Solar Board (DS2438) with LED activity light?

[aozminski]

Hello,

I really want to use Eric's 1-wire solar board (without the solar sensor) to do an A->D voltage conversion from a 5 volt ultrasonic sensor.

The ultrasonic sensor has a trigger which tells the sensor to ping. The easiest way to do this is via an LED activity circuit on a DS2438 board. The 1-wire network hits the board, the board LED goes off which triggers the ping.

Can anyone tell me if it would be too difficult to get the board from Eric and add a 1-wire activity LED? Obviously I'm not a hardware guy and I'm experiencing a steep learning curve

Thanks,
Oz
www.NorthPoleRetreat.com

 

[Clark Martin]

Hello,

I really want to use Eric's 1-wire solar board (without the solar sensor) to do an A->D voltage conversion from a 5 volt ultrasonic sensor.

The ultrasonic sensor has a trigger which tells the sensor to ping. The easiest way to do this is via an LED activity circuit on a DS2438 board. The 1-wire network hits the board, the board LED goes off which triggers the ping.

Can anyone tell me if it would be too difficult to get the board from Eric and add a 1-wire activity LED? Obviously I'm not a hardware guy and I'm experiencing a steep learning curve

There is no output on the DS2438. If you are talking about triggering on any activity on the 1-wire net it will be triggering all the time, every time something happens on the net.

You could do it with the HVAC monitor board and a couple of simple modifications. The 2450 in this board has 4 ADC channels. They operate at either 2.56V or 5.12V full scale. Each channel can also be configured as a digital output. So you could use one channel as an output to start the sensor then use another channel to read the voltage.

 

[aozminski]

Thanks for the info. That's an interesting option. I'll look into that board right away. As long as it's not cost prohibitive, that might be an excellent solution.

Also, I would be okay triggering the ping sensor upon any 1-wire net activity. This is for a weather station, and I plan on logging variables every 5 minutes. So there should only be activity on the net whenever I actually want information. I could also put a 1-wire relay on the network that removes power from the ultrasonic sensor unless the temperature is below 40 degrees F. But now I'm looking at the cost of a relay board and a solar board. I'll check prices in case the HVAC monitor board is a more cost effective solution. You might guess by now that this is for a 1-wire ultrasonic snow depth sensor I would like to add to my weather station.

Thanks for the info!

Oz
www.NorthPoleRetreat.com

 

[aozminski]

Clark,

Thanks so much for that lead on the HVAC board option. I already spoke with Eric about it. He is great to work with and agreed that a mod the the HVAC board should do the trick quite nicely. The board has been ordered.

To wrap up... if you're looking to add an ultrasonic snow depth sensor to your one-wire weather station, use the the Mini-AE sensor from www.senscomp.com. Tie that into the 1-wire HVAC board from Hobby-Boards.com, modified to use one channel as output (trigger the sensor) and another channel to receive the 0-5 volt output from the sensor.

Thanks again,
Oz
www.NorthPoleRetreat.com