Help Wanted: laser cutter sensors

The laser cutter has a few sensors that log to stats.vanhack.ca…

  • Laser power and duty cycle by monitoring the signal lines off the laser controller
  • Water chiller temperature using DS18B20 sensor
  • Pressure before and after the filters using BMP180 sensors*

* The BMP180 pressure sensors were broken sometime in the last year of Cook St. The cables got mangled from storing stuff behind the filter box, which caused a sensor to try andpower itself over one of its signal pins. Or at least that’s what I concluded after a few hours of troubleshooting.

I need some help installing these, so I’m looking for one or two people with whom I can split this job. If you want to help, either you’re already on the LCC, or you should work with someone on the LCC who can open the filter boxes, etc. Here’s what I need help with:

  1. Buy a couple new BMP180 pressure sensors and fit them into the filter box where the old ones were. Wire them up with some cat5 cables that I can plug into the sensor controller box. You could even terminate with an RJ-45 connector using the pinout I documented from the previous one.

  2. I bought a couple of VOC sensors that need to be installed. I’ve put them into the drop box locker. The best location is probably with the pressure sensors, but maybe you have a better idea. Wire these back to the sensor controller box.

  3. Any other sensors you want to install? Let me know what you have in mind. The more the merrier.

If someone can do the above, then I’ll pledge to wire these up to the microcontroller and modify the software to start logging. This probably involves redoing the controller box somewhat, but I plan to continue to use the RJ-45 connectors for the various sensors. If you can wire up the sensors and run the wires, I can terminate them and do the rest.

Let me know if you’re interested in helping!

How about BMP280s ?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/I2C-SPI-BMP280-3-3-Digital-Barometric-Pressure-Altitude-Sensor-High-Precision-Atmospheric-Module-for-arduino/32924808257.html

If these will do I will purchase them and get them installed…

2 Likes

Sounds like the BMP280 is an upgraded version of the BMP180, so yup that should work fine. Thanks!

I ordered four of these a couple weeks ago, they’re still in transit.

2 Likes

@Arrgh the sensors you handed me are in the dropbox labeled as for LCC

1 Like

@lukecyca - I finally got progress on some of this. I mounted 2 of the sensors that @Arrgh supplied inside the filter box. I used a couple of small boxes I had to give them some protection. I have run the cable out of the filter box and will terminate in a RJ45 plug. Then we can use a short patch cable to connect to your controller…

Only possible caveat is that the sensors I have expect +5Vish as they have a onboard regulator. I will have to test to see if they run at 3.3V… If not I will re-wire the plug in your controller box to supply +5 instead of +3.3…

image

image

Once it is all up and tested I will remove the old sensors and wiring…
The little red boxes were freebies from RP I think a long time back…

5 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.