EW Project 2: Development stage 2 - Bringing it all together

So far we have four individual elements:

  • Two personalized drink receptacles: one mug, one glass
  • The coaster that profiles users based on the mug/glass placed upon it.
  • The keyboard with the force sensor that can detect when a user slams their fist on it.
  • The servo-powered remote which can turn up to two mains devices on and off. 
 Now the next step of development is to link them all together to form the constellation.

So we have two Arduinos, each with their own WiFi shield. Chris ran a workshop on using the MQTT protocol to get devices to talk to each other which was extremely helpful - it's definitely something I'll be using in my final project. So we got the two Arduinos working with WiFi and got them connected up to Chris' message broker. I hooked up the force-sensitive-keyboard to the Arduino. I then hooked up the servo-remote to the Same Arduino. I used the keyboard hit as a switch to call a function which effectively used the servo to hit and hold a button on the remote for a few seconds. This sent a several second long on signal to the mains-connected device, to which a coffee machine was plugged into. This is what the result looked like. Just a little disclaimer, this was using a different servo configuration that only pressed one button. The dual button configuration was added later.



Once I'd accomplished this the next step was to add the coaster and use MQTT to connect the components wirelessly. Ideally each one of the three elements would be completely wirelessly connected to each other. However for the sake of this demo we only had two WiFi shields. So we connected the force-sensitive-keyboard to one Arduino. The coaster and servo-remote was connected to another Arduino. 

We ended up with a system which when you hit the keyboard with the appropriate amount of force, it sends a message over the internet to Chris' remote MQTT broker. The second Arduino was subscribed to the appropriate topic. When the second Arduino received the message it checked the coaster to see whether there was a mug or a glass on it. It then sent a command to the servo to press one of two buttons depending on whether there was a mug or a glass on the coaster. In this case if there was a mug, it would turn the coffee machine on. If there was a glass it would turn my record player on. Jamie and I shot a little video of the system in action:


Just to add, everything in this video is 100% functional. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Logitech G502 Proteus Core Teardown & Scroll Wheel Replacement

Image
So I recently acquired a Logitech  G502  mouse, and I have to say I absolutely love it. It's a beautiful mouse, and a worth upgrade to my old G500s mouse. However my one gripe was the new all-metal scroll wheel. While the weight was nice, I missed the rubber ring around my old 500s. This led me to attempt to replace the new 502 scroll wheel with the old one from my busted 500s. So let's get started shall we? So as you can see, these are what the mice look like side-by side. While they look drastically different, the ergonomics are actually very similar among the two. The first step was to take the mouse feet off and unscrew the screws that hold the chassis in place.  Lever the feet off gently with a flathead screwdriver. And they just peel right off. There's four screws on the underside of the mouse.  So the feet are layered. There's double-sided adhesive foam, with the feet on top. On the back foot, I managed to peel off th
Read more

Turning a laptop screen into an external monitor.

Image
So my old Dell L502x died. However most of the components were fine, it's just the motherboard that seemed to be down with a case of water damage. So along with turning the chassis of the laptop into a dock/stand for my new laptop I wanted to turn the laptop's screen into an external monitor. So the first thing I did was extract the panel from the housing to take a look at the model number and the interface. If you're looking to do this yourself just look up the documentation for your laptop or go to ifixit.com  and look it up. Fortunately Dell has excellent documentation and a pretty straightforward teardown process.
Read more

FYP: Working out Modules

Here's a little list of how I expect some of the modules to work: Master controller: Phone/Webapp -> PHP POST -> SQLdb entry Master receiver: Network capable Arduino/Pi sends several requests to the web DB per second.   Lights RGB bulb/strip along ceiling/wall join 4 pin input -> Arduino -> Wireless transimtter  (RasPI?/Wifi Sheild) -> Phone Sound Servo hooked up to volume knob 4 pin input -> Arduino -> Wireless transimtter  (RasPI?/Wifi Sheild) -> Phone Food Fridge Weight sensors under products to detect quantity and presence. Notification  when supplies are runing low Cooking Grill turns on at schedueled/dictated times. Leave food in grill in the morning Movement motion dectors door open /closed  sensors Security IP cameras - this will also help with keeping an eye on plants/oven/other time sensitive applications.
Read more