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A project log for The Brita Project

Never reach for an empty pitcher again

talofer99talofer99 08/28/2019 at 09:580 Comments

In our last group meeting we made some great progress. 

 The first thing we did is to add NTP to our system. The main reason is to be able to track and notify on things based on time. 

We added output on the web interface for the time. We still need to work out the Day light saving issue – but we decided will add a way to handle it via the web interface. 

 The next thing we tackled was getting some data out of the system, so we can get stat. We setup a channel on ThingSpeak and experimented for a while on getting the data there, and setting up nice widget that we placed in the wen interface. 

 Once that was sorted out, we added a post to the ThingSpeak each time a refill is done. So we measure the weight on the start of the fill and we know what is the weight on the end and its 1 to 1 from grams to milliliters – and this value is posted. 

 We then went on doing a full run and you can see in the video we noticed 2 issues. the update of the display on the web interface is not refreshing fast enough to show the data from the ThingSpeak in real life – but I think we can live with that, but the other issue is more urgent. 

 Once we place a full pitcher on the scale for the first few seconds it consider it not full and try to refill it. 

 We did notice that the reading from the HX711 are not that stable – but it was in grams and we did not care all that much. But now – we do – so I think will add some low pass filter and maybe adjust the top threshold for cutting the power to the pump comparing to what we consider as full pitcher (a 2% diff will solve the problem). 

 So stay tune, more to come soon.

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