I need advice with Logic automation programing

[Mr_Sheesh]

If your soldering skills are not up to taking leads off the board and replacing them, cut the leads and swap colors a couple inches off the boards.

Do be certain to stagger the cuts i.e. cut one lead further than the other from the board to prevent shorting, then cover the joins with heat shrink to hedge your bet.

If you've never soldered before, there are lots of soldering tutorials on youtube to help, or find a local ham operator or "maker" or someone else who solders well. Or ask someone on here to help, we be enablers

[MaryB]

Letting magic smoke out is a part of the learning experience! In high school I took 3 years of electronics, I got my ham license at 14 so the first year I was way ahead of everyone... so as the smoke clouds went up I was laughing having been there 2 years ago. The electronics instructor pretty much let me do my thing as long as I dd the required first year coursework too, 2nd year we had to design and build a project form scratch. Color organs hooked to stereo speakers were all the rage back then but were crude... I designed a 6 octave filter feeding FET's to turn the light strings on and off and added a booster amplifier internally so it could run off a tape monitor instead of the speaker output. Won a state wide industrial design award that year... third year I designed a solid state light chaser circuit(we had to use whatever surplus IC's 3M gave us...) that fed LED's for small signs and triggered FET's to drive 120 volt light bulbs. Won a National Industrial Design Award for that...

Trust me, designing from scratch the smoke clouds went up more than once! Heck I triggered the circuit breaker for the entire shop twice LOL learned a lot, was also teaching(1st year students) 2nd and 3rd year besides doing my projects. Learning to teach meant learning the details better myself. And the teacher liked it because he was an old tube type navy guy from WWII and solid state wasn't his thing...

[Big Tom]

Technically, you don't have to solder the side of the little distribution board. You can take the new wire and screw it into the terminal together with the cable (black terminal, negative) coming from battery. The other ends, from the Arduino and from the relay board, you can screw together into the terminal of the relay board - also in the negative terminal please

[Three44s]

R

If your soldering skills are not up to taking leads off the board and replacing them, cut the leads and swap colors a couple inches off the boards.

Do be certain to stagger the cuts i.e. cut one lead further than the other from the board to prevent shorting, then cover the joins with heat shrink to hedge your bet.

If you've never soldered before, there are lots of soldering tutorials on youtube to help, or find a local ham operator or "maker" or someone else who solders well. Or ask someone on here to help, we be enablers

I need to clarify.

Big Toms work is stellar. The polarity issue is in the Chinese made RF fireworks firing unit. The red and black tabs are swapped. When I went to trigger the sequencing that is when the smoke was generated. It smoked the negative lead to the optional power in for the Arduino Mega Board.

I can solder as I built some simple circuits, delay timers, switching based on light etc back in the early 2000’s. Tom also points out that his terminal block is right there and I could merely insert the new wires there. The red lead is fine but I am thinking about lengthening both leads a bit while I am at.

I have small diameter shrink tube to cover the solder joints as suggested.

The way Tom layed out the small junction board it is very easy to solder in the new repair. In my stuff (somewhere, lol!) I have the little heat sink tool but this project will not need that.

Thank you

Three44s

[Three44s]

MaryB,

Thanks for pointing out that I need to loosen up about making smoke but Big Tom put such a great piece of electronics together that I hated to screw things up. Granted I was blind sided by a Chinese Manufacturer but I still felt bad, at least until Tom figured out the likely source of the problem and then the Mega board still worked... whew!

The parallel I can compare to is running heavy equipment. If you have not gotten something big stuck, you have not done much. If I got the D7 stuck, not so bad. But when I got the D9 hung up ...... BAD! .... no body bigger to get 120,000 # out!

Smoke at our pump house 275 KVA 480 3 ph. .... a disaster. I had it twice just days apart where the leads were spliced to the ones going down the weather head. Power Company’s baby! Thank goodness!

[Three44s]

Technically, you don't have to solder the side of the little distribution board. You can take the new wire and screw it into the terminal together with the cable (black terminal, negative) coming from battery. The other ends, from the Arduino and from the relay board, you can screw together into the terminal of the relay board - also in the negative terminal please

Thank you Tom,

It’s the short black wire between junction board and the 2.1mm center positive plug that goes to the Mega board receptacle. I do not believe that any lead to the relay board is damaged.

Best regards

Three44s

[slohunter]

Well after 6 pages I really feel stupid now.

[Three44s]

Well after 6 pages I really feel stupid now.

Now I would not say that! Just because a particular discipline does not register with someone it does not indicate a lack of smarts. It also is not restricted to academic achievement because smarts comes in many forms in my humble opinion.

Without knowing what you do I would still wager that you have an interesting life story and some pretty good achievements.

Theodore Roosevelt was known in his stump speeches to proclaim to his audiences that “America needs each and everyone of you”! Everyone of us brings something to the table (criminals mostly exempted) that our nation needs.

Be it for me to pretend that I understand the coding that has been presented for my benefit by gracious members here. I have watched some 34 well done videos on the internet about the programming language the Arduino boards use and I thought I “knew something”. Well I have a long ways to go ..... oh my!

Where I come into the picture is my somewhat unique problem and a resolve to reach out to folks that may have knowledge that can help.

For four years I have been associated with the fellow who along with his family own and operate a pyrotechnics show company. They sell pyro to others such as stands and other show folks.

I tried some pyro on my elk and got mixed results but it became obvious that my technology in controlling and directing it were lacking. The radio frequency control system gave rise to a better way to gain control but I felt I needed more expansion of the options so the elk would be kept off balance and be less likely to get complacent.

As I brain stormed how to branch out the deterrents I came to learn about the old phone sequencing switches. Being sought after as collector items I thought about making my own switch. As I continued to discuss my thoughts the response from certain folks was to turn to micro controllers.

And here I am!

Three44s

[Mr_Sheesh]

Maybe a career in Elk Deterrents lies ahead of you

Letting the smoke out, yep it happens. Try to only do that with inexpensive parts though, not a clients' $25,000 computerized safety device you're testing :P

All of us have lots to learn, are good at some things and not so good at others. Doesn't make those lower on a specific skill stupid, just means they haven't learned as much about that subject, YET. I've worked with some awfully bright people and while I know computers / electronics more than they, their area of specialization I'm less knowledgeable in. Language is handy, it lets us work together

Tabs, not wires, oops we misremembered or just didn't know. I bet you'll chuckle at silly manufacturers doing stupid stunts like that more than once, later (Initially some less humorous responses perhaps tho!)

[BamaNapper]

I listened to a podcast a couple months back that comes to mind with the talk of letting smoke out of equipment. The guy was talking about accepting failure as part of progress. He gave a perfect example. Consider Elon Musk. He's world famous as a leader in getting things done, and quickly headed toward being the most successful and wealthy person in history. For the better part of 20 years he's had a focus on rockets. How many have blown up on the launchpad, blown up in midair, or crashed and burned? Maybe 50? He doesn't see millions of dollars in smoldering rubble as failure, but as an investment in eventual success. Even his most recent launch, that ended in an impressive explosion when the vehicle was landing, was called a successful flight.

I'm usually not that upbeat when I set fire to something I'm working on.

[thraxx]

I helped build a similar system using Arduino. It's more of a security system using hard wired motion sensors and some and security cams, but it detects things coming into the place, turns on lights and sirens and activates cameras. It uses the network cards and sends out emails when triggered. No reason it couldn't control pyro.

I'd like to upgrade it to a Pi as the master unit, controlling multiple Arduino units.

[BamaNapper]

No reason it couldn't control pyro.

I'm not sure pyro is a good idea for a home security system.

Kind of like the ad for the MAC-10 a few years back. It was touted for home defense... "Honey, someone's in the living room, lob a frag in there!"

[thraxx]

I'm not sure pyro is a good idea for a home security system.

what, you dont think an intruder would get excited by spotlights, sirens, and firecrackers?

I guess I should have said it was an outdoor system for keeping an eye on an empty farm place.

[Big Tom]

Correct - that's what M18 Claymores are for

I'm not sure pyro is a good idea for a home security system.

Kind of like the ad for the MAC-10 a few years back. It was touted for home defense... "Honey, someone's in the living room, lob a frag in there!"

[Three44s]

“Maybe a career in Elk Deterrents lies ahead of you. “

Thank you for the vote of confidence but I am happiest on my own farm. My pyro guy may take this “on the road” and his son was the biggest champion of seeking out an Arduino solution for my elk problem though he knows nothing about how to program them, only that some people do use them to run pyro shows.

He is also thinking about getting into the Drone/Ag business and that whole service area is about to explode in growth.

So I will help my pyro friends as much as I can and trade my ideas and experiences to them and in turn, they can knock themselves out getting to know agriculture using my farm as a living breathing school to expand their skill sets in areas like the special photography and field mapping.

Best regards

Three44s

[Three44s]

what, you dont think an intruder would get excited by spotlights, sirens, and firecrackers?

I guess I should have said it was an outdoor system for keeping an eye on an empty farm place.

Hush people ..... there is an elk thumpin’ on the front door, better give him some entertainment!

Three44s

[popper]

Mostly Asian stuff uses positive ground-neutral. We use neg. ground.

[Three44s]

Well, smoke my giblets! That figures!

Thanks for the warning popper!

Best regards

Three44

[Three44s]

Well, I figured I would let you know the hogs have not gotten me!

Big Tom continues to refine code and equipment and I have his first unit here and he has number two with him. We did a virtual meeting right after Christmas and I can tell you Big Tom is a brave fellow as the sight of me on his computer screen did not panic him!

There is so much adaptability written into his sketch and ways to bluff elk, I just have to learn how to get my farmer brain wrapped around it! LOL!

Working on tractors and cats, a small wire to me is 14 gauge!

I have about eliminated generating smoke also.

I am eyeing ice chests for a home away from home for the unit, I have lots of choices!

Luckily we have only had minor snow and the animals have stayed away thus far. I do have the option of just using the fireworks unit by itself too in a pinch.

A shout out to BamaNapper!

I have not forgotten your contribution! Your turn is coming! I really like you SD card code written into your sketch!

It blows my mind the potential that the Arduinos, Raspberry Pi’s And Beagle series’s of boards offer. Farming will never be the same.

Three44s

[Rcmaveric]

With some of the coding and software packages it no longer takes a degree to create anything. I was rather surprised how powerful the PI was.

The PI and Arduino broke the molds. They wanted us backwoods engineers and kids to be able to create and their software was designed with that simplicity.

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