I love voiding warranties.
I first built the "manual" version, and we were able to detect the change of mass by adding individual grains of salt to the scale. Each one caused a 0.004 volt change on the sensing voltmeter. Using this info, and some of the ideas from the automatic version, I proceeded to make my own version of the PID controlled scale.
I used an Atmel Mega48, and a tweaked version of the Orangutan Library for Pololu. I can get away with this because I bought a Baby Orangutan and a regular Orangutan controller from them at Robothon 2007. I did the first prototype of the code in the Baby O processor, but then decided I wanted it for another project. The Mega48 is smaller, but otherwise identical to the Mega168. I added a few routines to the LCD code, and patterned my UART functions off of the same.
I tried a new wiring technique on the circuit board for this project (jumpers on top), and didn't really like it that much. I'll go back to pseudo-traces on the next project.
You can't see much in that photo, but I am using A MAX233 for RS-232 conversion, as well as creating some negative voltage for LCD contrast (It's an OLD LCD. Newer ones only need Ground for contrast). I also have a 5 volt precision reference (MAX675), a really nice 16-bit DAC (MAX541), and a basic Quad Op-Amp for amplification. The closed box looks WAY better, don't you think?
Shown on the screen is a very early version of the code. Here is the mounting arrangement for the scale itself. You can see I took a slightly different tack that the original article, but have borrowed some ideas from them. The coil on the right is actually a counterweight, to (mostly) offset the weight of the glass coverslip and holder.
In the next update, I should have an actual measurement and some code details.
No comments:
Post a Comment