I've started trying to make the hardware more compact and i've managed to fit the circuit inside the gumstix box. Barely! Lorcan mentioned a possible problem with heat coming from the circuits voltage regulator. I checked the gumstix specs and its good in temperatures between 0 and 85 degrees so it will be fine. I've posted a pic of where its at now.
I must bring everyones attention to a cool little windows program im loving at the moment its called tortoiseSVN and it lets you do all your svn updates and checkouts just by right clicking. Well handy!
I think im pretty much done with my demo for the moment so for the rest of the week Im going to do some of my report and continue editing the wiki.
5 comments:
Setup looks good and your website should be fine for the demo. Good work!
Now, for your hardware setup, I have a few questions:
1. what temperature will the voltage regulator reach? These things can get pretty hot - esp when regulating 9V down to 5. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it reaches 85 degrees.
2. If the voltage regulator is kicking out a lot of heat - say reaching 40 degrees in ordinary operation - how high will the temperature get if the circuit is completely enclosed with no air circulating? (remember that the gumstix is in there pumping out heat too.)
2. what temperature will the plastic melt at?
3. what temperature will the plastic ignite at? [getting alarmed!]
If you can't answer those questions or if you think there is even a possibility of you getting too hot be very very very careful. I cannot over-emphasise the danger here! The voltage regulator should have access to flowing air or at least be open to the air. Maybe we should invest in a thermometer to check the temperature? Either way, do not leave the battery plugged in on your current setup for more than a minute or so at a time till you sort this issue out.
On the tortoiseSVN front I cannot agree more, it's a great Windows-only tool, I wish there was a unix/mac equivalent. The fact that folders are coloured according to svn state is great.
Ok im scared now.
There is a mac equivalent to TortoiseSVN. It's not very mature, but its better than nothing: http://scplugin.tigris.org/
Ok so i hooked it all up to test how bad the heat was getting. I left it running for over an hour and kept a close eye on things. Afterwards I opened the box back up to see how hot it was. The regultar was only slightly warm at this point so it might be ok to keep it like this. Putting the circuit on the outside wont be a problem anyway.
cool, sounds promising... i guess the solution now it not to run it for any longer than that without further tests. keep an eye on it and open it up and recheck the temperature next few times you're running tests...
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