Willing to publish some OSHW... anyone interested?

Gemeinschaft / Community Introduce yourself
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Hi there!

This is actually my very first post here… hello world! :)

I do design of remote scale systems for some time now (father and brother do keep bees for a living…). So already had “some” designs running (and failing) in the field.

My current approach is very much different to what I can see here.
I use Raspberries in different flavours for some time now (in the old days AVRs and Cellular modems as well as these Java-running cellular modems… but that was 10+ years ago).

Software is also different… Qt flavored C++ moving JSON objects over ssl-encrypted websockets.
Seems like over engineering, but has some benefits… I can easily push commands to the remote scales for example :)

However, I think some designs might be from interest for several others out there.

I already made USB interfaces for BME280, Si7021 and the HX711 and the software can also talk to cheap 18s20-usb interfaces.

Apart from that, my new raspberry pi-hat might also be from interest…(last year I designed a nice board accepting the compute modules… guess what, Farnell does not supply them anymore!)

It has 4 lipo cells (4s configuration), a STM32F030 pretending to be a ds3231 for wake-up,rtc and house-keeping , a lipo charger and a 3A buck converter.

Anyone out there looking for such stuff???

I don’t have the designs published by now, but if there are people interested in the designs, I’ll think about that…

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2 Likes
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Dear Johann,

welcome to our small but fine community! Don’t hesitate to take the chance for publishing some of the things you are working on. We can’t promise it will fit the specific needs of some members of our community but all of us and the like-minded people here are very open to new influences beside the things we are specifically working on, especially from people with good hands-on experience from different fields like you introduced yourself.

So we encourage you to share your work if you like the spirit we try to bring into this community and will be happy if you can feel part of it. The forum here is exactly for that purpose: Bring people of similar interests together and start discussions around the things everyone is working on - maybe with different flavors and goals in mind, but sharing the same idea about beekeeping with sensor-support and a strong emphasis on low-cost DIY hardware.

As you might recognize, the topics we are working on are pretty manifold and all of us are open to new and elegant approaches. I wish you all the best for your endeavors and hope you will also find like-minded people here - we are proud this became a cosy place for that very niche of the world where we can share and discuss our interests.

Have fun!

With kind regards,
Andreas.

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Thank’s for the warm welcome!

Some older stuff could be already useful for some… beware, it’s outdated…



https://beestalker.eu/

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1 Like
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Interesting concept! As you may know we try to record sounds in a 24/7 setup. So a RasPi is indeed interesting. We have planned this setup with a power plug. In case you plan a battery powered node I would not count on a RasPi. But you did a great job. Did I see this right: You managed to run the RasPi nearly one month on batteries? That’s great!

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Well, to be honest, I’m maybe a little bit paranoid. So stong encryption was manadory for me. I knowhow about embedded SSL libraries, but everything’s easier if you can test and debug everything in your pc. ;)

With a good cellular Connection and a model A+ Up to 3 months can be done. Thats with 4 16850s and measurements/uploads every hour …

I’d need to measure power consumption of my stm32, but i think 24/7 recordings should be feasible on my RPi HAT on battery for a month or so… Powerdraw should be around 1 to 2mA+the needed audio codec…

What are your basic requirements with that? (Samplerate, Resolution,…)

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We are not ready with the final definition. Our scientists have CD quality on their wish list, see the discussion System für kontinuierliche Audio-Aufzeichnung (BOB Projekt, Phase 1)

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Well, the TLV320ADC3101 would scale from Mono 8khz to stereo 96khz with 24bit… So that would be beyond CD audio…

Currently i use an ldo to Power the stm32 (better for deep sleep power consumption) that would need to be changed to a Low Power switching reg to preserve energy.

I would stream the recordings to an spi flash and copy the contents to the rpi when it wakes up.

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