Kevin and family are alive and well. Lots of wind, some rain. Still windy
this AM, the buoy 8 miles E says 34 knots. Knowing that a wing will fly
even if you don't want it to, I ballasted the wings and fuse, and tied the
boat up like spaghetti- lines everywhere tied to the dock, trees, house,
etc. Tide was up about 1.5 feet above normal. All in all, not too bad, I
have been through these before. During Charlie a few y ears back I had to
go get a runaway barge in Wilmington NC during the storm and push it back
to the dock. The barge weighed over 1000 tons, and the only tug that didn't
have a hundred lines on it was the 50 footer. It was all she could do to
move it against the wind. Ah, the memories......
My Viking altimeter is sitting on my desk while it waits to move into its
new home, and for most of yesterday it said my desk was at around 300 feet
with the Kollsman set on 29.92.
I spent some time during the storm working on the MAP sensor and temp
probe, and working out the code. The low pressure let me fine tune the MAP
sensor calibration a bit. The day before the storm the altimeter was
reading -105 feet due to a strong high between us and the Bahamas, and then
yesterday we had an altitude of 300 feet- so my testing was helped out
thanks to Isaac. Hopefully, after the next few days of taking down
shutters, etc. I can get back to it.
Paul, on your 8051 board, you keep saying that you are porting it to a PC.
That is great, but my laptop wont fit in my cockpit with me, my wife, etc.
I have the Arduino Mega that comes ported to export to Android. I plan to
have it read my sensors just like the other boards and then show me what it
is happening. Also, the SD card in my tablet (32GB) is more than adequate
to record everything from a flight. From my work with shark tagging, I have
a datalogging unit here with accelerometer, temp, pressure and room for
many more sensors that can go in the same case as my primary unit to log
everything from a flight.
Kevin Alderman
Then you must get a tablet. Tablets are available down to 7 inches
diagonal.
While your at it get a 7" Samsung cell phone instead. They both use the
same Android
OS. The SD card is not real time. My device is dumping stuff all the time
over and
over again. In effect it is an EFIS. RPM, pulse width, MAP, air temp,
water temp,
oil temp. I have eight A to D's total. Rather than pulse width I can
calculate fuel flow.
An android terminal program will display it or you can save it to memory.
Or you can save it to the SD card in your cell phone or tablet or netbook.
What is the clock frequency of that Arduino Mega?
Paul Lamar
The Mega has clock of 16mhz on an Atmega 2560. I have a couple of tablets-
my Toshiba Thrive is too big. I have a Motorola Zoom that is smaller, and
has a mini USB input. The Zoom charger is also 12 volt output, so I can
more easily connect it to the plane power system for constant power and
save the batteries for an emergency. I haven't gotten that far yet, but I
think I can program the output to display on the bottom of the screen and a
GPS on the top. Barring this, I can get an Android 4.0 7 inch tablet for
around $100.00, and I can just make a mount for it in the plane. Like dual
displays- one for engine and one for GPS with both capable of both
functions. Another alternative is to use one of those inexpensive touch
screens to monitor and control it, but once the info is ported to the
Android, it seems a waste not to collect the data for later. However, there
is always the breakout board and the SD card to log the data. The
Serial.write function causes a delay in the program which might cause an
issue at high RPM, so the solution is to output the sensor data directly to
another $28.00 board and let it handle the data logging, display, etc.
At 16mhz, this chip is capable of 16MIPS.
This little board has 11 PWM outputs (some of the digital pins), 15 analog
inputs, and a total of 46 digital I/Os.
Im writing code at the moment, hoping to have something to run through for
a test soon.
Kevin Alderman
--
The Rotary Engine News Letter. Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site.
http://www.rotaryeng.net
You Tube key word PaulLamar2
Copyright 1998-2012 All world wide rights reserved.