P-Mag capability demo

Brantel · Post by **Brantel** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:38 pm

Moving to the 21st Century with my airplane's ignition system has brought some benefits...

I built this simple LCD display that ask the P-mag to start streaming ignition data upon startup and then parse the data and display it on a simple 4x20 backlit LCD screen.

The results are shown below. I am not going to go into details on how and what it takes to do this because I do not want to have this compete at all with the EI Commander that Bill Repucci has developed. My device only monitors the P-mag. The total cost to go from P-mag to what you see in this video is $44.45 and over half that is the LCD (no I am not planning to sell them)...

If you are a tech geek and would rather play with electrons than eat, build you one but if not, get the one that Bill Repucci sells. Also buy his if you want to control the P-Mag (that could be expensive if you screw it up playing around with a device like this)

Disclaimer, the data displayed in this example is strictly sample data only and does not mean anything!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo5HLxaXPbQ

Post by **Spike** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:23 pm

What are you using on the backend? Thats cool!

hydroguy2 · Post by **hydroguy2** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:15 pm

pretty neat. Lately I'm wondering what my Pmag is doing, but can't afford the EIcommander. But I'm also not geek enough to put together something like you have.

nice job Brian

Brantel · Post by **Brantel** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:30 pm

I'm a Geek, I'm a Geek, I'm a Geek.

Too bad I can't turn it into a Billion $ like allot of those Geeks do!!!

hydroguy2 · Post by **hydroguy2** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:16 pm

Brantel wrote: Too bad I can't turn it into a Billion $ like allot of those Geeks do!!!

Would be nice wouldn't it.

money isn't everything...but beats what ever is second

Post by **bullojm1** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:41 pm

Brian,

I heard a few keystrokes before the LCD powered up. Is there a computer in between the LCD and the PMAG which does the work to interpret the data from the PMAG and assemble the output?

If you want to take this a step further, I have developed extensively with the Rabbit Semiconductor microcontrollers (http://www.rabbitsemi.com). Great development environment and relatively affordable uC's.

Brantel · Post by **Brantel** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:17 pm

No that was me plugging the power cord in and then starting the fake data sentences which did come from a computer acting like the P-Mag.

This thing is self contained and can run off of a 9 volt battery or lighter plug or ship power. It all will fit in a project box the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Emagair already has a free software program that will run on a laptop that monitors their P-Mag but for me that is too big and bulky and a real pain. Not to mention hard to see outside in the bright light.

I have talked to Bill R. about it and he does not mind if I fill people in on what I used to make this thing. He sells the EI Commander which looks like an awesome device.

Here is what I am using:

An Arduino based microcontroller board, very inexpensive and very powerfull
A LCD117 Serial LCD microcontroller board, very inexpensive and has a great built in library for the serial LCD screens
A TTL to RS232 converter board, required and cost nearly nothing
A 4x20 Blue LED Backlight Serial LCD screen, awesome and inexpensive

The above and some code and the sentence structure/command codes from EMagAir is all you need to make this thing work....

Brantel · Post by **Brantel** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:37 am

It really is simple (ok the code is not trivial but the hardware is!). I took a pic of what it takes to do this. The hardware is available for the most part fully assembled but it is easy to put it together out of kits or raw parts. There are many versions of the uController boards out there and mine is not the most basic one. You can get em even more bare bones depending on what you need.

Here is my setup:

The white board on the breadboard is the uController, the red board attached to that is the TTL to RS232 converter board.
The LCD can be remote mounted or not. It has a daughter board on the back of it that contains the controller for it.

The age of that breadboard makes me start to feel old!

Here is a really bare bones version of that same uController board that is available:

dons · Post by **dons** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:49 pm

That is so cool Brian! I've done my share of that kind of thing, yes I am very much a geek too wishing it would have made me $$$, but it didn't. You can do so much with the single chip systems, and they don't cost very much at all. I've lost rack of how many development systems I have used/bought over the years, but what you did is a perfect example of how these things can be used for a one of project, great work.