Lots of Distractions

I've been messing with a few things, the kids had a cubmobile race, and my wife had plenty of things for me to mess with. Along the way, I've been only reading about stuff. This week, Hackaday had some talk about this Jerri person who is building a FPGA software defined radio. I've been reading hackaday for a couple years, and always find some really cool info.

It turns out this Jerri person is Jeri Ellsworth, another self taught engineer. Instantly I respect her, but after seeing her work, I am even more impressed. She publishes a vlog, and a blog about her hobby work, and some other stuff. I've only been reading about her a couple days, but I thing this is really good info.

She is up to part 6 of her vlog reporting about this, and will end up publishing on element14. Suddenly I know about element14. Well, I knew about it a while ago, but never really paid any attention it is, since I had no idea if they sold something, or what they did. I've been getting EE Times and Embeded Systems Design magazines for about 20 years, and they are getting thinner and thinner, probably a sign of the times.

I've always enjoyed Circuit Cellar Ink, and still have issue 1, and a bunch of older Byte magazines, where Steve got his start. The price is up to almost $40/year ($45 for print) for the magazine, and that is scarey, and sad. It eliminates a bunch of people from being able to afford it, or thinking really hard about the magazine. It has always been at the high end, with limited advertising, and great content, but now I think it went too far. We will see how long that lasts.

The other thing I saw, Garmin has an "affordable" transponder for ADS/B. Turns out it is a 1090ES transponder. Well, that is a non-starter for GA as far as I am concerned. The FAA wants everyone below 18000ft to be using UATs, not 1090es transponders. This transponder is still about $2500, and UAT's are
still priced less. I am guessing this is "affordable" in the business jet jargon.

I promise to get back to my original project, check back next week.

tom

I quit, but I'm back

I almost gave up on the project. Financial times were getting tight, I was frustrated about all the other stuff that I needed to take care of. Some clown was able to get into my paypal account, and take all my ebay sales money, plus a little more. Paypal made things good, but it took a couple weeks to work out. A couple other things happened, and I was able to make the money deal work out.

My laptop had a flakey hard drive, so I bought a new one. 50GB for $500. Sure the 1TB drives aren't a lot more, but they are 3-1/2" ones. Internal laptop drives are a little more expensive. IT works better than before, plenty of space, but I still have to load all the software. I've gotten everything loaded, and the arduino talks to it fine. Tonight I installed Java, and waiting for eclipse to download.

I still have very little time, but I am making progress. I've built the protoboard. I modified it to be stackable with the bluetooth module, and am testing with an LM34, for the OAT sensor. Once I get the Eclipse installed, along with the amarino software fully configured, I should be good to go with the screen layout. I guess that is something I could have been working on all alone.

Keep the notes coming in. Love the feedback.

It works!

I finally got the itread studio stackable bluetooth card. It works right out of the box (or appears to, I haven't actually written code to make it do something). It connected right to the amarino app on the phone. I was a little nervous about plugging this into a mega arduino, since it doesn't have the same pinout as the basic arduino. Using the schematics for both the arduino and the shield, and dang, they line up. Being stackable, the pins are still usable (mostly).

I also ordered some blank prototype boards from itread studio. They are the mega sized ones, so I shouldn't loose anything. The board appears to have space to put one of the bluetooth boards, so I may be able to replace this shield with the prototype board. I should plan it out, and put things in eagle so that I can build a engine monitor shield. It only takes time.

I would like to get more folks coming to this site. I am looking for good ideas to get this promoted. It seems I am not spending enough time building to finish, so I don't feel strong about pushing things until I am done, in case I don't finish.

Feedback would be welcome.

I am still here.

I just haven't done anything in a week. Lots of kids stuff, and work. I did order that other bluetooth card, and sold some more on eBay, so maybe I can get another Arduino. Maybe I should save up for a new laptop, my  wife wants a new desktop.

Maybe I am the only one in the world who doesn't respect some certain big time aviation mapping company in the world. I think their maps are cool, but their software stinks. I've been dealing a bit with that all week in my professional life, and it seems I sort of being ostracized. Weird, it is like the airplane manufacturer that owns the mapping company is pulling some serious strings. But, the CEO of our company is kind of pushing them.

Hopefully I get to keep my job. Then I can buy more computers.

Amazing things happen in 24 Hours

My bluetooth card showed up a couple hours after I wrote the last post. Wow! that cars is smaller than I imagined!

So where to start. Well, the documentation leaves something to be desired. Seed has a Wiki page that has some pointers, including the pinouts of the card. It seems to be quite capable. But, so far I can't get it to work. I don't know if I need to connect more than power and Rx/Tx? It appears it needs to run on 3.3V, and my ArduinoMega has a 3.3V pin, so that seems right. Lots of grounds on the board, so that seems good. I connected reset, but this page made it seem like I didn't need to, so I disconnected it. Back in the day, We used to connect pins 6, 8, and 20 in the DB-25 connectors to get around hardware handshaking, so I connected RTS and CTS, but nothing.

I also had some issues with libraries and installing them. The Zip files come with a sub directory, so I'd install a new library in libraries/foo/foo/ well the apps wouldn't compile. I got pretty frustrated, but moving the libraries up to the proper place (IE libraries/foo) the code would compile.

How about this; http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=157, there is a schematic and everything! It is a little confusing, their schematic has a level converter (RS-232) but the pinout shows TTL level. Hmmm... 

I also found this card, for $19 I should buy it, since it'll get me prototyping area too. There seem to be many Arduino to Bluetooth solutions available.

I've got some other things to do, I'll get back to this.


I'll see when I  can get back to this.

Google is Helping!

This week Google has their developer conference, and they announced the Android Open Accessory Development Kit (AODK). It is based on the Arduino board, and talked USB. Buying from Google is expensive, but hackaday has a user who figured out how to use  any old Arduino to do the same thing. I need to look into this some more, since I am cheap, and have lots of ideas for the Arduino Android connection.

Seed Studio still hasn't devlivered the bluetooth shield I ordered a couple weeks ago. It is giving this vendor a black eye in my view. I probably out to write to them before complaining too much.

Not much progress on this project in the last week. Mostly working on stuff around the house. Floor upstairs, end of school year kind of things.

Write if you have thoughts.

Display

I've been thinking about the display. I briefly looked at the Nokia LCD shields for the Arduino, but have so far dismissed them. I've also looked at the larger monochrome displays available, and similar dismissed them.The Nokia displays, while color are too small (128x128 pixels and about 2.5" square), where the large ones are fine, they only are monochrome.

There is a bunch of information one can encode in a color display, everything from warnings, to dithering edges to allow more data on less screen. I am sure I could, if so motivated, put enough information on one small color display. Connecting multiple of these smaller displays up to a network from the main board is another option, maybe allowing 2-1/4" holes to display analog looking gauges. It would certainly be an option.

Using a larger monochome display could work, and for many years there was the popular VM-1000 display that was monochrome. Alerts could be encoded as blinking or changing presentation, including reverse video. The display can show analog and digital presentations, allowing quick checks for out of tolerance readings, and a longer view of specific readings.

Combining displays, making a comprehensive view will allow quick scans to determine more information. Combining all oil and temp into a single graph would allow noting any issues with the oiling system. A similar display could show CHT's and EGT's allowing quick viewing of current cooling status. The comprehensive display will allow showing more data in a larger color display.

Using direct connected displays would also have the disadvantage of requiring something to be farther from the engine. The display being close to the pilot would need to have all the sensor wires brought forward, where mounting the display and engine monitor near the engine would require the pilot to turn around to read the display. (We are talking a Cozy here, not a Cessna, but something similar to an Osprey II or non-traditional engine mounting would be covered).

I am planning on using an Android device for a display. The Android can receive the Arduino data over bluetooth, and possibly USB. Currently tablets are available for about $150 on up, or if you have an Android phone, it should work without any additional expense.The Android has a robust open development platform, and the tools are mostly open.

Using bluetooth allows the option of connecting to other devices, including full laptops, ipads, and other brand computers. I am not going to work on them, but all others to do it if they desire. This is an open project, read and learn along with me.