Today I received a few packages but one of them contained the ArduRF from Kickstarter. This campaign was short and sweet. I received the reward thirty-three days after it ended. You can read about the details from their Kickstarter but it’s an Atmega328p (Arduino Uno) with the RFM69 embedded. One has a USB A connector that can plug directly into your PC. This can act like a base station/receiver. This will replace my node connected to an FTDI cable to my Ubuntu VM. Using the JeeNode library in compatibility mode, the RFM69 should work with the RFM12B radios until I completely transition over. The other is similar to an Arduino Pro Mini but longer with the addition of a JST …
La Crosse Weather Station Gateway
Its alive! Last Christmas (or was it the one before that?), I received a La Crosse wireless weather station from my mom who is obsessed with them. This one has just a small display that can gauge inside and outside temperature. What interested me is that it’s a simple 433Mhz radio link. So sometime between then and a while ago, I got a 433Mhz receiver from Sparkfun with the intention of capturing the binary data from the outside sensor. Stock photo from SFE – CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Occasionally, I’ve seen blog posts about other people doing the same thing. Thanks to the world of Opensource, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Sweet! Well, that is if I could find …
Finally Some Home Automation
With all the busyness of FriedCircuits and with taking a late honeymoon to Europe, there hasn’t been very much time left for other just-for-fun projects. It’s taken a long time to scale up productivity after our trip. A few weeks ago I finally started to dive into getting some sort of a start on home automation, or domotica, as its called across the pond. Since the failure of the Smart Outelet I decided to start on a smaller piece of the home automation beast this time around. Having been following JeeNodes for awhile now, I wanted to make a custom version in which I actually had done last year and never posted about it. I did some testing with his setup …
Wizkers.io Is Live!
Happy New Year! Begin 2015 with Wizkers.io – an easy to use Open Source application that is great for makers and programmers alike. It was designed and is managed by Edouard Lafargue, a fellow maker who has greatly contributed to the USB Tester, which is supported by Wizkers.io. Now that’s Open Source in action! //We look forward to posting projects using Wizkers.io and the USB Tester! Here is his press release: “We are live! After about two years of work, I am very happy to announce the launch of Wizkers.io.What is Wizkers? Wizkers is an Open Source application that gives a web interface to your instruments. And much more. What’s in it for you ? Your measurement instruments often have …
USB Tester Firmware and Java App Update
It’s been awhile since there has been an update to the firmware or the Java app. I have been working on them on and off for a few months now and I am finally at point for a release. Both the firmware and the Java app have some significant and important changes. I hope this brings some useful changes and lays the groundwork for future updates. Now onto the details… Arduino Yun booting and running OLED Adafruit Test Sketch – USB data not connected to PC Java App: https://github.com/FriedCircuits/FC-USB-Tester-Data-Logger-App Start of changelog Uses temp file instead of memory for better long term logging Able to resume unsaved session Remote control of USB Tester display Option to stop updating graph for …
USB Tester and the DigiSpark Pro
After supporting the DigiX on Kickstarter, I have become a fan of DigiStump. So what better way to support them than buy stuff? I supported their new Kickstarter this year for the DigiSpark Pro. I got the beta kit which they made at their office and it came with the extras along with being shipped sooner. I posted about the details earlier: http://www.mobilewill.us/2014/06/digispark-pro.html. I finally got around to doing some basic power testing with the USB Tester. I took this picture just before our vacation. Running the basic blink sketch its using about 22mA. Which is less then an Arduino Uno.
Improving Cooling on Fury Miners
Over the summer, I began adding more miners. The weather had started to warm up about the same time so the Furys started to increase in temperature. In our area most places do not have air conditioning, so we are up to the mercy of the weather. Most of the year it’s a cooler climate off the central coast of California, but this year it has been much warmer. Even without the weather, the Furys ICs would get hot but not the casing, which is a giant heat sink anyway. That told me there is poor thermal transfer. I had to do something about it. Cooler ICs means less hardware errors which means more accepted shares. Upon research I narrowed …
On the Web: Circuit Construction Set
During my day job a call was mistakenly transferred to me. It was a teacher that needed help with a website not loading. Normally I only take calls related to the systems I manage and support. Turns out it was a Java applet that a science teacher was trying to us in the computer lab. Once he emailed me the link and I saw what it was, I got excited. It’s a Java applet that you can learn basic circuits. Check it out below. Click to Run http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/circuit-construction-kit-dc Turns out downloading and updating Java fixed it. The joys of Java!
Tessel Has Arrived!
Origianlly posted June 23, 2014… Last year in 2013, I backed one of the first projects on Dragon Innovation. It’s similar to Kickstarter but geared more for hardware and without the restrictions. Basically it’s a cross between an online shop and crowd sourcing mixed into one, since you can buy/support multiple of rewards. One of the launch campaigns was the Tessel. Tessel isn’t just another microcontroller platform, it’s platform that allows you to program it with Java but more specifically NodeJS! Pretty cool, ehh? There site has all the details http://tessel.io. But here are the specs from their site: The Nitty: Programmable via JavaScript 14 different hardware modules for added capabilites Compatible with 10,000’s of Node.js packages on NPN Deploy over …
DIY: Miner Rack
Over the last few weeks or so, I decided to build a rack to hold my ASIC miners. This way they are nice, tidy and not all over my desk! Commonly, GPUs miners make a wooden open air case so I decided to design something similar. Total power usage from the wall is 377-379W. Not bad for 11MH/s. One thing to note is the Gridseeds don’t get very hot so in turn their fans keep the Raspberry Pis cool which are zip tied above them. Parts: 5x 4ft Strips of wood Pack of finishing nails Wood glue Zip ties Gray primer spray paint Black gloss spray paint Small nails (keep miners in place) Mining Hardware: 8x Fury’s: GAWMiners 2x GridSeeds: GAWMiners …