Finally!

Desk upgraded.

Upgraded to two 27 inch monitors, hung from bookcase.

New dock with dual HDMI out.

HDMI switch attached to my 64bit Debian box allows me to pump its display to left most monitor.

Very happy now.

Trial fit of monitor stand, hung upside down. Remember the stop needs to be below the arms.

HDMI switch to drive left monitor with either the dock or the old PC or my Cluster Shield in fact.

Bad case of borers! Will allow short cutting of power cabling to the power board below.

Doubled me power board size. Includes USB charging! Very handy.

More borers! Another short cut so I am not having to pass behind board.

Final setup. Shifted to right side of shelf centre.

The reason for the right shift. Needed access still to USB dock that hangs off the old PC. Notice the WiFi extender? The linux PC is hardwired to that. My ethernet based dev boards are also generally hung off it as well.

AND! Me 2TB USB Seagate sits nicely atop me new dock.

Yes, I did go wild a bit with double sided tape. Power board! HDMI switch! USB drive!

You need the 2TB drive since HP are so stingy with the disk that comes with the Spectre. Need to set me up a NAS.

Universal Instrument Host

So, I plan to weld an ESP32 with built in battery, an e-link display, into a Universal Instrument Host (UIH) for the following sensors (as a start):

• PH (really a conditioning board plus a sensor).
• TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) indicates that how many milligrams of soluble solids dissolved in one litre of water.
• Turbidity (detect suspended particles in water by measuring the light transmittance and scattering rate).
• Soil Moisture.

I think I’ll have (at least) two touch inputs. Hold both down to wake the UIH up. Then I can use the two touch buttons as left/right to cycle through sensors.

PH meter will be a separate input, but the other three have same VCC, GND and ADC requirements. Though, the TDS and Turbidity sensors will have an intermediate box holding a conditioning circuit.

Using the e-ink makes sense from power saving but also since I want to hack at an e-ink display. Later, I rather like the idea of a form of “art” where you run a moving by clipping out a frame once every 5 mins say, and use it as a canvas and take a week or so to play the movie. Plenty of old movies to get hold of and black and white.

I did get a bad order from Aliexpress once, where they sent me 20 RFID tags and boards by mistake. I am thinking of building the reader board into the back of the GIH and use the tags around the yard to ID locations I am taking sensor readings to log to my home sever (running HA, node-red etc.).

I ordered the e-ink from waveshare, rather than by from local store, since locally there are too few options. Just needed a reasonable size display, no wifi, SD card, PI HAT etc.

Happy Accident!

I was umming and ahhring about getting a aerator for the pond, or at least using the one from the retired pond.

No need.

I noticed a plume of air bubbles, driven almost to the bottom of the pond, by the water streaming through the course filter foam sitting on the wire. The foam I was using as a muffler also acts as an aerator!

Don’t forget though!

You need condition the pond weekly, so remove a bucker of water (around 13% of pond is the rule) – it’s good for the plants around the yard. Top up. Clean out filter once a month.

Version 2 of the Coy Pond

Had to drape wool over the sprayer. Too much spray noise.

Pump definitely too big. I will downsize.

You might notice the cable ties holding the sprayer to the top rainwater pit? Notice also the holes drilled in the lip for the cable ties.

Another mod will be to drill a row of holes in the front lip of the bottom pit. Why? I ran up the system to check for leaks. Bad form, I had not put thread tape in any joint. The return pipe was leaking, so I undid it and added thread tape. Stopped the leak but I had upset the large stones in the bottom. So, the hole ended up blocked. When I turned it on, up the water rose over the lip! A quick jab with a chop stick opened the pourer. But, lesson learned.

Holes in the front lip will allow accidental overflow to run dfown the front and back into the pond.

Coy about me pond

Ages ago, the wife’s gold fish were migrated to a plastic tub, outside under the back awning. Happy enough but the large fish tank filter struggles.

So I have built this pond.

Wine barrel pond with small Bakki Shower or Trickle filter

The filter is a take off of the Bakki Shower or Trickle filter. The principle is having a number of perforated troughs “raining” onto various layers of material.

The trick is I am using rainwater pits from the drainage section of Bunnings (hardware store).

You will need drill holes in the bottom.

Notice they have flanges which usefully set a nice gap between pits. This means no need for wooden structures to hold the pits apart. Just take care to not fill space to top of internal flanges.

Bottom layer with large smooth water feature stones (below flange level).

Second layer from the bottom with small volcanic rocks (below flange level).

Second layer from the top is fired clay pebbles (below flange level)

Might have over done it with the pump.

The sprayer.

The top trap will have various layers of filter material.

Bill of Materials:

1. Rainwater pit (x4)
2. Half oak wine barrel (x1)
3. Wine barrel liner (x1)
4. 300mm x 25mm poly riser (x1)
5. 25mm tank fitting (female) (x1)
6. 900mm x 20mm irrigation riser (x1)
7. 300mm x 20mm irrigation riser (x1)
8. 150mm x 20mm irrigation riser (x1)
9. 80mm x 20mm irrigation riser (x1)
10. 20mm irrigation 90 degree elbows (x3)
11. 20mm irrigation end cap (x1)
12. Pond pump (x1)

Destructions (matching with the BOM items above):

1. Drill holes into the bottoms of top 3 rainwater pits. I used a 3mm drill bit to start with, so I had room to increase the size if needed. These holes are to allow for the trickle down. According to all the other hackers building this type of filter, there is no science to the holes. In the forth rainwater pit (the one that will sit at the bottom), drill a 44mm hole as close to right and as close to bottom to allow the 25mm tank fitting (item 5 in the BOM above) to snuggly fit. Too far left and you’ll collide with the flanges (which are all set on the left of a side). If that happens, your tank fitting (item 5 of the BOM above) won’t at all fit properly.
2. You don’t need to, but I did opt to drill three large holes (50mm) into the bottom of the barrel. I also gave the top edge and the innards a double coat of pond sealer. This is just in case of spills and accidental floods. This will help stop the barrel from rotting (I hope). Not scene in the photo above, but the barrel will also get a wood stain finish.
3. No special treatment for the liner. Just make sure, when you put it into the barrel, centre it OR IT WILL BUG YOU!
4. The 300mm x 25mm riser (item 4 in BOM above) is to be cut to create the return spout. It will fit into the tank fitting (item 5 in the BOM above). I used a mitre block and cut it at 45^o to create the spout. There is no rule really about the length. If you cut the riser a third of the way along, you get two spouts of differing lengths, as the riser is threaded at both ends. Keep the other as a spare, for for a second filter.
5. The thread on this tank fitting is contra to what you might expect. It has a soft seal so leave that seal on the outside. The hole for the tank fitting is 44mm to get a relatively snug fit. A little tighter might be apt, to then allow the male thread to be threaded into the tank.
6. As luck would have it this length was perfect! Perfect since an 80mm riser (item 9 in the BOM above) was able to lower the sprayer (item 7 in the BOM above) to contact the top of the highest rainwater pit (item 1 in the BOM above). I did get caught out with the pump (item 12 in the BOM above). Caught out because the pump said it had 20mm fittings and the irrigation was also supposedly 20mm. Turns out the 20mm irrigation pipe is 20mm internal so the pipe does not fit directly into the pump! The pump fittings are 20mm external. OH NO! Phew. There was a fitting on the pump that had a hose fitting. That, with a gentle but firm hand, actually press fit into the the pipe.
7. The 300mm riser is used as a sprayer. The rainwater spits (item 1 in the BOM above) are actually around 300mm in diameter. So this worked a treat. I was otherwise planning the more traditional rectangular sprayer. That option is still available but I suspect, given the mini size of this system, I won’t need be that fidgety.
8. There is no rhyme or reason for the 150mm length of this. It could be longer or shorter. It is obviously needed to set some distance of the pump from the shower system.
9. Again, this magically drops the pipe work to the top of the highest rainwater pit (item 1 of the BOM above). Most all of this was accidentally on purpose. The 20mm pine shelf helps. The size of the pump helps.
10. As we are only using a diagonal sprayer, only 3 elbows are needed. More would be needed if you opt for a rectangular sprayer.
11. The end stop, don’t forget the end stop. You’ll need back pressure.
12. The pump will lift to 1.5m. It may be too big. The rig is 900mm so the small unit, which will lift 1m, would likely be okay. Being smaller you might need put packing under it to lift it. Note also, depending on possible failure modes, placing a small pump on a block might help if something goes wrong and the piping comes adrift and water gets pumped out of the pond. You’ll need some water in the bottom to save the fish until you find the problem. Note, if the pump stops the Bakki Shower Filter will drain back into the pond. So the pond should not really be filled to the top. The filter may look like it has large capacity BUT each of the three lower rainwater pits only have about 10cm of space and that is occupied by rocks of various sizes. The top pit will be full of various filters. In the end, I have drill holes into two opposing corners of the top rainwater pit, so as to cable tie the sprayer down. This will also push down slightly on the pump, which gives me some comfort since the 20mm ID irrigation riser is only press fit over the 20mm OD fitting. It will also stop the pump from coming loose off the bottom.

I am on the look out for plastic mesh bags. I have seen some filters were the rocks are in plastic mesh bags, which makes sense if you want to clean out the filter – you just lift the rocks in/out in the bags. I do note the pet shops do have the mesh bags, at a premium price. Whether the $2 shop has them is the thing. Worth keeping an eye out.

However, the system easily comes apart for cleaning. Just need to snip the precautionary cable ties.

The volcanic rocks especially, but also the fired clay pebbles, are there to create biological filtering. Good microbes should be growing in those layers. I grabbed the fired clay pebbles as they are designed for aquaponics. There will also be a special filter stage in the top with deals with ammonia (if not nitrate).

The larger rocks in the bottom are their for ballast and won’t offer too much additional biological load. I am toying with the idea of oyster shells as an alternate. Another thing might be to add an aerator to the bottom pit. Still things then to fiddle with.

Currently, in the top rainwater pit, I am to have a carbon filter pad, ammonia filter pad, fine and course pads and aquarium wool in the top filter. Layers are (top to bottom):

1. Course pad.
2. Aquarium wool.
3. Fine pad.
4. Ammonia filter pad.
5. Charcoal pad.

I believe there is also a nitrate pad around.

You call that a battery?

THIS is a battery!

So, my old Acer Aspire 1 is now mobile again.

Better yet, I tried connecting it to my 5MP microscope camera and it runs.

I bought that camera for cheap as I have a basic Celestron telescope that I wanted a camera for. Problem is, it may be the low light for astronomy is no good for the camera BUT, the telescope is probably best for moon shots.

So plenty of light there.

Will try it out soon.

Gawd Awful!~

So, a little while ago I had ordered 5 boards based upon the ESP32 WiFi Robot design.

I actually just uploaded the Eagle Schematics to my Osh Park account.

Now I was interested in buying the parts. Apparently the BOM was in the Eagle files.

Not having Eagle, I opted to suck the files into KiCad and then use the BOM generation from there.

Don’t bother. The BOM generation tool was generating error reports across a range of BOM scripts I tried, including the file suggest by DigiKey’s Mr Smug.

In fact I was able to hang KiCad a couple to three times while trying to generate BOM from the imported file.

May have been a problem with the imported file? Maybe. Who knows?

So the $64,000 question, why did I not use Eagle to generate the BOM?

I would love to! Except …

I downloaded Eagle and tried to register. The Eagle server never did and has never actually EVER sent me a confirmation email needed to finalise a registration. What? Yes I did look in junk emails etc. Nothing. Nada. Nicht. Not a sausage.

So, I tried KiBOM download. Go figure, the change in PIP is blowing up the install. First I had come across this October 2020 fuck-up. Good one Python weeners. That’s up there with the dopey decision not to release JRE past Java 8 and then put the burden on users to build JRE to run code, given the dopey developers don’t bother providing a JRE nor a dependencies list. Yes you have tools to find out but who wants to spend every waking moment on our building JRE, to meet the range of dependencies across the multiple java apps you’ll want to run. I mean, eventually you might as well have the standard JRE, if you’ve enough java apps you’ll likely pull in a fair collection of the all likely dependencies. Eh? Yeah, I put 2 and 2 together to work out KiBOM is/was the problem in KiCAD.

So, again, no such thing as Users no more. I feel pressganged every time I want to use a open source piece of junk into getting into the internals of the tools instead of just using them.

Came across KiCost. Great, if you have a BOM from KiCAD (insert emoji for “irony” if ever someone feels compelled to craft an emoji for irony, I suspect the substitute is Mr Happy Poo).

Tried downloading KiCost from Github. Don’t bother, too many errors when installing using python setup.py install. Some were redeemable by installing missing dependencies (that should have been in the requirements.txt but were not). One did not resolve as I did install the supposed missing dependency but KiCost install kept reporting it missing. Use PyPi instead to get to documents. I might have said my bad but why have a dopey faulty github “main” version?