Nearly there
Today i finished my 3rd exam. So i have ASICs, Industrial Automation and Signals and Systems 2 done. I still have Active Circuit Design 4 and Telecommunications left to do and i'm pretty sure these will be the hardest.
I have to go teach maths at 6.30 which i really wish i didn't have to do because i need to study. Although realistically i'd probably just spend most of the evening watch Dexter on the internet. This is the best show out at the moment! Normally with tv shows, i get drawn in by the characters relationships with each other, but this has an amazing story line running in the background! If you haven't seen it, go watch it NOW!
So as promised here is the schematic for my temperature module
Now for a quick rundown. First, if you're reading this because you have a WiRobot and somehow got linked to this page, this circuit costs like less than 10euro to build. Compare that with the $50 before shipping on the Dr Robot website and i think it's obvious which one to go for.
The Analog Devices chip is a temperature sensor but outputs 28mV for every degree after 0. The robot detects 25mV per degree so i have a resistor network to drop the votlage down. Actually looking at this now, i think that when i built this i realised that the resistor values i had chosed to drop from 28 to 25 mV were wrong, but i can't be bothered to check this now.
The Analog Devices chip is a surface mount device which really worried me at the time because i had never soldered these before and the internet had all these crazy tutorials. In the end i just put a magnifying glass in front of the board and it was like normal soldering. The regulator (to drop from 5 to 3.3v) was tricky since this was also surface mount and since i was using these devices i couldn't use standard matrix PCB board and cut tracks. I had to go through the whole process of transferring my design to a board with UV light, etch out the pattern with acid and photoresist and then drill holes. All in all it was a good learning experience and a little fun! Next time i will possibly talk about the keypad circuit i'm going to start making when these exams are over.
I have to go teach maths at 6.30 which i really wish i didn't have to do because i need to study. Although realistically i'd probably just spend most of the evening watch Dexter on the internet. This is the best show out at the moment! Normally with tv shows, i get drawn in by the characters relationships with each other, but this has an amazing story line running in the background! If you haven't seen it, go watch it NOW!
So as promised here is the schematic for my temperature module
Now for a quick rundown. First, if you're reading this because you have a WiRobot and somehow got linked to this page, this circuit costs like less than 10euro to build. Compare that with the $50 before shipping on the Dr Robot website and i think it's obvious which one to go for.
The Analog Devices chip is a temperature sensor but outputs 28mV for every degree after 0. The robot detects 25mV per degree so i have a resistor network to drop the votlage down. Actually looking at this now, i think that when i built this i realised that the resistor values i had chosed to drop from 28 to 25 mV were wrong, but i can't be bothered to check this now.
The Analog Devices chip is a surface mount device which really worried me at the time because i had never soldered these before and the internet had all these crazy tutorials. In the end i just put a magnifying glass in front of the board and it was like normal soldering. The regulator (to drop from 5 to 3.3v) was tricky since this was also surface mount and since i was using these devices i couldn't use standard matrix PCB board and cut tracks. I had to go through the whole process of transferring my design to a board with UV light, etch out the pattern with acid and photoresist and then drill holes. All in all it was a good learning experience and a little fun! Next time i will possibly talk about the keypad circuit i'm going to start making when these exams are over.
