Arduino based VDI!

[dfbowers]

Good work dfbowers, thanks.

Yes! I saw your video's (along with others) and that is what gave me some inspiration to write a small program for the Arduino. was thinking of downloading the code to the Arduino NANO or MIN, which would be very small but would be somewhat liimited as compared to your project.
Thank you!

I will have to translate the details of your project from the other website.
Thank you.
Don

[Uykusuz]

Good work dfbowers, thanks.

[Jerry]

Jerry,
Just uses a standard USB printer cable that you can pick up just about anywhere.

Don

Thanks Don, I have several.

Jerry

[dfbowers]

Below are the hardware details. Besides the Arduino UNO, all that is needed is and LCD displays that is compatible with the Hitachi HD44780 driver. I just used a standard 2 X 16 LCD backlight.

For the IDX:

Pin A0 - > All metal (U3 Pin 1)
pin A2 - > Disc Channel (U3 Pin 14)
Ground - > Ground
+5V power source.

That's it!!
Don

Attached is the complete .ino file.
Also, spotted a small error above-

Pin A0 - > All metal (U3 PIN 1)
Pin A1 - > All metal (U3 Pin 14)
Ground - >Ground
+5v power source.

Don

[dfbowers]

I think this is going to be a very interesting thread. I do have one question.
Is the USB cable used to program it specific to the Arduino UNO or will any standard USB cable work?

I ordered an Arduino UNO today and did not think about it until afterwards.

Jerry

Jerry,
Just uses a standard USB printer cable that you can pick up just about anywhere.

Don

[6666]

Great work Don thanks

[Jerry]

I think this is going to be a very interesting thread. I do have one question.
Is the USB cable used to program it specific to the Arduino UNO or will any standard USB cable work?

I ordered an Arduino UNO today and did not think about it until afterwards.

Jerry

[dfbowers]

Below are the hardware details. Besides the Arduino UNO, all that is needed is and LCD displays that is compatible with the Hitachi HD44780 driver. I just used a standard 2 X 16 LCD backlight.

For the IDX:

Pin A0 - > All metal (U3 Pin 1)
pin A2 - > Disc Channel (U3 Pin 14)
Ground - > Ground
+5V power source.

That's it!!
Don

[dfbowers]

Without too much trouble I wrote an Arduino based program for an VDI module.

I had originally posted this under the IDX section but maybe deserves a thread of it's own since it should be able to run on a variety of detectors. I just happen to be using the an IDX kit, minus his VDI module from Silverdog for this experiment.

I struggled with this for a few days until I got the accuracy down but now works perfectly! Problems I ran into were determining how long to sample each channel and inconsistent calculations using floating point numbers.

I used an Arduino UNO, just because it's the most popular. Documentation for the Arduino is excellent, so even a hobby guy like be could figure it out. Basically the program monitors the last stage of the GB and DISC channels, takes 50 samples of the ratio between the GB and DISC channels when both are triggered , throws out any bad numbers, averages them and displays a number that is porportional between 0 and 100.

Details of the Arduino are here:

http://www.arduino.cc/

Here is a link to my experiment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b93lfFtUSFs&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy!

Don