Ralph Yamamoto's Blog

  • TPL5110 Nano Power Switch

    ralphjy
    While building my recent LoRaXes project I realized for successful battery power operation that I need a way to remove and restore power between data transmissions because the components that I was using did not have adequate sleep mode functionality...

  • Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

    ralphjy
    I had a minor victory on my road to figuring out how to use my new CNC router. I received the 0.5mm carbide end mills that I bought on Amazon and used one to successfully shorten a proto PCB that I need for my LoRaXes project.  The mill has...

  • Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO

    ralphjy
    I've had great success with my inexpensive AnyCubic 3D printer that I got on Amazon Prime day, so I finally decided to get myself a low cost (under $200) CNC mill. I wanted to get something that would allow me to drill holes with reasonable accuracy ...

  • AnyCubic Mega-S - Prime Day

    ralphjy
    After a fair amount of frustration trying to fix the hotend/extruder on my Velleman K8200 3D printer I finally decided that I should just go ahead and buy a new printer.  I really like the K8200, it has a large build area (20 x 20 x 20 cm) and h...

  • LoRa Gateway Activated

    ralphjy
    It has been a while since I received The Things Network (TTN) LoRa Gateway and two MKR WAN 1300 boards for winning the IoT in the Cloud challenge.  I've been busy with roadtests, but really would like to start playing with LoRa based sensors...

  • Prizes for IoT in the Cloud Competition

    ralphjy
    I just received my prizes for the Project14 IoT: In the Cloud Competition.  I received a 915MHz LoRaWan Gateway to the Things Network. In addition I received 2 Arduino MKR Wan 1300 boards and a MKR SD prototype shield. Looking forward to ex...

  • NXP Technology Days - Seattle, May 7, 2019

    ralphjy
    I just attended the the one day NXP Technology Days conference in Seattle, WA (actually in Bellevue). It was held at the Meydenbauer Convention Center.  This is the first Tech Days conference that I've attended. In the morning I attende...

  • Nvidia Jetson Nano - Just got mine

    ralphjy
    I was inspired by and ordered a Jetson Nano Developer Kit directly from Nvidia.  I received it a few days ago but just now had a chance to set it up. I noticed in YouTube videos that everyone uses the 4A power supply with the ba...

  • Tenma Handheld DC Power Supply - What's Inside

    ralphjy
    Since this power supply has been around since 2015, there is a lot of information about it on the Internet.  I thought some on the info that I've come across on the internals of the power supply might be of interest to others.  I don&#3...

  • Phones for the Elderly

    ralphjy
    I'm writing this out of frustration of trying to find a simple phone for my 96 year old mother.  Going through the aging experience with my parents, other relatives, and parents of friends, has made me realize that appliances that are design...

  • Laser Cutting at Community College

    ralphjy
    I've wanted to try using a laser cutter but haven't had the opportunity until today.  There is a campus of Portland Community College (PCC) just up the hill from me.  Spring term was the first time that they've offered Maker com...

  • NXP Technology Day, May 7, Seattle

    ralphjy
    I received a notification that NXP is doing a Technology Training Day in Seattle (Bellevue), Washington on May 7.https://getregisterednow.com/NXP/Event/Register/Register.asp?e=NXPTechDaySeattle2019&r=e&elq_mid=7369&elq_cid=2769005 Ha...

  • Oboo Smart Clock - Very Disappointed

    ralphjy
    I was very excited to try out my Oboo Smart Clock. I really wanted to demonstrate some of the features to my wife who wondered why I would back a clock on Kickstarter.  Unfortunately, the out-of-the-box experience was not very good.  The in...

  • Oboo Smart Clock - Finally Here

    ralphjy
    Back in November of 2017 I decided to back a smart clock project on Kickstarter.  It was being designed by Onion using their Omega 2 IoT computer.  I bought it as an early Christmas present to myself with an estimated delivery of June 2018....

  • Giving Snips a Try

    ralphjy
    After seeing the blog post What makes an office smart?  I decided that I should give Snips a try.  I have multiple Echo devices in my house and I have also tried Google (AIY Voice kit) but there are some circumstances where it is beneficial...

  • NXP Rapid IoT - Read External NFC Tag

    ralphjy
    The project that I'm working on with the Rapid IoT requires reading information from an external NFC tag.  The Rapid IoT has the capability of reading and writing an internal NT3H2211 NFC tag, but it does not have the capability to read or w...

  • NXP Rapid IoT - MCUXpresso IDE

    ralphjy
    The MCUXpresso IDE is an Eclipse based development environment that offers more advanced editing, compiling and debugging of applications for the Rapid IoT device.In this blog post I'm going to cover generating an example program using MCUXpresso.&nb...

  • Home Solar System Performance - Year 1

    ralphjy
    In December of 2017 I had a solar system installed at my house.  This is my first experience using solar technology.  I thought that since I've had the system running for a full year that it useful to review how well it has performed re...

  • NXP Rapid IoT - Rapid IoT Studio

    ralphjy
    NXP provides two different IDEs to develop programs for the Rapid IoT device.  The first is Rapid IoT Studio which is a graphically oriented web based Atmosphere drag-and-drop IDE.  The second is the MCUXpresso IDE which is an Eclipse based...

  • NXP Rapid IoT - OOB Demo

    ralphjy
    I've used the OOB (Out-of-Box) Demo to familiarize myself with the Rapid IoT kit and I thought that I'd describe its functionality and provide a short critique before I move on to creating my own programs. The OOB Demo allows you to conf...

  • NXP Rapid IoT Prototyping Kit

    ralphjy
    I didn't sign up for the roadtest, but I recently got one of these kits so I thought that I'd see how my experience compares to that of the roadtesters. The Rapid IoT module packs a large array of sensors into a small package (2" x 2" x 1/2").&n...

  • Reading and Writing RFID Tags

    ralphjy
    I am going to start a project soon where I want to use RFID tags to enable user authentication and individual profiles for a home automation remote controller.  I haven't worked with RFID tags before, even though they are fairly ubiquitous a...

  • Tello Drone - Camera Mirror Modification

    ralphjy
    One of the limitations of the Tello is the fixed position of its camera.  The camera points forward with a slight down angle which is great for FPV and taking pictures of what is directly in front of the drone.  Some other inexpensive drone...

  • Google AIY Edge TPU Boards

    ralphjy
    I know that a lot of Element14 members also belong to the Hackster.io community, but I thought this might be of interest to others that may not have seen this. On July 25 at the Google Next Conference, they announced two new AIY Project boards t...

  • Tello Drone - Setup

    ralphjy
    This is a continuation of my Tello Drone blog.  I thought that I'd go over some of the controller options. As I mentioned in the previous blog, communication with the Tello is via 802.11n wifi (2.4GHz).  There are iOS and Android apps ...