MS Surface Pro 2

Yet another Toy

I recently bought a Surface Pro 2. I opted for the Pro version for the option to be able to run Windows apps. I bought it as a laptop replacement for my circa 2009 MacBook Pro. I plan to still use my MBP from time to time, but just not as my primary daily computer. I'm hoping it turns out to be a good companion to my Nokia Lumia 920.

I've had it for a week or so and here are my thoughts.

Things I like

Touchscreen quality: the screen seem durable and the picture quality is great.
Netflix App: well writhen app I work reliably and is fun to use
Pen: Cool additional feature
Battery life: not sure how long it lasts yet however it looks promising
Speakers: the stereo speakers are loud and Clear
kickstand: the two position Kickstand works like a charm
Xbox Music: Like Pandora but better you ca actually browse albums
Handwriting: Keyboard- used to write this blog post very intuitive gestures
Pen input to One Note: Makes note taking fast and easy
Split Screen: I was able to watch a movie and surf the web at the same time
Processing power: Everything runs fast with no stuttering
Login PIN: Just like IPad
Skydrive integration: skydive appears Just like local drive in most apps
USB3 port: open up man uses
Micro SD slot: The ability to expand local storage is a great feature as you might imagine
Arrow keys: on keyboard why did this take so long to be implemented on tablets
News App: beautifully written app
Metro interface: I can't go back to IPad after using this interface
200GB of Skydive: for 2 years free I'm not a huge fan of cloud storage, but free is free

 

 

 

Things I don't like

Automatic apostrophe: doesn't work well
Camera quality: both are crap
App support: small but growing app library. Also apps are pricey compared Apple apps 
Gets warm: Its kinds of expected considering the horsepower
Narrator: needs improvement be able to be easier to use
No office: Only one month free of the 365 variety
Power connector: I like the magnet, but its difficult to connect sometimes I might be due to the angle
No touch friendly Chrome: That is worth  using
Heavy: To be expected but still light enough to be very portable 
Touchscreen Calibration: to get it calibrated properly you need to run an extended type o calibration
No clock on the Metro: nuff said
Kindle compatibility: found out some of my books aren't compatible with Win8!

 

Arduino Fan Control Project

My RC buggy has a brushless LiPo system in it. It can get pretty hot when running bashing hard. The motor tops out at 190F and the battery should stay under 120F. The motor mount comes with 2 pre-drilled fan mounting places which is nice. However I didn't want to wire them in straight and have them run constantly because that would be inefficient and deplete the battery prematurely.

Charging the 6S battery pack on my HPI Vorza

So the solution (which also gives me another project) is to make a temperature control circuit for my Vorza. Having a background in electronics engineering this should be a fun and challenging project.

Here is the scope of the project:

• Temperature monitoring of the motor, battery, and inside the car body.
• Two high CFM fans. One mounted on the motor and one mounted on the car body. The fan on the car body will exhaust hot air created by the ESC and motor fans which gets trapped under the body.
• The fans will turn individually on when the motor and the interior of the RC body reach a TBD temp.
• The battery temp will be monitored and an alarm will sound with a specific series of beeps if it gets too close to over temp.
• The battery voltage will be monitored via the balance connector. A specific series of beeps will alert me of the charge level. 3 beeps for 75%, 2 beeps for 50$ 1 beep for 25%.
• There will be a 7 segment LED panel that will cycle through the temps and the battery voltage.

I plan to use an Arduino Mini Pro for the microprocessor, it's cheap and very small. It will fit into a socket on the circuit board so I can take it out easily for programming changes.

It has more I/O than the project requires, but like I said it's cheap (about $10). I'm designing a circuit board to mount the electronics necessary to switch the fans, measure the temps, and display the processed info. Here is what I have so far. It's a work in progress and I need to change out some of the components for SMD to make it more compact. 

Work In Progress

The circuit board hasn't had the traces routed yet, so disregard the rats nest of lines. I'm using Eagle CAD to design the circuit board. I'm using some fairly basic circuits. So far I have a voltage regulator circuit, 2 relay circuits to switch the fans and some sockets to plug the fans, TMP36 temp sensors and Arduino. 

I haven't figured out how to distribute the power yet. The sensors and Arduino are 5 volts, but the fans are 12 volts. If you have any experience with this please help me out with it.

I found some Sunon fans from Mouser that should be more than enough to keep the motor and interior cool.

The programming should be pretty straight forward, I already have the fan sensor/fan switching code written and working. The next trick is to add the beeps and LED panel code.