The Tool Armoury

Build Logs
81

Josh found these hinges link. They are exactly what we need to make it look awesome.

ce26d3ad7b272aa1.jpg1000×900

83

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Jiale-stainless-steel-glass-hinge-glass-kitchen-cabinet-door-hinge-shopping-showcase-glass-hinge/1709492627.html

Found by Merseyless. The right price at $1.90ea, I say lets go with those.

84

For the reed switches:

https://www.amazingmagnets.com/sf-disc-magnets.aspx?SelectAll=no&Property=Width&SortOrder=0&Unit=metric&Min_Width=3.2&Max_Width=6.35&Min_Thick=0.5334&Max_Thick=4.064&PageSize=25&pagenum=1

Any of those should suffice.

85

I will start looking into data dot pricing, firstly will see if are
eligible for the police subsidy.
http://www.police.qld.gov.au/programs/cscp/propertySecurity/identification/Engraving+and+microdots.htm

Is there any other places I should be looking / phoning?

86

I can only think to suggest the supplier? http://www.datadotdna.com/au/

Be good if the police thing happens.

87

I have a couple of these I can spare if someone wants to experiment:

88

Luke and I have been talking about costs.

So far, luke has spent on electronics:

  • Digikey Components, 125
  • Element14 Components, 40
  • Solenoids, 124
  • PCB’s, 61

Thats $350. If we buy 10 more solenoids thats $474, a cost of about $23 per box for electronics/locking, since thats enough parts to produce 20 boxes worth of electronics.

I’ve run some rough math on box costs.

  • 2440mm x 1220mm of 6mm Acrylic is $160
  • 2440mm x 1220mm of 6mm AA Grade Marine Hardwood from Bunnings is $44
  • 2440mm / 150mm is 16.2
  • 1220mm / 150mm is 8.1
  • 16x8 is 128. 128 ‘units’

Hence,

  • 160 / 128 is $1.25
  • 44 / 128 is $0.35

A box thats 4 square ‘units’ would be 140.35+21.25 = $7.4 material costs for what will be the most common box (probably)

sooo, hinges are 1.90 each, so 23 + 1.9*2 + 7.4 is $34.2

Thats looking pretty good! I wanted originally to produce 10 boxes for $350, and we’re on track for that. Not only are we on track for that, we’re roughly on track for that with extra features (led lighting inside the boxes).

This does not account for some minor sundries like cost of cabling, and doesnt count for initial cost of the control panel.

89

In the true do it your self style, I have coded the slave nodes…
I think this is almost feature complete (needs a little more code for handling acknowledgments and door sensor)

Does anyone want to help take it to the next step and code up the Master?
The Mater would use this slave code as a base and build on top of it.
If you want to learn C code this would be a great project as it’s reasonably small and I’m willing to sit down and go over a few things with this person.
Anyway DA-DA!!

90

So is there a plan for the cuts needed on the boxes? Happy to table saw it up at some point.

91

I dont have a schematic or the time to make one at the moment really. But! If you draw up something you think will work and run it by me I’ll see how I feel about giving the ok :smile: I’m just wary of wasting materials or ending up with poorly done boxes. I’m not going to be back for a while yet and I recognise that this project needs to keep moving. :thumbsup:

92

Resurrection!

This project has been on the backburner for too long. Lets revive it. Too much of the state is in my own brain and I need to get it out so others can help if interested.

Current status

We have some boxes, we have a v1 of electronics, and a tablet for controlling. The tablet is already setup to run in a kiosk mode.

Next steps

  • We need some sort of master arduino or clone with the RS485 chip and ethernet. @nogthree has an iboard to donate so it needs a shield that does the serial and perhaps the rfid.
  • The specific technique of how we’re mounting the hardware that secures the doors closed needs to be finalised.
  • Once thats finalised that will inform if we change the door boards at all
  • The boxes currently made need:
    • Backs
    • 5mm holes in the center of every 15cm unit for attachment to other boxes.
  • Web based software to run on the tablet needs to be written, basic db of tools, log of check ins and outs.

Latch options

We have some options around how to approach the latching problem. Essentially, you need to have 4 wires at the edge of the door, 2 for the solenoid and 2 for the reed switch. You can run a cable for just these components, but the board itself is 4 wires so you can put the board just right next to the whole thing.

The latch and electronics can be mounted to the door itself, but I’m concerned this edge weight will impinge on the hinges operation.

My ideal solution is to have the latch on the sidewall and have a bent piece of metal attached to the door to be the latch/handle. Fabricating said metal is undetermined at the moment.

In the end, it doesn’t matter and it comes down to the person actually implementing.

Software spec

  • Needs to keep catalogue of boxes
  • Needs to keep catalogue of items
  • Needs to link the two
  • Needs to know about users or rfid cards
  • Needs to keep a log of users checking in and out items
  • Items checked out for 24 hours needs to email various people
  • Needs to be able to call a http endpoint on the master controller to indicate what box to do what with.
  • Potentially needs back communication from the master controller for box state? not sure.
  • Needs a basic ui to allow you to select a box by coordinates or name, show you whats in it and allow you to check it out.

To me, once some decisions are made, theres probably only a day or two of solid hacking to get this actually running.

93

I have written some code for the Door Controllers that can be found here, which I believe is feature complete.
The master shouldn’t be much more work expanding on the code below .

1 Like
94

I’m bringing in an RS485 breakout for Raspi tonight to work on getting a framework up for this. Not taking over the whole interface, just wanting to get something up :slight_smile:

@lhovo @devians are any of the slave node boards on site for working on this?