In my previous post, I covered the mechanical construction of the scale. In this post, I finish assembling the scale, calibrating it, and installing it.
After painting I put feet on the scale so it won’t soak in water spilled on the floor.
Continue reading Dog Water Bowl Scale Part 3: Final Assembly and InstallationIn my previous post, I started working on the scale. In this post, I finish the woodworking, and painfully re-learn the woodworker’s adage: “Measure twice; cut once”.
I was so excited about the progress I’d made, and so eager to finish the drilling that I carefully measured, drilled the holes for one half of the Load Cell, then counterbored the hole for the first Load Cell nut… then discovered in my haste I’d counterbored the wrong side, and ruined the bottom plate of the scale.
Continue reading Dog Water Bowl Part 2: Measure Twice, Cut OnceNow that my Dog Bed Weight Scale is sending data, I’m going to have a go at a water bowl scale. The idea is that, like the bed, the bowl will periodically send its weight to a cloud. This data should tell me when Pippa drinks, when we refill her bowl, and (maybe) how much she drinks.
The work-in-progress sources on Github, contain the beginnings of the Arduino 101 Sketch, Bill of Materials (Parts List), mechanical design/construction details, and a day-by-day project diary.
Continue reading Dog Water Bowl Scale Part 1: Initial Design WorkIn my previous post I changed the uploader app to run when the Raspberry Pi turns on, and installed the scale under Pippa’s dog bed. In this post, I get interesting data from the scale.
The scale has been running for a little over a week now, and has been surprisingly reliable for a first version. There is some sort of bug in which, every few days, the scale stops supplying new data BLE notifications to the gateway. I plan to refactor the scale and gateway to avoid that, but that’s another post.
Today I looked at the data and saw some very interesting things.
Continue reading Dog Weight Scale Part 16: Data!In my previous post, I wrote the Raspberry Pi Node.js code to upload data from Pippa’s dog bed scale to data.sparkfun.com (update: site is down in 2021). This post covers how to make a Node.js program run automatically when the Pi is turned on. Oh, and at the end I installed the finished scale under Pippa’s bed.
Continue reading Dog Weight Scale Part 15: Scale is Installed and Uploading Real DataIn my previous post I finished the hardware for the scale and calibrated it. This post covers getting data from the scale to Sparkfun’s Data Warehouse (Update: by 2021 the site has been taken down).
By the way, the nRF Master Control Panel (BLE) from Nordic is the perfect tool for debugging Bluetooth Low Energy devices and messages. It understands a pile of standard Bluetooth data types as well as the Physical Web, so it’s a quick way to find out whether your Arduino project is sending the right data.
Continue reading Dog Weight Scale Part 14: Uploading Data to Data.Sparkfun.Com
