We finished the east half of the walkway back June, and focused on other priorities since then. So we finally got around to building out the west half now. And with our large push cart built, the workers have a much easier time of moving the stones and sand around. The west side of the…
We built our own push cart
I mentioned previously that I wanted a push cart or wagon of some sort to push heavy things around the land on the walkway. We saw a nice example with the workers that brought the trees. So our workers quickly whipped up a useful little push cart from a pair of tuk-tuk wheels and some…
First “smart light” deployed on the walkway
This has been ready for testing for a few weeks now, but I’ve been quite busy. But I finally sat down and tested out the walkway “smart light” post we built. It is working quite well. Here is a picture as it was getting dark: Actually it started raining right about then, so this was…
Custom built gate lock
We built a short fence around BaanMae for keeping our actual pet dogs (the ones from our current house) in at night. We don’t normally let them in the house at night, and it would be nice to keep them separate from the pack that took over our land during construction until we are sure…
Motion sensors don’t like acrylic/plexiglass
I thought the walkway lights were ready to install. On the test bench, everything worked fine. But every time we assembled the lights, the motion sensors stopped reacting to motion. For the past few days, we assumed something was getting screwed up in the sensitivity tuning of the PIR sensor. But pommm pondered on Monday…
Successful first test of “smart lights”
Having built up and tested the peer-to-peer RS485 network protocol, it was only a matter of coding for a few days to write up the firmware for these “smart lights”. Here is a quick video capture of an early test: The 3 lights on the desk are the top part of the lamp posts. They…
Very successful first peer-to-peer protocol test
I’ve coded up a simple test of the peer-to-peer protocol I’ve been discussing recently. Here is a picture of the set-up: For this test, I have 3 light posts transmitting short 10byte packets as fast as they possibly can given the constraints of the protocol. These constraints basically reduce to: You can’t send a packet…
Please stop interrupting me (more analysis of AVR interrupts)
I have recently been working on designing a peer-to-peer RS485 network protocol with collision avoidance (and maybe even collision detection) for the walkway lights on the land. (Link to last two posts: here and here.) As mentioned in my last post, even though each device is doing its best to detect if another device is…
Building a simple but efficient peer-to-peer RS485 network protocol
In my last post, I mentioned that I am working on a peer-to-peer network protocol for the RS485 network that I am using to communicate between my “smart walkway lights”. In today’s post, I will continue with a general outline of the approach I plan to take. This is all very nerdy, so if you…
Walkway lights, network protocols, masters, and slaves
It has been a bit quieter than usual on this blog recently. It isn’t that we haven’t been up to much. Quite the contrary, it has been very busy. But much of the business (busy-ness) has been either at work. And the land work has mostly just been putting finishing touches on projects that have…
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
Categories