Pen & Paper

Come back to the origins... or better: how to design something starting from pen and paper.

"Modern" design

Recipe:

1. plexiglass
2. hot glue
3. hot glue gun
4. Arduino UNO
5. PPD42NS
6. bredboard
7. wires

continue...

Hacking party!!

Yep, the title could be misleading, but for it means that I found a solution for many of my comoputer problem in one night!

Here are some of them:

Problem 1: finding file usber.sys 

This file is more important if you were in my situation, that is, connecting an Arduino UNO Rev.3 on an old notebook Acer Aspire 1690 (with Windows XP mounted) that didn't recognise the usb peripheral on which was connected arduino.

After a long search I found a good man who shared the file he found on the forum at the following address:

• http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=98697.15

Thanks r0oland, thanks a lot! (Everyone can find that file at that forum address).

Problem 2: sharing my wifi connection from an Ubuntu os through an Ethernet LAN towards a Windows XP os notebook.

In this case I simple googled the solution and I found it at this address (in italian):

• https://www.lffl.org/2013/08/ubuntu-condividere-facilmente-la.html

Thanks to roberto.ferramosca.

Problem 3
In this way I was able to solve my third and final problem, namely to make my arduino work and continue to experiment and collect data on air pollution and more.

In conlusion:

SHARING SOLUTIONS MAKES THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE!!

Air pollution experiment (part I)

Another experiment using PPD42NS device to capture the air pollution (particles >=1um and >=2.5um danger for human health) on the roof of my house.

Im this new experiment I used the same device but another old notebook (very very old, it's older than 10 yrs!) equipped with an Ubuntu 16.04 distribution and LXDE desktop environment (one of the lightest de!).

At the time I'm writing the work is in progess yet. It will be finished in about an hour and it has sterted this morning at around 11 am. Thus, the following pictures was taken this morning:

My old notebook protected by a plastic box (I)

My old notebook protected by a plastic box (II)

 As you can see I protected my notebook with a plastic box in which I placed even its supplier (the idea of the box is of a friend of mine (a researcher who studies the atmosphere at the CNR of Lecce).

Arduino Uno placed neare the PPD42NS I

PPD42NS attached to a wooden stick (a broom stick :P) 

Vertical position with a view to the north: PPD42NS received the northern wind directly instead Arduino Uno was near there to capture each value.

Group photo: cheese!

Non vedo l'ora di conoscere i risultati!

...continue

Particulate meter - PPD42NS

One of my dreams was to measure particulate in the air and make this operation simple.

Thanks to the PPD42NS sensor this is possible. Obviously we have to use an Arduino (UNO in my case) to connect to and to abtain datas.

PPD42NS particulate meter.

The connection is very fast and simple (the following project was made by me using Fritzing IDE):

Connection schema between PPD42NS device and Arduino UNO

I opened the Arduino IDE to write the code, in reality I found this code online, I copied it and pasted on the IDE:

/*
 Interface to Shinyei Model PPD42NS Particle Sensor
 Program by Christopher Nafis 
 Written April 2012
 
 http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/grove-dust-sensor-p-1050.html
 http://www.sca-shinyei.com/pdf/PPD42NS.pdf
 
 JST Pin 1 (Black Wire)  => Arduino GND
 JST Pin 3 (Red wire)    => Arduino 5VDC
 JST Pin 4 (Yellow wire) => Arduino Digital Pin 8
 */

int pin = 8;
unsigned long duration;
unsigned long starttime;
unsigned long sampletime_ms = 2000; 
unsigned long lowpulseoccupancy = 0;
float ratio = 0;
float concentration = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(8,INPUT);
  starttime = millis(); 
}

void loop() {
  duration = pulseIn(pin, LOW);
  lowpulseoccupancy = lowpulseoccupancy+duration;
  if ((millis()-starttime) >= sampletime_ms) //if the sampel time = = 30s
  {
    ratio = lowpulseoccupancy/(sampletime_ms*10.0);  
    concentration = 1.1*pow(ratio,3)-3.8*pow(ratio,2)+520*ratio+0.62; 
    Serial.print("Concentration = ");
    Serial.print(concentration);
    Serial.println(" pcs/0.01cf");
    Serial.println("\n");
    lowpulseoccupancy = 0;
    starttime = millis();
  }
}
 

I found the code here :
http://www.howmuchsnow.com/arduino/airquality/grovedust/

As you can see in the following pictures (and as written in the code) the yellow wire is connected to the pin 8: this wire contains the information about the  of particulate.

The particulate was positioned vertically.

Following the previous schema I connected Arduino to the sensor.

The project has brought out the following results.

Obsviously we need to calibrate everything not to having had a reference emission source.

Here you can see the related video on my personal YouTube channel:

Results:

Results on Arduino IDE monitor.

Concentration values were taken in the following unit of measurement:

pcs / 0.01 cf

where pcs stand for pieces and cf for cubic feet (0.01 cf = 283 ml).

Next steps: 

• transform of the unit measure in ml;
• sampling at the rythm of 5 mins;
• export datas on an electronic sheet;
• visualization in real time of the datas and graphic them;
• comparison of data with those of the CNR (!!).

That's all folks! ...for the moment!