Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by karthickiot

karthickiot — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 15:50:56 GMT

It was very interesting to upcycle the old devices and give second life. In most of the time for small circuit damages we opt for repair and replacement of components but upcycling the old devices is fantastic idea for antique devices.

In present days due to rapid expansion of technology and the consumption driven society results in the creation of a very large amount of e-waste in every minute. Rapid changes in technology, changes in media (tapes, software, MP3), falling prices, and planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste around the globe.

In our houses, offices, Hospitals, Colleges, Farm house, Hotels their will a lot of devices such as Monitors, CPUs, SMPS, UPS, Keyboards, Mouse, mobile charging adapter, Flex box, USB cables, TVs, ceiling fans, Printers, fax machines, Automation devices, etc are thrown in electronic dumps for a small circuit board damage. Plastic, wood, metallic furniture can be reuse or recycled but electronic devices are not like that and due to latest technology some devices are placed in electronic dumps.

The important thing as a Hardware Design Engineer and Hobbyist, my interest was to upcycle the old devices in my institute Lab and train the students to learn about different parts used in the devices. For this, I want to upcycle my old Magnetic stirrer in my lab to an advanced "IoT Magnetic Stirrer". Old appliances stop working so I can upcycle and repurpose them instead of throwing them in e-waste dump with advanced IoT MCU kits like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, NodeMCU, Microchip,etc has on-board wireless connectivity protocols like WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.

In the below figure I am showing the old magnetic stirrer which has IC's damage due to overheating and they are rarely available from the vendors, it was big problem to search those controlling components in same Pin Packages.

I would like to upcycle the Magnetic Stirrer by including the Raspberry Pi as a main controller and Sensors and actuators interface to the Board via GPIO pins and control the device remotely using WiFi/Bluetooth/Ethernet.

Components and their function:

The DC motor is controlled by the Motor driver and speed is controlled by the PWM signal from the GPIO pins.

Hall effect sensor to sense the speed of motor and to display the RPM of motor in display unit.

Relay to control the Heater to ON/OFF.

Potentiometer to Set the speed of DC motor and other potentiometer for temperature setting for Heater.

Temperature Sensor to sense the heater pan temperature and send the data to Controller to display. The temperature range can also set to maintain for the particular time period.

Switch is used for device ON/OFF and other switch to ON/OFF Heater.

TFT Touch Display is used to display temperature of heater, speed of motor, Manual or Auto mode operation, operation time lapse.

Bluetooth/WiFi/Ethernet to remotely control the device function. The device operation can be monitor remotely by designing the Mobile App. this can be done with BLYNK app open app software and can add widget to control and monitor the process.

Camera is interfaced to visualize the chemical reaction. Some of Chemical reactions takes long time and some short time it can be viewed by recording the process. We can see the time taken for process completion in video playback so that we can maintain the stipulated time for next operation.

SD card is used to record the sensor data, camera data. It is also used to load the image software.

Audio jack and Mic are used to control the device with Basic Voice instructions like ON/OFF, temperature limit setting, RPM setting, etc. Voice control is because sometimes during the operation they emit some fumes they cause health issue.

The Raspberry Pi device can be controlled or monitored remotely using the mobile app (Blynk) by adding the suitable widgets. Raspberry Pi has the salient features for AI by Voice, Image, visualize graphics, processing faster, etc. The Motor Speed, Motor ON/OFF, Temperature setting, Time Setting, all can be controlled by speech recognition technique. Current operation time, temperature, RPM can hear from the audio speaker by requesting them like Alexa or Ok Google.

Image Courtesy: http://www.rhydolabz.com/wiki/wp-content/uploads/Pi3_Voice.gif

It will be good opportunity for me to utilize the giveaway Hardware and showcase my upcycling project to the community members through Step by step operation by posting a Blog, so that it can reach them to upcycle their devices and make the earth safe from Hazardous e-waste. This current project is about Magnetic stirrer upcycling but there is scope to upcycle their kids toys, home appliances, agriculture devices, anything as they like because most of the devices has sensors like temperature, accelerometer, speedometer, magnetometer, pressure, humidity, Gyro, IR, motion, etc they can be working with I2C/SPI/ADC. If one sensor interface is known they can implement with a few changes in program to other sensors. Actuators commonly used are Motors, Relays, Solenoid Valves, etc and components like Buzzers, LEDs, Diodes, switches, etc.

In this pandemic situation all the community members are showing interest to learn the technical aspects through webinars, on-demand videos, reading blogs, etc from online so it will be an advantages to showcase the project to reach for most of the people in community. It not only upcycling but AI techniques can be showcased through this project.

Enrico's new book and his talks and project presentations were inspiring the community members like me to upcycle the old devices with advanced technology hardware. In this event I would like to participate and share knowledge of my best to upcycle and reuse the Magnetic Stirrer and like to receive the Raspberry Pi kit which is popular and suitable for AI and other applications and I have good knowledge on the Module and having the required components to start the project as soon as If I am the winner and receive the Giveaway.

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by schabinsc

schabinsc — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 13:55:56 GMT

Hello, just getting started in learning about all the possibilities with a Raspberry Pi. There are many "fun" projects we have brainstormed, but an IT room Bluetooth speaker or net-workable audio player would be outstanding.

Concept so far is to attach an external hard drive with media, but need some type of GUI to connect to via HTTP preferably. We also have Audio codecs for our CCTV system that we have discussed these devices augmenting if possible.

We would like to up cycle an old RCA 14" TV we have in our "vintage case" so we could use it for different events. One particular was playing a yule log during a Christmas decorating contest with music. We also would add motion sensors to activate a random video/audio during Halloween as well, or anytime as a warning when someone walks into our tech room. Could perhaps integrate our music idea into it as well, making it function for us all year long.

Exploring this realm for a first time, do not have a Pi or any hardware yet to begin besides the old TV. Looking forward to the knowledge.

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by jennyfurwhen

jennyfurwhen — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 18:11:40 GMT

Getting a raspberry pi in one of those old Sony Vaio UMPCs would be really cool from the early 2000's! Also those neat handheld electronic games from the 80s with the VFD display.

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by carybriel

carybriel — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 22:10:18 GMT

The old Battleship game. Or the old Operation game. Both would be cool brought into this era.

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by cbohra00627

cbohra00627 — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 04:53:16 GMT

Really excited to attend this session also. Though, I might not be able to watch it live since it would be 12:30 AM (IST) here but I will surely watch the recording.

Since, this session will be about radio, I think I will get some ideas to incorporate in my radio project which I had commented earlier.

Thanks sir!

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by maxpowerr

maxpowerr — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:24:36 GMT

I have two interesting ideas. I have an old Optima typewriter, which has been produced since 1950 in the German Democratic Republic in Erfurt on the basis of the Olympia Büromaschinenwerke company. I want to breathe a second life into it and make it so that it can be connected to a computer or to another device such as a phone or tablet. I think the Arduino will be enough for this.

I also have an old Soviet film camera "Chaika", these cameras were produced in 1965-1974 by the Minsk Mechanical Plant named after SI Vavilov in Bellarusia. I want to make a retro digital camera out of it. I want to try to put a Raspberry PI and a camera module in it.

re: Vintage Upcycling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Part 2: Radio Magic by thesuperphil

thesuperphil — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 12:08:53 GMT

I’d really like to see an old reel to reel tape player/recorder upgraded to digital hi deg audio. Hack the analog magnetic recording system with an analog digital converter to write and read from the old magnetic tapes, possibly using some magnetic data storage parts, and hook it up to a tube amp for some lo-fi hi-def music. Or am I just weird...