[RndTbl] Home Automation

Robert Dyck rbdyck2 at shaw.ca
Fri Apr 30 20:33:59 CDT 2010


I have done a little bit. I was employed by Micropilot to build an automated
calibration device to calibrate the sensors on the autopilots they
manufacture. This included design and construction of both hardware and
software. Most of my career has been software development, secondly systems
administration, this one job was great fun because it was the only time I
got paid to design and develop hardware. It did involve designing a rack to
precisely rotate the autopilots to use gravity to calibrate their
accelerometers in 3 dimensions, and precisely rotate them to calibrate their
rate gyros. A set of pumps and pressure/vacuum reservoirs calibrated the
pressure transducers used for the pitot tube and altimeter. Quite
interesting; I used some simple easy to find parts, others were high-end
industrial components, and some parts were custom-machined to my
specifications. And I had to install, add additional equipment to, and
program an environmental chamber that used 480-volt heaters and liquid
nitrogen to cycle temperature from -55°C to +75°C. Keeping temperature
adjustments stable and using minimum liquid nitrogen were concerns. Yup, it
meant control of exhaust fans, valves, and duty cycle modulation of the
heaters. The process also required loading software onto the autopilot
microcontrollers. And I did update software onboard the autopilots
themselves for a couple tasks.

Is that good enough?

Rob Dyck

-----Original Message-----
From: roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca]
On Behalf Of Don R. Wolfe
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 11:09 AM
To: roundtable at muug.mb.ca
Subject: [RndTbl] Home Automation


Well we meet again, we need to talk serious motor control as princess auto
surplus is waiting. Who in Winnipeg has good knowledge of motor control,
microprocessors, bridge motor control either professionally or a great
hobbyist. Need a mentor.

Thanks

The Automator
DRWolfe





More information about the Roundtable mailing list