Telefonillum

I live in a block of flats, and of course, we have an entryphone in the doorway.
It is a nuisance for me to search for the keys when I am arriving. And this is even more inconvenient when you are coming with the arms full of bags from the grocery store.
So I had had the idea of some kind of automation for opening the door downstairs based on a remote control, or even a proximity card.
Nevertheless this would imply again to search for some artefact in order to open the door, so I shifted to the idea of using the entryphone.

I decided that the best was to setup a “special-way-of-calling-to-the-ring”, so my hardware up in the flat would recognize the sequence and would open the door automatically.

So I did. I tore up my home entryphone to get connected in parallel to the ring.
Now, a PIC microcontroller determines in real time if the ringing in the doorway matches with the programmed sequence.
I take advantage of the power supply of the entryphone with an added battery of my own for the hard switching of the relay. The battery will last almost eternally.

And YESS!, it works nice and smooth.
Everything is boxed in an aluminium enclosure with a general switch with a “camel-back” protector like those used in the cockpit of the F-16 fighter. It looks cool.

This has been, among my family, the most popular gadget I have invented :).

Fumigator

I began this idea with the need of an automatic irrigation system for the garden (well, some flowerpots indeed).
Actually, this system wouldn't be any efficient (imagine dozens of bottles with servos spreaded across the terrace). So I decided to make some fun of the idea, and I end up attaching a Light sensor to detect the presence of any uncomming objet/person. For example, my daugther :)
The project has been worked out with a PIC 12F675 and a handful of resistors.
A small PCB has been designed for the hardware. A conformal coating has also been applied in order to avoid corrosion.

The Anemometer

I love kites. I began flying acrobatic kites about six years ago.

When you have been flying kites for a time you know exactly when the wind is enough to play a flight. Actually, you don’t need an anemometer.

Nevertheless this hobby was for me the perfect inspiration to build a new gadget: an Anemometer (needless, I must confess)

The first I build was made of ping-pong balls. I finished it with ‘metallic paint’, and I have to say that the appearance is quite factory-made.

I also programmed a displaying application for my beloved HP-48 calculator, so I could follow the trend of the wind speed by a graph on the calculator display.

This project of mine won the HP-48 Calculator Programming Contest of PC-WORLD ’99 - Wooow!! -.
The prize was a HP-48 calculator!!,
as it happens I already had one :-)).

After this anemometer I build a second, a compact version.
I designed this around a Pentium cooler fan.


I got rid of the fan motor and took advantage of the fantastic bearings of the cooler fan to make a neat and sturdy anemometer.

This time the display I used was a seven-segment type instead an alfa-numeric LCD.

Publishing at ELECTRONIC DESIGN

I have finally engraved my name in the wall of the fame!!
Yes, Electonic Design, one of the major technical magazine for engineers and engineering management around the world, has picked up one of my ideas to put it among other outstanding articles (as Bob Pease’s, for example!).

I submitted a contribution for the ‘Ideas For Design’ section that got published on May 15, 2000. The title: “BIDIRECTIONAL RS-232 COMMUNICATION USES ONLY ONE I/O LINE”.






The idea deals with the circumstance in which design constraints are so tight that only one input/output pin of a Microcontroller is available to perform a duplex communication.
I worked out a very creative approach that I wanted to share with the world.
Formulas and schematic are provided along the article to better understand the concept.

Hey, besides I got a $100 prize!!.

The ServoCañon

Well, The ServoCañon is maybe the funniest project that I have developed.
I had always had very much interest in servos, so I finally end up buying a couple of Futaba to mess around with them.

After having programmed a fine routine for controlling a servo I got concentrated in building “something” with them.
I began joining two servos with metal pieces and screws and…, slowly the thing got in the shape of what it finally became: a servo-canyon.

The ServoCañon has three servos:
- ‘x’ axis movement
- ‘y’ axis movement
- trigger puller

The ‘trigger puller’ is just that: a servo that pulls from a spring that is tied to the trigger of a toy gun.

The ‘x’ and ‘y’ axis are controlled by means of respective potentiometers.

These potentiometers are arranged to create a home-brew Joystick made of a steel stick and a mouse’s ball.

To finish, I attached a cheap laser pointer on the gun’s tube, so I could easily aim my targets : -).

The ServoCañon draws everybody attention at once. Its nice ‘robot sound’ from the servos, its technological look, its anthropomorphic aspect, the laser …, everything is superb. There is not any genuine engineer can tear apart his eyes from it.

The final product is a very, very enjoyable toy that became quite popular at the office.
We even organized a TOP GUN contest in the breakfast during a week.

If you want to see the ServoCañon in action, there is a downloadable video at www.iearobotics.com

PIR Detector Project

I took the idea of this project on my last holidays. We were out of home for twelve days, and I set some automatic rotary switches to pretend life inside the house while we were at our vacation resort.

This, of course, is a rough try, but I think that is better than nothing.

The idea was to attach a pyroelectric detector (PIR) inside the door’s ‘surveying hole’, so when motion outside is detected it were pretended a more realistic events in the house. That is, noises, turning on-off some lights…, that’s all.

The second part of the idea was to have instant warn by mobile phone call if “too much” activity was detected by the PIR detector.

In that case, I could ask my neighbour to take a look in order to know the details of such suspicious situation.

Many mobile phones have AT-Hayes command set integrated. This means that the phone can be mastered as though it were a modem. It can be issued calls, SMSs, and other actions by sending AT commands through its serial port (when available ...).

Since I had to deal with the extended AT commands I went through all the documentation I could find on the web with regard to AT-Hayes and ‘Short Message Service’ (SMS). After a few days I became an expert : -).

The circuit is built around a PIC16F876, SMD version.

The operating method is the next:

Whenever the PIR detector detects any activity a phone call is issued to the pre-programmed telephone number.

When I receive the phone call from my 'alarm system', I hang the call so there is no cost for each of these warning calls.

If the battery of the alarm has been drained too much, a SMS with the text "LOW VOLTAGE" is sent to that pre-programmed phone number.

There is also a tilting sensor on the device for anti-tamping purposes. So, if the board is taken by any stranger the alarm sends a "PANIC!!" SMS to alert the owner.

After this , the system auto-protects itself by automatically switching off the mobile phone, and blocking the alarm.

Stockhölm

Around the middle of january (2006) I went to Stockhölm to attend a meeting at Bombardier.




It was 12ºC bellow zero, but that doesn’t kept me at the hotel.

I found spare time to take a city sightsee.
Stockhölm is a very beatiful place to go, I do reccomend it.

It is plenty of lovely places to take a coffee ...



I went to the Teknika Museum. There is a Robot Exhibition that deserves a visit.
The Teknika Museum is a very appropriate place to go with children. I missed a lot Jaime and Clara. They would have enjoyed it a lot.

Luxófono

The Luxófono is a musical electronic device.
It's a kinda Theremin stuff, but working from light instead of electric field.

It was specially designed for my beloved Gema Hassen-Bey, a performance artist.
She knows how to get the best of it, and so she has proved through many performance shows.

The device has a light sensor, a LDR (Light Dependent Resistor).
Depending on the light detected it outputs a pitch with deeper or downer frequency.

Gema process the sound with a personal computer creating wonderful effects.

Gema Hassem-Bey is now working in Onuba, an electronic flamenco group.