November 2019 Meeting Report

Air Filter Timer. STEVE

The mens' shed air filter has an infra red (IR) remote, so you can't just turn the power on & off from the socket.

An external automatic timer needs to re-create the IR signals to control the unit. Two complications were

1) identifying the IR code format used (RC5?, Panasonic?, LG?)

There's about 15 main ones to try!

2) the filter control on/off is a single button toggle not separate button.

This means the external timer cannot confirm if the unit is actually on or off, and things can get out of sync.

Please see attached presentation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zOCTLDzQC9PXRuehiT2hJKp6aq9Cv84e/view?usp=sharing

Which 8 Bit Microcontroller ? ANDREW

To explore a modern 8 bit very low power microcontroller, as a sensor node controller.

A DIL chip configuration PIC16F18326 along with MCP7940 RTC and I2C EEPROM to fit the

smallest jiffy box was considered using DIPTRACE as the layout tool. A LAN radio module would complete

a sensor node. However other options (Bluefruit LE Micro, WiPy3.0) became evident. These 32 bit arm

architecture microcontrollers use stripped down versions of python to

provide fully integrated solutions. A simpler design using only a PIC16F18326 as a low power slave node for a line powered

sensor network now looks a better way to go.

nRF24L01+ transceivers & Arduino Pro Minis. ALEX

Demonstrated a base station transmitting pings to a remote unit (both Arduino Nanos) which replied to each ping to provide a real-life range and reliability test.

He also showed an application which used the nRF24L01+ as a scanner to display active wifi traffic.

Full details here :

https://alw1746.github.io/projects/NRF24L01/index.htm