[Sticky] Project Corner

Thanks for the welcome, I'm glad to be here!

If I'm not entirely mistaken, we're not able to upload any images or videos of our projects to the forums, right?

So sharing content has to be via linking to external content on YouTube, Instagram, etc - or is there another way?

Martin 

Hi Martin

Glad to have you aboard!

Yes, images and videos will need to be externally hosted, sorry about that!

I  do have the forum setup for attachments of up to 10Mb but I will have to moderate that and see how much space it eats up - may need to change that in the future.

Bill

Here is a link to a project that I did a few years ago. I will be doing some updates this year.

Just showing off

After I printed the spider on the plexi, which is something anybody with a 3d printer should try sometime, especially if you're a big fan of failure, I made a frame for it, and put some remote control lights in it

If I had thought about it, I would have added some mirrored window tinting to it and made it into an infinity mirror

That would have been much cooler

@spyder

dude that is awesome i never would have thought about doing something like that  its now on my list 😛

@pakabol

Thank You !

I strive for coolness, and occasionally functionality 

In fact, I put the FUN in malfunction

I now have my deceased sister's house that has a well and two storage tanks. I am a city guy and am just learning about wells. Problem is the well is only 1 gpm, hence the two storage tanks (1200 and 1700 gal). What I am trying to do is make a wireless water level indicator using Arduino and nRF24LO1 modules since that is what I have. I have been cruzing the internet for something like that and found one but the Arduino sketches don't make any sense to me and my browser doesn't want me to go to the referenced site anyway so I am at a loss right now. I have made a simple indicator using transistors and leds which works but I would like to make something a little more sophisticated and be able to read the level on a lcd which would translate the JSN-SR04T waterproof sensor from cm or inches to gallons. I have a chart which has the depth to gallons translation. So, my dream, haha, is to be able to sit inside the warm house and read the gallons of water stored on the lcd from the storage tanks that are about 75 feet away. Doesn't seem to much to ask really...

I have several Arduinos and a couple of ESP8266s but I'm not really sure how to use either one.  I need to start at the beginning again I think.  Blink and Hell World.

Ideally using the ESP8266s and accessing the levels on my phone would really be cool, but I am a long way from that since I have not been able to find anything on the net yet.  Casey pointed out the one that I havae been able to find using Arduino and Robo Pi mentioned using ESp8266 so I could go either way since I have both. Just need to be pointed in a direction that my browser likes. Haha.

Thanks guys  and a really big Thanks to Bill for doing such a great job and being such a great teacher.

@chumley

Hi, I came across exactly the same issue ( water tank....wifi...arduino) especially to "link " the arduino to my phone.

I used thingspeak.com, it is a free platform , super easy to set up  that works very well.

I suggest you to have a look at it.

for the rest .. using arduino and peripherals, well, a lot of search is necessary , but the workshop is the best start. 

jp

Many thanks jp. I will have a look at thingspeak.com

@chumley

This is my idea (if I'm understanding your problem correctly)

You would need to have the magnet on the outside of the tank on some kind of bearings, so that as it goes up and down, it will also slide back and forth to stay with the magnet on the float in the tank

Or this one

Water has a conductivity which might be noticed by an arduino (not sure about how much the arduino can detect, I never measured it) As the water level changes, it gives a resistance to a different wire. So if input 5 is reading, the tank is almost full. 4 is less full, 3 less, etc

Unfortunately I don't yet have a nRF24LO1 to test the code but I think sonar is the way to go to control things like water pumps according to how full the tank is.

This is the mechanical method we used and if you look out the window you can see the water level.

I'm making a thing, cuz, I make things, and I got stuck on something so I started doing something else until I get unstuck, so I started playing around with some voltage and coils and transistors and stuff, and I made a light bulb light without putting power to it, which was cool

Then I calculated how much voltage was needed to flow wirelessly to light the bulb, and realized that it was a really big number, so I decided to put it to use doing something else

At which point I got carried away, and now I've got 4 of them that I plan on installing into a tall staff

Which should glow nicely I think

I also took a 3.5inch screen and made a little baby pi pocket-pc thingy,

which turned out to be really cute and adorable, and completely and totally useless unless you happen to be about as tall as a G-I-Joe

Project MOMYDAEWDSFLIS

So, with my youngest daughter getting hitched, i'm building a venue on the 'back 40'.

Leading up to the stage is a 160 foot runway. figure that's long enough for her to evaluate her future with this dude for a while.  The runway is 4 feet wide, made of 16' cedar deck boards running longway. What I would like to do is use my addressable pixels (ordered a couple hundred) to have an 'interactive' feature to the runway where on either side, say every 4 feet or so, as she passes, it triggers the left and right pair of nearest pixels to fade to full white, then as she passes they settle down to a soft pink or whatever foo foo color she chooses. Sort of like creating a long train made of light...ish. Wiring the pixels will be easy yet time consuming as I intend on ripping a 4x8 sheet of thin plywood to about 1 inch to make strips on either side so this whole light train thing can be removed and set up as needed for future venue uses. I'm thinking of having some sort of sensor arrangement at every 2 sections to trigger the fade up to white and dim to pink... or whatever. That way it stays in sync with her speed. I thought of just using a hall effect, then thought perhaps go with distance measuring and handle multiple sections.. should I use IR.. ultrasonic.. microwave... still trying to figure out the most foolproof system short of putting a magnet on my shoe and hitting reed switches along the way to kick of the section's lighting seq. Any suggestions appreciated!

@americanmike

Glad you found the Projects Corner so you post that pic!  You have gone all out on this and I'm sure you'll get lots of help from some of our members.  Remember, be careful what you ask for!