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Detecting button presses

A project log for Low-Cost Solid-State Cosmic Ray Observatory

Multiple nodes detect photons to within nanoseconds to analyze cosmic ray air showers and help solve the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin paradox.

aelias36aelias36 08/15/2014 at 01:590 Comments

modified the Arduino program to output the raw time for both of its interrupt pins. In lieu of a working gamma detector, (as the op amps haven't arrived yet,) I used a button press to simulate a pulse.

I added a small parallel capacitor to the button in order to remove any contact bounce. I also wrote some javascript to compute the length of time between the button press and last GPS pulse.

Next, I need to have the Arduino read the serial data from the GPS, which includes not only location but also time of the last sent pulse. Considering how easy it is to implement timing measurement, I think I'll try to use one microprocessor rather than two. If I can get everything, including networking, working on a single Arduino, that would reduce a lot of the cost I originally estimated.

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