Day 10/10 of #hardware-party! Finally the last day of #hardware-party! This morning before school, I took in the temperature logger from the outside. I grabbed the datalog file and analyzed it, and here are the results: Reflection: I would probably make the housing for the resin printed box larger because I had a really fun time installing the Arduino Uno board into the resin box. I also may make it RF based if I have the chance to come back to the project (which I probably will) with some of the NRF24s that are lying around my parts bins. Connecting the receiver up to a ESP8266 and enabling a RF to WI-Fi interface would also be interesting. However that still will not have enough range to make a meaningful mesh (because NRF has range of about 100m on good days). That is where LoRa comes into play. LoRa has a few km of range on good days, so if a mesh is formed using LoRa the mesh size will be largely expanded (I actually helped a person who was looking for a long range mesh solution for their project (it worked pretty nicely)). Anyways, lessons learned: I2c is a little bit more buggy than you think, Resin printed boxes are surprisingly weatherproof, SD cards can get a little finicky to interact with sometimes.
Day 9/10 of #hardware-party! Got the code done. Will push it to gitHub once I can verify the data. Currently the device is sitting outside in the rain.
Day 8/10 of #hardware-party! Today I finished the code. However the SD card situation does not get resolved. I'll probably try another SD card I have lying around and see if it works. Once it works I'll post the code on GitHub. Along with some of the data.
Day 7/10 of #hardware-party! Today I didn't get too much debugging done, but what I figured out is that there is a specific format I have to format my SD card in. (Called fat32). However that doesn't make sense because the last time I did it I formatted it in NTSF and it worked. How confusing. At least I confirmed the sd card module as working
Day 6/10 of #hardware-party! Today was just brute debugging code. The SD card doesn't get recognized for some reason although I had the SD card part working for another project a few months ago. However, getting the reading from the BMP280 is going surprising well after the little I2C ordeal on day 4. More debugging tomorrow.
Day 5/10 of #hardware-party! forgot to post yesterday, so posting today. today, I finished assembling the device fully. I also finished most of the code, but it's not complete. The CSV logging part of the code became a little buggy. Debugging for day 6.
Day 4/10 of #hardware-party! Today I reprinted all of the parts for the weatherproof box. I also finished wiring the Arduino with the BMP280 and the micro SD card data logger. I botched the curing step a little bit by not placing the parts in the isopropyl alcohol. (Washed it by brushing alcohol, and wiping off the resin) Despite this the product came out successfully, and was able to withstand the rain. I might change from a Arduino Uno to a micro in the next few days since the Arduino is quite large, and eats quite a lot of electricity. I also may make this a IOT device if time permits.
Day 3/10 of #hardware-party! Today I started printing the housing for my weatherproof enclosing for the electronics. The slicing software that came with it has horrible UI so I'm using ChituBox in order to slice the files. I printed the slices filea, but turns out I need to rotate board 90 degrees in the slicer because the length and width got inverted. It cut off the tip of the box. The good thing is the box is shaped just like a box so I'm using it as a mini parts bin. Also cleaning resin prints is a semi-nightmare. It takes at least 3 times longer than taking off supports with good adhesion on a normal 3d printer. Tommorow I will continue the code and re-print the box.
Day 2/10 of #hardware-party! Finished designing the box to house all of the components in. Added a overhang so that the pressure and humidity can still be sensed while the box is closed while still providing shelter from the rain. Formatted one of my project 128mb micro sd cards to implement logging. Spent some time banging my head against the wall trying to figure out where the BMP280 is located on the I2C bus. Turns out the manufacturer (seller 3rd party) was wrong and the sensor is not on 0x77 but instead on 0x76. Will print the box tomorrow time permitting.
day 1/10 of #hardware-party! Today I modeled the case for my Arduino based temperature sensor. It's still a work in progress, and I will be spending a little bit of time finishing modeling. (probably by tomorrow) where I can slice it and print it.
