secondsuitor

I finally got done with the project. I’ve retarded myself with a new computer for getting my game on, and I’m currently exploring the destruction of Total Warhammer (while trekking Blood for the Blood God). Everything is running well, and I haven’t even gotten into overclocking. I’m thinking I’ll take my old box and turn it into a functional shadow box. Because art. And computers. And artsy computers.

The next project is starting at work, and this well be a bit more interesting. Unlike the last one, it should be pushing everything as far as I can take it.

I’ve been working a lot. This equates to me not going anything much the else. It’s weird not swearing. Back on topic. Been working a lot. Stressed out. Thinking. Stressed out. Working. 

So where does that leave me?

The Wif got get degree, so now it’s time to get her license and add a second income. That’ll be nice as I’m laying the groundwork to take care of a lot of other things.  By things, I mean projects. So we’re thinking getting kitchen gadgets to make more food at home, stuff like a pasta roller thing and meat grinder for sausage.

I’m still in planning on my garden cubes, but other family things took precedent. I should think about doing the prototype in the next week or two. This’ll be done with hand tools as I haven’t built a CNC yet. Just need to build a cube with the baseline electronics.

It’s odd, this a personal blog that I know incredibly few people read, hi E, but I’m still incredibly circumspect. I had a whole paragraph here that I just deleted. I’ve written posts that I marked private, but it’s not quite the same. I blog to organize my thoughts, but here I’ve deleted my thought externalization which means that I have an entire paragraph still rolling in my noggin. Also my phone doesn’t recognize externalization. Stupid phone.

I’m becoming more set in my ways with age.  Becoming more me as it were. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Somewhere I lost the culinary excursion. 

I think I should go to work tomorrow. It won’t make me happy but it might get me out from in front of the eight Baal.  that was obviously ball, but again the phone. The problem with multi-dislike competence is that you get called on to use a lot of them at once.

As Marvin (Douglas Adams) said “How I hate the night.”

I’ve been back to working on a special project at work. Too many hours and too many balls to make any real progress on any projects.

On the other hand, I had nature provide me with more drive as something ate all my strawberries and all but one sugar snap pea pod. The one they left behind though was shared with the Wif and it was delicious.

The front posts won’t be solid wood. These too will be cut from plywood in two layers. The layers will involve a central slot which will facilitate a piece of thinner wood, engineered wood product, or plexi to slide in. The top and bottom won’t be fully square with the addition of depressions along the front edge for the now engineered posts to be placed, grooves for the previously mentioned panels to slide into, and the top will have depressions for the hing… maybe not. I need to think about that. I should start doing up a model tonight. 

I’m still deciding what I want to do for the electronics. While it’d be wicked to do a single board with everything, based on the odd shape it would need, I’m not seeing that being economically viable. I might just put depressions for the LEDs and wire runs with a central unit to drive everything. I should mount that right off the rails. I need to look into cost effective ways of driving the LEDs, ideally all off of 5 volts so I don’t have to do too much tomfoolery.

I was weeding the (outdoor) garden today and was looking at the peas and hops. So if I want to incorporate bigger plants, I need bigger spaces. Starting at the idea of the cubes, but I remove a lot of material, which will probably cut costs as well. Uprights holding the floor and the ceiling. Matched holes are drilled through those. Add on a pop in side wall. The back should still be solid.

So this isn’t 100% what I want, but it’s a start. I still need to figure out a lot of the other details. How big are the cubes? How much power do I want on those rails? How do I want to integrate watering? How am I going to do the communication? How do I want to pop in the sides, magnets?

I should get the first one built soon. Even a rough idea is better than no idea at all. Also, the (indoor) garden would like it.

Preliminary notes. All of these are based on my not finding cheaper or easier substitutions. The threaded rods (and matching nuts) are probably a given, but I’ll need to think about the motors.

• https://www.pololu.com/product/2823/
• https://www.grainger.com/product/GRAINGER-APPROVED-1-4-28×3-ft-4RDC7
• https://www.grainger.com/product/FABORY-1-4-28-Hex-Nut-4FAZ8
• https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12211

I’m really on the fence about the motors.  Assuming I don’t care about speed, within reason, the only real driving forces are a minimal amount of torque and overall price. By overall price I have to include not only the motor but controller and any encoder. Price is telling me to get some Chinese stepper motors off of Amazon, but that seems like a good way to have to replace some motors. I’ll have to continue looking at this.

 

Or how to ghetto build an extendable sensor network.

Well really, other people have fine this before me, I’m just trying to come up with a quick and dirty hot despair system. It’s more of a brain exercise than how I’d really go. Chances are I’ll just drive all these with a stack of Pi Zeros with hacked together Ethernet. But what if I don’t. This would be for the planter cubes. Each one would report moisture, temperature, illumination (to show if there’s a problem) maybe some other low grade sensors.  The data wouldn’t be much. Now I want this to be cheap and plug and play. Any time I plug in a cube, I want it to give me a couple LEDs. Red is bad, flashing green is coming online. Green is go. So what happens when it’s coming online?

I’m thinking we have a power rail. Next to this we have…

Sorry, just realized I’m a tool shed who should learn about parallel and series circuits.

…master line. This will be used to send a pulse down to all cubes on the rail. This will start the calibration for internal timing, and provide everyone a chance to become acquainted. So when someone comes online, it listens for the first pulse and then listens to the data line. During this time all onlined critters are sending their data. If we listen to that, we find out how many other cubes are on. After the next pulse, I now can calibrate my internal timing to everyone else’s timing which means that I don’t have to have high quality parts.  After a quick sanity check I’ll use one of the sensors to seed an RNG. This will provide an offset from the back end off the pulse. At this time it’ll give a shout out. The rest of the time it’ll be listening to ask the established cubes. If it detects another new cube, the first one wins. Now since we can’t know if there’s another cube on the same time track, we keep on going with more RNG action all the way down the line until our newest cube is right after the last established cube. Once we’re there, we start transmitting actual data.

End the day, assuming I have a large enough current source, this will work. I could probably limit my current needs fit the boxes by having signal diodes on the data lines, and then… oh duh. 

Master gives start. New boxes do their thing. When the new boxes transmit, they transmit a unique identifier. The units identifier gets passed back by the master. If the master passes back a corrupted identifier, we have cross talk. Do another round of rng hangs. If this happens three times, start flashing the red LED which is the pop out and plug in signal. This should be enough to get it back on the rails.

I should start putting together a BOM.

Self:

• Start arrow order
• Research constant current driver for LEDs
• SD cards for stuff
• More LEDs, or at least prices

Joink – The vebification of janky.  to make janky.  Usage: Can you joink that?  Tenses: joinked, joinking.

When I have a minute I’ll clean this up, just wanted to make sure documentation standards were being met.

Mostly unrelated. Mostly.

I started the tutorial three more times last night for FreeCAD. Each time, I must have clicked something wrong, and no dice. Tonight I’ll try the tutorial again with the video rather than just the website instructions. I don’t feel super loving toward it though.
I just had a thought pop up.  On the planter boxes I want a window front, so I can look and stuff.  This is easy enough, have a hinged door with a plexi panel. Oh. Plexi. Right. Have a hinged door with a glass panel.  it seems like such a small difference, but a little plexi is a big environmental commitment over time. Also, I’m not really sure if plexi starts leaching out whatever at some point. Either way. Glass.  Now, money wise, am I better having a wood door with a little window or a little wood with a big glass.