Dave's Neck, Compressor, Electronics

[davepl]

Feel free to move this to OT, but I'm following up on two topics we were discussing briefly here so thought I'd follow up here!

First, my neck - if you recall, I blew out my C6/C7 spinal disc. Completely ruptured it, the goo came out, bone on bone with the nerve pinched between. Not pretty, and no painkillers. But it's been almost TWO MONTHS now and I'm at least 90% healed up, maybe more. So a month laying flat on my back and then another one taking it easy and healing, and here I am!

That gave me a lot of time to learn electronics, so starting with a thread and some advice here, I undertook to learn basic digital electronics (breadboards, chips, ohm's law, etc) because I was a software guy with no hardware knowledge!

So, I took an ESP32-WROOM chip and built a compressor controller. My initial plan was to "soft-start" the compressor, but it turns out that's not always a great idea. So I just stuck with monitoring pressure and temperature and runtime and so on. So it only runs when I'm in the shop, won't run forever in case of a leak, and so on. But it's all about the learning, not for any practical purpose.

I used an Autex auto pressure sensor (like you'd use for EFI fuel pressure) to monitor the line pressures.

I got pretty much done but wanted to do more, so I added a web interface to my air compressor controller project so you can monitor/control the compressor via the Internet. Because the world needs Internet-connected air compressors! If I can figure out how to add the blockchain, I could have a serious valuation!

On days where I'm actively working on the project, it's up and live at:

http://1969pontiac.com:99/

But since its a breadboard with a mess of wires, I don't leave it running unattended when I'm not out there!

Anyway, I wrote/adapted an async web server to run on port 80, which serves web requests both for static files out of the onboard flash memory and also for a RESTful api that lets this page (or anyone) query the current pressure, temp, etc. The page is written with jquery and jquery UI and uses SVG graphics to render the gauges, no images.

As for the "why", it's just for learning. Serving a web page crosses a lot of boundaries - you connect to wifi, connect to the internet, set the clock from NTP, manage multiple TCP connections, serve files from the SPIFFS flash... jquery, jqueryui, javascript, json, svg, html5, and meanwhile, the chip's ADCs are reading the live pressures and temperatures. Pretty much everything gets involved except the Bluetooth!

Remember that there's no linux or windows on this thing - no operating system at all. Just bare metal. You and the chip, like the olden' days!

[ncpetersc]

Cool project, and glad you are almost completely healed up! That had to hurt!

[weq92f]

Neat! Hitting your URL now it must be serving up a static page as it's the same one you showed at the beginning of the thread:

155 psi
77 F
ON 30

No... wait, that's not a static page. It's reading from the chip...

What gives?

-klb

[davepl]

Here's my next project, a single-chip stereo spectrum analyzer. Sorry for the random update, I figure one post every couple weeks won't distract too much, and I'll be back under my truck in a couple of weeks I think! Six procedures later but mostly healed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6xa...ature=youtu.be

[davepl]

Originally Posted by weq92f

Neat! Hitting your URL now it must be serving up a static page as it's the same one you showed at the beginning of the thread:

155 psi
77 F
ON 30

No... wait, that's not a static page. It's reading from the chip...

What gives?

-klb

It wasn't a static page, it was a live page connected to the real compressor and everything, it was just not my -main- 240V compressor. I hooked it up to a small Cradftsman and left that run a few days, so you were able to monitor it while it was still up!

The page would update every second by doing a POST request back to the server for JSON data to update the text, whatever that's called (restful updating?)

[weq92f]

Back in the 80s, I had one of those under my dash in my '68 step. It was an equalizer as part of the sound system but it had a mode where it would do that as a display. Very cool back then and still sorta cool today too!

-klb

Originally Posted by davepl

Here's my next project, a single-chip stereo spectrum analyzer. Sorry for the random update, I figure one post every couple weeks won't distract too much, and I'll be back under my truck in a couple of weeks I think! Six procedures later but mostly healed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6xa...ature=youtu.be

[Husker]

Good that you are healing. Cool compressor gadget.
Ron