Friday 9 September 2016

9th Sept. Update

I've done most of the code conversion now and also drafted out a couple of new bits of functionality;  one idea was to include a "costings" feature,  this would allow you to enter a cost per kWh of electricity and then it would keep a running total of estimated units used per firing based on the amperage draw of the kiln.   And one of the other ideas would be to allow the controller to automate the process of triggering a vent system.   I think once these are added and tested with the larger chip, and it proves to be "rock solid" code then I think I will be finally happy with the feature set.

I have drafted out a rough UI for the editing of the programmes;  this will probably take a bit of time to implement but hopefully, it should be fairly intuitive to do from a users perspective.

In parallel to these tasks, I will try and look at creating some supplementary documentation to accompany the controller.

More to follow..



Saturday 3 September 2016

3rd Sept. Update

Had a bit of free time to look at the controller last week and I've been looking at swapping out the 8k pic microcontroller for a 96k one;  the foot-print is the same so it should work;  to do that so far I've re-written 2000 lines of code from the previous version;   one of the sticking points for me with the old code was the lack of programme editing without the use of the PC and Bluetooth link, but with the bigger chip that shouldn't be an issue now as the plan is you will be able to do that through the 4 buttons on the front panel.

more to follow..