jeff

LoopyByteloose

I am just finishing up a pair of devices that I might call the "Propeller Far Side Programing Tool Set".

I took my USB2SER device that I program my Propeller Proto Boards with and have adapted it to work with RS422 drivers and receivers at one end of a 100 feet of CAT5 cable. At the other end is its mate that plugs into the Propeller Proto Board at TTL interface levels.

So now I can have a programmable Propeller at the end of a very long wire. While 100 feet may seem long, the RS422 should go much further.. thousands of feet... maybe a mile or more.

Mostly I just want to use it with Forth on the Propeller projects and 'in theory' one doesn't need to reprogram the Forth.. a duplex serial link might be enough. But there are always the occasional exceptions due to some sort of 'brain wave' and it will help to avoid walking a mile to reprogram in such instances. Thus, the _RST is provide for as well. There are 3 twisted pairs providing a Full Duplex plus the _RST line.

Actually, I think I finished the soldering and all the construction earlier this evening. But I have learned the hard way to get a rest and verify everything the following day rather than just try to power up.

So we shall see.

Since I already had the USB2SER and many components, the total cost was 4 SN75179 chips at about $1.10USD each, or $4.40. If I added in everything on hand and excluded the $15 USB2SER, it was still only about $10 US total. The project was inspired by seeing how extremely costly long distance USB can be.

You can just have the USB convert to RS422 and everything becomes a saner solution.

skylight

I've been working on a small pocket sized DMX Tester,analyzer (using the jm_dmx objects and Rayman's QMP touchscreen) and light meter and torch and....... it seems to expand as I think of more uses for it , The only problem i'm having with progressing is the soldering side , not so much my soldering skills as I used to be a dab hand at it but recently my eyesight has been getting bad and I need to scrape together some money to invest in some of those magnifying goggles, the loupe style glasses I have are not really suitable for soldering work.
The tester comprises of the QMP touchscreen, a quickstart and sandwiched between them one of your quick proto boards to hold the line driver and ADC chips, resistors and caps.

When I finally finish it I hope to post details in the project section.

CuriousOne

I'm working on 4 channel LiIon battery capacity meter & analyzer. Breadboarding stage using basic stamp almost complete, now porting code to picbasic pro and developing a PCB. Circuit is simplified as much as possible, with novelty usage way for old known parts, while maintaining good accuracy. After completion, I'll make basic stamp code and schematics public.

Mike G

I'm working on a logging service for the Spinneret and W5200. The service runs on a PC hosted IIS or it can be self-hosted. The idea is Spinneret tells the service hey I got a log file that ready for upload. The service GETs the log file From there the file is saved and available for viewing or processing.

Gadgetman

Fixing my car, firt and foremost...
Then buying a few sheets of plywood and a circular saw...

And if I find the time(between hiking, reading webcomics, playing computer games and pretending to clean my apartment) I may finally start programming my Spinneret...

davejames

I've been loaned a copy of Harprit Sandhu's book "Programming the Propeller with Spin" and will be reading it in preparation of moving my flagship product from BS2pe to Prop.

Wish me well...

Other than that, gotta seal the yard fence and pergola for winter, and I'll be off to Bangladesh for most of July.

Dr_Acula

I'm designing a crazy 'all in one' propeller board. Keyboard, TV, VGA, 512k ram, touchscreen, sound, SD card, three propeller chips and even a real Z80 chip.
Thanks to this forum I have found out about the 74LVC 5V to 3V3 series so this is a way of interfacing to the older 5V technology.
'til everything goes to 1.2V, anyway

lanternfish

skylight wrote: »

I've been working on a small pocket sized DMX Tester,analyzer (using the jm_dmx objects and Rayman's QMP touchscreen) and light meter and torch and....... it seems to expand as I think of more uses for it , The only problem i'm having with progressing is the soldering side , not so much my soldering skills as I used to be a dab hand at it but recently my eyesight has been getting bad and I need to scrape together some money to invest in some of those magnifying goggles, the loupe style glasses I have are not really suitable for soldering work.
The tester comprises of the QMP touchscreen, a quickstart and sandwiched between them one of your quick proto boards to hold the line driver and ADC chips, resistors and caps.

When I finally finish it I hope to post details in the project section.

I for one will be watching with interest.

WBA Consulting

For me, availability of spare time has not been seasonal since high school. However, I do have some plans for projects to complete in the next couple months:

• Propeller based, bed of nails functional tester for a breakout board used for an ARM processor board, 95% done (tested 110 boards on Monday)
• Finish getting up to speed with using XBees
• "2TD1E", (a wrestling scoring abbreviation meaning 2 points for a TakeDown and 1 point for an Escape) a wireless wrestling timer/scoreboard system, ~50% done with prototype
• Firmware development for Kansla, the capacitive touch board that I showed at the 6/27 Propeller Hangout.

LoopyByteloose

So far.. no luck with my Propeller Far Side Programing Tool.

While I didn't break anything, first attempts have fail to get communication. And so, I'll have to ponder some further work. Everything is getting power. But the USB2SER seems to be unable to recognize my RS422 chips and behaves as if there is no connection.

Minicom provides a report than no ttyUSB0 port to be found in Linux. So it seems that something needs to be resolved around the USB2SER end. A hot swap directly to the Propeller Proto Board begins to blink the USB2SER leds and Forth becomes immediately active on a reboot.

LoopyByteloose

Dr_Acula wrote: »

I'm designing a crazy 'all in one' propeller board. Keyboard, TV, VGA, 512k ram, touchscreen, sound, SD card, three propeller chips and even a real Z80 chip.
Thanks to this forum I have found out about the 74LVC 5V to 3V3 series so this is a way of interfacing to the older 5V technology.
'til everything goes to 1.2V, anyway

Yes the 75LVCxxx can make a lot of builds much easier. I just can't get them easily in Taiwan and don't want to order abroad.

I am wondering why you decided to add a Z80 to a Propeller design.

zoopydogsit

It's actually winter here.... cold and raining, so no gardening! Yay!

I agree with Andrew, there really isn't much time. However for some reason the Propeller has invaded my grey matter the last couple of months and I have been designing and coding with the few spare hours I can find in a week. Working a really big project which has fired of a bunch of spin-off projects. Having way too much fun.

Here are a couple of the spin-off projects;
4 channel battery charger;
- I need it for charging Gel Cell lead acid batteries, but technically as long as you know how to charge a battery then you may be able to program it to charge other things.
- Measuring voltage, current and temperature of each battery, and providing the voltage the battery needs (via an LM317T, with an old notebook power pack (+19V at 4A)).
- I'm using an RN-131 as a Web Interface and plan to incorporate a uSD card for Web page images and data logging.

While Building this I've got plans for a new board that incorporates the RN-131 and uSD with a Prop, EEProm, 3.3V regulator, pins for a prop plug and then the rest of the pins going off to a header. I can re-use that in all of my projects.

I've got a bunch of other projects on the boil, too many to list. Just wish I had more free time to keep working on them!

Humanoido

I’m working with little Propeller boards that wannabe super computers, and setting up two new labs.

Fake Supercomputer

Spin Brain

Supertronic Spin Brain

Cherry Pie

Mobile Transport Lab 56

Humanoid Robotics Lab 57 in South Korea

mindrobots

Humanoido,

On your blog for Spin Brain, you list a lot of software and documentation for Spin Brain which appears to make it operational and a repeatable test base in our own "labs". I couldn't find any links to a link to a .zip or a repository or any other place where this software and documentation is collected and available to other Propeller users. Can you please provide that? I think this package is something a lot of forum members would like to try on their own.

These are some of the items you list as available software:

STARTER BRAIN SOFTWARE
Spin Brain RTOS - Real Time Operating System (timing, multi-threading)
AtOnce Loader - Loads code into all chips at approximately the same time
Enumerator - Auto assign addressing to each chip
Enumerator Viewer - LED displays each chip enumeration
Chip Enhancer - Loads 1000 VProcessors per chip
VProcessor Demo - Simultaneous operation of 1,000 programs per chip
Parallel Slicer Processing Cruncher - Haldivployment parallel equation solution algorithm
Evo Demo - Loads, enumerates, evolves cogs to a unique personality
Learner - Learning program provided for 5-chip modification exercise
Spin Brain Manual - Describes details about the Spin Brain


If nothing else, a video of Spin Brain going through it's loading sequence and running some of the demo programs you list would be fascinating.

Thanks!

Mike G

mindrobots, watch out! Danger of falling down the rabbit's hole.

While interesting concepts, H's software is generally vaporware, held under nondisclosure, or locked a government facility.

prof_braino

I might have mentioned this on another thread. Our team is working on the LittleRobot material. We completed that first class with a 60% robots tested operational at the end; the remainder were incomplete or partially destroyed (elemetarty school kids have inquiring minds). We found a couple of Univerisity of Illinois kids to review and translate the material (from geezer-speak to kid-speak) and made the first pass at the materials, by presenting to a bunch of high school kids while they watched and commented. We have a pilot gig booked at a major institution and and another booking pending at a university. Members of a local city counsel have expressed interest in a long term program based on LittleRobot, talks start next week. We have a tentative booking in October. There have been conversations with another city counsel out of state, but these are harder since we don't have the face-to-face to close the a deal. So for me, this week has been lots of driving and hotel rooms, lots of time on the phone, and maybe more of the same in store.

The biggest deal is keeping the bot kit "all parts in the box, no tools required" and under $50.

LoopyByteloose

One must wonder which kind of government facility that would be......

I myself am ready for a straight jacket due to chasing the few bugs my ambitions create. The Propeller and winter? Better than writing the next great Russian novel.

mindrobots

Mike G wrote: »

mindrobots, watch out! Danger of falling down the rabbit's hole.

While interesting concepts, H's software is generally vaporware, held under nondisclosure, or locked a government facility.

I know but this one has demos and an OS and a loader and everything! Having a Demo makes me think that you could ACTUALLY demonstrate to something WORKING!

It never hurts asking. Maybe one day we will all be surprised and some of the claims will actually be verifiable and repeatable with software he provides. Until then, every so often, I'll just ask the questions so new folks see what is going on.

xanadu

This summer I'm making a small video series on how peoples at home can become a scientist using a microcontroller (BS2), sensors and data logging. Within a few videos you'll be debunking hoaxes! Testing "life hacks" that work, don't work and -- the ones that just don't make any sense to begin with. You'll look at the world in a whole new way. No more sifting through tons of search engine data! You'll come up with your own answers while you hone your experimentation skills! You'll share your findings with the world and become famous amongst your peers. The good karma for having actually spent the time doing your own research and making new discoveries will be more than you can handle, so sit down, BS2 up, and hold on!

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Oooh! Yup.. Crazy.. my kind of crazy! Please keep us apprised on this one.

Dr_Acula wrote: »

I'm designing a crazy 'all in one' propeller board. Keyboard, TV, VGA, 512k ram, touchscreen, sound, SD card, three propeller chips and even a real Z80 chip.
Thanks to this forum I have found out about the 74LVC 5V to 3V3 series so this is a way of interfacing to the older 5V technology.
'til everything goes to 1.2V, anyway

User Name

I've got a really great camera with an effective anti-shake system. I want to take it flying to capture hi-res still shots of mountains. But flying a paraglider keeps both hands busy, especially in the bumpy air of mid-day and in proximity to mountains. So I'm working on a propeller-operated system that will allow camera adjustment as well as shutter release, hands off. So far, actuating the camera has been easier than figuring out the best way to indicate the desired actions. Maybe I'll use toe sensors or shoe sensors.

Anyway, development will be interrupted by a trip to Mexico. Someone really ought to go fly the Baja coast - may as well be me.

prof_braino

User Name wrote: »

Someone really ought to go fly the Baja coast - may as well be me.

Thanks for taking one for the team!

Humanoido

mindrobots wrote: »

I couldn't find any links to a link to a .zip or a repository...

Thanks for viewing the blog. It's not vaporware or free - plus you’ll need a Spin Brain to run it, which will be sold as a product. Announcements will be forthcoming when eCommerce is in place. A demo vid is a good idea.

Hal Albach

My current project is to update an earlier one where I built and programmed a scrolling display on an 8x32 LED matrix using a UCN5833 32 bit driver. Right now whatever is displayed has to be programmed into the controller, severely limiting the ability to change the message easily or to make it a really, really long one. I am going to add a 23LCV512 ISP RAM chip which will give me the ability to display a message of over 64 thousand characters. I plan on using the RS232 port with Realterm to dump a file from my PC into the ram chip and then display the message. The controller is currently a PIC 16F887 and is being programmed in JAL, which has a lot of library modules that made this programming project very easy. It is free, somewhat similar to C, and unlimited. I hope to eventually increase the size of the matrix to 8x64 by adding another UCN5833.

localroger

I salvaged the main board from a NCI model 5775 scale indicator, made in 1975, on its way to the dumpster. I'd salvaged it before in the late 1980's ripping out the ADC's (which were on add-on cards) and pulling out the counter latches (no microprocessor) to get access to the 7441 Nixie drivers, and made a BCD output tester. That function is now obsolete and I'm thinking of using it to make a honking Nixie clock. Haven't really got started on it yet though, except for bringing the board home and laying out the beginning artwork for a laser cut enclosure to fit. (The original enclosure is long gone and was honking huge and ugly.)

Google totally fails at finding a picture, I'll have to take one of the intact unit in our lobby museum. Here's the PCB, which is still functional and contains all the power supplies and drivers for 4 digits + sign + NE2 "error" indicator: (There's no point adding a Nixie to the empty socket, even if I hadn't sold all the spares; it's for an unswitched dead zero.)

erco

I mounted an iButton reader outside my garage door to open it. Built & coded the circuit, just have to wire it all up for power & opener connection. Easier to carry a tiny waterproof ibutton than a garage door opener when I go running or biking!

Duane Degn

I just (a few hours ago) installed my Propeller sprinkler controller. I still have a lot of features I plan to add to it (wireless communication etc.) but it runs through it's preset pattern and times with a single button press now. My wife likes to control when the sprinklers start instead of using the original timer/controller.

My CNC router should arrive Tuesday. That should be the inspiration for many summer time projects.

ajward

Heh... nothing so productive as y'all. As my signature implies... a lot of aimless tinkering! ;-) ( Or maybe see how many half-finished projects I can have scattered across my desk!)

http://forums.parallax.com/entry.php/2562-Summer-Projects

erco

Actually, there's one less summer project to do since I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Contech-CRO101-Scarecrow-Activated-Sprinkler/dp/B000071NUS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372677935&sr=8-1&keywords=scarecrow+water+sprinkler. Should keep the critters out of the wife's garden.

For just $50, might also be effective to keep neighbor's dogs from pooping in your yard!

I wonder how long that 9V battery lasts...

NWCCTV

Summer comes late normally but so far has been pretty descent here in the Northwest. I have so many things on my Need/Want to do list that I am not sure if I will get to all of them. Been working on my Micro Medic project off and on. Time is closing in and I have yet to get my mannequin. Or, as I was thinking of naming him, Mann E. Quin. I also have plans to pull everything out of my Office/Shop and do a little rewiring. Then I need to reroute all my CCTV camera cables, add 4 more to the mix and install the cameras. Paint my Office/Shop, rework my entire workbench so it flows with my desk and move my server rack so I have better accessibility to it. Then I want to upgrade my Main, Backup and Video Servers and my workstation. I acquired a SuperMicro server case complete with hard drives that will become my Main server, my current workstation will become my video server and my current main server will become my backup server and will contain 6 ea. 3 TB NAS drives for backing up client data. Then I will have a Quad core MB and CPU complete with RAM to put on EBay. Then I have about 30 or so Pelco Spectra cameras and loads of other stuff to put on EBay. Sorry for the long list but you asked!!!!!