Author Archives: Skye Sweeney

Drilling and populating the SUNDAR PCB

Last night I stopped at Harbor Freight and picked up a ‘set’ of solid carbide drills. To call them a set is a silly as each package has 20 random sized bits. But since the packaging is clear, you can … Continue reading

Posted in FIRST LEGO League, Robotic DVD burner, SUNDAR | 1 Comment

SUNDAR PCB using Press-and-Peel

I was unwilling to send out the PCB for the SUNDAR radar head to a fab house. I only need one and why spend precious money that I could use elsewhere. So I tried out the Press-and-Peel method for etching … Continue reading

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SUNDAR update #2

I took a few weeks off for vacation and to get my son ready to go to Europe for two years to complete his master’s program. I have a few things left to clean up before I can start back into … Continue reading

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SUNDAR update

Today I replaced the opamps with the new ones I just got from Analog Devices. These were SMT parts and I had to solder them to DIP adapters. But they share the same pin outs as a DIP, so the … Continue reading

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All is not lost with GPS

So after looking at the GPS data I collected, I figured I would try another data collection in 2D mode with the know altitude set. That would allow me to use one more satellite for horizontal position. I collected 12 … Continue reading

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GPS error

Towards my goal of entering the AVC competition in 2014, I have been evaluating GPS units. The current model I am looking at is a u-Blox LEA-6H with a patch antenna. The first test I tried was to hold the … Continue reading

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A Storm!

Had a storm come through the area when I was at work. Luckily I had the Tautic board running and collecting data. I have just spent some time processing the data and I am now rather hopeful that this might … Continue reading

Posted in Lightning detector, Projects | 2 Comments

AS3935 “Striker” software update

I was notified my Striker code on GitHub had a defect (bug). The contributor posted a patch that I have implemented.  You can find the updated code at www.github.com/skyesweeney/striker

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Opamp trouble

Been working on the two stage opamp for my Sundar. The first stage takes the current from the photodiode and turns it into a voltage with a certain amount of gain. The second stage applies a second gain as well … Continue reading

Posted in AVC, Projects, SUNDAR | 2 Comments

SUNDAR update

Been working on my SUNDAR in what little free time I have these days. Last night my Digikey order came in and I was able to get the dual channel digital potentiometer working. This will be used for a software … Continue reading

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