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Author Topic: Rich man EFIE  (Read 25260 times)

TheOne

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Rich man EFIE
« on: August 05, 2008, 12:18:50 AM »
lol

Well its not so that rich man, just wanted to make a contradiction with the other thread "poor".

So here some photo of my "Rich Man" version (total cost under 20$ so far).

My circuit is not finished yet. It use a dsPIC30F4011 microchip and LCD to show/setup the options and show the voltage value.

It will support 2 O2 sensor.
Also it will support an output voltage in fixed, sinus or square wave.

Hopefully I will able to finish ASAP to put it in my car.

If you have some suggestion don't hesitate to ask. I will add more photo when I will finish other part.

Now I am working on the menu/option. After that I will begin to play with the analogue/digital port of the microchip.


TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2008, 12:27:01 AM »
My prototype is done! I am quite happy of the result so far. Now the harder part is to make the circuit out of the breadboard :)

What the Rich man EFIE support is:

2 Sensors
LCD 16x2
Output in real-time the input/output voltage of both sensors (volt and % bar)
Customizable settings saved in EEPROM

Available configuration options:

Enable / disable sensor
Conversion of the output signal in 3 modes (Fixed, Sinus, Square)
Startup delay
Wave amplitude (Sinus or Square)
Wave delay (Sinus or Square)
Maximum output voltage

I will make a video to show how the EFIE is working and see the LCD in action!

TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2008, 12:44:26 AM »
Crappy cell video sorry, I will make other photo because we hardly see in this crappy video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I07ok41Qlww

UPDATE: Photo added
« Last Edit: August 08, 2008, 01:12:57 AM by TheOne »

hartiberlin

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2008, 11:44:40 PM »
@TheOne

nice circuit.

Are you going to sell it for those who like to try electrolyzers in their cars ?

Maybe you can also put in a flow sensor for the gasoline usage to read in realtime
the gasoline usage and change the voltage for the O2 sensor accordingly..

Would be great, if you could offer this as a kit or some way.

Many thanks-

Regards, Stefan.


infringer

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2008, 12:11:43 AM »
oh without a doubt that would be a seller a gallon use meter that you could reset and set...

then you could set your trip and your gallon meter.

ez as 123 to show proof of use for hho in gas powered vehicles...

While most are pervy to the info that the DOD or whatever actually did studies on this some years back and it did actually increase efficiantcy according to the report in desiel/LP/Natural Gas engines they failed to mention or maybe even failed to test gasoline powered vehicles...

Would actually be fairly easy to do say on a carburated vehicle just get a meter that measures flow through and splice it into the 3/8 fuel line.
As the meter reads have it output every gallon it reads...

Shame cars were not equipped with this stock and the other sad think is cars are doing away with oil pressure gauges and votage gauges as well very very poor way to cut costs I like to know if my machine is running good at all times.

TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2008, 12:50:16 AM »
Hi, they are something missing in my circuit that I need to buy to finish it, the DAC (digital analog converter), at first I was sure the PIC have one but that was only the ADC, anyway the coding is done, everything is ok, just need to add the ADC and time :).

Making a circuit to sell it is a good idea but this kind of circuit need professional soldering and board, I am not sure how a clean circuit will cost and i probably need to buy/order a big quantity to have some, that mean I need to sell a lot of circuit to cover all the cost.

Maybe I can get some idea/help from other to make this append.



Yucca

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2008, 01:43:58 AM »
VERY nice indeed! :)

Great work on using 4bit address mode for the LCD, it sure saves microcontroller pins ;)

You can do DAC with minimal external circuitry: Use fast PWM by utilising a timer pin and interrupts, then smooth the pin output using just a small ceramic capacitor with its charge slowly leaking to ground through a resistor.

I am working on a signal generator coded in C++ on the Arduino platform with external programmable oscillators, I have pretty much finished the GUI, it uses a jog wheel and a 16x2 LCD like yours, I will start a thread soon with photographs and source code.

I notice you appear to have user defined graphics on your LCD. I presume it has a standard Hitachi controller on it, if so could you give me a heads up on doing UDG?

All the best, Fraser.

Yucca

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2008, 01:57:40 AM »
Also, forgot to mention:

If you want to sell ready made units then you could use Arduino or Freeduino boards, the great thing is that they come ready built with power regs and USB interfaces on and they´re pretty cheap.

The even greater thing is that you can buy off the shelf plug on boards for them called "shields", you can get LCD shields with joypads on them. You can also get bare shields like veroboards for building your own projects on. So your unit could be one micro board, one bare shield with your input and output signal conditioning on, and one LCD shield, you could just bag these up and sell ready programmed as a kit.

The other nice thing is that the development environment is C++ or C and it´s very good quality and FREE to download!

I recommend Freeduino because it´s an open source board, and it´s fully compatible with industry standard Arduino, and it´s cheaper :)

http://www.nuelectronics.com/estore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

Of course the only downside would be that you´d have to port your code over  :P but nonetheless it maybe something to think about.

Fraser.

TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #8 on: September 24, 2008, 02:08:06 AM »
Yes indeed for the LCD. Its quite easy actually to make your custom graphics but its basically you are creating new character font.

Here the link of the PDF (http://www.serialwombat.com/parts/hd44780.pdf), all infos needed to generate your custom graph character. For the progress bar I am using a couple of character with 1/2/3 etc.. columns and when its time to show the graph I call a beautiful little function that render the right character on the screen ;)

I was aware of the method you are talking about (PWM) but I think to get a very accurate voltage between 0v and 1v a DAC is the way to go?

Nice platform, but my question is was is a Arduino? a chip like dsPIC ? dsPIC are very fast, many pin (64), ADC, enough memory, also how cost a dev kit for this platform?

Sylvain


Yucca

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2008, 02:18:48 AM »
Yes indeed for the LCD. Its quite easy actually to make your custom graphics but its basically you are creating new character font.

Here the link of the PDF (http://www.serialwombat.com/parts/hd44780.pdf), all infos needed to generate your custom graph character. For the progress bar I am using a couple of character with 1/2/3 etc.. columns and when its time to show the graph I call a beautiful little function that render the right character on the screen ;)

I was aware of the method you are talking about (PWM) but I think to get a very accurate voltage between 0v and 1v a DAC is the way to go?

Nice platform, but my question is was is a Arduino? a chip like dsPIC ? dsPIC are very fast, many pin (64), ADC, enough memory, also how cost a dev kit for this platform?

Sylvain



Thanks for the LCD info :)

On Arduino the processor is ATMEGA168 16MHz 32kbyte program, EEPROM, 8 bit RISC, 16 io pins, 8 ADC, SPI and more. It´s more than powerful enough for your project I think.

You can get VERY accurate voltages using fast PWM and conditioning circuit. 0 to 1 V with 0.01V resolution should be no problem provided you´re driving high impedance load like opamp. A cheap DAC chip won´t be that much more accurate and in fact alot of DAC chips use PWM in their internal architecture. But for maximum accuracy an expensive DAC chip can´t be beaten.

The development environment for Arduino or Freeduino is free:
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Fraser.

TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2008, 02:23:38 AM »
Does the board come with the chip or you need to solder the chip on it, or clip it?

Sound like a good processor to use, If I understand correctly you can plug the USB directly in the board and program the chip directly without the need of a external device like I use for my PIC chip?

Do you have good info about how to use the PWM for accurate voltage, I find some info but not enough to understand and control the voltage that I need.

Sylvain


Yucca

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2008, 02:29:54 AM »
The board comes with a chip programmed with bootlader already in a DIL socket.

You just plug the board into your PC with standard USB cable and program, compile and download using the free IDE. I have worked in industry as an embedded system engineer, with 68HC11, PIC, ATMEGA etc, it was always quite involved setting up IDE and programmers etc. especially for 68HC11, it was all command line stuff. but with Arduino you just plug it in and go, it really is easy!

I just use as fast PWM as I can generate, I get 8 bit resolution at about 100KHz PWM, then just use that PWM to charge up a ceramic cap that you leak to ground, depending on the impedance of your load you have to tweak R&C. If you have a scope it´s just a matter of experimenting with R&C. Then if you want only 0 to 1 v range just use a potential divider, so two leak resistors instead of one or use a trimpot with the cap leaking across the whole track.

infringer

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #12 on: September 24, 2008, 02:37:26 AM »
I read on www.hackaday.com a while back that errr I forget his name but he does tons of hacks on hardware and all good ones...

He what you seek to achive with an atmel mcu dont recall which one it was most likely one of the more common ones used in robotics or something...

I make no promises as I am no EE but just giving a possible direction.

-infringer-

TheOne

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #13 on: September 24, 2008, 04:24:11 AM »
24$(LCD) + 28$(Freeduino) + 11$(ProtoShield) + 24$ (shipping) = 87$, its quite high just for making a EFIE in my opinion!

Hum not sure if its that so good, its cost so much, my cheap pic proto did not cost that much!
« Last Edit: September 24, 2008, 05:06:46 AM by TheOne »

Yucca

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Re: Rich man EFIE
« Reply #14 on: September 24, 2008, 11:17:34 AM »
24$(LCD) + 28$(Freeduino) + 11$(ProtoShield) + 24$ (shipping) = 87$, its quite high just for making a EFIE in my opinion!

Hum not sure if its that so good, its cost so much, my cheap pic proto did not cost that much!


Yep it's fairly expensive in dollars, more like a rich mans efie! :D

You would get good volume discount off the board makers and they do free international delivery on orders over $600 so I think each unit would cost more like $50 ... 60$. I think you would have no problem getting $100 for each device, especially now the dollar is so weak on the international markets. Also bear in mind that the freeduino route would enable all device owners to upgrade their firmware just by using a USB printer cable on their PCs, a definite plus point, it makes the device very attractive.

Any way best of luck with it if you do decide to take your device to market.

Fraser.

P.S.
Stefans idea of flow rate transducer and realtime MPG display would make the device a real big seller I'm sure.