Telescope Field Project Box

[eliminster]

Hello,
I am new to the forums and the Arduino world. It would seem that it coupled with the Adafruit products I might be in the right place to have a long time dream become a reality. Looking at your products, and this new technology (to me), there is a world of possibilities your products can do. A little backfill on the dream project is as follows:

The project box must have a somewhat small footprint, i.e. 5" long x 2.5" deep x 2" wide...That is the largest, smaller is better. The odd size is due to the box being stored in the arm of the telescope. I have put together a DIY bluetooth module and a 5v to 3.3v module with RS232 to control the scope from MDFLY, which works great from my MBPro. There are times that I would like to be further away than 10'-15'. I have realized over the years, as my technology has changed, so have my needs. The field box needs to have the following capabilities in order to provide the completed feel to this long time wish.
- an LCD status screen with a momentary switch to cycle though information...I really like the RGB one!
- the end of the box has an LED to use as a flashlight with a push button or switch - red, blue, green or white depending on the need
- various LEDs depicting box status...i.e. charging, battery state, USB / DC / Solar, faults...etc, etc.
- a usb port to charge up an iPhone, iPad or other USB type devices
- an auto switching from usb/dc charger to recharge the battery inside
- a solar panel connector port to charge the box and can be used to support daytime charging of USB devices
- the ability to turn off the LCD display, and all lights but have a momentary switch to check status LED lights and display
- continue with bluetooth or even one of the xbee products to connect to the rs232 port on the telescope. It must "talk" to my MBPro
Housed in the other arm currently is my DIY bluetooth module powered by a 3.7v 610mAh Li-ion old banned Controller battery. I currently charge it using the PCB from the controller plugged in to the USB port of the computer. So, I would like to change that old habit in case the battery needs to be charged up in the field I can connect it to the box too.

I know, I know. My goal is not a simple one, but I have steady hands to solder surface mounted items with little or no rework. I can read schematics, and a have a good head on my shoulders. I know how to read bands on resistors and can figure out what most components are by looking at them, but the math for putting them together, I will need help with some of the formulas. So please be patient if I ask a few questions. Besides, you would ask a realtor about a house and a dealership about a car, right? Well, I'm asking you to help me bring a long time dream to fruition.

With the laundry list above, and your combined knowledge of these processors, modules and parts, what will I need in order to make this happen? I have crawled all over your site, like an ant on sugar, and have found some of the most wonderful things. But I will admit, I am a little bit overwhelmed. I believe the dual power li-ion charger with solar and a minty boost will be needed for starters? Then the RGB LCD display? Well, as long as I can choose red or blue and fix it for the color display. Then one, or more, of the li-ion batteries once power is figured out. The rest however, I need an expert please. I will answer any questions to my the best of my knowledge to help make this a reality.

Thank you in advance,
- Keven

[adafruit_support_bill]

Sounds like you have thought through your requirements pretty well. With all that functionality in one box, you will have to give some thought to how many i/o pins you will need. Displays in particular need a lot of pins. One way to deal with that is to use one of the display shields with built in buttons or joysticks. These handle both input and display and communicate via i2c or spi so they don't need so many pins.
[url][url]http://www.adafruit.com/products/716[/url]
http://www.adafruit.com/products/802[/url]
The solar lipo charger & panel would be a good way to power it. Add a mintyboost for your USB charging like this.
We don't have any bluetooth modules in the store, but serial over XBee is pretty straightforward.

[eliminster]

Thank you for the quick reply. I agree with you on a joystick or button display...I had my eye on the RGB display with the buttons anyway. I would like red for night eye ease of use.

I suppose I should say what I want displayed on the screen. I believe time and date is a given. The network signal to the telescope's strength. Maybe geo-location by latitude and longitude. I would like the temperature and humidity, for adjusting variances in the telescope or knowing when to use the dew shield. I had seen the Sensiron product #246 that I liked. Will that work well? Has anyone here had some experience they can shed with that module? Snafus I need to look at?

Then on to the "brains" of this box. There seems to be many Arduinos that will work, I didn't really know about the pins issue at the time. So that being said, is there something I should know going in with the above information? Which one should I choose that has the needed abilities and connections? Are they all the same with little subtle changes to call them something else?

I also like the idea of using the serial xbee products to create a micro wireless environment for my telescope. Are those ranges right? What am I missing here to get 300' or even miles away? That sounds unreal! Will that still work power wise with my li-ion banned battery? Or should I get a higher rated battery? Do I need some type of storage in the unit for sending data to the computer? Should I get three of them, one for the box, one for the telescope and one for the MBPro to "talk" to the network?

I am entertaining the idea of logging the information too. I would assume that I would need sd storage from the data logger shield? I would like it to store the time, date and location with the temperature and humidity, but only as a snapshot. For example one of the buttons on the RGB display could be a store information button to the SD card module.

Is it as simple as it seems to me. Plug the right units together, tell them what to do, and then how to display the information? I apologize for so many questions. I just have so many ideas of what I think this Arduino can do and have to wonder if I am misinterpreting the information.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Lots of questions! I'll try to address them all.

I've used the Sensiron for a simple monitoring project. It is a bit sensitive to soldering heat and can take a little while for the readings to settle down after soldering. But otherwise a nice sensor to work with.

In addition to pin considerations, you may run into memory limitations with all the functionality you are planning. I suspect you will need a Mega. You can compare the specs of the various models here:

XBee makes a wide range of modules with various ranges and power requirements. Check the Digi site for more info on that.

We have several options for logging aside from the data logger card. In fact, the TFT display shield with the joystick also has a micro-SD slot.

I think the best way to start on a project as complex as this is to break it down into subsystems. Get each piece working separately before trying to merge it all together. You can postpone final decisions on things like battery size until you have a handle on what the total power consumption looks like.

[eliminster]

Beautiful project by the way!

Ok, after extensive review, this is what I have determined I should start with. During my looking around and reading up on the Arduino, the solar charger board kit had sold out...so before I hit buy.

Shopping cart contents
1ea.- Adafruit 1.8" 18-bit Color TFT Shield w/microSD and Joystick
1ea.- Arduino Mega 2560 R3 (Atmega2560 - assembled)
1ea.- Large Solderless Breadboard
1ea.- Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires - 40 x 3" (75mm)
1ea.- Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires - 40 x 6" (150mm)
1ea.- Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires - 40 x 12" (300mm)
1ea.- Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout - 66 channel w/10 Hz updates
1ea.- Sensiron Temperature/Humidity Sensor
1ea.- Adjustable breadboard power supply kit
2ea.- XBee Module - Series 01
2ea.- XBee Adapter kit
1ea.- USB FTDI TTL-232 cable

Will there be anything that I am missing to get this off the ground?

[adafruit_support_bill]

That looks like a good start. A screw-shield might be useful too for accessing the unused pins under the display shield. You might also want a 9v adapter for powering the Mega.

[eliminster]

Ok will do! Thank you for your assistance.

[eliminster]

Is this the one i should add?
http://www.adafruit.com/products/196

And what should I use to keep time? I was a little confused about that one.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Is this the one i should add?

Yes. That is the one.

And what should I use to keep time? I was a little confused about that one.

You had a GPS on your list. That will provide you with an excellent time reference.

[eliminster]

Thanks! I thought that was the case using the gps module, but I wasn't quite sure. I went with my gut and ordered them before your reply.

On a related note...as to the size of the sketch files. When you made your humidity project...what size was the file? The mega has a flash of 256KB before the 8K boot, is that the area you were talking about filling up on this complex of a build?

[adafruit_support_bill]

The Humiduino code compiles to 10138 bytes.
There are several types of memory. Flash and RAM are the two you need to be most concerned with. This link explains it well:http://itp.nyu.edu/~gpv206/2008/04/making_the_most_of_arduino_mem.html