Project status as of 11-Apr-2018

It has been awhile since I wrote anything about my research. Now it's time for a major update since a lot has happened since October 2017.

New projects and their status

Supercapacitors for automotive use - Active, High priority

After figuring out that my car battery cannot hold the charge for too long I decide to install supercapacitors to take the burden of powering the starter motor off the battery. It took way too long for the capacitors toe arrive and the battery has lost the ability to hold the charge even for a day. But not all is lost. Later I will provide some of my findings into this matter.

Touchscreen control Version 2 - Active, Low priority

Having a touchscreen to control stuff may be a cool thing at first but it becomes a bit boring later. So why not to add some really good features to it such as aggregated feedback and PoE (Power over Ethernet)? Oh yes, and also the GUI based end user interface design for smart home automation? At the moment I got stuck with Cortex-M3 connectivity line due to the crazy amount of datasheets required for bare metal setup. It's ok, I will get through it someday.

Custom LED driver - Active, Medium priority

After ordering some cheap 9W-12W MR16 LEDs from China I realized that the power output is not what it should be. Some LEDs were faulty which gave me one more reason to dismantle and look inside. As expected the soldering job was not good at the rectifier bridge. Also the boost converter seemed to be too weak for 12W LED - instead of 36V it provided only 22V. That means one more project for me: design a robust and cheap power controller for the LEDs.

Old projects put on hold

Time is extremely hard to refund. Some even say it's impossible. So I had to put some projects on hold due to busy lifestyle and some unexpected difficulties.

Digital DI box

ATXmega could not cope with realtime sound conversion - it was just enough to convert Analogue data into digital signal, but converting it back to Analogue was too much of a task. I will have to use either a specially designed DAC or a more powerful uC (Cortex-M3 maybe?).

Abandoned projects

Technically I have not abandoned any projects yet, only changed priorities and some key components. For example I will not longer use ATXmega for high computing/high data throughput projects, there are other microcontrollers out there better suitable for this and at a lower cost too. At the same time I am switching mainly to PIC at low end due to cost and driver availability.