I have one of the cheap DX digital thermometers laying around with the thermistor removed and used in another project. So I got an idea to try: use the LCD screen for visualizing data. The unit is driven by a thermistor: a…
Tiny Sensor plans
I have been working this weekend on improved version of the ATTiny84 remote sensor, this time I will use a PCB fab house to make at least 15 pcs of the PCB. The improvements over the old hand-made PCB are:…
Downloading an Arduino sketch from Internet to SD card for flashing via the SD card bootloader
With the SD card bootloader ready, I thought I need a mechanism to be able to download firmware from the Internet and save it to the SD card, so that upon the next reset, the Arduino is re-flashed with the…
Using the Sensing Shield for logging solar hot water tank temperatures to Pachube
A local forum guy asked me to help him setup a system that logs his solar hot water tank and few other temperatures. The thing is he wasn’t sure how many temperature sensors he’d use and wanted to expand as…
Flashing Arduino from SD card
Remote sketch uploading has been something I have long wanted for my projects. I can outline two major cases: 1) Remote flashing over TFTP – useful for remote locations where it won’t be convenient to go physically 2) Flashing from SD card…
Store opened
I have decided to open a symbolic store on this site, where I will be selling some of my more or less matured projects. As a start I am offering the Sensing Shield PCB and will expand the products as they…
Single sided ATtiny84 temperature sensor PCB
Following the fiasco with the first version of the PCB, I have decided to create a single sided PCB so that the DIP socket that was causing me trouble is on the top. Here are the results, the PCB works…
Remote sensor’s PCB is a failure :(
Apart from the pathetic etching job on the PCB I described yesterday, I found out this morning that I also managed to etch the kitchen sink and made wife unhappy. It have been warned not to pour ferric tri-chloride in…
Home made PCB for the remote temperature sensor
As I mentioned in my other post, I wanted to re-do the temperature sensor, this time on my own PCB. Driven by the hunger for instant gratification, I have overcome my fear of home-made PCBs using toner transfer and ferric…
The ATtiny84 remote sensor gets and upgrade from single analog to multiple digital temperature sensors
I intended to use the ATtiny84 remote RFM12B sensor to measure my solar hot water tank, but once the temperature reached 57.05, it wouldn’t measure any higher. I assume this is due to the 1.1V reference limit used to measure,…
ATtiny84 remote temperature sensor with RFM12B
I have been drooling over the Amtel’s ATtiny84 mcu ever since JCW released the JeeNode Micro few months ago. It is an amazing piece of art, you can basically have a single-chip micro controller that can do most of the…
Controlling 433Mhz RF power sockets with a RFM12B module
One of the goodies of home automation is that you can actually turn appliances on and off based on some pre-defined conditions or via the Internet. Typically that task will require setting up a relay or multiple relays and hooking…
Sensing Shield #1 in action
I have installed the first sensing shield on an Arduino Uno near my house’s breakers box. I finally got a 9V AC/AC transformer so I wanted to monitor my voltage, power factor and effective power usage in my house. I…
Software only solution for feeding weather data to emoncms
I have installed emoncms to try it as alternative to my own data visualization software. It is quite nice piece of software and is open source. I then wanted to gather weather data but lack the hardware to measure humidity,…
RFM12B and Arduino Ethernet with WizNet5100 chip
I have successfully managed to get my Arduino Ethernet board based on WizNet5100 chip to work with the Sensing Shield‘s RFM12B. The Arduino Ethenet (don’t mix it with an Arduino Ethernet shield, this one is a complete Arduino+Ethertnet on one board)…
Sensing shield PCB ready
The sensing shield PCB is ready, I placed some of the components already and am testing it. Looks good so far 🙂
Arduino shield for energy monitoring
Few weeks ago I decided to teach myself Eagle PCB so I can put my current spaghetti-style solution for heat pump monitoring to some order. That’s just an excuse of course, I was curious how laying out a new PCB works to…
Monitoring of my heat pump performance
Having the heat pump in place, I decided that the next logical step is to be able to monitor its performance. The reasons behind that are simple 1) It is a home made hack job, not a ready product so…
Hacking Daikin split type air conditioner into air-to-water type heat pump
When I was building my house, I had to figure out what to use for heating/cooling plus a hot domestic water solution. I came to think that the best for my case is to use a heat pump. The advantages…
Custom defrost algorithm for Daikin heat pump
One of the things that has been quite annoying about my Daikin heat pump converted to air-water system, is the defrosting algorithm, or is it better to say the lack of defrost algorithm. Basically below 5 degrees Celsius it defrosts…
Control Daikin air conditioner over the Internet
[Edit] I now offer limited numbers of pre-built units in my shop. Here is a small home-automation project that I have been working in my free time. I wanted to control my home-made air source heat pump system (based on Daikin FTX71GV /…
Setting up WordPress
I have decided to give WorPress a try as a CMS, I will be setting it up the next couple days.