Live Sensor Data

Frequent visitors will recognize the following as performance programming.

You can view live sensor data during daylight hours, or you can look at old data from months ago. The data is acquired by a Basic Stamp II microcomputer and reported as a decimal number whenever prompted over a serial port. A server shell script, bsw, prompts the stamp once a minute. A second script, bsr, collects the responses from the stamp and maintains a record of the last one hundred measurements in a file. This is an oscilloscope trace of the dialog.

The stamp measures a trimmer pot on a prototyping board. The trimmer is the blue control with a white screwdriver slot in the center. If you visit this site often, you may notice that I occasionally adjust it.

Kudos

Ward, that is unquestionably the goofiest thing on the net. What a hoot! -- Ron Jeffries

I can't figure out your device. What the heck is that thing? -- Gary Goldberg

I love it! -- Rick Wartzok

Daylight Sensor

I replaced the mechnacially variable resistor shown above with photo cells. I sample these all day and assemble an image from the resulting data. At one pixel per minute this could take years. Here is what the light in my shop looks like over a number of days. Can you see that the days in Oregon are getting shorter? Can you tell when the shop lights were left on overnight, or when I've moved the sensor?

I'm happy to go into engineering details about this project including mathematical models, schematic diagrams, source code, acquistion logs and high resolution data.

More Kudos

You're on the slippery slope now ... what you have there is a 1BITx1BIT webcam. Next thing we'll be watching you walk around naked 24 hours a day. -- Ron Jeffries

I like the new color photo cells. -- Joshua Kerievsky