PTSense

(updated: 2017-7-6 - currently finishing development of PTSensePC and doing full test)

Purpose: PTSense is a pocket-sized device that measures and logs temperature, humidity, pressure, light, UV, sound, motion, and gas CO2 + TVOC.

Overview

The hardware is based on the Silicon Labs Thunderboard Sense. Additional hardware includes:

- Digilent PmodOLEDrgb 96x64 OLED

- Sparkfun PowerCell (PRT11231) battery charger and power supply

- LiPoly battery

- pushbuttons

- enclosure

In Rev. 1, the Bluetooth wireless interface (source code) has been removed since GCC is being used for development and at the time of development their Bluetooth stack was created only for the IAR tools. It is anticipated that Silicon Labs will eventually make a GCC compatible Bluetooth stack and Rev. 2 of PTSense will include wireless communications. If not, then perhaps a proprietary stack will be used.

Real-time measurements can be displayed on the screen.

Measurements can be logged to memory and then retrieved via the USB interface.

The device can be powered either via the USB port or by it's battery. The battery is charged via the USB port.

Here's are photos of the first prototype:

TBD: photo

Simple configuration can be set via the user interface. Detailed configuration is set via the USB interface (see the command interface in the attached document) --- TBD: will also be support via the wireless interface in future revision. A Java application, called PTSensePC, has been designed to provide a human usable interface. It is very basic in that it sends command and receives displays/processes the response. When the log file is downloaded, PTSensePC includes the ability to graph the data for a quick look, or the raw data can be exported to a CSV file for more thorough analysis using sophisticated charting tools. PTSensePC is developed using JavaFx, JFreeChart, JavaFX Scene Builder, and NetBeans 8.2.

This project is very similar to the Pocket Tool project (actually, the Thunderboard Sense came out right at the time when I was about to get started on the hardware assembly of the Pocket Tool - the circuit was designed and the PCB was fab'd but components were not mounted, and no firmware had been started).

Download (see Attachments):

TBD

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