Real Tricorder: With Scanny Bits (TNG)

Here is an example video from my twitter feed of the thermal camera and tricorder working:

Added thermal camera and sound to the tricorder! pic.twitter.com/KXqDAwPYAP
— TG-Techie (@TG_Techie) February 23, 2019

resources:
• https://github.com/TG-Techie/tg_gui
• https://github.com/TG-Techie/tg_gui_examples
• https://github.com/TG-Techie/pyportal_gui
• https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython

https://twitter.com/TG_Techie/status/1099386733513318405

Hello! 

Long time no chat, how've ya been? 

    Okay I'm gonna dive right in. So as you might know i'm in high school. This year was the first year my school implemented an internship program and I , as I m sure you fellow makers can relate to, immediately miss used it for a my own purposes. So I "interned" and turned my out of school project into an in and out of school project! However, it worked out very well because of my mentor. An ex software engineer turned teacher,  who is my favorite teacher, agreed to be my mentor for the internship. Basically she agreed to help me when I ran into code - research problems, ran into Heisenbugs, or got tangled in ideas. Indeed by drawing from her software dev knowledge and her clairvoyant ;-) insights she was crucial to making the progress I have.  Thank you again, Ms.K,  if you read this.

so, about that progress: here is a small list of what has been accomplished.

• Decided on final sensor array
• Created all but one circuit boards for the project
• Order all designed boards
• Orded the 3d-model chassis mentioned before. The new one is more accurate than my prior one on thingiverse. the previous one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1739621 
• Hand soldered three of the boards (and they worked, after a few tries)
• Created a gui with menus, lists, pages, and customizable objects, from scratch in circuitpython 
  • (okay this is kinda off topic but: Some else actually was able to use the gui on different hardware! It is open on github, it's called TG-US rather the TG-UserSystem (i don't want to call it an OS because it isn't))

Okay, now for some not progress:

• Soldering mpr121 chips has NOT been successful! At all! (WOW are they tiny)
• The slots for the hinges I cadded in were too small and make the retention plate bulge out
• Ahhhhhhhh software takes a lot fo brain power, but oh boy is it fun!

I find that I do best in conversation, please feel free to chat and ask questions. Or if you wanna use the gui message me on discord: @TG-Techie#5402.

If you have any tips on soldering tiny and thin chips I'd love some help!

Thank you,

    TG-Techie

Now That the summer is ramping down I have been able to make more progress, here is a list:

• Restarted 3d-chassis by using imported eagle boards to define cutouts
• got a metro m4 and restarted software dev (after making a super buggy own version)
• designed an embeddable pcb made to act like a tiny m4 board so people can add tiny "metro-m4s" to their projects. thus not needing to know how to wire one
• revamped code structure into :
• -- staging (talks to hardware)
• -- middle (setup and define functions)
• -- surface (turns and actions)
• -- tg-modules and other custom libraries

more to come, any and all questions/ suggestions welcome 

Thanks,

TG-Techie

WHOO! just added priority based threading to the triocrder.

what does this mean:

i have made a group of libraries, available  on github *shameless plug* (https://github.com/TG-Techie/TG-Modules), that has two classes. the first is a task class. it make an object with a stored method and a stored tuple. when call the .perform() method on a created task it will execute the tuple as the input for the method stored:

from tg_modules import task

my_obj = task(print, ("text to be printed"))

my_obj.perform()

would output:

text to be printed

the next class is a thread_list class:

this class allows you to add tasks with an assigned priority:

so items with a lower priority number are executed first.

from tg_modules import thread_list

my_list = thread_list(length = 3)

my_list.add_task(print,('world'),priority = 3)
my_list.add_task(print,('hello'),priority = 1)

my_list.chug() #this works through all the current tasks

this would output:

hello
world

this is b/c the  print('hello') task has a lower priority number

have fun:-)

any questions please ask! (or if messed something up here)

and have a great day 

having finally made display library for rgb displays, (i modified this:  https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_RGB_Display) that supports text, rounded rectangles,  and other small accoutrements to make coding easier, i imported the first sensor library, and ran out of ram. this is a side effect of running circuitpython on the atsamd21g. circuitpython uses alot of ram and the d21 has a max of 32kb.  i've decided to switch to the d51, which is being pioneered by adafruit. it has up to 8 times the ram. 256kb. and since any files being run in cir-py are buffered in ram this will alleviate the the bottle neck(for now).

currently the metro m4 is out of stock in adafruit. so i whipped up a m4 breakout board during memorial day weekend and ordered the parts. link below. it is as of now untested.

thanks for reading,

TG-Techie, Highschooler 

link:

https://github.com/TG-Techie/m4-breakout-test