Would you buy a raspberry Pi based multiplexor/datalogger if it was easy?
- Thread starter GHA
- Start date
Joseph Bloggs
New member
Some of us don't like to read long, boring anchor threads, but we do not all come and tell you so when you post another one.
GHA
Well-known member
I use a logic level mosfet to run the pump from main diesel tank into the refleks diesel heater header tank. More than once missed it on a kitchen timer and made such a horrible mess. Now controlled by a node red dashboard to set a timer for a (selectable) few minutes so don't have to concentrate on one thing for such a long time
Music goes through the Pi as well with a hifiberry amp, streaming or playback from sd card, sleep timer in a node red dash for that as well. Node red ROCKS!!
I find so often useful things pop up as you go along that you simply won't consider until the day. Best to keep as open a mind as possible. In easyeda it's simple to bung in a load of spare header holes so the option is there. Usually have spare headers for every pin so you can get to them if you want later on.
AngusMcDoon
Well-known member
GHA
Well-known member
So without celery for a moment, since there a few experienced electronics guys around - voltage measurement >
any thoughts on putting an op amp as a differential amplifier in front of each ADC input? need a resister network anyway to drop the voltage down for the ADC so the inputs could be below Vdd, then run in 2 wires to the battery, 1 to neg, 1 to pos. Gets rid of any errors from voltage drop down the ground.
And would a polyfuse be OK on the pos to the ADC, would that lead to any errors?
TIA
any thoughts on putting an op amp as a differential amplifier in front of each ADC input? need a resister network anyway to drop the voltage down for the ADC so the inputs could be below Vdd, then run in 2 wires to the battery, 1 to neg, 1 to pos. Gets rid of any errors from voltage drop down the ground.
And would a polyfuse be OK on the pos to the ADC, would that lead to any errors?
TIA
Neeves
Well-known member
Actually I thought GHA was genuinely interested in his initial post in identifying who might be interested - AND - why (the other side of the coin) why they might not be interested.
It turns out he is not in the least bit interested nor their reasons in those who might waver in their interest or have no interest at all.
Unlike others I would defend GHA's right to post as much as he desires on the topic - I find it fascinating that he (and others) has such passion. I have no concerns at the frequency of his posts on said subject. I fully recognise there is a genuine interest in the topic amongst a very small group of people - characterised and limited to the very few who are making positive contributions, maybe 10 people.....?
I suspect there are factorially more people interested in that other boating topics - anchors and anchoring, exhaust elbows, corrosion, copper coat (or antifouling in general) and washing rope.
Most people are able to devine from the thread title whether it is a topic of interest to them and are able to ignore those topics they find boring and make no complaint. Odd that people feel the need to complain - they might need some lessons in being selective in their reading matter - sad they read and are bored - self inflicted harm.
I do find it interesting that some have found anchors and anchoring of sufficient interest (not boring) they designed and marketed their own anchor - Rocna, Vulcan, Viking, Spade, Knox, Excel, SARCA etc come to mind - but no-one seems to have sufficient incentive to make what GHA is proposing.
Jonathan
It turns out he is not in the least bit interested nor their reasons in those who might waver in their interest or have no interest at all.
Unlike others I would defend GHA's right to post as much as he desires on the topic - I find it fascinating that he (and others) has such passion. I have no concerns at the frequency of his posts on said subject. I fully recognise there is a genuine interest in the topic amongst a very small group of people - characterised and limited to the very few who are making positive contributions, maybe 10 people.....?
I suspect there are factorially more people interested in that other boating topics - anchors and anchoring, exhaust elbows, corrosion, copper coat (or antifouling in general) and washing rope.
Most people are able to devine from the thread title whether it is a topic of interest to them and are able to ignore those topics they find boring and make no complaint. Odd that people feel the need to complain - they might need some lessons in being selective in their reading matter - sad they read and are bored - self inflicted harm.
I do find it interesting that some have found anchors and anchoring of sufficient interest (not boring) they designed and marketed their own anchor - Rocna, Vulcan, Viking, Spade, Knox, Excel, SARCA etc come to mind - but no-one seems to have sufficient incentive to make what GHA is proposing.
Jonathan
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GHA
Well-known member
Oh lighten up for goodness sake, your nose is out of joint cos you are being made fun of and can't tale it. So lash out pretending it's a sort of well reasoned & logical response. Kidding no one.
Only making it worse for yourself.. ....
Next anchor thread you derail within moments there'll be celery coming from all directions.
Last paragraph is wrong as well, good few similar systems out there which all cost an arm and a leg. And can be done for a fraction of the cost with bits off ebay. Same isn't true for anchors.
Don't be too mad when you reply now, cruisersforum kicked you off for shouting & screaming....
Wow, that blue touch paper should burn well
AngusMcDoon
Well-known member
I made and sold over 1400 of my YAPP designs until I stopped because it was taking up too much of my life leaving little time to read long dirges on anchors that I enjoy so much.
ylop
Well-known member
that is very often the way with "Open Source" projects - people are doing what they want to do and sharing it with the world if the world wants it, rather than a commercial venture where if you don't identify the user needs correctly you go out of business.
I don't think you should presume that the only people who are interested in a topic are those who post. Plenty of "lurkers" around, especially on a topic like DIY electronics where both the personality types might be a bit less in your face than others and those who are not confident are quickly bemused by the terminology.
I'm not sue any of your other niche topics actually get more genuine interest.
and yet here you are on yet another post on this thread telling the world you aren't interested!
there's loads of people made / marketing electronics in a similar ilk to GHA. Some fancy expensive solutions. Some niche techy solutions. Several companies exist just to service the hobby electronics people adding stuff to raspberry pi's. In addition lots more who aren't commercially focussed and just freely distribute their designs; to me its more interesting that there aren't any (that I know of) open source anchor designs or simple ways to get your own anchor design made up. Given the seemingly endless arguments about which is best - you'd have thought the "community" would have come up with a way to cost-effectively make incremental improvements.
boomerangben
Well-known member
I have a crazy idea of buying a cheap Chinese load cell (for measuring how heavy your bags/fish are), somehow wiring it to a Raspberry, logging the data of my anchor rode tension with simultaneous data on accelerations (linear and angular) heading, position, wind speed and direction. Ultimately it would be nice to provide some real world data on anchoring loads and how they vary with conditions.
I have no experience of electronics but the idea of learning a new thing interests me. The concept of cheap Openplotter type stuff on a low power consumption Pi type device for a small (20’) boat with no electrics save a power bank to charge my phone is also very interesting.
much of what has been said on thread has gone way over my head, including the celery reference but it might be fun learning. I might even ultimately marry RPi threads with anchoring……..
I have no experience of electronics but the idea of learning a new thing interests me. The concept of cheap Openplotter type stuff on a low power consumption Pi type device for a small (20’) boat with no electrics save a power bank to charge my phone is also very interesting.
much of what has been said on thread has gone way over my head, including the celery reference but it might be fun learning. I might even ultimately marry RPi threads with anchoring……..
GHA
Well-known member
Ahead of you there mate
Accelerometers, tablets and sailing
Another madcap project sitting on the sidelines. And yes, it would be absolutely fascinating, not too difficult to do, trickiest bit prob be mechanical. I've been in the lifting game since a teenager, rope tension meters exist by making a slight deflection in the line and going from there. Hard to calibrate very accurately but wouldn't matter so long as the data errors weren't too large and repeatable. Then have a box near the snubber tie off point bending it up a bit. Retired another kitchen scale covered in epoxy paint yesterday so got a spare load cell now
.Openplotter has the Pypilot autoplilt software built in which uses 9doff compass sensor, has accell, magnetic & gyro data 10 times a second. Would be fascinating, add wind speed & direction a well,
ICM20948 9DoF Motion Sensor Breakout - Pimoroni
Couple of clicks and it's all constantly written in a time based database for making pretty graphs.
(celery was a bit of an oblique metaphor, if some people are having a chat about all the different things you can do with celery it's a bit pointless to keep butting in with "I don't like celery!!!"
)GHA
Well-known member
Thinking bit more about this - you could do a lot even without a Pi if you take a laptop to the boat with you, signalk is easy to install on windows or linux, so even cheaper you could build the box with just an ESP32, set up your laptop as a wifi network and the esp sends everything to that into signalk.
No programming required but you would need to load the code onto the ESP.
Does anyone run signalk on their boat laptops?
No programming required but you would need to load the code onto the ESP.
Does anyone run signalk on their boat laptops?
PaulRainbow
Well-known member
Obviously aimed in my direction.
FYI I have a RPi. N2K data, solar controller and battery monitor are connected to a powered USB hub, which feeds everything into the Pi. Using InfluxDb and Grafana i can see detailed information about my batteries and solar power. SignalK deals with all of the other data.
The Pi connects to a router, which makes everything available to any device onboard that has a web browser, including the two 10.4" tablets at the lower helm (nicely protected from the weather and Sunlight). Each tablet can also be used for any internet based purposes, email and both have charts and software to act as fully stand alone chart plotters, or they can mirror the fixed chart plotter on the flybridge.
The main computer is a laptop, connected to the 40" TV screen in the saloon with an HDMI cable and controlled by a wireless keyboard and mouse. This can also connect to the Pi via the router and do all of the usual laptop things. TV, radio etc is provided by 5G mobile data throughout the boat. The laptop also has OpenCPN, with full UK chart coverage and it's own GPS dongle, a 40" chart plotter is nice for passage planning.
In contrast, the flybridge plotter is a 12" touchscreen Garmin MFD. I like to be able to see things in bright sunlight and not have to worry about rain, so a cheap tablet isn't the best solution here.
Only had this boat for 6 months, still a lot to do. One thing on the list is to get all of the engine sensors, tacho's, fuel and water tank senders etc onto the N2K network, so it's available on the plotter or the two 4" displays at the lower helm, it also feeds it to the Pi so will be available to everything else over wifi.
I'm not stuck on one technology, or purely focused on one price range, like a needle stuck in the groove of a record. I'm happy to embrace them all, from a £50 Pi to a £3K MFD, whichever is the most cost effective and appropriate for the task in hand.
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ylop
Well-known member
Are you still trying to make the lowest barrier to entry system or now the cheapest? People who would find a pi/open plotter solution intimidating are not going to be messing with an ESP32 etc.
GHA
Well-known member
Not trying to do anything with a fixed goal, just trying & seeing the lay of the land along the way, then do what makes most sense, keeping an open mind every step of the way.
Mark Twain was the king of quotes >
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
Better to deal with things as they evolve rather than making your mind up with doom and gloom about things which are unknowable today.
The most common biggest stumbling block of any opensource project from an outsiders point of view isn't that it's too complicated. It's that there is usually next to no documentation if any.
This isn't anything yet, your consistent err, slightly glass half empty view about things which don't exist even as a design isn't actually very helpful...
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ylop
Well-known member
OK, I manage software engineers everyday. I’ll offer you some free advice then but out!
- if you want to do this because it is fun for you and you don’t really care about servicing a “market need” then crack on, you don’t need the YBW people’s input and you can do whatever you want because you want to. Lots of people making software and hardware like this - they get their satisfaction from the design / build process, or it fulfilling their personal technical need.
- if you enjoy seeing other people use the things you built, you need to properly understand their needs and set proper design goals and stick to them not hop around. You also need to be really open/realistic about what real/ordinary users want/value - this is probably the thing my developers find hardest. It’s why so many software developers make tools for software development - it’s the market they understand.
GHA
Well-known member
Thanks.
BTW - which programming language do you use for ESP's?
Indeed, that would be a step too far for many who much prefer to get their EPS's built already like the handful of multiplexers out there already.
But if you give up and don't try you'll never know...
AngusMcDoon
Well-known member
Over the years I've being doing this I've moved from the latter to the former. The early open source devices I produced which I published here were simple and did one thing only, like a Seatalk to USB converter. They ran bare bones on simple cheap 8 bit controllers, but they became a victim of their own success with more demand than I could cope with. My later projects are vastly more complex with multiple interfaces, wired and wireless, internet connection, multiple sensors and running on 32 bit platforms with a real time OS. I don't know if anyone else makes them, and I don't mind if they don't. I do them for my needs and because they are a fun learning experience.
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GHA
Well-known member
Also I think now there is a bit of middle ground with signalk/openplotter.
Openplotter does the job of setting it all up & signalk isn't too different from a mobile phone with a multitude of apps for such a variety of devices so a simple design on easyeda is basically just a tidy patch bay, other people have done all the coding already.
Be nice to have header holes to allow use of an ESP as well/or stand alone should anyone want a tidy option to go that route.
