The real root cause (maybe?)

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Just when you think you understand everything, life gives you a left hook. Continue reading →

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Sanity check for lightning detector

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

For the most part, my lightning detector is working well. I get the sporadic false alarm from the furnace kicking on or a florescent light fixture turning on or off. These false alarms are taken care of because they do not happen that often. The algorithm needs to see a few strike events before it pulls the power on my computers. But one day I was vacuuming and my detector went nuts and shut down the computer. Continue reading →

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A comment on comments

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

I have been updating this build log for about a month. Very few of the comments I have gotten have been related to the material. They have all been commercial spam or feeble attempts to make a “good job” comment and have their website show up in the signature block. The first one or two caught me off guard, but now I understand the trick.

Although I hate to sensor comments, I find that I must in some regard. Overt spam, and “good job” comments will be relegated to the waste basket. If the comment has anything to do with the content it will be posted unless it is in poor taste (relative to my morals). I will post your comments indicating how idiotic my designs are, just not those using gutter or hateful language. Just like pornography, “I will know it when I see it”.

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Root cause to RS-232 bug found!

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Last night I found the true cause of my RS-232 problems. The question should not have been why two computers did not work when one did, but rather how did any manage to work. Continue reading →

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Bug update

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Skye Sweeney
This bug is now officially driving me nuts.  Just to review, for several years I have been working on building a lightning detector to shutdown my computer network during a storm when I am away from home. I learned a lot and have a pretty neat system. A few days ago, I went to solve what I figured was going to be a simple logic problem in the micro that runs the detector. The micro is an MSP430F2012. It does not have a UART, so I have been bit banging the output using TimerA. On my scope the timing for the serial train is dead nuts at 9600 baud. The level conversion from 3.3V is being done by Sparkfun level converters (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/133) Continue reading →
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Heartbreaking Bug Revisited

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Got time to look at the problem in much more detail. Last night I was just too upset to start work so close to bed time. Today I discovered that the baud rate was indeed correct. What i was measuring yesterday was two bytes back to back without the start and stop bits. And hence the baud rate that was about 50% of my  9600. Continue reading →

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A test of my backup strategy

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

A week ago I got a string of messages from my XP workhorse computer indicating it was unable to write to the disc. When I powered the unit back on, the system was quite obviously ill. I turned it off and pulled the hard disc drive from the unit and put it on the shelf. Now would be a good time to test my backup strategy. Continue reading →

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A heartbreaking bug

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Last night I decided to try to find a nagging bug in my lightning detector software. The code is supposed to not output a strike severity number unless it is different than the previous value. I was seeing several cases of multiple zeros in a row. How hard can that be to fix? Must have screwed up the place I check for duplicity. Continue reading →

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First use of Sugru

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

I have been looking at purchasing some Sugru since I learned about it some months ago. Sugru is a hand workable silicone putty that air cures in about 24 hours. It becomes a medium hard rubber solid. It comes in small packets of various colors. I purchased mine from Sparkfun as a multi color sampler. Continue reading →

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Solution to reboot issue?

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Could it be that I found the reason that my lightning detector rebooted on strong sparks? When I ran the project without the programming cable connected I stopped getting resets. Connected it would reboot. Perhaps some kind of ground loop through the laptop I am using for programming? In any case, I seem to escaped the executioner on this particular problem.

I also started to move the algorithm from the Python code running on my Linux box back into the micro. I seem to have the strike detection code working. Now I need to implement the warning, danger, and all-clear storm code. With those implemented, my Linux box will need to process very few events. Simply pending on a one byte notification of a storm warning, danger, or all clear. Perhaps I can get to it tonight.

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