RSS
The latest Gadget Freak from Design News show you how to build a quarter-sized temperature recorder -
NASA engineer Bob Wilson devised a technological solution for a bureaucratic problem: convince building maintenance that his office was frigid in the morning. By the time anyone responded to a call, the heat was on. So he programmed a TI MSP430-F2013 microcontroller to record the temperature continuously over several days. The size of a quarter and powered by a 3V lithium cell, it records converted, filtered, RL-encoded data from its built-in temperature transducer into Flash memory, to be read back later via a USB interface. The maintenance department was convinced.
Case #99: Bob Had a Problem with the Thermal Management - 3/19/2007 - Design News - Link.
Ha! Now THAT's problem solving!
Reply to this comment
Alright Bob! I know Bob as a customer at the Apple Reseller I work at. Not just a customer, but also the smartest customer (in my opinion anyways... which is always fact :-) ).
His LED hack for a broken backlight on a laptop is over-the-top, and the mods to his Prius are that much more so. Really interesting guy, hopefully more will be heard from him.
Reply to this comment
Yeah, TI sells the USB emulator and a target board for $20, and extra target boards at 3 for $10. It's a sweet little piece of hardware. http://www.ti.com/designmsp430
Reply to this comment
The same thing could also be done using an ibutton from maxim, They do free samples, just not as much fun as building it yourself.
Reply to this comment
Haha, this reminds me of when I was in high school. The room's thermostat was completely unresponsive and the room would be too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. He used to put a damp rag on it to trick it into thinking the room was too cold and run the heater. I built him a little device using components from an old power supply that mounted to the thermostat allowed him to either run a fan over it or run current through a resistor to trick it into thinking the room is too cold or hot respectively.
Reply to this comment