Week 9 has come and gone and there's plenty of work to be done. I wrote the majority of the first draft of my paper this week. I'm hoping to have this draft revised soon so that I can prepare to turn in everything at the conclusion of my REU. Our project has made a little project this week. We recently found a sensor that we think will allow us to take two different kinds of measurements. This led to us reconsidering our design, if we could use this sensor we wouldn't have any need for our current temperature sensor. My colleague scouted out a few different parts we would need to build our first real prototype. We are pretty sure we will be using cellular signals to transmit our data and have decide we will also want to add a barometric pressure sensor to our design as well. It seems like we are getting closer and closer to having a prototype to test and while it may not be complete before I leave for the summer, its still very exciting. Check out the illustration bellow to get an idea of what we are trying to build.
Up until this point I've been working exclusively with the arduino uno. The uno is pretty simple to work with and was good for testing our sensors and getting acquainted with the arduino eco system but it isn't what we are going to be using out at the sites. Instead we want to use the Mini wireless arduinos. They are smaller, lower power, and have wireless communication (probably why they are called mini wireless huh). They are just going to be a better fit for the project, so of course this meant at some point I was going to have to take everything I did to the uno and transfer it to the wireless. I had been putting it off for a while but wiring everything up didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I got everything working today, as opposed to the several days it took when I was first learning how to use the uno. Guess I'm getting the hang of it. I still have some code to fix up so that it will work with the mini but that shouldn't take very long at all. Yay progress! check it out bellow:
After a weeks worth of work I'm proud to announce that I got the Arduino to correctly hook up to the SD card reader. What was the issue you might ask? Well it was simple really, I had a single wire connected incorrectly which I believe was keeping the SD card reader from getting any power. Originally I thought the issue was the the Arduino wasn't connected to the correct chip select pin but it turns out that wasn't the case. It's an odd combination of joy and frustration that you feel when a solution was so simple and right under your nose. Oh well on to the next part. This was what I had before I fixed the issue. And here is after, it really is as simple as it looks. Can't believe it was right under my nose.
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AuthorThis blog is authored by me, Omar White. Learn more about me here Archives
September 2015
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