bobnova

------- Looks like I got everyone ------
List is closed. Thank you for your entries.
 
Ti has agreed to send each of the listed entries a kit( FET + Board ).... which is certainly awesome on their part.
Thanks TI! 
 
 
@abecedarian -: Water supply usage
@chicken -------: Resistive touchscreen pattern detector
@Fred -----------: Laser cutter coolant and temperature monitor
@greeeg --------: Fitness monitor
@bobnova -------:Digital tachometer, speedometer, and intelligent shift light.
@Automate ------:Single-Point Sensing of Whole-Home Water Activity
@pjkim ------------: Speed Controller
 
Please send me your mail addresses at admin  ( the at sign ) 43oh . com
 
It would be much appreciated if you could all start project threads with your ideas in the the Projects section.

Small.  I'll have a prototype soon.  It will be able to fit inside a USB cable, I think.
 
 
Possibly.  In any case, the project is to be open source, so you can add features however you want.
 
 
I had not planned on making this into a Teensy competitor, but perhaps there is reason to do so.  I could one-up Teensy by offering multithreaded Wiring (i.e. multiple sketches running simultaneously) with automatic low-power usage in the background -- the RTOS underpinnings are already there.  This would require a couple months of my time, and therefore would necessitate a successful kickstarter.  What do you think?

Just a note: I'm building an open source project that utilizes STM32L0 as USB-UART gateway.  This chip has some interesting attributes, and it can create a low-cost, small geometry USB interface that is also programmable.  I'm building the CDC-ACM to UART version first, then an Android version that does the necessary authentication, and then finally a USB-Ethernet version so you can telnet to it (ssh is too much overhead).
 
The idle current will be in the area of 2uA, so it's a good USB bridge for any low power project you may have, unlike most off the shelf bridge chips which are nowhere near this.
 

Hi All,
 
This my first prototype for Booster Pack that connect LaunchPad XL to Arduino Shields
It convert 3.3V to 5 Bidirectionaly, I just test it with my own Arduino Shield with SPI works fine.
I know board is too long and jumpers are not necessary, I will removed them.
 
It will help Arduino Shields as BoosterPack.
 
Thanks,
Ali

Wow weird, will have to test that later. I do know SPI.begin() needs to be called beforehand but I'm not sure what Serial.begin() would do for it. 
Sent from my Galaxy Note II with Tapatalk 4

OK Now I'm really confused.
I sat down to work with this some more, and the code that did not work earlier this evening without Serial.begin now works without it.
I have absolutely no idea why, or what changed.
I'm confused now.
This is what I get for posting I guess!
 
The especially confusing part is that I've run into this twice, the first time I put off more testing and posting about it, then forgot about it and didn't remember till earlier today.
 
I'll keep poking it and see if I can figure out what the deal is/was.
 
EDIT:
 
I'm a doofus. I think it was a combination of things not actually Serial.begin() related.
I have a 500ms delay after I call serial.begin to give the serial window time to open after uploading.
That delay was inadvertently solving a completely unrelated bootup problem where the MCU and the radio would come alive at different times on powerup on the specific (non-launchpad) PCB I was using earlier. It has a very intelligent, inrush limiting, boost converter. I think the MSP was kicking off before the NRF24 and was zipping past / crashing in the nrf initialization process. The delay gave the boost converter time to get vcc up to >2v so the radio was happy.
An additional factor may have been my swapping between 2553 and 2452, it turns out that Energia is totally happy to compile for a 2452 and upload it to a 2553. Whether that kills things or not I don't know, but I don't see it helping.
 
So yeah, false alarm on the Serial.begin front, sorry about that!

That is absolutely glorious.
 
You could do a finite number of frames with an MSP430 of some sort. If you want to do the motion capture style like in that video you'll need to aim a lot higher in processing power I think.

Progress:

A summary of changes:
instead of unipolar motor drivers, now I used a bipolar drivers very popular in RepRap projects, here A4988 (or DRV8825) 28byj-48 modified for bipolar cheap HC-05 for bluetooth SPP GPS module U-blox NEO-6m added RTC DS1307 to provide date/time reference even in the first seconds after power-on and 56 of NVRAM bytes added (optional) humidity and temperature sensor DSTH01 added a I2C socket to connect external temperature sensors to provide information about motors temperatures added PCF8574 for microstepping configuration of A4988 drivers added buzzer for audible indication added output for 12Vdc fan of main mirror - PWM controlled Nokia 5110 display replaced with a red back-light
 
As the software is concerned, there were several improvements as well. The most important is that the motors are now driven by an interrupt driven AccelStepper
 

 
With kind regards,
Szymon

I wrote up an unboxing + firmware updating post for the blog of a group I'm part of.
It can be found here: http://humboldtmcu.blogspot.com/2014/08/unboxing-and-updating-texas-instruments.html
 
It's aimed at Energia users, as I'm only just barely starting to transition to CCS and Energia is what I used to do the updating.

OK, I have two three different projects that the ESI could be used with, I'm going to list 'em from least ambitious to most ambitious. The more ambitious the less likely I'll actually manage to do it, but who knows.
 
Possible project one:  Digital tachometer, speedometer, and intelligent shift light.
Uses the ESI to read either the ignitor's tach output (one pulse per ignition event, so two per engine revolution) or the vehicle speed sensor's square wave (whichever is more difficult to do with interrupts/timers, unknown at this time) as well as the throttle position sensor.
Displays engine RPM via either LCD screen or RGBLED bars (or both, plenty of GPIO here), also vehicle speed with LED indicators for common speed limits.
Based on throttle position, engine RPM and vehicle speed (and gear, calculated via engine RPM and road speed) it will also have a pair of shift lights, one to indicate for downshifting and one to indicate for upshifting.
Example: On the freeway behind someone at 60MPH in a 65 zone in 5th gear, left lane opens up and you can accelerate. If you give the engine a little bit of gas to accelerate slowly, no lights. Stomp on the gas and the downshift light comes on (perhaps blinking, to indicate multiple gears downward are indicated, as full throttle 60MPH is best done in 3rd gear on this car). If/when you downshift, the light goes out. Let off the throttle to maintain your new speed and the upshift light comes on, as 65MPH in 3rd is lousy for cruising.
Also indicates upshifts based on engine RPM directly, given a 6750 redline and high throttle angle the upshift light would come on around 6500RPM.
I may make the MCU learn the rev limits, may not.
ESI and FRAM are not specifically needed for this project, but using ESI for either tach or road speed would eliminate timing artifacts that would happen if the road speed and tach signals happened simultaneously, something that is guaranteed to happen eventually.
 
 
Possible project two:  Battery-free bicycle telemetry
Bicycle telemetry, read road speed via multiple magnets attached to one rim and a coil attached nearby.
Trick is, I want to make said magnet/coil arrangement power the MCU as well as give it a timing signal.
Both FRAM for its low power consumption and the ESI module for its ability to grab rotational information while the CPU sleeps would be useful.
Once it has this information, display it on low power LCD screen and save it to FRAM blocks for later downloading to computer, possibly via radio module. No radio for normal operation, radio module also contains a battery. Plug the radio module into the bike and it detects the external power and radio, and contacts a home base unit attached to a computer.
Possible bonus features include a second sensor on the crankset, and shifting suggestions similar to project #1.
Alternatively a battery+SD card for data transfer, done more or less the same way.
I'm not positive that enough power can be generated this way, if not then I'll use a more classic power method, but the ESI and FRAM low power abilities will still be useful. Solar maybe, with a small rechargeable backup battery. Most bike riding is done during daytime after all.
 
Possible project number three:  Digital tach/speedo/intelligent shift light, with advanced fuel consumption monitoring.
Same as project #1, but put the ESI on injector monitoring duties (start timer on injector fire leading edge, stop on trailing edge, calculate fuel injected based on time) and calculate instant and average fuel consumption. Display current MPG, average MPG, cruise MPG and town MPG (buttons to switch between display modes are now needed).
Ideally run some calculations internally with some learning ability, to allow the MCU to suggest cruise speeds/gears for better mileage.
Also a route mode. Push "start" button, drive to where you're going, push "end". Display tells you both MPG and how much fuel you actually used. This can be used to figure out what the most efficient routes from point A to point B are, as MPG does not tell the whole story (20 miles at 30mpg, is worse than 10 miles at 20mpg, for an extreme, but not unreasonable for direct city vs indirect freeway example).
 
#1 is quite doable.
#2 may have power issues, but is doable as well.
#3 is further out there, but something that I would like to do and more importantly has a feature that I've not seen anywhere else.
 
 
 
Will I actually do any of these if I win? I plan to do them anyway. Free parts help, though.
Are the FR6989 chips necessary? Not really, a FR5969 would work just as well, or a LM4C for the automotive ideas. Considering that I can't find a place to buy fewer than 1000 FR6989 chips, I'll either be getting by with free samples or using a different MCU. Certainly don't have $4500 to throw down on 1k FR6989s, that'd be overkill even for me.
Will I blog/log about the project(s)? Definitely.

I'd not seen this till just now. Very interesting project, and one I'd contemplated for one of my cars at one point.
I'm short on time right now, but I'll be keeping an eye on this thread!

This pendulum clock is not only regulated by the pendulum, but it is driven by it.  A hidden magnet in the pendulum swings past a hidden coil and induces a current.  This is detected and then a current pulse is fed into the coil, creating an electromagnet that repels the pendulum to keep it moving.
 
Others have designed and built clocks like this, but as far as I know mine is the only one using a microcontroller to fine-tune the pendulum's speed to keep accurate time. 
 
The coil's output is filtered and fed into an MSP430 comparator, set on an interrupt to wake the microcontroller up.  The microcontroller delays a bit to let the magnet swing away from the coil some for optimal push, then feeds a variable-length pulse (typically 25 mS) into the coil via an output port connected to a PNP transistor.  If the pulse duration is increased, the pendulum swings farther and slows down.  If decreased, the pendulum speeds up.  The ratchet mechanism used to convert pendulum motion into rotary motion had to be designed to accommodate this variation in pendulum swing angle.  By varying the pulse width, the clock can be sped up or slowed down about 1%.  The pendulum needs to be manually adjusted, by setting the height of the bob, to within this tolerance.  To facilitate that, I use a dual-color LED driven by two output ports.  The LED flashes red if the pendulum is too slow, and green if it is too fast.  It usually takes only a few minutes to adjust the bob.  
 
Once the bob is set, the microcontroller can maintain accuracy.  I've implemented a modified PID (proportional - integral - derivative) control system to derive the pulse width and regulate the clock. Accuracy is basically the same as the watch crystal used to drive the timer/counter. 

Hi All..
Electro Dragon came back saying that 4.50 is the best they could do.. unless quantites were over 50.. which would make it a dollar or so less. It would be cheaper if you ordered it directly rather than shipped to me and then me to you.

Just for reference, page 21 of the G2553 datasheet recommends 2.2v-3.6v for programming, and on the same page Figure 1 is a graph reflecting voltage versus processor speeds and minimum required VCC for programming.

Energia sets the chip up to run 16MHz via the internal oscillator(s?), the external crystal is typically for an optional 32.768kHz crystal for RTC use. It's not used for the core clock in Energia, nor in most setups.
 
Regardless of what you're programming it with, you really shouldn't need anything more than VCC (2.0v to 3.6v), GND, a cap from VCC to GND, and a pullup resistor on RST(reset).

Note to yagi-uda builders: you can get more directivity by adding more elements to the front.  There are already two in the design above.  Just cut more wires of the same length and space them at lambda/4.
   
 
A straight dipole or monopole will have no problem covering the entire band 2400-2500.  These antennas are 75 or 37 Ohms impedance respectively, and the RF source of this device is 50 Ohms, so this is easy.  I recommend this approach.  I also recommend experimenting with trimming the antennas and testing RSSI against a reference because the wire you use will have some inductance (and capacitance) and the best resonant length will be less than lambda/4.
 
The bandwidth of a folded-dipole is theoretically the same as on a straight dipole, but it many designs the aperture is made wider, which decreases the efficiency a bit and changes the polarization a bit, but increases the bandwidth.  You can do the same thing with a regular dipole by constructing a "fat" dipole.  A thing called a "bowtie" dipole is a common structure.  Mainly, a folded-dipole has an impedance of ~300 Ohms, which sometimes is preferable.
 
But any-old straight dipole should have no problem covering 10% of center frequency, which is quite fine for 2400-2500 MHz.  If you are trying to build a multi-band antenna the easiest way is to build a multi-element inverted-F monopole or perhaps a spiral antenna with multiple turns.

I've been playing with NRF24L01+ modules and launchpads. I've got 'em to where they can run and send packets on a (&*@#% little solar panel out of a harbor freight solar path light, and make it through the night on a 300mAh NiCd. Next up was improving their range, as the PCB trace antennas aren't especially good (even more so when you have metal walls to punch though, like I do).
 

Cut traces, soldered mini-coax from a dead WiFi router in place.
 

Built a mini-yagi!
 

The test package, a MSP430G2553 launchpad, a JeeLabs AA power board (3.3v boost converter, extremely efficient and low quiescent current), a $1 NRF24 board, and the Yagi.
 
Works great! Over doubled the range I get through the wall, it went from ~60-80' depending on direction to 200-240'.

I have seen this on hackaday.com http://hackaday.com/2014/08/26/new-chip-alert-the-esp8266-wifi-module-its-5/
 
What do you think?
 
Electrodragon $4.50 http://www.electrodragon.com/product/esp8266-wi07c-wifi-module/
Documentation here: https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266
 

My antenna design is a bit rusty, but I think folded dipoles allow for a wider frequency band without attenuating too much. So if you work on a single (or a few very closely clustered) frequency, you'd better use a straight dipole. For a wider band (say all 13 channels in the 2.4GHz band, or even 2.1GHz UMTS + 2.4GHz Zigbee/WiFi) you'd better use a folded dipole.

Sure! What sort of details are you after?
 
Design/construction wise:
I used the excellent Yagi Calculator by John Drew / VK5DJ (link) for the basic design, the element lengths and locations and such.
Once I had an output I took my digital calipers and sketched it out on some paper.
 

 
I hot-glued the shell of a rubber duck antenna to the paper along the long axis, then trimmer aluminum electric fence wire to the proper lengths (roughly. Within 0.25mm anyway) and glued them to the antenna shell and paper.
The dipole was made using the mini-coax cable, the yagi calculator gives numbers for both dipole and folded dipole elements, I went with dipole as it's easier.
The center wire of the coax became my driven element, it was already the proper length from its previous duty as the guts of the WiFi antenna (2.4GHz is 2.4GHz, after all). I cut a measured length out of a bit of 22gauge wire stripped from a discarded 8con cable to act as the ground element, and soldered it to the coax shield.
 
Ideally I'd have a blocking collar (there's an official name for it, I forget what it is) around the end of the coax, but that's more effort than I'm willing to put in.
 
The end result you've seen above.
 
 
Now using the antenna is fairly interesting. At close range it's happy to function as a normal old dipole, though reception of signals from behind the reflector element is dubious at best and reception at angles not inside the forward facing cone the antenna is built for is between OKish and not very good. The downside to a directional antenna is that you have to aim it.
Once you get to farther away having the antenna aimed correctly becomes important. Due to how I mounted the stick there is a slight bend in the rubber bit, I had to adjust things slightly to get all the elements line up right.
 
Two especially interesting things are being able to "see" the angle the strongest signal arrives from, once you're on the outer edge of the signal range it becomes very important, a 5

I hadn't checked out TI's energy scavenging boost converters previously, so that was interesting.
Overall, awfully dry and scripted.
The Q/A box never went live for me.
 
I'll rate it as vaguely interesting, but I wouldn't have sat through it without the potential bribes I don't think. Seemed like it was mostly aimed at marketing.

Sure! What sort of details are you after?
 
Design/construction wise:
I used the excellent Yagi Calculator by John Drew / VK5DJ (link) for the basic design, the element lengths and locations and such.
Once I had an output I took my digital calipers and sketched it out on some paper.
 

 
I hot-glued the shell of a rubber duck antenna to the paper along the long axis, then trimmer aluminum electric fence wire to the proper lengths (roughly. Within 0.25mm anyway) and glued them to the antenna shell and paper.
The dipole was made using the mini-coax cable, the yagi calculator gives numbers for both dipole and folded dipole elements, I went with dipole as it's easier.
The center wire of the coax became my driven element, it was already the proper length from its previous duty as the guts of the WiFi antenna (2.4GHz is 2.4GHz, after all). I cut a measured length out of a bit of 22gauge wire stripped from a discarded 8con cable to act as the ground element, and soldered it to the coax shield.
 
Ideally I'd have a blocking collar (there's an official name for it, I forget what it is) around the end of the coax, but that's more effort than I'm willing to put in.
 
The end result you've seen above.
 
 
Now using the antenna is fairly interesting. At close range it's happy to function as a normal old dipole, though reception of signals from behind the reflector element is dubious at best and reception at angles not inside the forward facing cone the antenna is built for is between OKish and not very good. The downside to a directional antenna is that you have to aim it.
Once you get to farther away having the antenna aimed correctly becomes important. Due to how I mounted the stick there is a slight bend in the rubber bit, I had to adjust things slightly to get all the elements line up right.
 
Two especially interesting things are being able to "see" the angle the strongest signal arrives from, once you're on the outer edge of the signal range it becomes very important, a 5

I've been playing with NRF24L01+ modules and launchpads. I've got 'em to where they can run and send packets on a (&*@#% little solar panel out of a harbor freight solar path light, and make it through the night on a 300mAh NiCd. Next up was improving their range, as the PCB trace antennas aren't especially good (even more so when you have metal walls to punch though, like I do).
 

Cut traces, soldered mini-coax from a dead WiFi router in place.
 

Built a mini-yagi!
 

The test package, a MSP430G2553 launchpad, a JeeLabs AA power board (3.3v boost converter, extremely efficient and low quiescent current), a $1 NRF24 board, and the Yagi.
 
Works great! Over doubled the range I get through the wall, it went from ~60-80' depending on direction to 200-240'.

I've been playing with NRF24L01+ modules and launchpads. I've got 'em to where they can run and send packets on a (&*@#% little solar panel out of a harbor freight solar path light, and make it through the night on a 300mAh NiCd. Next up was improving their range, as the PCB trace antennas aren't especially good (even more so when you have metal walls to punch though, like I do).
 

Cut traces, soldered mini-coax from a dead WiFi router in place.
 

Built a mini-yagi!
 

The test package, a MSP430G2553 launchpad, a JeeLabs AA power board (3.3v boost converter, extremely efficient and low quiescent current), a $1 NRF24 board, and the Yagi.
 
Works great! Over doubled the range I get through the wall, it went from ~60-80' depending on direction to 200-240'.

I've been playing with NRF24L01+ modules and launchpads. I've got 'em to where they can run and send packets on a (&*@#% little solar panel out of a harbor freight solar path light, and make it through the night on a 300mAh NiCd. Next up was improving their range, as the PCB trace antennas aren't especially good (even more so when you have metal walls to punch though, like I do).
 

Cut traces, soldered mini-coax from a dead WiFi router in place.
 

Built a mini-yagi!
 

The test package, a MSP430G2553 launchpad, a JeeLabs AA power board (3.3v boost converter, extremely efficient and low quiescent current), a $1 NRF24 board, and the Yagi.
 
Works great! Over doubled the range I get through the wall, it went from ~60-80' depending on direction to 200-240'.