Bill E.

Netizens! That's clever. I love it - we should cap on that phrase.

Rookie, exactly what do you want to do with the 220V (AC I presume) 100W motors? Control their cycle time or speed? Cycle time can be done with triacs (for a reasonable duty cycle period like on for 10 seconds off for 10 seconds) but if you want speed? Now that's more difficult. Magpie hit it on the head that if you want to control the speed of the motors. PWM is all about effective energy delivered to a load. Using PWM with AC (50/60HZ) just doesn't compute. You need DC motors to work with PWM - on vs off time.

A solar system, I would think, doesn't need milisecond or even second control. If I were you I would think about a NUCH hegher repetition rate line MINUTES control of the pumps. Simple monitoring works then.

Peace,
Bill

Hello Edward and Chris! I have the pdf version of the "Getting Started with Netduino" - that is how I recommend getting the book. I received an email alert from O'Reilly media today announcing the "Getting Started with Netduino" for $7.99. $4 less than I paid. A great deal. For all of you that read this post I encourage you to jump on this! It's well worth it for refresher/beginners (me!), etc. I think this publication is the fill-in for the "Getting Started with the Internet of Things" that references the Netduino Plus. As an experienced hardware guy I would love to see the Netduino expanded to use ALL of the available I/O be accessable within the .NetMicro scope. In fact, using a much biggr MCU for a Netduino would be really cool! More I/O pins available than the Arduino pinout. Kinna like the Arduino Mega. Or more. Any plans for that? Chris, I commend you on your book. It is a very informative publication. Written in the Maker style, yes, which is a bit "Radio Shack-ish" but it gets the info across which is the main thing. Kudos!! Get the book, readers!! Peace, Bill

As I sit here thinking of how to reply to your question of a "scope" I have to kind of step back and apologize for presuming. As a hardware guy I presume everyone has a scope. A TV remote, as Stefan elaborated on, can be of, oh, maybe 500 different varieties. The basic operation, however, is all the same. Without a scope though this could turn into a real nightmare! I really don't know how you could reverse-engineer a TV remote with a meter. Can you consider a matched set of receiver/transmitter components for your project? It would be possible if you follow the specs of the individual transmitter/receiver parts. It would be simple if you started with a matched set. See my post about "A Hardware Guy Drowning In A Software World". You will find the design files for this. I called it the Collision detector. The components would work for you. Good luck with this. Regards

Hello Abdalla and, Welcome to the forum (As Stefan said). I use IR remote emitters and sensors in my - yet to be sucessful - autonomous bot. The receiver I use is a generic 38khz device and an Osram emitter LED at 980nm (i think) (watch for the IR frequency, the nm or wavelength of the emitter & receiver). Do you want to use a TV remote? Make your own remote? It's all possible. The most common frequency of "modulation" is 38khz. Get an InfraRed receiver LED or transistor which has a relatively wide bandwidth (800nm to 990nm),connect it up to a scope and fire away at it with your TV remote. If any of this confuses you just post back and I will (or the community will) respond. Great question. This is a wonderful lead-in to specification sheets. Good luck! Regards.

Beowolf, how accurate do you need to be? I ask this because the interrupt method is the best way to go about precisely counting 3900 ppl (pulses-per-liter) but which begs the question: How fast is the flow? How many lpm? LPH (per hour), etc like Stefan did. I have a fish pond and I am interested in measuring flow from my pump(s) back to the pond. The "vane sensor" or hall effect sensor is a nice way to measure flow but you suffer from having to be responsive to the individual "ticks" of the sensor. If your CPU, in this case, a Netduino, is doing a lot of other things, you may not be able to deal with the latency, or delay, of handling many interrupts. I am an interrupt nut - I love them! But if you only need an average of the flow (which is what most people care about) why not convert the pulses to analog?? Integrate the pulses with an RC network and simply read the analog value from the RC. Over hours/days/weeks/..., this may be the best way to do this. Place a resistor in series with the sensor output and a capacitor to ground after that (your sensor must have a rail or "potential" level for this to work). Use the A/D to measure the capacitor level and, viola! You have an average of the flow! I believe in the "KISS" approach (KeepItSimpleStupid) whenever possible. Choose the R & C values emperically, that is trial and error - to what suits your needs. Good luck and let us know how it works out? Regards.