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Lawn Sprinkler, Mixed Signal Layouts, and New Productsby Nate |
September 11, 2009 |
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I often get asked what it is we do here at SparkFun. I as of yet, do not have a decent answer. But when projects like Pete's come along, they make a great concrete example. What do you do with a microcontroller? That's easy to answer! We use microcontrollers to solve simple problems.
Pete had a problem. His lawn needed watering but the sprinkler was throwing half the water onto the street and side walk. With an Arduino, a pot, and a servo controlled value, he was able to control where the sprinkler head delivered water. A simple problem with an elegant solution. Nice job Pete!
We have been playing with high resolution (24-bit) ADCs lately and we came across a great application note written by e2v (if they're making dental x-ray scanners, they must know something). When it comes to mixed mixed signal PCB layouts, proper layout can be tricky. Checkout this great document to find out more about how to layout PCBs to prevent ugly current loops, proper PCB stack-ups, and some notes on proper analog and digital grounding.
MCI Electronics in Chile is our biggest distributor in South America. Paul Aguayo was on vacation with his girlfriend in New York and decided to swing through the SparkFun office in Boulder for a tour and a great exchange of business stories. Paul and I had a great time catching up. I can't wait to return the compliment by traveling to Chile someday.
Always new stuff!
Always new stuff!
This is a tiny MEMS microphone mounted on a breakout board with 100 gain amplifier.
This is a breakout board for the VS1000D a single-chip Ogg Vorbis (license-free audio codec) player with USB and NAND-FLASH interfaces. This board makes it incredibly easy to add audio to your project. It can be embedded and controlled with just a few GPIO lines! By itself, it is a fully functional Ogg-Vorbis player out-of-the-box. The flash chip has a 256MB capacity, and the board has all the features of a standard audio player. Audio files are added over USB and the playback quality is great! The board can drive headphones or a small speaker with no additional power source.
This is a simple to use USB evaluation board for the GE865-Quad cellular module. All pins of the GE865 are broken out, so you'll have access to the state-of-the-art DAC, ADCs, and GPIOs.
The LPR530AL dual axis gyro has a maximum sensitivity of +/-300 degrees per second and very low power consumption.
This is the micro switch that is used on our concave and convex buttons.
6 pin right angle female header.
Remember the Nintendo Power Glove? This is an awesome project that captures motion using flex sensors, accelerometers, and an Arduino! Great job Noah!
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If you would like to tell us more, you can fill out our form if you need some psycho-suggestive questions. Go to the form.
It would be nice to have an all in one unit that you could program with a 2d profile of your yard (or a given area) at a fixed point and have the sprinkler head rotate and modulate so that the entire area is covered and little more.
And yes, Sparkfun has been an invaluable resource in the development of the SmartRotor.
I'll see if I can't post a video on the site. We're up to our eyballs preppin for the show so it may be a bit.
The push for the show is complete. Videos are posted in the gallery @innogation.com
Have a look and drop me a line with your thoughts!
:) Rob
If the device also had the ability... somehow... to quantitatively measure the soil's water content then it could not only water until a certain saturation threshold is achieved but not water if the lawn is already over that threshold, say after a rain storm. The water savings there could be significant and you could fine-tune how much water your lawn gets if you're a real stickler for conservation. It seems like several physical measurement locations would be necessary and they would probably need to be separate from the sprinkler heads themselves.
I'm under contract buying my first home right now so in under a month I may have a lawn to call my own. I may want one of these!
I had to open up Firefox in order to post this comment. :/
It's about the 3rd image into the gallery - can't give you a url to the exact image since it's a Flash player gallery.
I know it is a factor, but when does it become critical?
I am getting into Mixed signals a lot lately and so far (knock on wood) haven't seen an issue.
The signals I am working with however are low freq, basic Analog DC type signals. So I assume it's not critical to the signals I have been working with.
I can see however how the higher the freq the more important it becomes.
E2V did the detector array on the main imager of the Hubble:
http://www.e2v.com/news/e2v-ccd-imaging-sensors-to-enable-nasas-hubble-space-telescope-to-explore-the-nature-and-history-of-our-universe-with-greater-capability-than-ever-before/
Wow, that was very long (and self-serving) link!
Sincerely,
Mark
Oh well, keep the MEMS products comming, I love nano stuff.
It sounds like they were suggesting that you would just keep one big ground plane for A & D if you had multiple analog circuits that had to interact with each other as well as interact with the digital side.
Anybody able to elaborate?
- Dean