Raspberry Pi + Arduino

[pepsi2451]

Yup... Arduino is awesome...

I have a few active projects still in the works, like a case annealing machine and some other gun/reloaded related things.

My last Arduino project was an electronic powder trickler which uses a stepper motor and motor driver.

For use with a digital scale... Controlled manually using a Jog Wheel or Buttons for momentary press continuous run speed, and pots to control the speed of each button.

For use with a beam scale... I have two photo sensors which control speed and when to stop based on beam position. Basically an Analog Scale "Chargemaster".

I can get my powder trickler out of the way. Its actually quite ergonomic and nice when you don't have to keep moving the trickler to get access to the pan.

That is awesome. I knew I was saving those stepper motors and sensors from my old printer for a reason, looks like I might have a new project. I wish I knew enough about reverse engineering and logic analyzing to make my own chargemaster for my rcbs 1500 scale. I just don't reload enough to see myself ever buying one.

[croc4]

With a soldering iron or with hot air? I've done lots of QFN with hot air.

Perhaps "by hand" was the wrong way to phrase it. What I meant was with a traditional soldering iron. I've done BGA with air, but no can do with an iron.

I've soldered 0402 parts with an iron but I don't like it much. And I have insufficient magnification and motor skills to deal with 0201. Just too damned small for me. Old age and bad eyesight...

with a soldering iron, its not that hard, but hot air is easier , the key with the iron is to have the pads already tinned and a fine tip. I use a metcal rig with a scope.
The other key is to know how the solder will flow with the right tip motion as you drag across the part

croc4

[Dubious_Beans]

with a soldering iron, its not that hard, but hot air is easier , the key with the iron is to have the pads already tinned and a fine tip. I use a metcal rig with a scope.
The other key is to know how the solder will flow with the right tip motion as you drag across the part

croc4

What kind of magnification are you using? One of my biggest limitations is these old eyes. What Metcal rig & scope do you have?

[croc4]

not sure the magnification (it belongs to the company), but I've had it for ~10yrs on my bench, same for the metcal rig, its has dual outputs to run two irons, but I only use one.
Any metcal with the removable tips should all be the same as far as I know, when I order tips I don't recall there being any note for a specific model.

croc4

[Dubious_Beans]

Ah, someone else paid for yours. That's the kind I want too.

My hot air station and irons are sufficient for the task but I need to do something about magnification. I'm just gonna have to spend the money on a decent scope one of these days. There's just so damned many things to spend money on...

[chiefcrash]

I've played with both for a variety of things. My latest project is a RPi + Roomba robot, once a few parts come in...

[skunkbad]

I work in the sewing machine industry, and it's amazing how similar the milling machine project (from the video) is compared to an embroidery unit. It makes me wonder if I could hook up a Raspberry Pi or Arduino to an embroidery unit and create something like a milling machine.

[Ninety]

They are cheap enough to try.

Hardest part is coding. But there seems to be q lot of support and the language isn't overly difficult.

[skunkbad]

They are cheap enough to try.

Hardest part is coding. But there seems to be q lot of support and the language isn't overly difficult.

For me coding is the easy part, as I have two jobs and one is full time programming. What I feel is the hardest part for me is to learn about electronic components. For instance, if I have an LED I want to light, I need a resistor, but how do I know the proper type of resistor to use? When would it be acceptable to not use a resistor? I have many little questions like this.

I have a couple of projects I'd like to play around with. One would be a sprinkler controller for 4 stations, and the other is a hydroponic controller. If I could get both of these projects to work on solar power, they would be even more fantastic. For right now I'm just letting my 11 year old son work with what I purchased (Raspberry Pi and Arduino, plus some components, a relay, and a breadboard). When he gets bored or otherwise quits then my fun begins.

[Ninety]

So .. I've got my RPi communicating with the arduino tonite.. via usb..

also set up SSH and VNC so I can communicate via the terminal and have the virtual desktop on a remote http://www.howtogeek.com/141157/how-...-transfer/all/

Was pretty easy to setup

Now I need to figure out how to finish my project of temp probes and graph it / host it to a web server and send alerts at high temps...

for a remote location out of state..

[intradubio]

I got this diy garage door project that works with the rpi and some other hardware, but it requires soldering. I tried doing it but had a lot of trouble. How do you learn to solder? I watched some youtube but it didn't help. lowpowerlab

[Ninety]

I've not done a whole lot of soldering .. but it's not too difficult.. some flux and some solder.. a nice solder gun... tin , weld. But I've seen some videos where the guys have really nice board holders and a magnifying glass jig.. pretty neat.. I'm gonna go check out your lowpowerlab right now

Some pretty cool things there..

I think this one is funny.. send it to your wife from work

[pepsi2451]

I got this diy garage door project that works with the rpi and some other hardware, but it requires soldering. I tried doing it but had a lot of trouble. How do you learn to solder? I watched some youtube but it didn't help. lowpowerlab

I'm not real great at soldering but I'm usually able to make it work. What kind of iron are you using? Good tips make a big difference. I used a cheap harbor freight iron for a while and it really sucked. I threw the tip away and found some brass rod, I would just snip off a piece, grind it to a point and use it as a new tip each time. Finally I got a Aoyue solder station and never looked back. Make sure you use enough flux. Some "helping hands" are nice to have, you can get them pretty cheap from harbor freight.

[pepsi2451]

Has anyone used the ESP8266? Its a < $5 micro controller with wifi. I guess there is an Arduino IDE that supports it now. I just got one in the mail the other day but I haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet. It gives me a lot of ideas for cheap wifi connected projects. You can pick them up for about $2 each if your willing to order from China.

[intradubio]

I didn't use any flux, isn't that the core of the solder? And I was just using a walmart iron. I am willing to spend some money on good tools, there are a ton of projects I'd like to do. I just don't know what to get.