4 ms·

You get the radio in the 8 pin part. That's the "ANT" connection, pin 8, one of the three "wasted" pins (along with the crystal) you complain about.

dmitrygr 2y ago
Yup. All of which would be useless for this project. :)
- sitkack 2y ago
  I am imagining a world where Bruce and Dmitry team up on a project together, maybe we need CNLohr as arbiter.
  - brucehoult 2y ago
    I bow to both Dima and Charles on making practical physical hack projects! I'm more of a software guy. I guess my biggest hardware project (other than building a 3D printer from someone else's plans) was in 2012 or so making a PID-based home heating controller using an Uno with a custom perfboard shield with a thermistor for measuring the air temperature and a 433 MHz transmitter for talking to a set of Jaycar 240V remote controlled power outlets to control primarily a 2400W oil column heater, plus a fan pointing at it which I turned on when it was at a high duty cycle. Plus switching the home water heating on and off on a fixed schedule just as a side thing from the same board. I used that in Wellington for 3 winters before moving to Russia for a few years and saved NZ$500 per winter on electricity bills compared to previous years using a mechanical Honeywell thermostat to control the heater.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      That is really cool. Sounds like it could be turned into a great product. It is funny that Nest basically added 3 if statements to a thermostat over a reed thermal switch and became a multibillion dollar company for it.
      - brucehoult 2y ago
        It worked really well. That Honeywell thing let the temperature cycle over maybe a 2º C range. I was sampling the thermistor 100 times in about 1/10th of a second (analogRead() on Arduino) and then doing exponential averaging each second with a 32 second time constant (i.e. `temp = temp - (temp >> 5) + new_reading`) and averaging and getting a nice stable temperature reading that moved smoothly in 0.01º C increments. Turning the heater on and off at maximum every 30 seconds the room temp usually stayed within ±0.03 C of the set temperature -- not precise on an absolute scale but detecting and correcting small changes accurately. I was actually thinking of trying to make a product, especially once Flick Electric started up with electricity prices changing every 30 minutes based on the wholesale rate plus a 2c margin. You could (still can) get the current 30 minute wholesale price at your local substation from electricityinfo.co.nz with a simple http query, so you can build something to make intelligent decisions. But then I got a job overseas and dropped the project...

dmitrygr 2y ago

Yup. All of which would be useless for this project. :)

sitkack 2y ago
I am imagining a world where Bruce and Dmitry team up on a project together, maybe we need CNLohr as arbiter.
- brucehoult 2y ago
  I bow to both Dima and Charles on making practical physical hack projects! I'm more of a software guy. I guess my biggest hardware project (other than building a 3D printer from someone else's plans) was in 2012 or so making a PID-based home heating controller using an Uno with a custom perfboard shield with a thermistor for measuring the air temperature and a 433 MHz transmitter for talking to a set of Jaycar 240V remote controlled power outlets to control primarily a 2400W oil column heater, plus a fan pointing at it which I turned on when it was at a high duty cycle. Plus switching the home water heating on and off on a fixed schedule just as a side thing from the same board. I used that in Wellington for 3 winters before moving to Russia for a few years and saved NZ$500 per winter on electricity bills compared to previous years using a mechanical Honeywell thermostat to control the heater.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    That is really cool. Sounds like it could be turned into a great product. It is funny that Nest basically added 3 if statements to a thermostat over a reed thermal switch and became a multibillion dollar company for it.
    - brucehoult 2y ago
      It worked really well. That Honeywell thing let the temperature cycle over maybe a 2º C range. I was sampling the thermistor 100 times in about 1/10th of a second (analogRead() on Arduino) and then doing exponential averaging each second with a 32 second time constant (i.e. `temp = temp - (temp >> 5) + new_reading`) and averaging and getting a nice stable temperature reading that moved smoothly in 0.01º C increments. Turning the heater on and off at maximum every 30 seconds the room temp usually stayed within ±0.03 C of the set temperature -- not precise on an absolute scale but detecting and correcting small changes accurately. I was actually thinking of trying to make a product, especially once Flick Electric started up with electricity prices changing every 30 minutes based on the wholesale rate plus a 2c margin. You could (still can) get the current 30 minute wholesale price at your local substation from electricityinfo.co.nz with a simple http query, so you can build something to make intelligent decisions. But then I got a job overseas and dropped the project...