DIY Controller (Atmel based)

[kwirky]

they finally arrived on saturday haha. I need to get myself a 12V power supply or two and I have to find the mating ends for the 14 pin busses. I asked for "male" parts but they sent me the same ones soldered to the bords. I must have gotten male and female mixed up. I'm going to try to find somewhere local that has them, maybe alberta computer cable.

Here are my priorities:

1. get the power supplies and cable ends
2. figure out how to get my pc talking to the boards (relatively simple)
3. get the units talking with the screens (fair bit of work, i'll be writing my own framework for this as a learning experience)
4. get the units talking with the opto-interrupted relays
5. start designing the user interface (switches, etc) and how the unit will function

my first real use will be a wavemaker using maxijet pumps. My goal is to EVENTUALLY develop it into a product. I have a guinea pi*ahem* BETA TESTER lined up already . I'll post my progress of the build on the thread here. I'm pretty busy with class for the next few days so I can't run around town gathering the stuff I need to start playing with my parts until later this week.

oh does anyone know how I'd run 120VAC through the relays? They're SPDT. Would I switch the hot on and off and leave the ground connected to the wall supply? I've never worked with AC power and I have to make sure I get things right before I start using it. I don't want to burn anything or even worse get a nasty shock.

oh and here's a serious iodological personal debate of mine: open source. I REALLY want to make all the code open source and I don't really think it would interfere with me selling them down the road. If people want to mess with their units then so be it. If they want to make their own and sell them oh well. I just like the idea of introducing a well featured aquarium controller at a price many more hobbyists can afford (shake up the market). That's WAY down the road but I think the "open source" decision should be made early. Any suggestions?

oh please don't ask me "make me one!" because I just barely understand all this myself yet. Talk about a "product" is just my overambition
here are some pictures:

[Delphinus]

Count me as a vote for open source..

[Pan]

Make me Two!
Open Source is a good idea i think as well.

[midgetwaiter]

Originally Posted by kwirky

oh does anyone know how I'd run 120VAC through the relays? They're SPDT. Would I switch the hot on and off and leave the ground connected to the wall supply? I've never worked with AC power and I have to make sure I get things right before I start using it. I don't want to burn anything or even worse get a nasty shock.

Switch hot and wire the neutral straight through. Neutral and ground are different though, makes life easier to keep them separate in your mind.

[kwirky]

on a 2 pronged AC plug, which is the hot and which is the neutral? Is the wider prong the hot?

[digital-audiophile]

[KrazyKuch]

The wider prong is the neutral!

[KrazyKuch]

Hey Kwirky if you have any problems with the code let me know....What language are you gonna program in???

I can program with C of coarse and I'm not bad with assembly!

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by KrazyKuch

The wider prong is the neutral!

hence why I asked

Originally Posted by KrazyKuch

Hey Kwirky if you have any problems with the code let me know....What language are you gonna program in???

I can program with C of coarse and I'm not bad with assembly!

I'll be using C through the gcc/atmel compiler. Assembly would be required for something of extreme performance but it's not like I'm doing frequency generation or the likes. I shouldn't have problems with C. It'll more or less be problems with the poorly documented atmel library for C that I forsee. But like I said i'm not doing anything real complex.

One thing I don't know is how to make a serializing circuit. I understand the programming but how the transistors would go together to "unserialize" the data later is a bit beyond me. It's the electronics that I'm learning as I go.

[kwirky]

I got me some "8 bit parallel serial shift registers"

They're so I can use like 3 pins for 8 pins worth of traffit. mainly for the LCD screen/s.

I got all the 10 pin wire and ends too and a cheap little 500ma power supply. I'll be getting the serial cable tomorrow hopefully then start playing with them on friday.