The End of Summer

Here we are mid September, and already we can see Autumn on the horizon. The leaves are starting to fall from the trees, the evenings are getting colder and the suns rays begin to deteriorate earlier and earlier; all the signs that summer is drawing to a close. But in hindsight, its been a very productive and successful summer at the lab.

I have completed a large number of projects, more in such a short space of time than I have ever before. And most importantly, I have managed to finish those projects I started years ago that had only been collecting dust on a shelf, discarded until I had the time and funding to complete them.

And even though I have not completed everything I set out to achieve this summer, I am happy with what I have done and am actually looking forward to a bit of a break from hands on work for a short while.

Unfortunately I have not managed to document every project I have worked on this summer, but the vast majority have been captured on film and uploaded to my Halfcorp YouTube channel in the form of showcase videos which you can find and watch at your own discretion here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbYNLXCvqlCoLev-WvJ37oQ

Alas, I have to go back to university now so further documentation cannot continue until I return. But rest assured, when I do return, the projects will continue, they will be bigger and better, they always are!

Until then, spread the word and the video links to anyone who might be interested in my shenanigans. Catch you all in a few months time.

Advanced Power Monitoring System

For as long as the lab had been an idea in my head, a power monitoring system was also. The premise for this project is simple: a system that monitors the power entering the lab and displays it on a screen on the power cabinet. And since I have finally had a load of time in the lab, I have designed and built that very power monitoring system and its more advanced than any other on youtube.

Simply put, my power monitoring system is the most advanced there is, not because I'm egocentric, but because it measures every possible piece of data you could want to measure on the power flowing into the lab. It measures:

• Voltage
• Current
• Power Factor
• Phase Angle
• Apparent Power
• Real Power

Voltage and current are a given, but I have also decided to make the system measure power factor. The reason for this is because, voltage times current does not tell the full picture of power.

For a detailed explanation of power factor and phase angle, see a proper video but here is the basic principle. Power in a DC circuit is calculated by multiplying voltage and current, in AC its more complicated. When reactive loads are placed in an AC circuit, the voltage and current sine waves become out of phase as current either leads or lags voltage. This means simply doing RMS voltage times RMS current does not give the correct value for power. Proper measurements can be derived using the power factor.

The cosine of the phase shift between the two wave forms gives the power factor. Current times voltage results in a measurement called the apparent power; apparent power multiplied by the power factor gives the real power. The difference is known as the reactive power.

My system is more than just a simple voltage current monitoring system since it records the power factor by measuring the time difference between the zero crossing of each wave form enabling the system to measure and calculate all of the different power values.

Despite this, current is arguably the most important and useful parameter to measure as it allows me to see the current a project or a particular set of systems draws. The other parameters will not be used much but it is still handy to have them recorded.

The main purpose of the project was not just to present the power consumption of the lab on a screen but also as a learning experience to expand my Arduino and programming skills. This project was actually very multifaceted as it involved electrics, electronics, programming and mathematics/data processing. And at the end of the day, it was fun to do and an achievement.

The hardware required for this project is quite extensive. Current transformers were used for current monitoring, a step down transformer was used for voltage and multiple IC chips, diodes and potential dividers were needed for all the rest. Not to mention the the OLED screen for presenting the data, numerous wires/cabling as well as the Arduino Nano that sat at the heart of it. All of this took up a lot of room, luckily there was a lot of room left in the power cabinet to facilitate this.

Here is a view of the cabinet before the instillation of the power monitoring system. The empty space is ample to contain the power monitoring and backup power systems that would soon be added.

Testing and refining of the circuits happened outside of the cabinet. Once I had the system working as I intended it was mounted inside and wired up to the labs power supply. My new mini oscilloscope was instrumental in the completion of this project and has convinced me to get a much bigger and better one in the future.

The components were mounted inside the cabinet and a long USB cable was used to program it.

Finally, I programmed the system to display all of the relevant information on the small yet versatile OLED screen.

Observant viewers will notice information pertaining to a backup battery, this is for the backup power system which will be explained in the next post.

Mistakes were made in the construction of the project, it took me three attempts at making the primary circuit board as parts kept breaking!

The system had to be carefully calibrated in order for it to turn the recorded value into meaningful voltage and current values. This was done by placing a dummy load on the system and measuring values at incremental power consumption. Graphing and regression analysis could then take place to determine the constant of proportionality needed to obtain the true values. It should be noted the system isn't perfectly accurate but functions well enough for anything I need and can be improved further if needs be.

Once the server is set up in the lab, the data will be recorded and logged. This data will then be able to be viewed in a graph of power consumption. Finally, the price per kilowatt will be factored in and the electricity usage of the lab annually or daily can be calculated!

For much more information, circuit diagrams and a much closer look at the system whilst running, check out the video overview I have made on the project here:

The MIDI Laser Piano

So back in 2015, I played about with cymatics (a way of mixing physics and music through visualization). The results were great, but it didn't really impress a crowd, my setup was far from perfect. Disgruntled by this, I set out to design a completely new device that visualized music and looked impressive to a viewer. Something I could show to a crowd.

And so I present to you, the Laser Piano™. The Laser Piano is a device I have came up with that is simply a bank of 88 lasers connected to an Arduino connected to a computer. Since there are 88 keys on a standard keyboard/piano, there is one laser for each MIDI note. I have programmed the device so that a user can play a MIDI keyboard and the note pattern will be reproduced in the lasers. However, the real show starts when you play a full MIDI song file from the computer (especially one of those impossible Synthesia songs that have hundreds of note changes a second!)

To top it all off, when the device is used in a dark room, the smoke machine I have built (see previous post) can be used to make the entire beam of all 88 laser clearly visible. This system coupled up with some catchy, well known and out right fast MIDI tunes through a 5.1 surround sound speaker system and a crowd makes for a prismatic overture!

I started this at the end of 2016 and have only just finished it (this summer literally has been just me finishing old projects xD) At the end of the day, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It works, looks amazing and is something I cant wait to show anyone who visits the lab, especially people who like music. And of course, I designed this myself and as far as I'm aware, there is nothing else like it out there making this one of the few projects completely devised by me, and not something I've recreated which makes me quite proud of it.

In this youtube video, I showcase the hardware of the system, how it works, and how I got the idea to make it as well as some demo footage of it working. In later videos, I will post entire songs played through it with proper sound editing and better lighting. If anyone has a song they would like to see played through it (or a MIDI file), just write a comment and I will be sure to make it happen. 

The electronics behind this project is simple. The difficult part was that every component had to be glued and soldered 88 times, once for each laser! This took a long time but the main damage was not to my sanity, but to my wire supply. Hopefully the pictures illustrate just how much wire was required.

Testing the shift register library:

Here is how far I got in 2016 when I started the project before I ran out of lasers.

And here is it finished before the wires were tidied up:

A little bit of hot glue and cable ties were required for cable management.

For now, enjoy the video and stay tuned for at least 10 videos showing at least 10 songs being played through the Laser Piano. These should be released in a few week time.

I Built A Smoke Machine

Ok, so it certainly wasn't on my list of projects to do, but I needed a way to make lasers look even cooler, and smoke was the answer. But instead of buying one, I did what any good engineer should do and built my own; the perfect and FREE solution to my problem.

Now its nothing special on its own, it doesn't produce a jet of smoke its more passive. It slowly fills a room with a haze which makes it easy to clearly see the whole beam of a laser when its shone across the length of the lab.

Now to address the elephant in the room. The lasers I'm talking about are a part of a project I started at the end of 2016 but, as usual, never got round to finishing. (There's definitely a pattern going on here isn't there?)

I'm not going into details as to what is is, that's the subject of my next post. But it is essentially a way to visualize music by tying each of the standard 88 MIDI notes to a laser and playing a song through it for an awesome light show!

The smoke machine works by heating up a heating element (Nichrome wire, if you look far back enough in this blog there is a very old video of me messing about with some) to essentially evaporate the same liquid they use in electronic cigarettes, vegetable glycerin. This is then sucked out and diffused through the room using a fan and pipe system. The construction pictures below describe it better then text can.

The vegetable glycerin isn't suppose to look black and gooey I assure you! The system got too hot and some of the hose melted down into it and made the chamber look horrid. Its perfectly safe to breath in don't worry.

And here is my large tub of pharmaceutical grade vegetable glycerin which should last me a lifetime.

Again, the youtube video explains all the details and shows what the lab looks like full of smoke,so go watch that here. The purpose of the blog is really for behind the scenes and construction pictures, not technical explanations.