"Jim Wilkins" fired this volley in news:m6ikm9$k5t$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
Explain how "those meters" (the implication being that you have several of them interfaced to your laptop at once) can challenge similar A/D resolution and _many_ A/D inputs at once on a $35 board.
"Arduino" has already (and far too soon) become a word that's used interchangably and incorrectly to mean "small ARM-based computer".
There are plenty of those out there that are NOT Arduinos, per se. Some have none, one, or only a few A/Ds. Some have quite a few. Some have
10-bit resolution; some have 14-bit. Some have many A/Ds at 14-bits. Your meter isn't 14 bits deep; and it's only ONE channel.
You'll accomplish with "those" meters what you can for 1/10th the cost and identical accuracy with a decent SBC.
But you know what? I'll bet you only have the one, and "these meters" was just a figure of speech.
Are you afraid of coding? Most of those boards offer a BASIC(like) language, and most of those offer pre-compilation almost as efficient as good, tight C++ code.
PIR came out while I was doing alarm work, and a lot of buildings were too drafty for ultrasonics. Heavy, cold air blowing in through cracks or around doors would cause false alarms. Have you ever tried to get a business manager to replace a door on a 100+ year old railroad terminal building, to prevent false alarms? They would just have the ultrasonics replaced by mag switches, if they couldn't put duct tape over the cracks. The first microprocessor dialer I saw had the RCA 1802 processor in it. It cost five times a tape dialer, and the programmer was $1500.
The meters resolve +/-3999 counts, or about 13 bits. Their real advantage is their signal conditioning that can accept auto-ranged AC and DC volts or amps or a Type K thermocouple, and the optical isolation between channels that lets them measure battery voltage and current without errors from wiring drops.
Before I found the meters I had acquired some Hall-effect current sensors and thermocouple amplifiers to build my own data acquisition system around an 8 channel, 16 bit A/D board for a Mac that I designed and was presented with to take home after the project finished.
I have more experience with the PIC and TMS320 DSP families and with high-end dual slope and successive approximation A/D converters in custom test equipment, and flash converters in digital radios. I've had my fun.
You lose. I have three of them plus an older Radio Shack serial interface meter that can handle 20A. The limit is that they can be assigned only to COM1-4. All can run simultaneously, logging to separate files that I combine in Excel or Calc by aligning their time stamps. I have a faster 4-channel microcomputer DAQ if I need speed and synchronous readings, but for monitoring power and temperature and battery charge / discharge one reading per minute can be enough.
I did write a program that reads the meter's raw serial output and hashes the LCD display segment data in it into decimal numbers with a Select Case block, hoping to run all the meters from one program that could control outputs based on data comparisons. The problem is finding USB or CardBus COM port drivers I can tap into, since I have only one physical COM port the BIOS recognizes.
I wrote my first editor/assembler in machine language in the 1980's, for a computer I designed and wirewrapped. Overall I wrote around
10,000 bytes of code for it. Commercially I wrote self test code for a semiconductor industry automatic wafer tester and a lot of in-house developmental code for programming and testing new Unitrode and TI ICs, like Hot Swap and Power Over Ethernet.
What? Someone still has electric baseboard heat? When I moved into this house in FEB of 2002, it had 240v electric baseboard heaters. The first electric bill shocked me as much as the inefficiency of the EBHs did.
Within a month, a brand new 96% efficient, natural gas, Carrier Infinity system went in, complete with arid conditioning. I had aluminum-framed single-glazed windows, too. Those were replaced with vinyl dual-glazed windows immediately after the HVAC system.
My brief and bitter existence with baseboard heat left me cold. Cold ankles but a comfy body, while on the couch. When I stood up, the heat at the ceiling instantly brought sweat to my brow. I broke out the cooling fans just to get rid of the stratification of air, but that was too noisy and too breezy for my taste. I'm much, much happier with forced air heating, thankyouverymuch.
I don't see how you put up with EBH, Jim. Mega ICK!
I don't, I installed wood heat after a few years and put up with it instead. Right now it's heating my laundry water in kettles. The readout above the computer monitor shows 145.1F so I should log off and get busy.
The electric heat is a pipe-protecting backup that shouldn't turn on unless I'm away longer than planned in the winter. I checked it last winter to satisfy the insurance company.
Electric heat is nice in the bathroom for showering, though.
You should be able to find an old wood stove that will LAST for less, unless you need a lightweight collapsible one for field exercises. I paid $25 for mine at an auction in 1985 and flycut the pebbly textured top smooth for heating pots. The cast iron was still in excellent condition a few years ago when I "blueprinted" the joints and replaced the gaskets.
It did seem strange to spend the day building satellite communications gear and then step back 200 years to a cast iron stove with hand forged (by me) tools at home. I do have modern sensors on it so I can tell when it needs stoking or draft adjustment from the kitchen, and if the pots are boiling.
The local station and police put up "can you identify this person" shots all the time. Some from newer gear is nice and clear. Others are of the "Well I think it's a person" quality.
I don't get the various businesses though. Some of their cameras are just CRAP. I have POS web cams that take better images! They get robbed a LOT and expect folks to ID a person with less detail than a 2 year old drawing a stick figure!
Then there are the banks, There are a couple that have been hit 2-3 times a month. The cameras show distorted out of focus shots that look worse than an overexposed 110 negative blown up to 24X30....
I told one bank exec that they need to take a few steps back into olden tech.
99% of the banks around here use a vestibule entry port. One door opens to the street and one on another wall opens into the lobby. Many times they have a ATM in there as well. My suggestion was simple. The ATM wall is already solid, if not some reinforcement can make it secure. Next replace the normal glass with some bullet resistant stuff and add laminated to the mix so it's tough stuff. Frame it with some good steel. Now add a double locking system to both doors, Normal pass locks for "normal" use. Plus 4 way electronic bolts placed in the frames and drop into sockets in the doors. Bank robbery occurs, teller hits the button. Outer door locks, silent alarm starts and extra cameras start recording in HD. Teller "cooperates" with crook. Crook goes to exit and inner door locks solid. Now crook is in a mantrap, waiting for the police to show up.
Or the method that I would use in a bank I owned. Tellers all go to training at Gunsite as part of the job... And set behind a nice solid wall with an open field of fire....
Um, you don't really fire that where it is _sitting_, do you? If so, I'm utterly surprised that your fire department hasn't come to put out the fire that was your home. It's a wee bit too close to exposed OSB there, pard, both at the stove and flue outlet ends.
I'm wearing a quilted shirt and flannel-lined jeans from Walmart that are soft and flexible enough to be comfortable and keep me warm in the upper 50's. A vest lowers it to 55F. Below that I put on hunting coveralls which are much less restrictive than work clothing. Pile-lined suede boots help a lot.
Oh, OK. It appeared to be a couple inches away from the wall, with the ducting 6" or less from it.
WHAT? Um, for what specific purpose was the stove built? I've never heard of an insulated woodstove before.
Good!
Good draft is imperative for those bloody things. I hate wood stoves, due to the smoke they put out into the room by default (no matter how good you are at stirring/reloading) but they do put out a lot of heat, too.
Har! He probably used leaded wood. ;/
Craigslist and FreeCycle can be your friends.
Propane is 1.69/gal here right now. I'm thinking about getting another tank and filling it for backup. I have a little tabletop BBQ grill which sips gas, so it lasts a long while.
We've been in the low 40s lately, with high 40s during the day. A few inches of rain have helped our water shortages, but the snowpack is still many feet short.
OK, after digging around a bunch. Take a look at 2007-2011 GMC Acadia. Correct windows, doors, roof racks, tail lights and pillar locations are correct.
The Credit union I uses has a double door system that can be disabled in either set of doors so the can keep people out, or from leaving by trapping them between doors till to police arrive. They have signs on the doors that you can not bring any electronics inside, yet people bitch and whine about it.
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