Vintage Gauges Turned Classy Weather Display

August 8, 2020 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

It’s always good to see old hardware saved from the junk pile, especially when the end result is as impressive as this analog gauge weather display put together by [Build Comics]. It ended up being a truly multidisciplinary project, combing not only restoration work and modern microcontroller trickery, but a dash of woodworking for good measure.

Naturally, the gauges themselves are the real stars of the show. They started out with rusted internals and broken glass, but parts from a sacrificial donor and some TLC from [Build Comics] got them back in working order. We especially like the effort that was put into making the scale markings look authentic, with scans of the originals modified in GIMP to indicate temperature and humidity while retaining the period appropriate details.

To drive the 1940s era indicators, [Build Comics] is using an Arduino Nano and a DHT22 sensor that can detect temperature and humidity. A couple of trimmer pots are included for fine tuning the gauges, and everything is mounted to a small scrap of perfboard hidden inside of the custom-made pine enclosure.

This is hardly the first time we’ve seen analog gauges hooked up to modern electronics, but most of the projects are just that: modern. While the end look might be somewhat polarizing, we think maintaining the hardware’s classic style was the right call.

3D Printed ESP8266 TV Is A Blast From The Past

July 23, 2020 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

We’ve often said that one of the best applications for desktop 3D printing is the production of custom enclosures, but you certainly aren’t limited to an extruded version of the classic Radio Shack project box. As [Marcello Milone] shows with this very clever retro TV enclosure for the Wemos D1 Mini, 3D printing means your imagination is the only limit when it comes to how you want to package up your latest creation.

As nice as the printed parts are, it’s the little details that really sell the look. [Marcello] has bent a piece of copper wire into a circle to make a faux antenna with vintage flair, and while the ESP is connecting to the WiFi network, it even shows an old school TV test pattern on its 1.8″ TFT display.

In the video after the break you can see the device go through its startup routine, and while displaying the Hackaday Wrencher at boot might not be strictly on theme…we’ll allow it.

While you could certainly use this little enclosure for whatever ESP project you had in mind, [Marcello] says he’s building a distributed environmental monitoring network using HTU21D temperature and humidity sensors. It sounds like he’s still working on the software side of things though, so hopefully he posts an update when the functionality is fully realized.

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The Challenges Of Monitoring Water Streams And Surviving Mother Nature

June 30, 2020 by Danie Conradie 23 Comments

Small waterways give life in the form of drinking and irrigation water, but can also be very destructive when flooding occurs. In the US, monitoring of these waterways is done by mainly by the USGS, with accurate but expensive monitoring stations. This means that there is a limit to how many monitoring stations can be deployed. In an effort to come up with a more cost-efficient monitoring solution, [Rohan Menon] and [Ian Vernooy] created Aquametric, a simple water level, temperature and conductivity measuring station.

The device is built around a Particle Electron that features a STM32 microcontroller and a 3G modem. An automotive ultrasonic sensors measures water level, a thermistor measures temperature and a pair of parallel aluminum plates are used to measure conductivity. All the data from the prototype is output to a live dashboard. The biggest challenges for the system came with field deployment.

The great outdoors can be rather merciless with our ideas and electronic devices. [Rohan] and [Ian] did some tests with LoRa, but quickly found that the terrain severely limited the effective range. Power was another challenge, first testing with a solar panel and lithium battery. This proved unreliable especially at temperatures near freezing, so they decided to use 18 AA batteries instead and optimized power usage.

The mounting system is still an ongoing challenge. A metal pole driven into the riverbed at a wider part ended up bent (probably from ice sheets) and covered in debris to the point that it affected water level readings. They then moved to a narrower and shallower section in the hopes of avoiding debris, but the rocky bottom prevented them from effectively driving in a pole. So the mounted the pole on a steel plate which was then packet with rock to keep it in place. This too failed when it tipped over from rising water levels, submerging the entire sensor unit. Surprisingly it survived with only a little moisture getting inside.

For the 2020 Hackaday Prize, Field Ready and Conservation X Labs have issued challenges that need require some careful consideration and testing to build things that can survive the real world. So go forth and hack!

Breathe Easy With This Online Dust Sensor Box

December 27, 2019 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

It’s an unfortunate reality that for many of us, our air isn’t nearly as clean as we’d like. From smog to wildfires, there’s a whole lot of stuff in the air that we’d just as soon like to keep out of our lungs. But in order to combat this enemy, you first need to understand it. That means figuring out just what’s in the air you breathe, and how much of it. That’s where devices like the Dust Box from [The IoT GURU] can come in handy.

Inside the 3D printed enclosure is a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 development board, sitting on a custom breakout PCB. This board gives you some easy expandability to add your own sensors and hardware, though in this particular configuration, the Dust Box is using the BME280 sensor for general environmental monitoring and the SDS011 laser particle sensor to determine what’s in the air. Just plug it into a convenient USB power source, make sure it’s connected to the WiFi, and off it goes.

But where does all that lovely data end up? That’s up to you, but in this case, the [The IoT GURU] is pushing everything out to a web interface that allows the user to view yearly, monthly, and weekly historical data for each of the parameters the Dust Box can check. This is probably a bit more granular than most of us need, but it’s a good example of what’s possible should you need that much information.

For a similar project that allows you to take your sensors a bit farther off the beaten path, checkout FieldKit, which was recently crowned winner of the 2019 Hackaday Prize.

Stackable Open Source 3D Printer Enclosure

December 11, 2019 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

One of the unfortunate realities of desktop FDM 3D printing is that environmental factors such as ambient temperature and humidity can have a big impact on your results. Even with the exact same settings, a part that printed beautifully in the summer can warp right off the bed during the winter months. The solution is a temperature-controlled enclosure, but that can be a daunting project without some guidance. Luckily, [Jay Doscher] has spent the last few months designing a very impressive enclosure that he’s released to the community as open source.

While we’ve seen no shortage of DIY printer enclosures over the years, they tend to be fairly lightweight. But that’s not the case here. Obviously not wanting to leave anything to chance, [Jay] designed this enclosure with 2020 extrusion and aluminum side panels. You could probably sit on the thing with no ill-effects, which is good, since he also designed the enclosure to be stackable should your print farm need to expand vertically.

Of course, there’s more to this enclosure than just an aluminum box. It’s packed with features like an integrated Raspberry Pi for running Octoprint, internal and external environmental monitoring with the Adafruit SHT31-D, and a Logitech Brio 4K video camera to watch the action. While not currently implemented, [Jay] says he’s also working on an internal fire suppression system and a fan controller system which will circulate air inside the enclosure should things get a little too toasty.

The enclosure has been designed around the ever-popular Prusa i3 MK3/S, even going so far as to relocate the printer’s display to the outside so you don’t have to open the door to fiddle with the settings. But adapting it to whatever rig you happen to be running shouldn’t be a problem. Though admittedly, perhaps not as easy as adjusting an enclosure made out of metal shelving.

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A Printed Case For Your ESP Environmental Sensors

November 28, 2019 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: rolling your own hardware solution is ridiculously easy these days. If you want to make a network attached environmental sensor, you wire a DHT11 up to an ESP8266 and you’re done. Time to move onto the software. In fact, it can take longer to come up with some kind of suitable enclosure for your hardware project than it does to assemble the thing.

Which is why [Pixel Hawk] has come up with this elegant 3D printed enclosure for the ESP8266 and ESP32. It’s designed to hold the microcontroller in the bottom compartment, while the environmental sensor (either the DHT11 or DHT22) is mounted to the top so it’s exposed to the outside. The case snap fits together so you don’t have to worry about gluing it, and there’s even an opening so you can keep the USB cable plugged in.

In the notes for the design, he mentions that in testing it was determined that the heat of the ESP itself can skew the temperature readings. So he recommends putting the microcontroller to sleep whenever possible, and keeping reads short so the enclosure doesn’t have time to heat up. He’s also created an alternate version of the case with more openings which should help combat this issue if you need to keep the chip awake.

If you’re looking for a complete solution, [Pixel Hawk] has included the source code he personally used to get his ESP32 sensor talking to Blynk, but you certainly don’t have to go that route if you don’t want to. There’s no shortage of existing projects out there that will help you get started with whole-house environmental monitoring. Our very own [Elliot Williams] happens to be partial to MQTT when he wants to get all his gadgets to play nice.

An Open Source Toolbox For Studying The Earth

November 13, 2019 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

Fully understanding the planet’s complex ecosystem takes data, and lots of it. Unfortunately, the ability to collect detailed environmental data on a large scale with any sort of accuracy has traditionally been something that only the government or well-funded institutions have been capable of. Building and deploying the sensors necessary to cover large areas or remote locations simply wasn’t something the individual could realistically do.

But by leveraging modular hardware and open source software, the FieldKit from [Conservify] hopes to even the scales a bit. With an array of standardized sensors and easy to use software tools for collating and visualizing collected data, the project aims to empower independent environmental monitoring systems that can scale from a handful of nodes up to several hundred.

We’ve all seen more than enough DIY environmental monitoring projects to know there’s nothing particularly new or exciting about stuffing a few cheap sensors into a plastic container. But putting high quality, reliable hardware into large scale production is another thing entirely. Especially when your target user may have limited technical knowledge.

That’s why FieldKit is designed around a common backplane with modular sensors and add-on boards that can be plugged in and easily configured with a smartphone application. Whether the node is going to be mounted to a pole and powered by a solar panel, or attached to a buoy, most of the hardware stays the same.

While the electronics and the software interface are naturally the stars of the show here, we can’t help but also be impressed with the enclosure for the FieldKit. It seems a minor thing, but as we’ve seen from the projects that have come our way over the years, finding a box to put your hardware in that’s affordable, adaptable, and weatherproof is often a considerable challenge in itself. Rather than using something commercially available, [Conservify] has designed their own enclosure that’s inspired by the heavy duty (but prohibitively expensive) cases from Pelican. It features a replaceable panel on one side where the user can pop whatever holes will be necessary to wire up their particular project without compromising the case itself; just get a new panel when you want to reconfigure the FieldKit for some other task. Prototypes have already been 3D printed, and the team will be moving to injection molded versions in the near future.

As a finalist in the 2019 Hackaday Prize, FieldKit exemplifies everything we’re looking for this year: a clear forward progression from prototype to final hardware, an obvious need for mass production, and the documentation necessary to show why this project is deserving of the $125,000 grand prize up for grabs.

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