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Topic starter
2022-06-20 6:04 pm
Hi all,
I am an old guy (67) with no electronics training but have been messing around with arduino and esp32 projects for about 10 years. (thats equivalent to 3 years of a young person) I did start a software company in 95 building cdroms for mcgraw hill books to train medical students. Before that, i was in the us army for 20 years.
Previous projects:
1. Built a watermaker that made 20 gallons of fresh water an hour from salt water for my catamaran.
2. Built 12v battery monitors and currently still monitor online various boat batteries in the neighborhood. LoRa is the communication hardware, to a base station, then wifi to my router to the web. Uses html, php, javascript to display the gauges on the web.
3. A tire temperature gauge (uses nexion tft) for my sons race car. Tracks the tire temp of the 4 tires as he goes thru the track. He is just now installing.. will be interesting to see how it works.
4. Like most everyone, built some bme280 devices to monitor weather.
5. Dryer monitor that sends a text message when the dryer stops.. that was a while back but still thought it was a cool project.
6. Used a ryobi battery charger to make a small robot using the 18v battery in the charger as the power source. Basically gutted the charger, put wheels on it and with a buck converter powered the arduino(b4 i got into the esp32). It senses walls etc and changes direction to avoid obstacles. Still think ryobi should make toys to use with their batteries.. maybe even elec skateboards.
7. Tons of test projects that we all go thru learning about this great hobby.
8. Have made a number of pcbs at this point. Its still fascinating to me that on an afternoon i can design a pcb, pay 20 bucks, send it off, and 6 days later 5 circuit boards are on my door step.
Current project:
I want to go cellular with 4g. Not sure what hardware to use for the sim card, tons of examples of 2g solutions out there but 2g is going away i guess. Would like it to be able to connect in any country.
But truthfully, i am still a hack in that my knowledge is just what i have learned thru trial and error. No deep understanding of electronics.
Other hobbies include scuba diving, sailing, and motorcycles. Spend a lot of time in the florida keys.
Thats probably more than most want to know.
Cheers,
Jim booth
Palm coast florida.
Jim booth
2022-06-20 7:23 pm
Welcome aboard. I'm an older yet guy (75). I do have a little training as I attended a vocational school after taking a two year leave of absence from teaching Math locally. I retired early and went back to the family farm and worked part time with electronics at a local Ag business. I started messing with Arduinos a couple of Winters back and have done a few projects with ESP32's. I always enjoy Bill's tutorials as they are a pleasant relief from the foreign speaking, dog barking, kids crying videos that are so common. I belong to some other boards but the posters there are so brash and offensive. I think you will find the company "kinder" here. I'm big on asking obvious questions. The answers don't always apply to my situation but I do learn something from them.
Inst-Tech reacted
2022-06-20 9:00 pm
Built a watermaker that made 20 gallons of fresh water an hour from salt water for my catamaran.
Welcome to the forum!
I'm a cruiser want-a-be... Learned to sail on a Hobie, moved to 26 foot mono for the kids growing up years and would like to get a cruise-able catamaran... ~40 feet. I see you haven't filled in your profile... Care to elaborate on your location and specifics about your catamaran, watermaker and your other micro-electronic-boat projects? 🤗
Have you see the new research coming out to desalinate via electronic chips (no compressors/osmosis barriers)? Also seen some articles using no electricity and no need to clean the barrier filters... purely a passive sun baked version.
3 lines of code = InqPortal = Complete IoT, App, Web Server w/ GUI Admin Client, WiFi Manager, Drag & Drop File Manager, OTA, Performance Metrics, Web Socket Comms, Easy App API, All running on ESP8266...
Even usable on ESP-01S - Quickest Start Guide
Inst-Tech reacted
Topic starter
2022-06-20 10:04 pm
I have been cruising since 2004. My 38ft lagoon sailing catamaran is being sold. Closing date is 27 jun. She was a 3 cabin 2 head owners cat. Sailed really well. I sailed up and down the east coast of florida, and the bahamas. Never got south of georgetown in the exumas, but have chartered a 45 ft lagoon in the turks. I have done a bit if diving throughout the carribean.
Most of my electronics on moondance focused on monitoring the boat, weather, and watermaker. I always wanted to connect to the raymarine data but never did.
Not sure if i will replace Moondance or not, for sure not immediatly. The new owner is going to sail her down to st croix where she will stay.
I am unaware on any new technology involving watermakers, but that would be nice. I wonder if it also strips out all the bacteria and other contaminants.
Ref the watermaker, it was a 220v electric motor running basically a powerwasher at 900psi. I used off the shelf valves to open and close and a manual valve to increase or decrease the pressure. Initially planned to use a stepper motor to do that but time ran out and figured it was safer to just do that manually. Used a arduino mega, that was in vogue at the time. I used a touch screen color tft to control it. Used front panel express to make the bezel for the tft. The mega controlled 12v relays, which controlled 2 110 relays to turn on the electric motor. I would get about 160 to 200 ppm which i was happy with. Used my generator to run the watermaker.
I live in palm coast florida, near st augustine and daytona beach.. I will complete my profile asap.
Cheers,
Jim
Jim booth
2022-06-21 12:03 am
Welcome to the forum @jimbooth97...Plenty of us ol' timers on here with a variety of experience in electronics and/or software.. so you should be right at home!..lol
kind regards,
LouisR
LouisR
2022-06-21 7:48 am
Hi and welcome.
Lots of like minded and driven members here and I am sure you will find the forum a helpful place to hang out!
At our age (I'm an age peer) its good to have vision and ambition.
Ron b
Ron Bentley
Creativity is an input to innovation and change is the output from innovation. Braden Kelley
A computer is a machine for constructing mappings from input to output. Michael Kirby
Through great input you get great output. RZA
Gauss is great but Euler rocks!!
Topic starter
2022-06-21 2:54 pm
Nice to meet you guys (Ron and Louis)! Thanks for the warm welcome.
I wonder if you guys have found anyway to inspire your grandkids. I am failing miserable at that. My latest idea is to send them a meArm robot kit and pay them for a video of it working. I am not located near them so a video is the best i can do. I purchased a meArm kit and it didnt come with instructions. Dronebots has a video but its a little different that the kit i have. Once i get this "simple" project working i will have to decide if any of them could rebuild it. I have considered 3d printing the structure differently in an attempt to simplify the assembly. I have tried building a remote control tank but it was not a quick build for short attention spans. Lol
Maybe i should go with a commercial kit that comes with instructions.
Thoughts.. btw, i have 9 grandkids ranging from 8 - 14.
Cheers!
Jim
Jim booth
Inst-Tech reacted
2022-06-21 4:39 pm
Nice to meet you guys (Ron and Louis)! Thanks for the warm welcome.
I wonder if you guys have found anyway to inspire your grandkids. I am failing miserable at that. My latest idea is to send them a meArm robot kit and pay them for a video of it working. I am not located near them so a video is the best i can do. I purchased a meArm kit and it didnt come with instructions. Dronebots has a video but its a little different that the kit i have. Once i get this "simple" project working i will have to decide if any of them could rebuild it. I have considered 3d printing the structure differently in an attempt to simplify the assembly. I have tried building a remote control tank but it was not a quick build for short attention spans. Lol
Maybe i should go with a commercial kit that comes with instructions.
Thoughts.. btw, i have 9 grandkids ranging from 8 - 14.
Cheers!
Jim
Hi Jim, Yes, I think I might have a solution for you.. I have a tank robot I built, from Keyestudio..url: https://wiki.keyestudio.com/Ks0428_keyestudio_Mini_Tank_Robot_V2#Introduction
It was fairly easy to build..and comes with great instructions via the link I gave you, so you can check that out before you decide to purchase it.. around $70.00 I think..
Since all my grand kids are in their mid & late 20's, they just thing that's it cool that a 75 yrs ol' guy can still manage to do something like that...lol.. Oh, I'm way ahead of them..remember, Old age and experience beats youth and agility every time...lol
Hope this is helpful to you..
kind regards,
LouisR
LouisR
ron bentley reacted
2022-06-21 6:30 pm
Hello, good afternoon everyone.
I'm new here on the forum, but not that new in age.
I'm 60 years old, I'm Brazilian and I currently live in Munich.
I am passionate about electronics with an emphasis on music.
To be honest, despite being reasonably experienced in electronics, I am not very experienced in programming, but I am studying to learn more and more.
Greetings from Germany
Inst-Tech reacted
2022-06-21 8:13 pm
@jailton Welcome to the forum..I think you'll find many here that will share your passions for electronics, and even music.. There are many on the forum that are well versed in the art of programming, and electronics in general..
Enjoy the forum and the very informative videos put out by DroneBot (Bill) the one responsible for the forums content.. Also Check out Arduino project Hub , here's a link: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub?page=1&sort=trending
Again, welcome..have fun, and be safe!
Regards,
LouisR
LouisR
2022-06-21 9:06 pm
I wonder if you guys have found anyway to inspire your grandkids. I am failing miserable at that.
Really you can't inspire them to do anything they don't have a natural interest in particularly if it is academically intense. My kids didn't have any interest in science no matter how much I encouraged it, they just didn't want to know. Thinking back now with my own brother I am holding the magnifying glass checking out bugs while he is shouldering his gun. I spent my money on a computer much to his annoyance as he wanted me to spend it on a speed boat. You are what you are. Everyone has to run their own race.
Those that think they inspired their children just happened to have children with a similar interest. Had I been interested in racing motor bikes I could have claimed I inspired my child to do likewise.
2022-06-22 2:22 pm
Welcome to the forum, I hope you have fun here.
The robot you talked about seems interesting, could you please send a picture of it and/or explain it
in more detail?
For example, does it try to "encircle" the obstacle or does it change direction and keep that direction
after moving past the obstacle?
And how do you control it?
Kind regards
Valerio
Topic starter
2022-06-22 2:42 pm
Hi valerio,
Its not that clever, lol. But was fun in part because i have a ton of ryobi tools and batteries and chargers. I think it was the first time i converted 18v to something that arduino could use.
Basically it wondered around the house and i moved on to other projects. Eventually the hot glued on wheels fell off.
If memory serves me, i did have a wiresless controller at first but decided it would be more fun to let it wonder by itself.
Cheers,
Jim
Jim booth
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