Category Archives: Projects

Propeller Development Stick REDUX REV3

Finished the next revision of the Propeller Development Stick REDUX. The power switching has been changed to fix the flakiness of the past revision. I switched the TPS2115 to a TPS2113. This seems to have fixed the weird power switching issues. The layout has change completely. SD card slot is on the top side of the board and the power circuity and ADC are on the bottom now.

OctoPROBER Case Designed

OctoPROBER_Case

Finished drawing the case last night for 3D printing. Used SketchUp to draw it as its free. Still searching for that perfect 3D modeling program. SketchUp is an ok piece of software. Compared to AutoDesk 123D V9 it lacks some features but the newer 123D Design (they changed the name slightly) its pretty lame.

OctoPROBER_Case_XRAY

X-RAY view for giggles.

OctoPROBER standby current test

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Testing the standby current draw for the OctoPROBER. It uses a soft power switch and a real time clock which draws power when the device is turned “off”. Fortunately the power consumed is very small. At a battery voltage around 4V the standby current is under 20uA. With a 2000mAh battery we have a standby lifetime of 100000 hours or over 11 years! Don’t really have to worry about the OctoPROBER loosing its clock time anytime soon.

OctoPROBER REV2 Released

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Above is the REV 1 of the OctoPROBER. This revision fixed allot of the issues I had with programming the propeller and the propeller resetting when the USB plug was plugged in. To fix the USB resetting the propeller when being plugged in I disconnected the reset line off the FT230X (USB chip) from the reset signal on the propeller. This breaks being able to program the propeller as it needs to upload code directly after start up. To fix this problem the code has a menu option that will reset the propeller if it sees the USB reset line so the user can control if the USB resets the propeller or not.

To enable ease of first time programing or encase the firmware gets borked there is a switch that manually connects the FT230X reset signal to the propeller reset signal.

Layout

Rev 2 of the OctoPROBER I decided to do away with the MAX31855 chips. They are very expensive ($5 a piece) and not very accurate (+-2C). Instead I am using 2 MCP3424 18-bit ADCs to do the thermocouple readings. To perform cold junction readings I am using 8 AT30TSE752 board temperature sensors. This should provide +-0.5C accuracy and the ability to use any thermocouple type.