uRADMonitor KIT1

About a year and a half back, while watching a mailbag clip from EEVblog, I learned about the uRADMonitor project by Radu Motisan.

The idea was to build a network of monitoring devices all around the globe that would measure radiation levels and display the results on a global map.

I noticed that there existed no data for Greece, so I thought I would fill that gap in the map. I enquired about a uRAD measuring unit but realized that it was kind of pricey (~$200 for a finished unit) so decided to wait for the Indiegogo campaign that had already been announced.

The campaign ran successfully, so I ended up owning a uRADMonitor KIT1. These are the contents of the kit:

uRAD_KIT1_01

The smaller components come nicely sorted and taped to a piece of paper:

uRAD_KIT1_02

The PCB itself is of typical quality:

uRAD_KIT1_03

You might notice that there is no silkscreen detailing the names of the components. I hope Radu changes that in future revisions of the KIT1.. It would make building the kit a lot easier.

The kit comes with a pretty nice manual. In the manual among other useful info you can find a parts placement diagram:

uRAD_KIT1_04

..and a BoM:

uRAD_KIT1_05

You will notice that I have added a couple of transistors to the bottom of the BoM. They appear to have been left out of the BoM by accident. No biggie.

To actually build the kit one has to correlate info from the parts placement diagram and the BoM. It’s not really difficult to do, but it might trouble a novice in electronics.

We start by soldering on the lowest-profile components. That means the resistors, the diodes, the inductors, the ceramic capacitors, the IC’s socket, the crystal and the push-button.
We continue with the transistors and the voltage regulator IC. Take care to follow the instructions here – R7 should be left open (no component) and R13 should be shorted.
Next up is the on/off switch and the terminals that will hold the Geiger tube.
We then move on to the piezo speaker (be careful, it is polarized!), the pin headers for the display and the ethernet board and the power input jack. Regarding the ethernet board, you will need to take care to mount it properly on the first try because it will be soldered in place. You are supposed to mount it in such a height and angle so that it is perpendicular to the main board:

uRAD_KIT1_06

You can power the board with the supplied power supply or any 5VDC power supply. The power switch turns on when it is toggled towards the Geiger tube:

uRAD_KIT1_07

The Atmega328 that comes in the kit is already pre-programmed with a unique identifier for your unit so all you have to do is connect the kit to your router with an ethernet cable and it should get an IP from your DHCP server. Once that is done, it will automatically appear on uradmonitor.com:

uRAD_KIT1_08

Here is my unit powering up:

uRADMonitor may have begun with measuring radiation levels but it is evolving into a more diverse platform, measuring several other pollution factors. I’ll be happy to incorporate more sensors into my KIT1 in due time.

Arduino: ENC28J60 LAN module

I bought this inexpensive (something like $3 delivered) Ethernet module a few years ago, only to discover that there really wasn’t a decent library to support it. So it got tossed into a drawer..ENC28J60%20Ethernet%20Module1[1]A few days ago I realized that I needed a low cost Ethernet interface for one of my projects. It wouldn’t really need to do much, so I thought the ENC28J60 would probably be able to handle the task.

Doing the customary Google search for Arduino support turned out a full Ethernet library for it! 🙂

It’s called UIPEthernet and it is fully compatible with the original Ethernet library for the Arduino. What this means is that every piece of code written for the Ethernet library (in other words for the “classic” Arduino Ethernet Shield) can be made to work with a dirt-cheap ENC28J60 just by changing
#include <Ethernet.h>
to
#include <UIPEthernet.h>

This I had to see for myself, so I hooked it up.

The module that I have needs 3.3V power (not 5V!!) but its SPI pins are 5V tolerant so it will pair nicely with any Arduino.
The necessary hookup for the UNO, MEGA or DUE can be found in the library’s page: https://github.com/jcw/ethercard

I decided to try a classic Ethernet example sketch: The WebServer sketch. This one reads a few analog inputs on the Arduino and then serves them on a web page.

Sure enough, all I had to do to get it to work was just change the #include statement. It worked like a charm!

WebServer running

So, there you have it. You can add full wired Ethernet connectivity to your Arduino for less than $3.