A decent multimeter is great, but there’s times when you just want to have a quick check to see what signals are high, low or neither. A logic probe is ideal for this, but the cheap ones are about £15+, so I decided to build my own. For less than a quid!
A couple of months ago I bought a Nanode, which required self assembly. Whilst I was building it, I thought it would have been nice to get a photo of each stage of the build. Well, when I bought my second Nanode, I decided not only to photograph it, but to make a little animated video of the build. Enjoy!
Less than 3 months ago I didn’t even know what an Arduino was. A couple of times I had stumbled upon them with various web searches, but quickly dismissed them as well beyond me even if interesting. Then a few coincidences consipred to make me sit up and take note. The first being the Nottinghack Openday. This didn’t actually promote Arduinos, in fact, I can’t even remember them even being mentioned. But the were there. Several of them. And that must have got in to my subconsious. A few days later was a discussion at work about how to read the switch status of many switches via the network and log them on a database. I had found a device for about £120 that could read 8 switches, but with the ~100 we were looking at it would be expensive. Multiplexing (MUX) was mentioned and I started to Google…
3 days later and a package arrives on my desk. Inside is an Arduino Uno, a beginners kit (consisting of LEDs, resistors, breadboards and a few other bits), an ethernet shield and a MUX shield. My professional and personal Arduino adventure had started
14/6/11 – First Arduino arrives at work. Go beyond Blinky to 3 LED traffic lights
16/6/11 – Use ethernet shield and MUX shield to display analog inputs on a web page (Note the two shields are not compattable with each other)
24/6/11 – Use ethernet shield to connect Arduino to Twitter. Tweets whenever a button is pushed
26/6/11 – Parts have arrived to start work on custom MUX shield that will be integrated to ethernet shield. This will be part of a work project to detect the status of multiple switches in welding bays
2/7/11 – First Nanode arrives. 16:59 start work on building it.
2/7/11 – 18:10 Nanode working and Blinky runs
3/7/11 – GPS unit tested with DFRduino
8/7/11 – Hello World displayed on LCD screen
9/7/11 – Custom MUX shield soldered up and tested
19/7/11 – Breadboard based GPS Datalogger (DFRduino + GPS + SD Card Reader) logs drive home from Hackspace
31/7/11 – LCD Screen added to GPS Datalogger
4/8/11 – Prototype for factory sounder project built (Arduino + Ethernet Shield + LCD Screen + Battery Backup Real Time Clock)
12/8/11 – After custom shield made for RTC, the Factory Sounder hardware is finished
13/8/11 – GPS Datalogger moved to veroboard for semi-permanent mounting in custom case (VHS cassette box!)
14/8/11 – “Spencer” scrolling marquee on 8×32 LED display
15/8/11 – Trying some custom graphics on 8×32 display
19/8/11 – Welders Switch project finally mounted in suitable box. The scope has been revised to cater for 10 bays (30 switches) not the 32 bays (96 switches) the hardware had been planned for, so a lot of the hardware is redundant
20/8/11 – First AVR built on breadboard (bare processor only version of Arduino). Tested with 8×32 display
20/8/11 – First PCB based AVR. Designed to be powered from a battery and run the 8×32 display as an animated name badge for upcoming Hackspace party
In this short time I’ve gone from making an LED flash to creating commercial solutions for problems that didn’t have a (affordable) solution to, to building devices the size of VHS cassettes that do a small subset of what most modern mobile phones do, to designing old school style 8 bit animated graphics.
I’ve bought 4 Arduinos for use at work and 3 clones for home use plus components for a couple of AVRs. As well as several shields and prebuilt hardware modules I’ve got back in electronics at a component level and have started soldering resistors and capacitors for the first time in 21 years.
It’s been a steep learning curve in the first 77 days. I’ve got an inkling where the next 77 days will take me, but the one thing I do know… it’ll be fun!
Last weekend 8 of us (John, Gary, Kate, James, Andy, Another Gary, Mark and myself) set off from Hassop Station and headed north on the newly opened Monsal Trail. This is a 7½ mile cycle and walking path in the Peak District that used to form part of the Midland Railway route from the Midlands to Manchester. The line was closed down after the Beeching cuts in 1968, and despite being bought by the Peak District National Park, parts of it have been cut off for the public for over 40 years.
Being an ex-railway line, the route is very strait and flat. Due to the very unflat nature of the Peak District there are long tunnels and fantastic viaducts which offer either no views or fantastic vistas of the surrounding land. All in all, it was a great day out and much fun was had by all.
View Monsal Trail 5-6-11 in a larger map
Thanks James for sorting out a very fine video archive of the day.
There are so many blogs around that start off with an enthusiastic first post telling the reader how they will regularly write articles about this, that or the other, and are followed up by an article or two. And then nothing for months. Then either more nothing or a ‘sorry I’ve been lazy’ post and then nothing. These bloggers have clearly failed. They made promises that they couldn’t keep or else they were just far too overambitious. Or maybe they died, who knows.
My blog, however, will not be like that.
I am going to start off by saying that I won’t update this regularly. It might not be very good. It probably will be updated in fits and starts, or possibly never at all. Sure, I would like to think that twice a week I will be able to produce witty or interesting articles and then build and nurture a growing readership that hangs on my every word. But I am realistic, and aware of my shortcomings.
I am not even going to say what articles will appear here. I suspect it will contain stuff about unicycling, geeky IT stuff, my YouTube videos, deep insights into life, and maybe cute photos of my cats. But that is not a promise. If any or all of those do not appear you cannot sue me. But if they are, and you enjoy them then that’s a bonus.
So, I hear you ask, with all of that vagueness and lack of commitment, why do I even want a blog at all? Well, I had a website here for 8 years which kind of filled the role of a blog, but it wasn’t quite as simple and easy to update as I would have wanted. It didn’t integrate well with other media, and the self-imposed categories meant that a lot of what I would have put there didn’t quite fit so was never done. Consequently, it hasn’t been updated for, well, lets just say its a long time. Not that it was a bad site. In fact, I loved it. And with 40,000 hits a year, I think others loved it too. So, I’ve not killed it off totally, and you can still see it here. I do suspect, however, that I will be raiding some of the better parts of that site, giving them a dust off and re-blogging them on here, so don’t be surprised if there is some repetition.
If there is anything in particular you would like to see on here, don’t be afraid to ask. I’m making no promises, but if I can help to cheer up your trip around t’interwebs then I will.
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