Amicus-based Irradiance Meter

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Jon Chandler
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Amicus-based Irradiance Meter

Post by Jon Chandler » Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:57 pm

I just finished a project to measure irradiance to help a friend evaluate a solar panel installation. I used the Amicus compiler for this as the PulseIn command made it easy to measure the frequency output of the Taos TSL230R light sensor.

I would have preferred to use Swordfish, but Amicus worked very nicely. It is confusing at points because it's so similar to Swordfish but the syntax can be very different. Swordfish could have been used as well by setting up a timer and counting pulses, but I was lazy :)

There are a few unique pieces that may be of interest here. I used a Handspring Visor PDA for I/O and logging - this was just a matter of finding a nice terminal emulator and making connections to existing pads for serial I/O in the USB docking station.

For wiring up the TSL230R, I used a great prototyping board from Microchip. The board has pads for an 8 pin package in several formats, and each pins has pads for 805 SMT pull-up, pull-down and series resistors and a location for a bypass cap on each pin.

The details can be found here: http://digital-diy.com/home/amicus18/pr ... meter.html

Francis
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Post by Francis » Sat Jul 24, 2010 11:31 am

Nice one.

Maybe they'd like to hear about your project on the Amicus Forum?

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