FuckCombustion Community Enail Project (Name TBD)

@PoopMachine the holes on all of the parts (other than the ones with terminal tabs and solder cups) are 0.1" holes for the pads, so it's definitely one of the easier solder jobs. Just need to make sure you have a narrow tip on the iron so you are only heating the pin/hole you want the rosin/flux to bond to. I've been considering attaching pins to components and making custom connectors to sell for DIY kits, but that's further down the road.

The parts with holes (which is only the SBC and TC) are all made for prototyping setups, so any standard prototyping tools should work with it, like solderless breadboards and pre-crimped dupont jumpers.

Edit: Here's a size comparison of the holes on the Orange Pi Zero next to a US quarter (and some pins for ease of use):

Do we have Login Info for the HN-01 OS?

@Hollabackatcha Assuming it's a similar environment to HN-02 (Ubuntu-based Armbian, but the Debian version should work the same), you can replace any passwords in /etc/shadow as long as you hash the password against the same variables/algorithms. Or you could boot into single user mode and change the root password. What I did, rather than try to figure out the hashing used, was spin up a fresh armbian image, make a user, grab the password of that account from /etc/shadow, and replace that in /etc/shadow on the HN image. Works for the hexnail user and root; will work on any account as long as SELinux isn't on.

Vote for the name "Talisman FCE" here. Really love seeing this become a community project, and thank you @JigMelon for getting this going!

@JigMelon if you plan to offer kits, I would like to be the first in line. Even if its just a bag of parts, Ive assembled stuff way worse than that before.

Im really interested to see which way the OS goes. Sadly thats whats going to make or break this since Im sure beings that this is a DOA project, I dont expect the HN servers to stay up forever.

I also seriously doubt there is ever a software update. Same shit, different day. "Its coming" and then crickets.

I have text messages on my phone from Ava from LAST YEAR where she was talking about how it was almost ready and would be released any day.

Finger of shame to those two. I dont really know Liz but just the fact that they were cramming whatever they could find into something that A) Really didnt involve a lot of expense to build one and B) Used parts I assume are readily available, it makes no sense why there is such a hodgepodge of versions out there.

I noticed that neither of them really have any hardware experience on their resume. Im almost thinking there was someone else involved in this that the community never found out about.

Im sure there is more to the story than we know.

@PoopMachine When it gets to that stage you'll be #1. I don't plan on offering anything like that until we have it working off of their server; it wouldn't be right to put additional load on their server for unofficial products.

There is more to the story and a bit of it was shared with me, but I've been out of the loop for 5-6 weeks now. I've reached out to them again via email last week but nothing. I'll text him later today and if I don't hear back this weekend I'll share what I know. The silence they've had the last 5-6 weeks (including the closing of the instagram account and the SSL cert issues on their shopify site) is very different from the intentions they portrayed in previous discussions.

JigMelon said:

@PoopMachine When it gets to that stage you'll be #1. I don't plan on offering anything like that until we have it working off of their server; it wouldn't be right to put additional load on their server for unofficial products.

There is more to the story and a bit of it was shared with me, but I've been out of the loop for 5-6 weeks now. I've reached out to them again via email last week but nothing. I'll text him later today and if I don't hear back this weekend I'll share what I know. The silence they've had the last 5-6 weeks (including the closing of the instagram account and the SSL cert issues on their shopify site) is very different from the intentions they portrayed in previous discussions.

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Do you have a way to contact Liz?

I dont know what the whole mess is going to turn into but if Liz pulls the plug on the AWS server, I could continue to run it hosted somewhere else which I would be happy to do until we dont need it anymore.

WOW! Watching this thread right now

JigMelon said:

@PoopMachine When it gets to that stage you'll be #1. I don't plan on offering anything like that until we have it working off of their server; it wouldn't be right to put additional load on their server for unofficial products.

There is more to the story and a bit of it was shared with me, but I've been out of the loop for 5-6 weeks now. I've reached out to them again via email last week but nothing. I'll text him later today and if I don't hear back this weekend I'll share what I know. The silence they've had the last 5-6 weeks (including the closing of the instagram account and the SSL cert issues on their shopify site) is very different from the intentions they portrayed in previous discussions.

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Yeah, I was supposed to get my HN02 back from owner of Team Rosin weeeekkksss ago.

Cool idea.

I am tinkering with how to pull this off with the least amount of effort. I did collect some links...

http://electronicshobbyists.com/con...er-bluetooth-raspberry-pi-bluetooth-tutorial/

https://www.instructables.com/id/Read-and-write-from-serial-port-with-Raspberry-Pi/

https://prota.info/prota/pi/

https://www.instructables.com/id/Boost-Your-Google-Home-With-Prota-OS-for-Raspberry/

https://iot.mozilla.org/gateway/

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/02/h...h-a-raspberry-pi-and-mozillas-things-gateway/

I think the least amount of friction for creating a pid is to use an arduino. This way a corrupt SD card can't take down the PID. The arduino could be hooked to a pi to connect to mozilla.

The mozilla path seems like a short route.

@jojo monkey I appreciate the effort but you're going down the wrong path currently. Once an API is created for communicating with the hardware, controlling the hardware from other devices is trivial. With such an API, controlling anything with bluetooth directly would just create additional, unnecessary work. In regard to bluetooth interface, everything we need already exists. In regard to serial I/O, that's really only necessary when there are no other means of communicating with the board/OS. All of the images we'll be using will be setup with an SSH daemon already, so it would be less expensive for everyone to just use SSH, rather than purchasing the necessary hardware and potentially ruining your device.

Prota is great and their Prota Pi interface would be a great base for an API, however, it's closed source so that's not really feasible. The ideal of this project would be to avoid proprietary commercial software.

The Gateway and Things projects are definitely something we could look into down the road for people wanting to host their own setup, but that utilizes more space and resources than a simple webserver would do.

@JigMelon I see. I did not realize you want to run everything off the pi and keep it all local. I was aiming for the internet.

So more like:
https://github.com/gurumitts/pyrokinesis

That has the PID + web server.

@jojo monkey now THAT is something we should look at, thanks for the link!

Here's the official library for the TC chip I'm using

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_MAX31856

Edit: Also, it isn't necessarily about what I want; remote control and remote interfaces are definitely on the list of goals

Here's the part of Pyrokinesis that sets up the sensor:
https://github.com/gurumitts/pyrokinesis/blob/master/pyrokinesis/sensor.py

Pyrokinesis uses the adafruit max31855 so I image there is not much to do than change that to a 6 at the import line. I also imagine it will work as is.

The downside of pyrokinesis is that it is the first python project by the creator. In the help section, he admits that it is not properly set up. I have not tried it yet. Either way, we have bones and guts to work with.

JigMelon said:

Here's the official library for the TC chip I'm using

Click to expand...

I think I have that chip. I don't have a pi yet.

JigMelon said:

remote control and remote interfaces are definitely on the list of goals

Click to expand...

The internet of thing API that mozilla wrote does most of that. Within the python that pyrokinesis uses we could just load the mozilla IOT library and pass the data on. Done!

JigMelon said:

SSH daemon

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The mozilla IOT image immediately sets up as a wifi hotspot on first boot. By default it is only local and does not require anything online. You get a local IOT gateway at http://localhost:8080 or http://gateway.local. WHen a phone first connects to the hotspot it will be directed to the page. No SSH or figuring out ips.

It would be nice to use that image as a starting point. Instead of writing python, html, javascript and whatever to add stuff, one api in python could be used to add buttons and features using the mozilla IOT API.

To help get things setup, SSH can be turn on. These directions show how:

https://s-opensource.org/2018/04/25/mozilla-iot-generic-sensors/

Graphing is a matter of connecting the local setup to a service:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/visualizing-your-smart-home-data-with-the-web-of-things/

So I think I am gonna rip out all the python from pyrokinesis and load in the mozilla IOT library for the controls. I don't have the parts I need so I am just planning from a distance.

@jojo monkey Great research and excellent write up, thanks! I'll definitely try out Gateway when I'm done with my current image and I'll post results here. Been a busy past ~10 days but I'm finally putting together the unit this weekend.

@JigMelon

I just found out that there was a new update to the mozilla "things gateway" 0.5 came out last month(can we call it MTG to save typing?). If we were all running this already our PID's would have updated.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/08/things-gateway-0-5-features-experimental-smart-assistant/

What's new? SSH can be turned on or off on the gateway's menu in the new update.



I think the PID can be represented like this with a few buttons/functions that are immediately accessible and a few that need a second page.:

All this will work on every device with a browser. We can also update the icons.

If you want to connect it to the online API you can access your PID over the web through your own free subdomain.

Nice @jojo monkey definitely on the todo list

Has anyone with an HN-02 disassembled their unit? I just finished wiring my DIY and it works but no PID control. Coil stays red hot. If anyone can confirm the wiring in my diagram, that would be amazing. I think I may have mixed up some wires on the TC board.

HN-02 - https://easyeda.com/editor#id=|1502c8036b6942e4987d4e7b5ac65749

My Build - https://easyeda.com/editor#id=|bba7611ec531478792c71553b367c372

does the software check for the presence/absence of the thermocouple? are you able to read the temp from the probe?

@Hippie Dickie I've been having trouble reading gpio via SSH and getting any sort of terminal output in minicom. I have a USB/TTY UART board coming in on Wednesday, and I'm hoping I'll be able to get that going in Arduino IDE. That would make things much easier. Once I get there I'll see if I can figure it out. Other than a potential wiring issue (as in, I documented it incorrectly), there are a few possibilities I've come up with for the glowing nail symptom:

1. The issue is the wires being used from the XLR port to the TC board. They seem to be using standard wires in my official, but it was my understanding that it needs to be a specific form of Ni/NiCr for the controller to work. If anyone believes that they are using a specific type of wire for this, please let me know. I do not have much experience in this department.

2. I have a short; I'll pull out my multimeter tomorrow.

3. The TC board I bought runs at a different resistance than the one in the official unit; I'll pull out my multimeter tomorrow.

4. I fried the SSR as a result of inexperience and not using the multimeter

I assume there are several people reading this who have significantly more electronics and IC experience than I do, so please chime in if you have any suggestions.



In regard to GPIO interfacing for our version, we should look into these options:

https://github.com/xpertsavenue/WiringOP-Zero

https://github.com/rm-hull/OPi.GPIO

As far as I can tell, they are using vanilla WiringPi in the HN-02:

JigMelon said:

1. The issue is the wires being used from the XLR port to the TC board.

Click to expand...

I've used this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/K-type-The...ensor-Insulation-Extension-1-yd/222597713726?

Speaking of relays...
https://www.lightobject.com/25A-Solid-State-Relay-SSR-DC-In-AC-Out-P61.aspx

These are cheap and have a little light on them to watch it go. The DC fires at 3v and up so any microcontroller should be able to fire it up.

I prefer this panel style of SSR to the through-hole style (that is meant to be in a pcb). Where 5v and 110v meet is a dangerous place and I would not want things floating about. The panel style lets you screw down the wires at opposite sides.

@JigMelon Thanks for that GPIO info.

Hey everyone … just want to mention to everyone, that there are some serious limitations to this approach. I've built a raspberry pi e-nail, and the main issue I encountered was getting the PID library to be stable and to be very responsive; there are no good quality commercial or free libraries that I found that perform acceptably. I also implemented the ArduPID library and a few variations in typescript/NodeJS to test, as well as a full UI that could operate it over both web and Bluetooth.

I've also built a "in-between" e-nail controller, (eNail Magic), which uses a raspberry pi zero to interface in between your PID and your coil to run "scripts" or "profiles" that can turn on/off the coil based on temperature and timeouts, etc. and play audio/display icons/text on OLED display etc., and this works wonderfully. The interface for this in-between controller is all Bluetooth.

Anyways, I'd be willing to share my code for running the e-nail (it's far from complete, and I don't love it … the eNail Magic code is much better). It was just a quick prototype that was intended as a proof of concept.

I abandoned the raspberry pi e-nail project on it's own, as I feel that the implementation of PID control on the Pi is not worth the trouble. One can get an Omron E5CC with RS-485 interface for <$100 and this could then be controlled from a raspberry pi thus getting the best of both worlds (Industrial quality Omron PID control with the flexibility of a custom system with Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.)

Anyways … don't mean to discourage everyone, but unless someone can nail down the PID algorithm on the Pi, the rest is a moot point, as without accurate temp control, what is the point of this project? To this end, I would gladly share my code, I'll even get it working on hardware that is identical to the wiring diagram if someone wants to send me an Orange Pi board.

I can also provide instructions on how where the PID code is and what to play with, how to run it,, adjust P.I.D. settings, etc.

Edit: Just to clarify a little bit here … the code is licensed under creative commons non-commercial, so it belongs to me right now (and all derivative work does as well, but can be freely used/extended for non-commercial purposes).

That being said, if someone gets the PID control working right on the Pi, I'd be willing 100% fully open source the requisite code to get a basic system working in combination with this PID library (if we can get a quality raspberry Pi/typescript library created out of this, that would be an accomplishment, there have been quite a few attempts, and I'm sure I spent a good 100 hours on it … and I'm yet to see a success story in this regard …)

@JCat

I agree that a microcontroller is prob better.

Good to know the python pid library stinks.

There are a few other python pid libraries to copy that mirror our needs:

mushrooms:
at a quick glance, this does not use the standard PID library.
https://github.com/kizniche/Mycodo

Beer:
also not the standard pid library, this one copies code from the arduino pid library.
https://github.com/hirschmann/pid-autotune

@jojo monkey Now I feel stupid; I'll pick some up. Regarding the SSR, for now I'm trying to get as close as possible to the HexNail design for the sake of people who currently own the device. Making a better design is further down the road for me, but anyone else is welcome to pick it up. In regard to PCB mounts, pins are easy to add and dupont connectors are great. Right now I'm running almost everything through a breadboard; minimal wires. But yea, I agree that something with more integrity should be used once we're situated.

@JCat Did you try the official libraries from your controller manufacturer? One of the reasons I chose to get the Adafruit implementation of the 31856 is because they have a full and well-documented library for it. In regard to the in-between feature, that's exactly what hexnaild does. Additional factors are used to change interaction with the hardware. If that weren't the case, there would be no reason to have the SBC in the first place other than for graphical display and remote control. Not that that's a bad thing though; your suggestion to use a reputable controller such as from Omron and control it separately is definitely something to consider.

I'm very interested in what you have so far if you were willing to share with us. What were the shortcomings you noticed with the libraries you've used? Which have you used? Only official? Only community-lead? Considering how far SBCs have come as a separate platform from Arduino, I find it hard to believe that there still isn't a suitable solution. I will say that my HN-02 does a fantastic job of regulating temperature and doing programmed up/downtemps, regardless of the accuracy of the reported temperature.

I'm not sure if you have access to a HexNail image or not, but many python parts in /opt/enail/ are not compiled. The only reason I haven't uploaded them anywhere yet is because it is not licensed.

@JCat @jojo monkey @JigMelon on behalf of all of us tech n00bs who can't follow the lingo but are still invested in the project: