This is my little workshop in the basement. Nothing too special. The computer rack is pretty much empty now (thank you vmware) and the toolbox is a $40 homedepot special. The desk itself is 8ft by 3ft with a 1ft ledge and the monitors are a 23 and a 15. They are hinged to the table and can fold backwards. What you can’t see is a drill press on the other side of the toolbox.

The one neat thing about the lab is the spool holder. I made this from a reject levolor mini blind. I just took all of the slats out of it and mounted the mechanism to my ceiling. The bar is a $2 curtain rod mounted to the blind base with a couple of screws and nuts. I use zip ties to keep the various spools separated from each other.  I just lift it into the ceiling when I don’t need it and lower it down when I do.

The wife and kids bought me a USB microscope for fathers day that I promptly hacked. I got rid of the cheap base and mounted it to a 3rd arm, then I took and drilled 2mm holes about 70 degrees apart from each other all around the focus knob. I mounted a screw on multimeter probe with a harddrive bearing bolted to it into the holes and now I have a very fine motor way to adjust the focus of the scope. The stock way was prone to sticking and could be frustrating.

Last is the latest change to WHIA. Instead of controlling the dampers in the basement, I’m moving to controlling the registers. To that end I bought a whole bunch of tiny servos and I’m modifying the vents to fit them directly into the register. The servo’s shaft actually becomes the pivot point for the vent and allows me very simple torque transfer without any of the clearance issues that I ran across when I tried a linkage style mount. Works great, very quiet, look for more of this soon.

• Communication is now query/response based instead of the arduino constantly chattering.
• Individual sensors can be queried or all sensors.
• No  more pressure sensors.  Too variable, instead my safety gear focuses on the number of registers open and inlet/outlet temperature. I’m considering a hot wire anemometer.
• I went back and forth on it, but I’m using two Arduinos talking I2C. One controls the inputs, one controls the outputs.
• Thanks to I2C, we have lots and lots of blinky lights this go around. Two for each sensor and one for each servo.
• I’ve stubbed in support for controlling the mini-blinds in each room via xbee or cheap 900mhz radio.
• I actually control registers instead of dampers in some of the rooms, chiefly the basement.
• Water sensors have been added in the basement and under the washing machine (long story).
• The big one, a web based gui for feedback and control this time.

It’ll be well into winter before this one is done and a few more weeks before I’m even at a stage where I can post code, but I’m going to stand up the v2 page anyways and just start putting everything out there. I did a really poor job of getting my code and schematics in shape and online for v1, so I figure the best way to remedy that is just to hang it all out for v2.

Thanks again all of you google ads clickers, you bought me servos and micros and are funding the work on v2!

So next up, we finish and document the amp clamps and get that pressure graph online!