My 2016 Projects, Trips and Activities Summary

7 Dec 2016

In 2016 I got to explore a few things, here is a quick summary.

Project/Activity	Description
Building and Testing Audio Cables	The year was kicked off with an investigation into audio cables and jack plug connectors and how to solder them and how to test cables for immunity to noise pick-up.
Non-FTDI USB-to-UART Serial	Very unhappy with FTDI / Bridgetek, I looked around at the competition and made a table of alternative offerings. (An open hardware non-FTDI USB-UART was created towards the end of last year).
Raspberry Pi 3 Cooling / Heat Sink Ideas	Cooling options for the (at the time) new Pi 3 were investigated. This was really a collaborative effort from many people, includingbwelsby and cstanton and others. The actual investigation from me was quite short, but the comments section is where everyone supplied their findings and ideas.
Cisco Live 2016 in Berlin	This is a collection of photos and some videos of a few of the interesting things at the show.
Southern Manufacturing and Electronics Show	A small taste of what was at the show; it is definitely worth a visit.
Building a Temperature Measurement System	I started a project for a temperature measurement system using a thermistor. Although not complete, the front end is finished and tested, providing an analog output for the temperature measurement system. It is usable with a multimeter until the data acquisition portion of the design is complete.
Keysight U1282AU1282A Multimeter RoadTest Data logging Vehicle applications Raspberry Pi 3 dynamic power and temperature tests and video of the results	For a Road Test I investigated the U1282AU1282A multimeter It proved very useful for a multitude of tasks including to finely examine the Pi 3's power consumption dynamically and to observe laser power
Raspberry Pi 7 inch Display and Enclosure	Some simple mods to improve the enclosure to suit the 7-inch display
HAL-CAM 9001 'modern security camera' project and Power over Ethernet (PoE) capability	The HAL-CAM 9001 project was started with a colleague. The hardware is complete, and we were able to refine it with PoE capability. The software still needs polishing and publishing will commence soon.
IoT RoadTests: mangOH Green and Sierra Wireless AirVantage FRDM-K64F and mbed and IBM BeagleBone Black Industrial and AWS IoT Raspberry Pi 3 and IBM course Summary	Four RoadTests covered end-to-end IoT solutions using several different cloud IoT platforms and a range of hardware.
Engineer's Multi-Tool project	The Engineer's Multi-Tool was a short, fun project that integrated some simple test tools into a single pocket-sized unit.
Knipex Ferrule Crimping Pliers review	This was an opportunity to test the tool and see how ferrules could be used.
SMT Pick-and-Place Buddy	A project that is still ongoing (but is complete enough to function) is the SMT Pick-and-Place Buddy, used to position surface mount parts on a PCB speedily. It will be enhanced with software features in an attempt to improve productivity when building circuit boards.
Thermal Imaging System with Raspberry Pi 3 and Panasonic Grid-EYE	The last thing for this year (so far) is an investigation into the Panasonic Grid-EYE that was part of a Road Test and used it to build a thermal imaging system with the Pi 3 and Sense HAT, with a web browser-based interface for higher resolution.