Not that anyone probably bothered to follow this blog, but I'm actually trying to pull together some stuff this summer. I've got like 2 projects that I'm working on. They are as follows.
Remote Controlled Bike Light
This is quite simple idea. I've wanted to make some sort of bike system that I could remotely control, and have the system be useless if stolen because the remote is the only way to control it. I've run into some issues with this however, and I'll elaborate on this later.
The project started last semester in school when I decided to go with this idea for a project for a class. The results of the class are shown in the following picture/video.
This summer, I decided to design my own PCB's to decrease the size of these lights and also design a rear light module. I finished soldering my remote and front light module and did some preliminary testing. This is where everything decided to not work as expected. Seeing this is my first time printing PCB's There were a few things that went wrong. My battery clips were not spaced right and would short some of these batteries. Fortunately this was simple to fix with some strategically placed electrical tape. I had also made a mistake and forgot the connection to ground from my microcontroller on the remote. I was also fortunately enough able to just throw a short wire on and fix that. The result is shown below.
Something I failed to consider though, is the amount of power I would be able to get out of these batteries. I discovered that the current draw of the MSP430 and the XBee were all relatively high, and my batteries were going to essentially drain overnight. I was originally intending on these running for at least a few days. I think I would be able to squeeze far more savings on power for the microcontroller, I need to play around with the sleeping modes and/or lower clock speeds for this chip. Unfortunately the XBee is a much bigger power hog than I imagined. In it's active state it's 50mA and it's low power modes seem to potentially decrease the responsiveness of my remote. I nevertheless will test these settings and hopefully I will be able to get some better performance.
I am however going to be pursuing my rear module first because I purchased a small multicolor led strip for this, and it should be fun to use should it be successful.
Controlling a Lamp with My Smartphone
I have wanted to do some home automation stuff for sometime now, and I had bought a relay module sometime last summer, but I had never gotten around to using it until now. Where I am with this project is a pretty interesting place. I've successfully controlled my relay module from my laptop to an Arduino, and I've also successfully made an Andriod app that can connect to a custom TCP server and send packets to it. The next step is bridge the server and the communication to the Arduino. I think the the future I may also be able to use some proximity beacons as well to automate this even further. The relay module in action is below.
Remote Controlled Bike Light
This is quite simple idea. I've wanted to make some sort of bike system that I could remotely control, and have the system be useless if stolen because the remote is the only way to control it. I've run into some issues with this however, and I'll elaborate on this later.
The project started last semester in school when I decided to go with this idea for a project for a class. The results of the class are shown in the following picture/video.
This summer, I decided to design my own PCB's to decrease the size of these lights and also design a rear light module. I finished soldering my remote and front light module and did some preliminary testing. This is where everything decided to not work as expected. Seeing this is my first time printing PCB's There were a few things that went wrong. My battery clips were not spaced right and would short some of these batteries. Fortunately this was simple to fix with some strategically placed electrical tape. I had also made a mistake and forgot the connection to ground from my microcontroller on the remote. I was also fortunately enough able to just throw a short wire on and fix that. The result is shown below.
Something I failed to consider though, is the amount of power I would be able to get out of these batteries. I discovered that the current draw of the MSP430 and the XBee were all relatively high, and my batteries were going to essentially drain overnight. I was originally intending on these running for at least a few days. I think I would be able to squeeze far more savings on power for the microcontroller, I need to play around with the sleeping modes and/or lower clock speeds for this chip. Unfortunately the XBee is a much bigger power hog than I imagined. In it's active state it's 50mA and it's low power modes seem to potentially decrease the responsiveness of my remote. I nevertheless will test these settings and hopefully I will be able to get some better performance.
I am however going to be pursuing my rear module first because I purchased a small multicolor led strip for this, and it should be fun to use should it be successful.
Controlling a Lamp with My Smartphone
I have wanted to do some home automation stuff for sometime now, and I had bought a relay module sometime last summer, but I had never gotten around to using it until now. Where I am with this project is a pretty interesting place. I've successfully controlled my relay module from my laptop to an Arduino, and I've also successfully made an Andriod app that can connect to a custom TCP server and send packets to it. The next step is bridge the server and the communication to the Arduino. I think the the future I may also be able to use some proximity beacons as well to automate this even further. The relay module in action is below.
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