An Ocean of Science

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – Admiral Jim Stockdale

It was hot in our valley this past week!  I built a simple outdoor weather station that displays current temperature, pressure and humidity.  This is the first time I saw it go above 114°F (45°C).  I was never so glad that I had planned time off and we had arranged for home healthcare to stay with my mother-in-law so that my wife, daughters and I could get away for a day.  Our big vacation was a trip down the 126 freeway to Ventura. 

Sometimes the simple things are best.  We parked at the beach, rolled down the windows and enjoyed the cool breeze.  We ate lunch in our van and watched the surf perform its dance across the shore.  It was like each wave was an ocean exhale reminding us that time keeps moving forward.  Its cool breath swept up the beach and gently across our faces.  It was serene and relaxing. 

As you can imagine, we were not the only ones to have this brilliant idea.  The streets and beaches were full of cars and people.  Sadly, most were not wearing masks or even attempting to social distance as they wandered about between the parking lots and beaches.  It struck me how difficult it has been for us to maintain vigilance in this area as we enter our 6th month of this pandemic.  I understand the frustration and know the desire to get back to normal, without face masks, distancing or shields.  There is a temptation to dismiss the science, minimize the seriousness or even justify rebellion against these safety measures.  Some of us figure that if we ignore it, it will just go away.  Unfortunately, that can only prolong and increase the impact.

We must never lose hope.  As the ocean reminds us that time marches on, so must we.  But that faithful determination must be coupled with discipline to confront reality.  As engineers, science is the illumination and tool of our profession.  We practice the scientific method to systematically experiment, learn and devise solutions.  Uncertainty, mystery and fear are chasms that we can bridge with methodical, step by step discovery and progress.  We can tunnel through difficult realities with cunning application of knowledge and persistence. The same can apply to this coronavirus pandemic and to the challenges in our businesses.  We can use our skills and expertise to help chart a solution forward.

Are we or others assuming or inventing a reality inconsistent with our scientific training?  Are there problems in front of us that could use a methodical approach to fully uncover and fix?  Do we set the example for others of being helpful, but logical, optimistic but scientific in our approach?  While 2020 has been an extremely challenging year, it is also a reminder that we have come a long way as a human family.  Behind us is an ocean of knowledge, discovery and tools that can amplify our ability to help those before us.  This week, I challenge you to tap that reservoir and heroically apply your talents to the problems at hand.  Strengthen your mind with hope and logic and let the winds of knowledge propel us forward.  And please, like other super heroes, wear a mask.  Stay scientific (and safe) out there!

Luminous Beings

Glowing Print

“Luminous beings are we.” – Yoda

I love building things.  During the past several weeks my girls and I have been 3D printing all sorts of characters, figures and models. It’s amazing what you can find online or build yourself with free or online tools like Tinkercad or Meshmixer.  Recently we started printing with glow-in-the-dark filament.  In a funny way, it unlocked a new nighttime routine for us.  Before going to bed, my girls will charge up their figures by holding them next to the light to have their accompanying glow.  We observed how different lights influence the glow, with the sun and UV light being the most powerful for long term glow.  

Of course, this led to the question, so how does glow-in-the-dark work?  I love those questions!  The phosphorescence material we printed is absorbing the radiation and causing a quantum magic show where the electrons absorb the energy from the light source photons. They are jumping to a higher energy state which slowly degrades over time, emitting that glow.  The unique nature of glow-in-the-dark materials like zinc sulfide and strontium aluminate is that the energy is not released immediately.  The higher energy state causes the electrons to get “trapped” in a higher state and released over the course of several minutes and even hours. Quantum mechanics loves to do this forbidden magic.  Ok, to be fair, I lost my girls on that explanation about the same way I lost some of you… so moving on.

How are you glowing?  It is amazing to me how many metaphors surround us.  This glow-in-the-dark adventure reminded me how we as humans, often radiate what we are exposed to.  I often find that in my life that I begin to emit what I allow myself to be exposed to.  If I become fixated on negative news, I become negative.  If I spend all my time hanging around critical people, I become critical.  On the flip side, if I seek and surround myself with positive people and mentors, I become more optimistic. If I change my diet to include good news as well as bad, I find that I am more encouraged and encouraging to others.  What are you feasting on?  What light sources are you orbiting?  Who and what are you bringing into your life to help you absorb good energy so that you too can glow?

In our fast action, twitter abbreviated, news cycle world I find that I often become carried away by the currents.  This little glow-in-the-dark lesson reminded me that we have a choice on where we are going and how we shape ourselves to be the people we want to be.  This pandemic can be discouraging and rob us of energy and joy.  There are a lot of negative and depressing conversations going on.  I understand that.  But we shouldn’t limit our charging to only those sources.  Find some new light sources this week.  Look for opportunities to jump to a higher energy state this week… and glow.  Here’s to a brighter future!

ATtiny85 Weather Station

Weather Station

This project will show you how to build an ATtiny85 based mini Weather Station that displays temperature, humidity and pressure using four easy to read 7-segment LEDs.

Requirements

This sketch requires a version of the Wire library that is compatible with the ATtiny85 for the I2C communication to work with the BME-280 sensor. I used the ATTinyCore arduino core by Spence Konde which has a version of the Wire library that works with the ATtiny85. I was able to use the standard Adafruit_BME280 library to pull data from the BME-280. You can install ATTinyCore by putting the board manager URL in the Arduino IDE preferences:

http://drazzy.com/package_drazzy.com_index.json

Set the board to the ATtiny85 chip at 1Mhz (internal).

Circuit

Components:

  • ATiny85 Microcontroller (DigiKey)
  • BME-280 Sensor (Temperature, Pressure, Humidity) (Amazon)
  • 74HC595 8-bit Shift Register (Qty 4) (DigiKey)

Sensors

  • 7-Segment LED Display (Qty 4) (DigiKey)
  • 0.1uF Ceramic Capacitor (Qty 2)
  • 100uF Electrolytic Capacitor
  • 5V Power Supply (Alternatively you can use a 5V Solar cell, 3.7V lithium ion battery and a TP4056 constant-current/constant-voltage linear charger to charge the battery during the day).

Schematic

Circuit Board

ATtiny85 Microcontroller

Circuit Board

Programming Notes:

Code for this project is located on Github: https://github.com/jasonacox/ATtiny85-Weather-Station

I2C communication with BME-280 uses pins PB0/SDA and PB2/SCL. If you use the Tiny AVR Programmer from Sparkfun or something similar, keep in mind that it drives an LED on PB0 which will interfere with I2C communication. You will need to remove the chip from the programmer after uploading to get it to work in the circuit.

Memory Warning

This sketch uses nearly all of the ATtiny85 program storage space (8K) so you may get an overflow error if the libraries change or you add any code. To address this, I created a minimized BME280 library to reduce the PROGMEM space required. You will need to download and install the Tiny_BME280_Library library in:

~/Documents/Arduino/libraries/ directory and restart the Arduino IDE.

Display

  [ 70'] - Temperature in degree F 
  [ 24r] - Relative Humidity %
  [_970] - Pressure in hPa with rising/falling animation
  [ 21c] - Temperature in degree C 

Construction

I used two circuit boards: Display and Logic board. The Display board holds the four 7-segment LEDs with the array of resistors. On the back are header pins that plug in to the logic board. The Logic board holds the 4 register chips and the ATtiny85. On the back are headers for the Display board to plug in.

Logic and Display boards: 

Both boards together and running: 

I printed a simple cylinder case (Thingiverse) to mount the weather station and have it on the back patio: 

Power Supply

The circuit will run on 5V or 3.3V. I used an existing solar panel, battery and TP4056 charger circuit to power this project with a 3.3V regulator.

Solar Power Option

  • 1 x 2.5W 5V/500mAh Solar Cell – Amazon
  • 1 x 5V Micro USB 1A TP4056 Lithium Battery Charging Board with Protection Charger Module Amazon
  • 1 x 3.7V 3000mAh 755068 Battery Rechargeable Lithium Polymer ion Battery Pack – Amazon
  • 1 x 3.3V Linear Regulator 250MA MCP1700-3302E/TO – DigiKey

ATtiny85 Ultrasonic Distance Measurement for Parking Help

After discovering the tiny but mighty ATtiny85 microcontroller, I decided to put it to use to help me park my car in the garage. Sure, I could continue to use the softball hung from the ceiling to let me know when I have the car pulled in far enough, but why not take advantage of some tech and have it show me instead? Alternatively, for these times, it is also a fun way to clearly demonstrate 6ft social distancing. 😉

ATiny85 Microcontroller

The ATtiny85 has 5 GPIO easily usable pins (technically you can even use Reset pin as a 6th GPIO but that makes it much more difficulty to reprogram). For information about how to program the ATtiny85, see my previous blog post here.

The tiny but mighty ATtiny85 Microcontroller Pinout

For my “Parking Helper” project I decided to use the low cost entry level ultrasonic distance sensor, the HC-SR04 and two 7-Segment LEDs to show the distance between the device and the front of the car.

HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor

The HC-SR04 has 4 pins: VCC, Trig, Echo and Gnd. The Trig and Echo lines will be driven by the Attiny85.

HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor

The HC-SR04 measures distances by sending (TRIG) an sound pulse and measuring the time it takes for the ECHO. Sound travels through air at 332 meters per second at 20 °C (68 °F). Using this the unit provides a duration pulse back to the controller that can be used to determine the distance.

The speed of sound is: 343m/s = 0.0343 cm/uS = 1/29.1 cm/uS

I found a great project here where the author uses the HC-SR04 as an ultrasonic rule. Using the ATtiny85 to trigger and receive the duration pulse we can determine the distance to the parked car.

// Send TRIG HIGH for 10 microseconds 
// to trigger the HC-SR04 to send a sound pulse
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  delayMicroseconds(2);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(10);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);

// Read the ECHO duration
  duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH);

// convert the duration to cm
  distance = (duration / 2) / 29.1; 

LED Display (2 Segment)

Driving the display with two 7-segment LEDs is a bit more complicated. Each segment has 7 LEDs to form the numbers plus one LED for the decimal point. That would require 8 GPIO ports for each LED Display or a total of 16 GPIOs! The ATtiny85 has only 5 available for use so we need another way. Thankfully, we can use two low cost 8-bit shift registers (74HC585) and get by with using only 3 GPIO and still drive the 16 LEDs on the two displays.

74HC595 8-bit Shift Register to Drive 7-Segment LED Display

Here is how it works… The ATtiny85 sends the binary data for the the numbers to a first 74HC595 8-bit register using its “Data Input,” “Clock” and “Latch” lines. Once the register receives a total of 8 bits (1 byte), it will overflow the data out through its “Output” line which can be connected to the “Data Input” of another register.

We toggle the “Clock” to signal to the registers to record the value of the data line (1 or 0). We do that for each of the bits of the two bytes we need sent for each display. Finally, we have the ATtiny85 toggle the “Latch” to let the registers know when the transmission is complete. They then lock the 8 output lines (QA to QH) to high or low depending on what they recorded. These lines are connected to the individual LEDs on the 7-segment LED displays.

I found a great example of using the 74HC595 to drive multiple LED Displays here. I used that code to send the data as well as the byte arrays used to form the numbers on the LEDs. Since that project was using a common anode LED and my project uses a common cathode LED I had to flip the bits. In the code below, a one (1) value would drive the LED high (on) and a zero (0) would drive it low (off).

/* Set up 7-segment LED Binary Data

     |--A--|
     F     B
     |--G--|
     E     C
     |--D--|   H - Decimal

     0b00000000
       ABCDEFGH
  */  
  numArray[0] = 0b11111100; // 0 - Zero
  numArray[1] = 0b01100000; // 1 - One
  numArray[2] = 0b11011010; // 2 - Two
  numArray[3] = 0b11110010; // 3 - Three
  numArray[4] = 0b01100110; // 4 - Four
  numArray[5] = 0b10110110; // 5 - Five
  numArray[6] = 0b10111110; // 6 - Six
  numArray[7] = 0b11100000; // 7 - Seven
  numArray[8] = 0b11111110; // 8 - Eight
  numArray[9] = 0b11110110; // 9 - Nine
  numArray[10]= 0b00000000; // All Off

Circuit Schematic

Pulling it all together, here is a schematic I put together that combines the ATtiny85 with the two 74HC595 registers, two LED displays and the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor.

A Kicad schematic is included in this project and the schematic export is sown above. The circuit is powered with a steady 5V DC supply (e.g. USB adapter). The HC-SR04 is an entry level sensor and does suffer from some fluctuation. Logic in the code attempts to stabilize the measurement by making multiple readings.

List of Materials

  • 1 x ATiny85 Microcontroller (DigiKey)
  • 2 x 74HC595 8-bit Shift Register (DigiKey)
  • 1 x HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor (DigiKey)
  • 2 x 7-Segement LED Display CC (DigiKey)
  • 16 x 220 Ohm Resistor
  • 1 x 100uF Electrolytic Capacitor (DigiKey)
  • 1 x 0.1uF Ceramic Capactior – (Amazon)

Code

The code for the project can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jasonacox/UltrasonicDistanceDisplay

Imperial and SI Units

In Imperial unit mode, the code is written to display distances in inches (1 to 11) for distances less than 1 foot. Once the distance reaches 1 foot, it will show feet in decimal (1.0 to 9.9) until the distance reaches 10 feet when it will display in feet only (e.g. 10).

In SI unit mode, it will show centimeters for distances less than 1 meter (1 to 99, then it will show meters with decimal (1.0 to 9.9) until the distance reaches 10 meters and will continue to show meters only.

To toggle Units: Hold the distance to 4 (either unit) for ~4 seconds and it will toggle between units. Imperial mode will flash “in” and SI mode will flash “c”.

Sleep Feature

Sleep Mode: The code includes logic to turn off the display when there is no movement and power back on when movement is detected.

Prototype

Prototype Model without Box

ATtiny85 Arduino Programming with Sparkfun Tiny Programmer on a Mac

This guide will help set up a Mac OS computer to program an ATtiny 85 using the USB Tiny AVR Programmer from Sparkfun and the Arduino IDE.

Required Items:

  • Sparkfun Tiny AVR Programmer (Sparkfun) – This is a handy USB based programmer for ATtiny microcontrollers. It is powered by an ATtiny84 that is set up as a USBtinyISP programmer. The board has an 8 pin socket to hold a ATtiny45/85 microcontroller that you want to program.
  • ATtiny 85 Microcontroller (Digikey) – The ATtiny85 is a low-power 8-bit microcontroller based on the AVR enhanced RISC architecture.
  • Arduino IDE 1.8.12 (Download)
  • Mac computer (e.g. MacBook Pro) with OS 10.14 or later

I used the following steps to get the Sparkfun Tiny AVR Programmer working on my Mac. Hopefully this will be helpful for you as well. Your experience may vary.

Step 1: Install ATtiny85

Install the ATtiny 85 into the programmer. Make sure you orient the chip so that pin 1 (usually identified by a dot) is by the notch. Once this is installed, plug the USB into your computer. You will not see a light and Mac OS will not recognize it as a serial port (don’t worry).

Install ATtiny into Programmer

Step 2: Set up Arduino IDE

Install the Arduino IDE software (Download) and navigate the menu Arduino -> Preferences and in the field for “Additional Board Manager URL” paste this link:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/damellis/attiny/ide-1.6.x-boards-manager/package_damellis_attiny_index.json

Click “OK” to save and restart the Arduino IDE. Navigate the menu Tools -> Board -> Boards Manger and type “attiny” into the top search board and there will click on the “Install” button on the attiny board package.

Find the attiny board package and Install.

You should now see an entry for ATtiny in the Tools > Board menu. Select “ATtiny25/45/85”.

For “Processor” select the chip you are using, e.g. ATiny85.
For “Programmer” select “USBtinyISP

Please note: On the Mac, you do NOT select a serial “Port”. The IDE will program the ATtiny through the USBtinyISP that is loaded on the Tiny AVR Programmer board.

Step 3: Program your ATtiny85

You can use the example blink test to make sure you can program your ATtiny85. You can use the built in blink test but you will need to change the LED_BUILTIN to be 0 (zero). You can also copy and past the following code:

void setup() {
  pinMode(0, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(0, HIGH);   
  delay(1000);                       
  digitalWrite(0, LOW); 
  delay(1000); 
}

Click the upload button (right arrow) and the built-in LED should start to flash.

Example “blink” program running on ATtiny85

The ATtiny85 has PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) outputs so you can use the analogWrite() function to adjust the brightness of the LED from 0 to 255. Here is an example that fades the LED.

/*
  Fade

  This example shows how to fade an LED on using the analogWrite()
  function.

  The analogWrite() function uses PWM, so if you want to change the pin you're
  using, be sure to use another PWM capable pin. On most Arduino, the PWM pins
  are identified with a "~" sign, like ~3, ~5, ~6, ~9, ~10 and ~11.

*/

int led = 0;           // the PWM pin the LED is attached to
int brightness = 0;    // how bright the LED is
int fadeAmount = 1;    // how many points to fade the LED by

void setup() {
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  analogWrite(led, brightness);

  brightness = brightness + fadeAmount;

  // reverse the direction of the fading at the ends of the fade:
  if (brightness <= 0) {
     analogWrite(led, 0);   
     delay(1500);
     fadeAmount = -fadeAmount;
  }
  if(brightness >= 255) {
    fadeAmount = -fadeAmount;
  }

  delay(10);
}

References

Solar Powered WiFi Weather Station

I’ve always wanted to add a backyard weather station to help record not just temperature data, but humidity, pressure, rainfall, wind speed and UV levels. My recent experiments introduced me to the ESP8266 NodeMCU, a low-cost microcontroller with embedded WiFi. I just needed to add a solar cell, a battery, a sensor and an enclosure.

Solar Power

I found a 2.5W 5V/500mAh solar cell (from Amazon) and a 3.7V 3000mAh rechargeable Li-ion battery pack (Amazon). After some research (see here), I added a TP4056 charger module (Amazon) that regulates the charging and protects the battery from overcharge.

Solar cell and battery charging circuit.
Solar Cell + Battery Power Supply

I added a 0.1uF ceramic capacitor and 100uF electrolytic capacitor to smooth the output voltage. I used a simple 3.3v voltage regulator (DigiKey) to feed the 3.3v bus for the ESP8266 and sensors.

Voltage Divider
Voltage Divider

Monitoring the voltage coming from the solar cell and/or battery would help determine if the system is getting enough power during the day to keep the system running at night. The ESP8266 has an analog input (A0) that can be used to determine the output voltage but it can only handle up to 3.3v. By using a simple 2 resistor divider circuit (see right) I could monitor the voltage and apply a multiplier to get to the actual voltage I measured with a multimeter. In this case, the A0 pin was reporting 907 when the multimeter was showing 4.69v so I used 4.69 / 907.0 and further sampled other readings to ensure I had the correct value.

Voltage Charge and Discharge over 4 Days

Circuit Design

The sensors I wanted to add included a BME280 pressure and humidity sensor, a one-wire DS18B20 temperature sensor and a 2N2222 transistor powered rain detector. I put the circuit together using a simple breadboard and started on the code.

Prototype Solar Power Weather Station
Prototype Solar Power Weather Station

Using the free open source KiCad electronic design software, I build a schematic drawing to help build the final non-breadboarded product.

Schematic - ESP8266 Solar Powered Weather Station
Schematic – ESP8266 Solar Powered Weather Station

Getting Started with Arduino IDE and ESP8266

The ESP8266 NodeMCU has a USB port that allows the microcontroller to be easily powered and programmed with the Arduino IDE . However, it is not as easy to set up and use as an Arduino device. I found out that you will need to install a driver to see the device on my MacBook (see here for MacOS instructions and download the USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers here). Once the driver is installed, the Arduino IDE needs to be set up to manage the NodeMCU. The ESP8266 I purchased came with some instructions:

Instruction & Steps of How to use:
1. Download and Install the Arduino IDE (download here)
2. Set up your Arduino IDE as: Go to File->Preferences and copy the URL below to get the ESP board manager extensions: http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
3. Go to Tools > Board > Board Manager> Type “esp8266” and download the Community esp8266 and install.
4. Set up your chip as:
Tools -> Board -> NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module)
Tools -> Flash Size -> 4M (3M SPIFFS)
Tools -> CPU Frequency -> 80 Mhz
Tools -> Upload Speed -> 921600
Tools -> Port -> (whatever it is)
5. In Arduino IDE, look for the old fashioned Blink program. Load, compile and upload. Go to FILE> EXAMPLES> ESP8266> BLINK

Code

Once I had the ESP8266 connected, I could start creating the code. The code is available here: https://github.com/jasonacox/WeatherStationWiFi

Rain Sensor

Using a simple NPN transistor, you can detect the presence of water. I wanted to detect rain which mean that I needed to add a couple of electrodes connected to that transistor (for detection) and our power supply. Water allows a small amount of current to pass through it to detect water, you will need to amplify it, hence the need for the transistor which turns a low current into a switch to a much larger current. The ESP8266 digital inputs can see the switched power from the transistor and can indicate water has been detected.

Wind Speed Sensor with an Anemometer

An anemometer is a device used to catch the wind and record its speed.

3D Printer

I found a 3D model on https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2559929

More to come…

Installation

Home Automation – SentryPi

Who left the garage door open?

We have a full house with a lot of activity and visitors.  There have been several times when the garage door is left open for extended periods of time.  While our Christmas decorations and paint supplies may not be a treasure most would be thieves would desire, it is still not the most comforting thing to think about leaving the garage open for all passerby to see.  I often thought it would be great to have a way to notify whoever is in the house that the garage is open.

Phase 1 – LED Indicator

I decided that my first step would be to design a way to detect “door open” by providing a simple indicator light.  I explored a few optical ways to do this (light beam, camera, reflectors) but quickly pivoted my approach when I found some unused microswitches.

I found a good place to detect “closed” on the main track.  I thought about piggybacking on the garage opener sensors but dismissed that as I didn’t want to risk an undesirable interaction with the opener and more importantly, I wanted to have the detection work even if power to the opener was interrupted.

This required that I build a bracket to mount the switch to and a ramp plate to compress the switch when the door was in the down position.

I used an aluminum sheet, cut with sheet metal snips,  bent and drilled holes to mount the microswitch and eventually attach it to the garage door track.  It took a few tries to get the right fit and right placement of the micro switch.

My first attempt destroyed the microswitch after a few uses.  The garage door track sled has a straight edge that collides with the microswitch roller. It created too much force on the small roller and eventually popped it loose.  To help with that, I added an aluminum ramp to the sled so that the microswitch roller would gently rise as the sled entered the “closed” position.

I decided to make the “door open” state be the closed circuit condition so that phase 1 of the project could start as a simple LED circuit indicator.

I attached the switch and drilled some pilot holes and mounted the bracket to the garage door track right above the sled when the door is in the closed position.

I added a 9V battery, a 470 ohm resister and a red LED to the circuit.  To complete this phase, I ran the wire from the garage to our entry hall and mounted an LED and housing above the HVAC controls.  Now we can all see the brilliant red LED glowing when the garage door is open.  That covers some of our use cases but I also want a more proactive notification.  Now on to phase 2…

Phase 2 – Raspberry Pi – Home Automation Sentry

Now that I have a working “door closed” sensor and indicator, I am ready to add the proactive home automation component, specifically the Raspberry Pi (RPI).  It just so happens that I have a spare RPI Model 3 that needed a project, and I wanted to experiment with AWS IoT services.

I used the RPI to detect the state of the switch. To do that, I will need to wire the circuit into the RPI’sGPIO headers.  I decided to use GPIO Pin 23 and the adjacent ground (GND) pin.

Here is the code that is used to detect the closed circuit (indicating an open door):

#!/usr/bin/python

##  
## Garage Door Sentry - RPI script to monitor door
##  

## load libraries
import RPi.GPIO as io 
import time 

print "Garage Door Sentry\n\n"

## set GPIO mode to BCM - allows us to use GPIO number instead of pin number
io.setmode(io.BCM)

## set GPIO pin to use

door_pin = 23
print "Sentry Activated - Watching: GPIO 23"

## use the built-in "pull-up" resistor
io.setup(door_pin, io.IN, pull_up_down=io.PUD_UP)  # activate input

## States for door: 0=closed, 1=open, 2=init
door=2
## infinite loop
while True:
    ## if switch is open
    if (io.input(door_pin)==True and door!=0):
        door=0 
        print "Door closed"
        # do some action
    ## if switch is closed 
    if (io.input(door_pin)==False and door!=1):
        door=1 
        print "Door open"
        # do some action
    time.sleep(1) # 1 second wait

The next step was to connect to AWS IoT to record this sensor data and send alert messages to my phone.

The following will help you set up your Raspbery Pi as a platform to install the SentryPi scripts.

Required:

  • Raspberry Pi – B+, 2 or 3
  • Wifi Dongle or Network Cable configured
  • SD card (Recommend: 16GB or larger)
  • AWS Account (IoT, DynamoDB)

Read the details on this GitHub Project: https://github.com/jasonacox/SentryPi

The project describes how I added these additional features:

  • Sentry Alert – Send a text message to contacts when an alert condition is reached.
  • Dashboard – Provide an automation dashboard for realtime status.
  • Other Sensor Data:
    • Temperature Sensors
    • Barometric Pressure Sensor
    • Humidity Sensor
    • Motion Sensor

To set up a web based dashboard, I decide to use static HTML, CSS and JS (jQuery, Chart.js and the AWS JavaScript SDK) so it can be hosted on a simple S3 bucket, a web server, or the RPi itself.  See here for the code. 
SentryPi Dashboard
SentryPi Dashboard - Garage Door Graph

Raspberry Pi – AirPiano

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could control your MIDI equipped digital piano from your iPhone?  Imagine a player piano capable of jukebox queuing up MIDI or Audio files and playing them in order.  That was my goal!  RPI to the rescue.

RaspiModelB

Required Ingredients:

  • Raspberry Pi – Model B, 512MB RAM, 16GB SD Card, Raspbian Linux, Apple 12W USB Power Adapter, USB WiFi Dongle
  • USB MIDI Digital Device (e.g. Yamaha Clavinova CLP-440 with USB MIDI port and RCA L+R Audio Inputs)
  • Software:  Apache HTTP Server, PHP, MySQL, (Nice to have:  Netatalk file server, Shairport AirPlay server)

Instructions:

My original thought was to turn the Yamaha speakers into a AirPlay device for our many iOS devices.  It’s nice to pipe in background tunes without having to hook up a device.  AirPlay is great way to do that but I didn’t want to spend $100+ to be able to do that.  The Raspberry Pi is more than capable of doing this. I found an extremely helpful blog post here:  http://www.raywenderlich.com/44918/raspberry-pi-airplay-tutorial

NOTE: Power is a big issue for the Raspberry Pi.  If you are using a WiFi dongle or any other USB device, I recommend making sure your power supply has enough kick to keep the RPI going.   I started out with a microUSB adapter that advertised 700mA but performance became very unstable, especially under load.  I switched to a 12W Apple adapter that I had handy and the problems disappeared.   The RPI FAQ recommends 1.2A (1200mA).

Setup for AirPiano – MIDI Control

The Project Code: https://github.com/jasonacox/raspberrypi

  • MySQL: Database ‘piano’ – see piano.sql file
  • Dequeue Service: Run the cron.sh script to have the RPI scan for new midi or wave files to play. Run it with:
bash -x cron.sh 0<&- 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null &
  • Apache: Install apache http with mod_php and mysql support
  • Website Code: Install index.php, setup.php and the folder.png files into the document root of your webserver. Upload the MIDI (*.mid) and WAVE (*.wav) files to this location. Be sure to update $globalBase in setup.php to the folder where these files are located.

 

AirPlay via Raspberry Pi

Adam Burkepile has the best tutorial I’ve found on how to set up a RPI for AirPlay:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/44918/raspberry-pi-airplay-tutorial

Apple Share (AFP) Server via Raspberry Pi

The RPI is great for a tiny file server!  At the least, having it run an AFP server will allow quick drag and drop transfer from your Macs.  A Samba service for Windows shares is easy to set up as well.

sudo apt-get install netatalk

Yes, it is that easy.  Finder will now show your Raspberry Pi under “shared” along with any other local network shares:

Screen Shot 2013-12-27 at 11.22.08 PM

 

 

 

 

Simple LED Flasher using Transistors

Simple LED Flasher Project

I wanted to put together a simple two LED flasher circuit that would use the fewest parts and low power.  My first project of this type used the NE555 timer IC but besides the chip, it requires more power than what I would like to use.   Using a couple low-power NPN transistors, the circuit should be able to run for hours on a 9v battery.

The Circuit

I decided to use two 2N3904 transistors (a low power NPN transistor).  This design uses only 10 components but I added additional resistor to inline with the power source.  It could be removed and the other resistors adjusted to lower the power.

I used a free copy of LTSpice from Linear Technology to create the circuit (most SPICE packages do not have LED components for some reason) – you can download it here:  http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ltspice.jsp

Which LED will light first?

The Breadboard

I assembled the circuit using a low cost breadboard I picked up at Fry’s Electronics.   Using a breadboard allowed me to play around with different components, especially the capacitors and resistors to tweak the flash rate and brightness.


Single LED Flasher

The simplest single LED Flasher circuit I have found uses a single transistor (NPN), 2 resistors and 1 capacitor.  This circuit uses the transistor as a Negistor using the NDR (negative differential resistance) effect.  The transitor will block current until the voltage threshold charging on C1 reach something close to 9v, at which point the voltage will become large enough to get the emitter-base junction to avelanche and drain the current through the LED.

Click here for the video:
http://jasonacox.com/images/IMG_2022.MOV

Reference

http://wild-bohemian.com/electronics/flasher.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2N3904

http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/  (LTspice – Nice circuit design tool based on Spice)

http://jasonacox.com/ndr/

http://www.cappels.org/dproj/simplest_LED_flasher/Simplest_LED_Flasher_Circuit.html