Progress! Sensor v2 mounted
This weekend Andrew and I worked on getting the new sensor installed.
Other improvements:
- A custom PCB was designed and manufactured for this sensor
- It uses a single 3.7v lithium polymer battery so needs no voltage regulators.
- It doesn’t have the massive battery drain I designed into the first one ;-)
- It’s much smaller
- There’s a Dallas DS18B20 temperature sensor which compensates for the velocity of sound in different temperatures (surprisingly it makes a difference of centimetres). This could also provide a unique ID for each device later. And of course a temperature reading
- Code and some schematics available on a new github project: https://github.com/oxfloodnet
The mounting uses strong magnets to hold it in place instead of velcro strips, which is interesting, but not cheap. It has a piece of wire wrapped around it in case it becomes dislodged (we didn’t have any string). We need to work on the mounting but the priority was to get radio range and battery life tested.
For now it’s still in situ and stable. It’s currently tweeting heavily to a private account but a visualisation should be available soon. The main aim at the moment is to produce a viable outdoor device and then bring in all the data.
More updates coming soon.