• More baby steps

    Greg Miller • 02/02/2015 at 15:38 • 0 comments

    It's been a while since I last posted any updates, and to be honest, this project hasn't been high on my list of things to do. However, I've recently started plugging away at re-learning C/C++, which I haven't worked with in twelve years, and figuring out the XBee portion of this project.

    In order to do this, I've put together some simple sketches at https://github.com/gjmiller/Arduino-Examples. One covers structs and dynamic memory allocation, and the other covers the reception of data via XBee and dynamic memory allocation. They aren't complicated, but they've been useful in getting me into the groove of this project again.

    Next up, assembling the CC3000 shield from Adafruit and testing it out.

  • LCD Backlight Control

    Greg Miller • 04/22/2014 at 20:52 • 0 comments

    By digging through the Arduino forum and some other sites, I've found that the secret to controlling the LCD's backlight via PWM is to use a transistor, resistor, and diode between the PWM pin and pin 16 on the LCD.

    Now...onto XBEE!

  • Baby Steps

    Greg Miller • 03/27/2014 at 22:22 • 1 comment

    So far, I've ordered the parts and tools that I think I need to be able to pull this off.

    I've not soldered components as small as electronics before, so I also ordered a MintyBoost kit from Adafruit to learn and practice on. I've completed it and it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.

    I'm working my way through making sure that the parts for the base station are working and am making sure that I'm familiar with each part by itself. I've been able to make the temperature/humidity sensor (DHT22), the barometric pressure/temperature sensor (BMP180 breakout from Adafruit), and 20x4 LCD screen work on their own without much difficulty.

    I'm currently in the process of working on getting the LCD to switch from displaying temperature, to displaying humidity, to turning off when a button is pressed. Apparently shutting off the LCD entirely isn't totally trivial, but I think I've found a way to do it with some extra components and some extra code.