Project:Fire Pong Meeting 2016-07-14

Since Last Meeting Notes

Lots of stuff has happened since the last meeting was formally documented. Ian and I have been working pretty much every night on the project and much has been achieved:

• Re-worked the spark terminals. The rounded heads on the previous iteration caused the voltage to rise above the breakdown potential for the internal insulation in the sparkers, killing several of them. We re-made them with screws with sharp edges, and having a bundle of wire fibres protruding from the top of the sparker. This still needs sustained testing. Ian also ordered a bunch more sparkers.
• Added inductive spike protection in the small puffer segments after a pro-mini bit the dust
• We now have enough 15mm tube for all the small puffers, but we're still waiting for delivery of more 1.4" BSP -> 22mm solder joint adapters
• Small puffer segments now have stabilisation legs
• Mouse purchased ply and made a mounting board for the supply segment. Waiting on delivery of a final gauge, and then the supply segment can be bolted to the board. The board has been painted black and had brightly coloured stencil markings to show which valve does what and the on/off positions of each
• We found an enclosure for the power supply, and Ian has started work on that to make holes for all the buttons, cable glands and such
• Greg Duckworth came through with a tank adapter for one of the large puffers. It works (with a minuscule / nothing to worry about leak). Testing with air from the compressor it is very impressive. Should get to test it this weekend coming.
• Mouse extracted the valve from another butane cylinder - will check if previous valve goes in the hole, and if so, give Greg the go-ahead to make another adapter.

At The Space

• Got some green spray paint from Toby and finished colouring the supply board
• Put headers on two new arduino pro minis and upload firmware:
  • Small puffer segment 2 replacement
  • Large puffer control
• Wired up 3 x 10m 4-way cables for main control box -> small puffer segment control box
• Tested three small puffer segments in a row!
  • Exceptions on Ian's laptop - his USB stack was dropping the device due to noise
  • Doesn't seem to happen on my laptop or the RPi
  • Some freezes when delay between puffs set to 0.08s

Next Meeting

Saturday the 16th - big test day!

TODO

• Mouse: check serial buffer and FpEvent parsing code:
  • Implement different heartbeats for different states:
    • waiting for new event
    • filling buffer
    • HALTED mode
  • Check checksum verification
• Mouse: Implement continuous mode in main firepong code
• Mouse: Implement GPIO button handling
• Mouse: Implement display to HDMI for testing until we get the proper display working
• Mouse: Bring second barrel; FTDI & jumpers; WiiMotes
• Mouse: Implement individual puff mode (need two buttons)
• Order buttons for main control box
• Order EMStop button
• Test with B grade sparkers (do the still ignite?)

Blockers

• Assembly of supply segment on board is waiting for delivery of new gauge
• Second large puffer awaiting Greg making the second tank adapter (Mouse messaged him just now to give news about the size of the second tank thread (which is compatible with the other tank).