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RE: I'll Start Shipping the Prizes Tomorrow - Experimenting with Extreme Environments

dougw — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 22:11:18 GMT

Here is the blog...

I'll Start Shipping the Prizes Tomorrow - Experimenting with Extreme Environments

rscasny — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 03:27:03 GMT

Before you flood me with questions....

I will be starting to ship the prizes tomorrow.

Congrats to the Winners.

Randall

Element14 Community Team

RE: I'll Start Shipping the Prizes Tomorrow - Experimenting with Extreme Environments

rscasny — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:00:38 GMT

Great! It was well deserved. Your participation is always outstanding, and much appreciated.

Randall

RE: I'll Start Shipping the Prizes Tomorrow - Experimenting with Extreme Environments

dougw — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:37:10 GMT

I received my prize.

Thanks

It is a very nice MSO.

I'm going to have some fun with it - some of the things I want to try will take some time and effort but hopefully I can post a blog about it soon.

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

beacon_dave — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:19:17 GMT

[quote userid="123345" url="~/challenges-projects/design-challenges/experimenting-with-extreme-environments/f/forum/54503/driving-the-lcd---share-your-experience/222342"]Ten years ago, it cost £36 when I bought it, and it still works as well as new, never needed to change the blades.[/quote]

I have the Hozan branded version which I bought around 40 years ago and it is still works as new. It was around £25 back then.

The only thing I didn't like about it was the fiddly length gauge that screws onto the side of the jaws. Fine for a single length all the time but not if you want to constantly change it.

Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 11:32:34 GMT

Hi! So, I've been working on the software for this challenge and have reached the point where i need to figure out the LCD. The datasheet has a character map and and the addresses for the position of each character. I don't have much experience with driving LCDs so I'm struggling with where to start. Have any of you figured out the LCD yet?

I found a couple threads on the arduino forum that talk about this display, with people saying you could use the HD44780 libraries, or similar to drive it. I'll be trying that with an arduino board first, but still would like to hear about your experience with this display so far.

Thank you!

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:03:38 GMT

the wires are bare copper, that's why there's an arch on the right of the board in the first picture, as another wire ran under that one. I use 0.5mm and 0.8mm bare copper wire since stripping became too tedious. I'll use heat-shrink tubing if i need a wire to cross over a bunch of others, also seen in the first picture.

when the prototype is too complicated, depending on the complexity, i'll either use enameled wire and deal with the tediousness of stripping the enamel, or draw a PCB with sharpie and etch it, or design a PCB in kicad and etch it.

that stripper looks really nice, but yes, too expensive, wow! although, with blades lasting for 10 years, that price doesn't look that bad as a long term investment

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

shabaz — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 18:51:11 GMT

That's great news that it's working : )

Just curious, are the wires enamelled? I couldn't tell from the photos.I too like using the separate pad perforated boards for prototypes. But normally use 30 AWG 'Kynar' or 'Tefzel' wire, which solders very well, but requires a very good wire stripper unfortunately, otherwise it's just frustration using it.

This wire stripper is excellent for 30AWG wire, but the price is ridiculous. Ten years ago, it cost £36 when I bought it, and it still works as well as new, never needed to change the blades. But now the price is close to £100 : (

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 17:56:01 GMT

update time! when i soldered the board to the LCD, which also served as an I2C breakout board, the flux residue was so hard to clean, i couldn't get it all out. I decided to remove that board, which i should have done in the first place, and what i saw on the bottom side was awful.

shameful reveal:

so i redid the board:

while the new board's soldering job is still far from good, i at least was able to clean it much better than the other one (isopropyl acquired), and so i plugged everything back to the pi, and it ran uninterrupted for over 12 hours ( i moved the entire enclosure to another location, so i had to power it off). i then connected the sensor with the long cable back, and it's been running uninterrupted for a few hours already.

it took me way too long to consider changing that board, but it appears the problem lied there in that bath of corrosion and flux 🙈🙈

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

javagoza — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 06:16:51 GMT

I have had it running without problems for more than 40 days straight. But I only have the display on that I2C bus with the internal pull-up and without a logic level converter. I also have a capacitive keyboard on another I2C bus with external pull-ups and the distances are a few centimeters, with the LCD on the stripboard and with the keyboard with cables. A try except block can help you recover from errors, but it is best to fix the source of the disconnection first. Are the rest of the devices on the bus without pull-up?

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:54:53 GMT

thank you! i'm going to check with just the short cabled sensor and see if that helps

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:54:05 GMT

thank you! i knew i was pushing it with such a long cable which is why i checked signal integrity with the scope. maybe i didn't check what i needed to. i'm going to test without the outside sensor and see if anything changes.

i don't know the resistor values, i'll check that out as well, and i will also implement your suggestion regarding the file handling.

Thank you!

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

shabaz — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:44:41 GMT

That cable is very long for I2C : ( It's not designed for running over such long cables between devices. It's really meant to be a comms method only for inside a single device, What's the pull-up resistor values? It may be worth reducing the resistances.

Regarding the code, the only unusual thing (not actually related to the I2C, but who knows, maybe there is some knock-on effect with resources), is that the code doesn't close the file handles. Suggestion (1): There should be a file.close() after you've finished with each file. Personally, I wouldn't keep the file handle open for ages either (no real reason in this code, but there could be reasons in other projects). In other words, as an optional suggestion (2): you could close the file after writing the line, and then after your 120 second delay, open the file again and append to it.

Even though the suggestions 1 and 2 are not related to I2C, at least one or the other should be done, because there is still a chance that resources could be preventing I2C from functioning (a lot of OS's don't care what resources you use, but will care how many in total you use, hence why I'm mentioning it could be a knock-on effect).

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

ralphjy — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:33:10 GMT

I've run for weeks continuously and reasonably hot (up to 60 C in the enclosure). I currently only have the BME280 and LCD sharing the I2C bus, but I've also run with a VL53L1X attached. I have a 40 cm harness to a protoboard with the sensor and LCD.

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:26:21 GMT

yes, there are two sensors attached to the bus, the cable from the pi to the display is about 20cm long, at the display there's a small breakout PCB that exposes the i2c lines and that's where the sensors are attached, one sensor's cable is 10cm long, the other is about 1.5m long. I've already checked signal integrity on the scope, back when i set up the sensors.

everything is being handled by the same python script:

import time
import board
import lcdrw1063 as LCD
import adafruit_bme680
from adafruit_bme280 import basic as adafruit_bme280
from gpiozero import CPUTemperature
display = LCD.Lcd()
i2c = board.I2C()

sensor = adafruit_bme680.Adafruit_BME680_I2C(i2c)
bme280 = adafruit_bme280.Adafruit_BME280_I2C(i2c)

temperature_c = sensor.temperature
humidity = sensor.humidity
pressure = sensor.pressure

temperature_out = bme280.temperature
humidity_out = bme280.relative_humidity
pressure_out = bme280.pressure
cpu = CPUTemperature()

print("ignore these:")
print("CPU Temp: ",cpu.temperature,"°C, Time: ",time.strftime('%H:%M:%S'))
print("Temp={0:0.1f}°C, Humidity={1:0.1f}%, Pressure={2:0.1f}hPa, Temp out={3:0.1f}°C,  Humidity out={4:0.1f}%, Pressure out={5:0.1f}hPa".format(temperature_c, humidity, pressure, temperature_out, humidity_out, pressure_out))
print("--------")

display.lcd_display_string("--------------------", 1)
display.lcd_display_string("Extreme Environments", 2)
display.lcd_display_string("--------------------", 3)
display.lcd_display_string("@e14@e14@e14@e14@e14", 4)

time.sleep(3.0)

it=1
while True:
        
        print("iteration: ",it,'\n')

        filename = "Full-Day-" + time.strftime('%m-%d-%H-%M-%S')+".txt"
        file = open(filename, 'w')
        file.write('Time, CPU Temp, Air Temp, Humidity, Pressure, Temp out, Humidity out, Pressure out\n')

        for count in range(180):

            temperature_c = sensor.temperature
            humidity = sensor.humidity
            pressure = sensor.pressure
            temperature_out = bme280.temperature
            humidity_out = bme280.relative_humidity
            pressure_out = bme280.pressure
            cpu = CPUTemperature()

            Disp1=("CPU Temp: "+str("%.2f" % cpu.temperature)+" C")
            Disp2=("Temp  in: "+str("%.2f" % temperature_c)+" C")
            Disp3=("Temp out: "+str("%.2f" % temperature_out)+" C")
            Disp4=("RH I:"+str(round(humidity, 1))+"%, O:"+str(round(humidity_out, 1))+"%")

            print("CPU Temp: ",cpu.temperature,"°C, Time: ",time.strftime('%H:%M:%S'))
            print("Temp in ={0:0.1f}°C, Humidity in ={1:0.1f}%, Pressure in ={2:0.1f}hPa".format(temperature_c, humidity, pressure))
            print("Temp out={0:0.1f}°C, Humidity out={1:0.1f}%, Pressure out={2:0.1f}hPa".format(temperature_out, humidity_out, pressure_out))
            print("--------")

            display.lcd_clear()
            display.lcd_display_string(Disp1, 1)
            display.lcd_display_string(Disp2, 2)
            display.lcd_display_string(Disp3, 3)
            display.lcd_display_string(Disp4, 4)

            file.write(time.strftime('%H:%M:%S')+','+str(cpu.temperature)+','+str(temperature_c)+','+str(humidity)+','+str(pressure)+','+str(temperature_out)+','+str(humidity_out)+','+str(pressure_out)+'\n')

            time.sleep(120.0)   
        it = it+1

Thank you!

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

shabaz — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:18:44 GMT

Do you have anything else on the I2C bus (apart from the LCD screen)? If so, what's the cable length approximately?

Also, what software is controlling the rest of the I2C devices on the bus; is it the same Python code, or some other code, and does it run simultaneously?

A possible workaround (but extremely ugly because it doesn't identify the actual issue) is to catch the exception using 'try..except', then wait some tens of msec, and then reattempt writing to the LCD screen. But really, the root issue should be identified.

RE: Driving the LCD - share your experience

Anthocyanina — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 19:29:00 GMT

has anyone had success driving the LCD with the provided computer for hours?

I'm using javagoza's library, and have been getting crashes related to the lcd in my logging script like this one:

I have no idea what might be causing the crashes. I went to read the lines mentioned in the error, re-checked the connections, but this keeps happening regularly. I don't know how tight the timings are for the i2c bus, i read years ago that you couldn't drive neopixels with a Pi because of timing issues, so perhaps it's that?

I've been watching for errors, and managed to catch one live. I immediately re-launched the script, but it ran fine. I doubt it's a connection problem, because nothing moved within the half a second it took me to arrow up then enter to re-launch the script, or well, i doubt anything did.

The enclosure has been inside since yesterday as i thought maybe it getting too hot was messing with the display's controller?

That doesn't seem to be the case, or who knows, maybe the heat damaged in in a weird intermittent way?

thank you!

RE: An apology to the organizers

rscasny — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 19:00:39 GMT

Illness or a family issue or emergency (i.e., paternity leave) come up when you least expect it. I understand and I'll make a note of it it comes up when I have a a meeting with the sponsor.

An apology to the organizers

Anthocyanina — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:47:05 GMT

As the title says, this is an apology to the organizers. I thought I would have the time to work on this project unimpeded, but this semester's classes turned out to be a lot more involved than I expected, leaving m with little time to actively work on this contest. I also must say that even with such amazing prizes as motivation, i struggled to find enough motivation to use my limited free time to work on this. I know I won't meet the deadline for all the extra credit posts, but I will still post the final blog in time. Still, I felt I needed to say something about my absolutely minimal participation in this contest, so to the organizers, I'm sorry about not having participated actively enough in this contest as the other contestants have done, I'm sorry about having taken a potential spot for another participant, so I'm willing to return the participation kit once I'm done with the final blog. Thank you for having selected me as a participant, and again, I'm sorry for my minimal participation.

RE: An apology to the organizers

iker46 — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 08:13:06 GMT

Things like this happen. In my case I was on paternity leave when I applied and this started. I am working already and I am struggling to find time to finish it. I hope to be able to make it.

RE: An apology to the organizers

dougw — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:15:06 GMT

The contest only requires a final blog, the other blogs just help garner extra scoring points. You will receive the participation prize if you publish your final blog on time. Sometimes priorities dictate that you can't spend much more time than the minimum requirement, but hopefully that won't always be the case. I think it helps that you are explaining the situation.

RE: An apology to the organizers

Jan Cumps — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 15:19:33 GMT

[quote userid="438987" url="~/challenges-projects/design-challenges/experimenting-with-extreme-environments/f/forum/54709/an-apology-to-the-organizers"]return the participation kit[/quote]

Local makerspaces or stem teams would be happy with it.

RE: An apology to the organizers

rscasny — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 14:17:02 GMT

I understand. I think everyone experiences semesters like that.

Randall

RE: An apology to the organizers

javagoza — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 09:42:47 GMT

Good luck with your exams!

Would you be interested in Judging the Final Blogs of the Experimenting with Extreme Environments Challenge?

rscasny — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 22:57:40 GMT

Would you be interested in judging a design challenge?

Here's what you would need to do:

1. I would send you all the final project/summary blogs. For this particular competition, it looks like it will be 7 blogs. (To put this in context, in the past, I used to give the judges all the blogs, but that was around 50 blogs! It was just too much. So, I went to giving the judges just the final blog for each participant.)

2. The judge needs to go through the blogs and score it from 0 to 300 points, based on creativity & technical merit. Of course, you can create your own categories for scoring. How you score the blog is up to you and kept confidential, just like all court system juries. The final points, however, are posted on this page.

3. The judges take about a week and send me their final scores.

4. I'll review them and average them and the final scores are added to the points accrued for individual blogs. For ties, all three judges will discuss and decide together how to resolve the tie.

Why do I have a point scoring system?

I went to this scoring approach because I think it's fairer and there's more transparency. The judges also meticulously read the blogs and I feel overall judge the final blogs objectively. Three different people are involved in the final scores (2 judges and myself for the extra credit blogs only) and I think that adds into the fairness.

If you would be interested, leave a comment are message me at [mention:55e535b498a841ed8f2949266bc56dc3:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

Thanks.

Randall

--element14 Community Team