Help with designing a new project?

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bkk
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by bkk »

Hello,
As of yet I do not know much about electronics but I would like to share with you my thought of integrating capacitors into the system.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

I originally started pondering this idea over a video I saw on u-tube, please check it out here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3x_kYq3mHM

So I looked up the ultra capacitor and found they come in a multitude of sizes, please view.

http://www.maxwell.com/products/ultraca ... urst-power

http://www.maxwell.com/products/ultraca ... _guide.pdf

http://pdf.directindustry.com/pdf/maxwe ... 48000.html

Then I began to wonder if a set resistors before and after the capacitor or capacitor bank could actually replace a control board if they were sized properly at rate of charge and rate of discharge for the needed timing of the pump. Having the battery as back-up of course if needed at night so forth. Is this feasibly possible?

Thanks for your consideration,

Bryan

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zener
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by zener »

The pumps you and lyndon both linked are all in the ballpark of what you would need. One thing to keep in mind is the specs are not gospel. You may find they flow a little more or less and they can run at other voltages at other flows. So don't get hung up on the exact numbers but they are a good indication of what the pump can do. One thing to point out is what they said about those pumps lyndon linked "don't run without water". So again you have to sense when there is no water. You can't just run 15 min every hour, unless you know for certain there will always be water and it won't run out. In the end you have to find a pump that can do what you want, and pick batteries, charger, panel to give the voltage and Ah you need. So Maybe the ideal pump is 4V but can you find one that works for your application? Otherwise maybe you use a 6V system? Or 12V? I don't know economies of a 4V systems vs 6V vs 12V, etc, with regard to the solar panels and chargers that are commonly available.

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zener
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by zener »

As far as the Supercaps go, they are basically a cross between a battery and a capacitor. So you could say it is a very good capacitor, or a very poor battery. Of course that is a gross simplification. You can use them in place of batteries in some applications, as the video suggests. The advantages are their long life and low internal resistance, compared to batteries. The disadvantages are mainly cost. WIth regard to making a simple RC timer, they would have no advantage over any other capacitor.

bkk
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by bkk »

Thanks Zener, I believe that the 4 volt pump is ideal to start with. I liked the battery you chose and I hope the the solar panel and charger that is in the kit (http://learn.adafruit.com/usb-dc-and-so ... r/overview) is all compatible with the operational needs of the pump. The water in the bottom reservoir is not meant to run low, actually if it ran for only 1 minute every 15 minutes or 1 minute every 1/2 hour depending on the battery capacity or if it could sense if the sun was not as bright or clouds it could run once an hour but if it was shining bright if it could run every 15 minutes or half hour. I don't know if that is getting to complicated or if it is worth it but would be nice if controller could distinguish if it was not charging much it could run less often but never more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time. Basically
This kit- http://learn.adafruit.com/usb-dc-and-so ... r/overview
This Pump-
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/59567 ... _Pump.html
and what ever control operation to make the pump run 1-2 minutes every 1/2 hour or so.

I would like to put this together as soon as possible and see if it works.

Peace,
Bryan

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zener
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by zener »

Well, there are some issues. First of all that product is #390 I think and it is just the charger, not a kit. You have to buy the battery and solar panel separately. And there is no stock on #390 right now... So maybe the AF people can help you pick out some parts that will work.

The pump is from Alibaba which is not like Radio Shack. It is some guy with a factory (or some land where he could build a factory). Did you notice the min order qty? At work we try to filter out Alibaba since I think you can type just about anything and 10 people on Alibaba say they can sell you a 1000 (usually more) of them.

So you probably need to find a different pump. Sorry I'm not a pump expert. I usually look on Ebay.

bkk
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by bkk »

OK, I am confident I can get all the parts. Lets say I have them all right here in my parlor except for the control board and a diagram on how the whole thing is wired together. How are we doing? I appreciate you sticking with me through this post. My question is now are you willing to finish it? You mentioned an audrino. Now I am understanding what you said about writing code. Is that the issue? that the controller needs to be programed with code that needs to be written to make the operation work? How do I go about that? Is it complicated can I learn in an afternoon or weekend. Does Adafruit sell kits or books to learn? or is there like an electronic BANNED to write the code on a controller and how much would it cost to have someone do that? Where would I find them?

Thanks,
Bryan

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tastewar
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by tastewar »

For Arduino, you could start at http://www.arduino.cc/ -- there's *tons* of good info there. But also check out http://learn.adafruit.com/ where there are tutorials covering all sorts of electronics and microcontroller topics. I believe this book (http://www.adafruit.com/products/1019) comes highly recommended as well, though I've not seen it in person.

How long it takes you to learn is entirely dependent on you experience, aptitude, and drive. You will find help here for the issues you encounter, but if you're wanting someone to do it for you, there is also the adafruit jobs board at http://www.adafruit.com/jobs/

Cheers!

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zener
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by zener »

Tastewar gave you a really good answer on the Arduino. It is not something you learn in an afternoon. If you have never done programming of any kind then it could be a steep learning curve. If you have done some programming then not quite as steep. If you know C then a little less steep. But it is something you can spend years learning to do well. If you wanted something much simpler then maybe some kind of float switch that just runs the pump when there is water and turns off when there isn't.

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lyndon
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by lyndon »

To add to what Zener said:
Whether or not you want to BANNED this to a BANNED, you'll need to specify how the pump should be controlled. As I read your last few posts, you have quite a few "would be nice" type statements. That's great when you're doing the work yourself and you are quite experienced. But if you're trying to explain to someone else how to do it, or if you're just learning to do it yourself, then it's much easier if you give yourself a simple, straightforward specification. e.g., I want to run this particular pump using this particular power source for a period of one minute every 15 minutes.

Once that's done, you can add "don't run the pump if a float switch shows reservoir is empty" and later "run for one minute every 45 minutes if the voltage on the solar cell is less than 3.5V"

Doing it in this fashion makes for a progressively more complex controller but at each stage you have something that is known to work before adding a new feature.

My (unsolicited :-) ) advice: find a suitable pump and some wire & a few batteries and tubing and play with it. See how fast it pumps water as you change the battery voltage. Once you get that working, then you can add the solar cells and experiment with them on sunny days, cloudy days, partly rainy days, etc. After this then consider adding timers or Arduino or something else to control. By that point you'll have an excellent understanding of how the various parts work together before the complexity of electronics is added.

In my experiences building stuff for other people who are not engineers, there is less confusion, disappointment and mismanaged expectations when going from simple to complex in multiple steps than all at once.

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chuckz
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by chuckz »

bkk wrote:You mentioned an audrino. Now I am understanding what you said about writing code. Is that the issue? that the controller needs to be programed with code that needs to be written to make the operation work? How do I go about that? Is it complicated can I learn in an afternoon or weekend. Does Adafruit sell kits or books to learn? or is there like an electronic BANNED to write the code on a controller and how much would it cost to have someone do that? Where would I find them?

Thanks,
Bryan
You could learn BASIC for microcontrollers. I think it is a little easier than learning "C".

Swordfish Basic and Great Cow Basic exist for the Pic microcontroller family.

Basic use to be a high school and college course that you took. It was also the language of 8 bit computers in the 80's. If you took a command for each day and tried to write a program to make it work, you would be on your way in learning programming. Learning how to program is a devotion to computers as sports fans are to cable and their team because they get their programming manual like Sports Illustrated and they have the game on because they are studying their team.. The idea that people just pick it up doesn't happen unless you know two computer languages or more. In other words, it takes hours to learn something so unless you have that devotion, it doesn't always work out for people because I remember tutoring my classmates in school so if you were to write a program to input numbers and come out with an average, you would have to have an idea how to do it by hand before you could go and tell a central processing unit how to do it. You have to learn about variables and strings and so forth.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

You mentioned an audrino. Now I am understanding what you said about writing code. Is that the issue? that the controller needs to be programed with code that needs to be written to make the operation work? How do I go about that? Is it complicated can I learn in an afternoon or weekend. Does Adafruit sell kits or books to learn?
We do have books: http://www.adafruit.com/products/1019
http://www.adafruit.com/products/263
Kits: http://www.adafruit.com/category/17_64
and a whole lot of on-line tutorials for learning how to program and use the Arduino: http://learn.adafruit.com/search?q=arduino+lesson

bkk
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by bkk »

OK Awesome, thank you all very much for your input it is greatly appreciated and it is a enough to keep me busy for a minute digesting what all is here. Hope to put in an order soon.
Peace,
Bryan

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Renate
 
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Re: Help with designing a new project?

Post by Renate »

Not to beat a dead horse, but regarding the super cap question of a week ago:

Using large capacitors for timing is always a bad idea.
Large electrolytics have lousy tolerance on their capacitance and leakage to boot.

Even back in the old days (like 20 years ago) if you needed to time for an hour,
you would use a smaller capacitor (1 uF or less) to run an oscillator that feeds a divider.
Besides the precision and size aspect, this scheme makes it easier to clear or set the timer without large exchanges of energy.

Nowadays this would most normally be done by a microprocessor running off a crystal oscillator.

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