Firmware for Diagnostics

This morning I put together some firmware to carry out diagnostics on the boards. When uploaded to the microcontroller the firware checks for the presence of the SD card, config files and then verifies that timestamps written to the RTC are stored and read correctly without error.

Naturally, this was developed on a board which fails all tests. #UnitTesting. Kinda. The next stage is to upload this to the boards and find out what the current situation is.

You may have noticed the sensor remains unchecked. This is because at the moment I don’t have access to a signal generator to produce fake signals. Rest assured, as soon as I’m back in the lab that test will be written.

All talk but no walk…

Tonight the task was to gauge which of the old boards were working and what their condition was. Fortunately all three were able to output over the serial, hoorah. However, the RTC, SD card and sensor still had to be checked. Unfortunately, I don’t have a micro-SD card to boot the board from and so this quickly came to a halt.

This fail-safe was written into the firware so a user could avoid making the mistake of setting the sensor off without the SD card. Although it has saved me in the field countless times, tonight it does the opposite.

Before I can progress with the testing I first need to modify the firware to skip the SD card check, or at least to bypass if sent a specific command over serial. Tomorrow night I will address this problem and upload the new firmware ready to return to testing!

Boards ordered

The 4 Layer boards have been ordered from Elecrow.com. Not too bad a price and cheaper delivery if you go with registered airmail.

Until I can start populating these boards I’ll return to the main controller boards. I have a couple of these spare in different states and should check their serial interfaces and which version of firmware they are running on. These are in desperate need of updating to improve user interaction, however the focus for the time being is to ensure I have at least one board running and ready to test the sensor boards.

Back to the PQC

After a little pause, I am getting back onto finishing the PQC project – a sensor to detect exposure to volatile acids. The current state of the project is a single sensor monitored via a microntroller and with data written to a micro SD card. Essentially, every aspect of the system is there however I have yet to increase the number of sensors and multiplex an array of them.

I’m returning to the project wiht two goals; first to construct and test the multiplexing circuit and secondly to beef up the micontroller board to make it more user friendly and easier to reprogram in situ.

Ideally, the project should be wrapping up by the end of october as by the new year I want to have it finished. What will a finished project look like? A neatly packaged sensor, that is reliable and can be ordered via a website.

I would also like to relect on the successes and failures within the project – the timescale being one of the latter. But that can wait.

Tonight, my task is to review and send off the sensor board for fabrication.