This blog post is going to be a bit scattered. At this moment, I have a lot of projects at the 80% or a little more done, but nothing complete finished. I have been putting off any sort of update because I've been waiting to at least finish one or two of the items I have out there. However, its just taking a little longer to complete anything than I originally expected, as usual. However, I decided that I've accomplished so much this last month that I should share it and not worry about the last 20%. It will be completed soon. Last disclaimer: there will also be a severe lack of pictures or video in the post simply because I haven't taken the time to document anything.

On to the good news. I'm officially saying that the main software application for the controller is in beta. I'm really happy with the state that it is in, and would have no problem letting it run the tank. Next, I went on a shopping spree a little over a month ago and hopefully have all the parts and pieces needed to complete the main unit, a dimming (analog output) card, and a power strip. One of the items I order was a touchscreen for the Raspberry Pi, and its working out pretty good so fair. I did however have one hell of a time getting my program to run in "kiosk mode". I can't remember all the hops I tried to jump through, but there was lots of moving when and where the script that starts my application is called. Long story short, Gtk needs X10 to already be running before it will work. I'll have to make a short post about where that's called from because I couldn't find any good examples or help on the internet.

In addition the the controller stuff, I also order parts to build myself a solder paste dispenser and to finish my reflow oven. I based my solder paste dispenser on Sparky's Widgets design with a few changes. First, I didn't see any reason to use a microcontroller. Voltage is instead applied to the coil of the control valve with a simple foot switch. I'm also using a slightly different control valve. This one is more of an "industrial" valve with a 110Vac coil. Its a 5 way valve which isn't required, but it was cheaper than the 3 way valve. The 'A' port is plugged and the 'B' port is used to apply pressure to the syringe. Lastly, my air compressor's regulator sucks at reducing pressure less than 50ish lbs. Luckily I had a really nice one sitting around. I plumbed that into the system and it provides reliable low pressure to the system, down to around 10lbs. It works lower than that but at that pressure the valve start to have issues operating. I haven't tested the dispenser with solder paste yet so it might not even work, but dry runs work properly. One of the issues I'm worried about is the valve being to slow for this application.

The reflow oven is darn close to being finished as well. I used the chipkit Max32 and touchscreen I originally purchased for the AquaPic to control the oven. All the firmware is done for that and works. I also built an enclosure for the control circuitry. The only thing that remains unfinished is tuning the PID loop, which I'm almost done with as well. Once the PID loop is tuned, I can start populating and reflowing the boards for the controller. I need to build some sort of enclosure for the power strip, but I have a pretty good plan to move forward with that. I however have no idea what I'm going to do for the RPi and its touchscreen. Lastly, the firmware for the slave modules is coming along nicely.