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Addicted Hobbiest in Wyoming

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Post  Ike Mon May 03, 2010 12:17 pm

Hey all,

I'm an electrical engineer and admittedly an addicted hobbyist who has been inspired by these forums to make my next project a laminar fountain! I've always had a love for water and waterfalls so building a laminar fountain seems like a perfectly natural thing for me to take up. I've got almost all my parts ordered already and they should be getting here this week so I'm really anxious to get started!

I currently live in Wyoming with my wife (where there is still snow on the ground) but am on a long term project in Indianapolis where I will be traveling during the week and where I will most likely be doing most of my work. I do process automation (programming PLCs for assembly lines and formulation processes) for a small contracting firm and I enjoy it quite a bit.

Being an EE my expertise is much more in the electronics part of this project so I'm hoping that once I get going my contribution to the community will come in the form some circuit diagrams and programs. I have some early schematics and programs for both a pump control circuit (to vary the length of the water arc) and some high power LED driver circuits. I also plan to connect to my pump/LED control board via ethernet which I will tie in to my home network and build a webpage that will let me control everything (control via webpage on my blackberry for remote automation is the goal) But of course that's a ways down the road and I need to get my nozzle to actually work first Razz

Anyway, if anyone needs some help with circuits and micro controller programming hit me up with a thread on the forums and I'll do my best to at least point you to useful information the web. Most of my experience is with PIC chips from Microchip.

I look forward to working with you all and hopefully in a few weeks I'll have some pictures of my own to post on the site!

Ike

Ike
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Post  John Mon May 03, 2010 12:53 pm

Ike! Welcome!

THOSE GOALS ARE VERY AMBITIOUS!!!! For me that would that more than this lifetime. I can't wait too see the first home laminar show all programmed from a blackberry (or perhaps an iphone app???? Very Happy )

I've been programming pics for a couple of years and have had some success. I can blink a LED....and ....make it stay on.....and well......make it turn off..... Very Happy No, I can do somethings in pic, but I haven't had a real program that does everything that I want. It mostly just does simple functions, and starts to evolve until I get to interrupts. Then it stops.

I program in pic basic. What do you use?
John
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Post  liteglow Mon May 03, 2010 1:52 pm

Hi and Welcome to the forum cheers cheers

Your goal is not so hard to accomplish :-)
I have a 16 output relay board that is connected to the USB and my computer.
The USB board is controlled by a simple little program on my computer.
And to remote control that software from whatever computer\mobile device should not be so hard to do :-)

From the USB relay board I can control; cutter, rgb light, pumps, etc....

:-)
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Post  Ike Mon May 03, 2010 4:27 pm

It is a little ambitious lol. I'm probably getting ahead of myself but the wild and random dreams are part of what keeps me motivated to keep going on a project. What's a hobby if you can't dream big? Cool

The goods news is that I can pull a lot of that functionality from some of my other past projects. (See, its good to have lots of projects lol. Now if only someone can explain that to my wife...) The pump control should just be a modified AC Dimmer circuit which I have from animating my Christmas lights and the ethernet communication I have some of already just from goofing around with it a while back (crap, I hope I still have those program files lol)

Fail or succeed I plan on making a big fun mess on the way there and as long as I get to do that I'm happy jocolor

Ike
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