V2.0 suggestions

[zoltuz]

Hi all,

If and when version 2.0 comes out, it would be great to incorporate as many ideas/user feedback as possible. I’d like to share my ideas to improve the user experience/reliability of the Chibios. Some of them are useful, others are just a pipedream.

– add power on/communication link LED everywhere: pump board, Chibio reactor, cape
– USB-c connectors, please. Somehow I manage to *always* plug the wrong way despite the 50% theoretical chance
– pump board USB connector needs reinforcement, it breaks off easily
– put a temperature sensor on the pump, the one on the cape is inaccurate, especially since we put the Beglaeboard inside a protective case
– allow batch mode, e.g. run Chibio without a pump (it could be done with some software tweaking)

– develop feedback for stirring for two reasons: 1, to detect heater is on without tube inserted. Idea: measure motor current, if no-load and heater is on, then warning for the user (prevent melting with emergence shutdown); 2, to detect when the stirring did not start, e.g. the stirring bar is preventing the motor to spin up.

– somehow detect the water sensor was triggered, e.g. something mechanic flips or fuse disengage (or adding a rudimentary Residual-current device).

Cheers,
Zoltan

[harrison]

Good ideas!

I think the pump board USB connectors have been updated after your past orders. Labmaker found a different variant which seems to hold on stronger.

The temperature sensor idea is good, though it means we would have one per reactor rather than one per control computer. Originally I put the sensor on the end of a long sticking-out part of PCB in an attempt to thermally insulate it, but as you said it doesn’t work that well. Often it is as much as ~7-10C higher than it should be…

The feedback on stirring/heating could potentially work. I think it would be feasible to tell if the motor is rotating or not, but also figuring out if there is a stir bar there would be tough… Are you hoping that the motor will draw a significantly different current if it is/isn’t interacting with a stir bar? I suppose there will be SOME change in current draw, but it might be of a small magnitude and hence difficult to distinguish between inter-device variability in that component (fan current draw). If we want to implement this could add a low-value resistor downstream of each of them and then measure voltage across it (and hence current) with an ADC (which would need to be added, there are cheap/simple I2C ones that would fit).

For the water sensor change is the primarily purpose you imagine to ensure that we can always diagnose when this has caused the crash? (versus some other possible hardware issue)

[zoltuz]

Temperature: I’ve been recently playing with these Zigbee temperature sensors (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000042592841.html). One option would be just to add this to the ChiBio setup and people can place the temperature sensors wherever they want to.
(However, it would require a new type of communication channel to the ChiBio setup. Just an idea: having RF communication between certain modules would be actually desirable, there are *so* many cables for a 6-8 reactor setup, it takes 20-30 min just to plug everything together.)

Water sensor: indeed, I’d like to know what caused the crash at 3 am. Although, with the cape V1.2 we have fewer and fewer crashes.

[harrison]

Yeah, i agree cabling isa pain and something I have thought about changing. At present there isn’t too much to be done since (even if data was wireless) we still need power transmitted between them.
One option I thought of was to have a “base” to which reactors/pumps attached. Thus, all power/communication would be routed through some table top-size structure and you just plug in the pumps/reactors to the top of this. But, would take a lot of design/manufacturing and potentially could create new failure modes (e.g. liquid spills could become more damaging…)

[zoltuz]

I like the idea of a “base” or hub, where you can plug in all the pumps and reactors.

[Author]

Posts