What I did find was my kit built magnetometer which I decided to get working again. As I mentioned above, the information I had been searching for was for this receiver. Could I find it? Not a sausage. Anyway I connected it all up with the actual detector fixed high up in the conservatory and aligned East West. I have always been disappointed with the readout being a meter as there is no record of what changes there may have been in the Earth's magnetic field, especially after the Sun has released any charged particles in our direction.
I wondered whether I could use an Arduino with one of my 3.5 inch TFT displays to show some sort of graph of the changes. I had build one for displaying temperature and air pressure some time ago. Aha. I could probably use some of that code. Once again I went searching through files on the laptop and back up drives. You guessed it. Not found. So starting again from scratch was the only way forward. I linked the voltage output to the meter on the magnetometer display to an Arduino Mega fitted with a 3.5 inch display. Lots of typing code, testing and use of Adrian's favoured naughty words I managed to create a scrolling display. Only time will tell how useful, effective or interesting the result will be.
Next project will be to 3D print a housing for the display as it's now just a Heath Robinson layout while in the testing stage. Not a great deal of activity so far today. Just the normal minor variations if the Earth's magnetic field being displayed on the graph.
This looks interesting. Special words do help, I'm a firm adherent.
ReplyDeleteAdrian: It seems to be working OK at the moment. It's great to have something to stimulate the grey cells even if my version of logical problem solving does seem a bit on the woolly side.
DeleteI thought, always suspect and sometimes dangerous that modern phones have one built in. I seem to remember years ago that one of the maritime electronics firms were also using them in 3-axis accelerometers. Like a 3-axis gyro navigation thingy.
DeleteAdrian: Indeed they get everywhere these days. The kit I am using is quite old, no longer available. The detector is a scientific design for detecting small changes in magnetic fields. Ideally it should be buried 18"+ underground away from other sources of magnetism. Now you can get DIY kits for RPi and probably Arduino.
Delete