Feels almost unreal, they’re so tiny 45x40mm and 45x30mm! I really hope we didn’t miss something important or made any critical design flaws! Anyways, here they are!

fireCrow v2.0

PyroFyro v2.0

I also got the neat little handheld spectrum analyzer, looks nice!
So now all we can do is wait for the electronics to arrive.
(sorry for the crappy photos)

Igår var jag i “Hallen” och hjälpte Peter att programmera två radiosändare som ska styra en monstermask till ett hemligt projekt

Peter sätter fast vajer för läpprörelse

Ögonen monteras på sina kulleder

Allt på plats förutom ögonlocken.och skinnet, tyvärr får jag inte visa bilder på det färdiga resultatet än.
Kommer att komma en video på ansiktet med ögon och munrörelse så snart jag får lägga upp det

Lite ändring av vajerpunkterna som ska röra på ögonbrynen, dom gick emot fästena till ögonlänkarna

Allt som allt så är det 9st servon som kontrollerar ansiktsrörelserna.
Det krävs två radiooperatörer för att styra hela spektaklet, en för ögonen och en för munnen/käken!

In the beginning there were only 2 channels…

It all started with an idea about making a small and secure 2 channel wireless firing system primary used for squibs (sfx body hits). I didn’t thought that there was anything like that on the market, all I knew about was a single channel, made in China system that was quite expensive, lack of security and didn’t have a nice form factor (if you aske me).

So i simply started to investigate how to make my own system, what kind of hardware to use and how to put it together, since I didn’t have any knowledge about electronics to start with it was like a jungle for me.
Simultaneously my friend David started to play around with this amazing microcontroller called Arduino, he heard about it on a “talk” at FSCONS I belive.
Things took an exciting turn when I early in February 2009 I mentioned my idea to David.
The flame was lit!

From the beginning there was a lot like learning to write code, much copy and paste!
I looked at schematics on Arduinos, floating led light circuits and many more, to figure out how to do things the right way. Of course there was a lot of asking around at forums, mostly Svenska Elektronikforumet (Swedish forum for electronics), thanks guys, you helped a lot!!!

After some research we stumbled over the XBee. Seemed like it was quite commonly used with Arduinos and other wireless project that needed the same level of security as we did.
We decided to skip the microcontroller on the receiver because the XBee had its own I/O ports that we thought we could use, the transmitter on the other hand we used a ATtiny2313, David found out that it could run an Arduino tiny core which saved a lot of coding and time!

When I did my fisrt schematics it looked quite different to the ones I make today, back then I draw them in paint, now a days I use Eagle!
Here are the oldest schematics I could find (not the first) of the transmitter and receiver:

There is an ATtiny2313 added to the receiver (below) so this have to be the second version

About four months later and much redrawing we had two “working” prototypes with some minor bugs. We called the “system” PyroFyro (something like PyroFiring translated) they looked like this:

In August David became proud father of his son Frode and we had to take a small brake with the project.

I think we picked up the project again in the summer of 2010.
We then discovered there was a problem using the XBee to directly control the relays, if pressing the buttons to fast after each other some kind of buffer overflow made a delay on the firing.
This was one of the minor bugs we had, in generally the two first button press worked fine if not pressed to close, but there was no continuity and therefore not reliable.

After many hours of googling and reading we decided to add a microcontroller to the receiver, we also added external crystals to the microcontrollers to get the serial communication to work correctly.

This is how it looked after the modification:

Unfortunately we ran in to some more trouble with the receiver. Somehow one of the channels got f**ked up after adding the microcontroller, a transistor broke I think, and of course the backside was covered with silicone so it was a pain in the ass to fix if even possible at all

The worst thing about this was that I where supposed to use the PyroFyro to shoot Daniel, my brother in law, as a birthday present later on!
So, I had to improvise by making a relay shield to fit on an Arduino FIO. It worked out quite well except that when we should do the shooting the battery somehow got fried so we couldn’t use it anyway!
Luckily my friend Lennart helped out so Daniel finally could get “killed” !

The dude with the protecting glasses is me taking of the “victim” his bloody gears.
If you look closely you could see the clumsy receiver in his back pocket:

From here on the project took other turns!
I’ve started to do the schematics and PCB design in Eagle and we had plans for a new CPU and we’d decided to turn it into an open hardware multi-platform microcontroller.
So this was the end for the 2 channel PyroFyro system that started it all, but never the less the beginning and rise of the fireCrow! ]]> http://crowstudio.se/it-begun-with-a-small-idea/feed/ 0 http://crowstudio.se/finally/ http://crowstudio.se/finally/#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:35:27 +0000 Daniel http://crowstudio.se/?p=307 Continue reading →]]> fireCrow v2.0 PCB’s ordered

Yesterday I ordered the PCB’s for the fireCrow v2.0 and the PyroFyro 4ch module.
Here below you can see the PCB designs:

I also ordered a hand held Spectrum Analyzer for 2.4GHz so we can do some diagnostics on signals and stuff

The PCB design for fireCrow v2.0 is finished, I’m just going to double check everything twice or more

There also is a 4 channel plug-in card design finished.
The design is especially made after Lennart’s, who’s working with special effects at the Gothenburg Opera House, desires and needs.
By the way, I’m very happy to have such a great opportunity to work this close to a possible customer!

Preview features on fireCrow v2.0

Larger CPU – ATmega32u2
More pins – 19
USB connection for easier programming
Module detection
Priority settings for receiver (on plug-in card)
Separate power source for receiver and plug-in cards

A new remote control is at the drawing table as well.
I will put up photos and a summary of the hole project from the beginning to the recent state sometime in the near future ]]> http://crowstudio.se/coming-soon/feed/ 0 http://crowstudio.se/fscons-iii/ http://crowstudio.se/fscons-iii/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:42:24 +0000 Daniel http://crowstudio.se/?p=286 Continue reading →]]> FSCONS – third day

It’s been a very inspiring weekend indeed!
Today, thanks to the lightning talk, some different peoples came up to me and asked about how and where I made my PCB’s, and about wireless applications for home automation and what transceiver to use.
I take that as a sign of success and a great pay off for my first public presentation, that by the way was a close to death experience but I would definitely do it again!

Today I did my lightning talk. It was one of the scariest things I ever done, but I think I did quite well!
I said some stuff twice but I managed to get the crowed to laugh and I think I got through to them –
That you can do anything you want if you are persistent enough!

Today FSCONS (Free Society Conference Nordic Summit) started here in Gothenburg.
Maybe I’ll do a Lightning talk tomorrow on Saturday about the fireCrow platform

Overview

The fireCrow is an Arduino inspired microcontroller board based on the ATtiny4313 with a modified Arduino-Tiny core. The fireCrow runs at 3.3V and 9.216MHz, it has 12 digital input/output pins (of which 3 can be used as PWM outputs), a 2-pole DIP-switch to turn on battery power and (ARM) external power, a pin out socket with included power and serial TX/RX pins, and an ISP socket. It has connections for a Lithium Polymer battery. A XBee, or compatible Bee series, socket is also available on the board.

The fireCrow is original designed to be a module based wireless firing system but could work as a general microcontroller as well. The ATtiny4313 is Arduino code compatible. The user can upload sketches/programs via AVR-ISP programmer or a MEGA-ISP Arduino Shield.

The fireCrow design is made by me, Daniel Arvidsson and licensed under TAPR Open Hardware License. The code is written by David Jensen and licensed under GNU GPL.

Schematic & Original PCB Design
EAGLE files: firecrow_v1_original_PCB_design.zip
Schematic: firecrow_v1_schematic.pdf

Summary

Power

The fireCrow can be powered with a Lithium Polymer battery on the BAT pins or via external power on pin out header 15 and 16, if not used to (ARM) power the shield.

The power pins are as follows:

• BAT. For supplying a Lithium Polymer battery, or other power source with min. 3.35V, to the board.

• Header pins 15 and 16. External power via shield (note – not arduino pin numbers).

Input and Output

Each of the 12 digital pins on the fireCrow can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(), digitalWrite(), and digitalRead() functions. They operate at 3.3 volts. Each pin can provide or receive a maximum of 40 mA and has an internal pull-up resistor of 20-50 kOhms. In addition, some pins have specialized functions:

• Serial: RXI (D0) and TXO (D1). Used to receive (RX) and transmit (TX) TTL serial data. These pins are connected to the DOUT and DIN pins of the XBee modem socket.

• External Interrupts: 4 and 5. These pins can be configured to trigger an interrupt on a low value, a rising or falling edge, or a change in value. See the attachInterrupt() function for details.

• PWM: 5, 12 and 13. Provide 8-bit PWM output with the analogWrite() function.

• SPI: 14 (MOSI), 15 (MISO), 16 (SCK). These pins support SPI communication, which, although provided by the underlying hardware, is not currently included in the Arduino language.

• DEBUG-LED: 11. There is a built-in LED connected to digital pin 11. When the pin is HIGH value, the LED is on, when the pin is LOW, it’s off. It serves good for debugging code.

• I2C: 14 (SDA) and 16 (SCL). Support I2C (TWI) communication.

Physical Characteristics

The dimensions of the fireCrow PCB are approximately 45mm x 40mm (49mm with headers included).

Related Pages
Code for the firing system is available at github:
fireCrow – code for the 2 ch PyroFyro module
fireNest – Fio based remote control for the fireCrow
Arduino-Tiny core link comming soon…

*There are some design flaws in v1.0!!!
The TX/RX LEDs are not functioning as supposed so skip soldering them to the board.
Also the voltage regulator (XC6216D332FR) in the schematic has reversed in/out pins so you have to change it to another suitable 3V3 regulator, for example: LM2937IMP (SOT-223)

Det var lite trial and error under den inspelningen, men nu vet jag vilket vattendjup som är bra och att man måste ha en regält bred bottenplatta för drivladdningen om man har dybotten! Den vattenpelaren som knappt blev något av (till vänster i bild) sköt ned sig i dybottnen och försvann, trots en trädgårdsbetongplatta, hittade inga rester av plattan efteråt!

Fick ett par vadarstövlar, 100 meter telekabel och en massa spännband som betalt, vad gör man inte för kompisar!

Här kommer några stillbilder också: