SURVIVAL EQUIPMENTS

Great utility knife!
The wife says not to go with the sheen finish.. looks more rugged that way!

Perhaps...

This is the Graham Brothers Jackyl! One of the most well made knives I've ever had the privilage of owning!
It was a lot of fun doing this sheath. Craftsmanship is key!

Great little neck knife from Blind Horse Knives!

Its one of my favorite knives and a very
inexpensive way to buy a custom knife. Blind Horse knives make some really great "user" knives and I would recommend them to any one looking for a custom knife without the worry of spending a whole lot of cash!

In the tradition of Martin Swinkels, over at Sheaths for Knives, this sheath is made to mount horizontally on your belt, however it can be attatched to a backpack for hiking or what ever your hearts desire.

The kydex insert is a attached in such a way that you can take it out if you need to clean it or if you simply want to use the kydex as your M.O.

In my last post, I used my USB oscilloscope to decode a discarded remote control's IR output. My next goal was to see if I could get my Arduino to read the data coming from the remote I had decoded.

The first challenge was finding an IR receiver. IR receivers are different from a typical IR transistor in that they are tuned to a certain carrier frequency - also called a "center frequency".

The boys and I dismantled retired DVD player from a company called CyberHome. It was a cheap and junk - it really only lasted a year or so (maybe we watch too many DVDs). :) We had dismantled it and a few circuit boards were left for me to scavenge through. One had a IR receiver that I decided to use for this project.


I used my desoldering tool and soldering iron to remove the component from the circuit board, and also did a little reverse engineering to see how it was wired. I discovered that careful attention had been placed to create adequate filter capacitors and a small current limiting resistor in series with it's power.

I wired it with this circuit on a breadboard and was pleased to find out that the LED flickered each time I pressed a key on the Insignia remote control.

IR1 - unknown (CyberHome DVD player)
C1 - 470uf 16V
C2 - 0.02uf
R1 - 100 ohms
R2 - 1k ohms
LED1 - small green

I then transferred the circuit to a small perf-board and built a small shield to fit onto the Arduino that will allow me to read the output. I used a piece of yellow stranded wire and a single header pin to allow me to connect the output of the IR receiver to whichever I/O pin I wanted to use on the Arduino. Here's some pictures of the completed shield attached to an Arduino Duemilanova 328 from SparkFun.

I then wrote a program to read the data from the IR receiver, first detecting the header and later walking through each of the pulses that I discovered in my last blog entry. Here's a code snippet that shows the basics of reading the data:

lengthHeader = pulseIn(pinData, LOW);
if(lengthHeader > 5000)
{
//step through each of the 32 bits that streams from the remote
byteValue = 0;
for(int i = 1; i <= 32; i++)
{
bit = pulseIn(pinData, HIGH);

//read the 8 bits that are specifically the key code
//use bitwise operations to convert binary to decimal
if (i > 16 && i <= 24)
if(bit > 1000)
byteValue = byteValue + (1 << (i - 17));
}

You may have noticed three important things about this code:

1. I used the "pulseIn" function. This function allows me to measure the length of a pulse coming from the I/O pin in microseconds. This allowed me to differentiate between a long pause or short pause in the signal stream - producing for me 1's and 0's.

2. I used bitwise shift "<<" to convert the binary data into decimal data. I had first used the "pow" function but was disappointed with it's performance, and it didn't seem to accurate report that x to the 0 power equals 1, it was reporting zero. I may have done something wrong - not sure.

3. I only deal with bits 17 through 24. That's because the first two 8-bit bytes are not relevant, so I just want to skip them.

I then returned the results of the decimal data to a serial connection so I could see it on my computer. Sure enough - after a little messing around with setting proper "bounds" and flushing the serial buffer explicitly, I saw great results.

Lastly, I wanted to do something fun with the data results. So, I decided to make a Processing program that would show which button on the remote was being pressed. Here's a screen shot of the resulting UI. As you'll see by the following picture of the remote - they are relatively close in appearance. When the button is pressed, the UI illustrates it by turning the button red.


Here's a short video showing it working!

[coming...]

Here are the code listings. If you do something similar, be sure to let me know - I would love to hear about your projects too! Thanks for reading!

ARDUINO CODE

//setup variables
int pinData= 12;
unsigned long lengthHeader;
unsigned long bit;
int byteValue;

void setup()
{
pinMode(pinData, INPUT);
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
//look for a header pulse from the IR Receiver
lengthHeader = pulseIn(pinData, LOW);
if(lengthHeader > 5000)
{
//step through each of the 32 bits that streams from the remote
byteValue = 0;
for(int i = 1; i <= 32; i++)
{
bit = pulseIn(pinData, HIGH);

//read the 8 bits that are specifically the key code
//use bitwise operations to convert binary to decimal
if (i > 16 && i <= 24)
if(bit > 1000)
byteValue = byteValue + (1 << (i - 17));
}

//send the key code to the processing.org program
Serial.print(byteValue);
Serial.flush();
}

delay(100);
}


PROCESSING CODE

import processing.serial.*;

//define variables used thourghout the program
Serial arduinoPort;
int rowPressed = 0;
int colPressed = 0;
int code = 0;
String codeText;
PFont font;

void setup()
{
//create the window
size(210, 325);
background(220,220,220);

//write the brand name at the bottom of the window
smooth();
font = loadFont("Calibri-Bold-16.vlw");
textAlign(CENTER);
textFont(font);
fill(0,0,255);
text("I N S I G N I A", 105, 310);

//draw the silk screen colors on the remote
translate(-10, -15);
stroke(0,0,255);
ellipse(184,80,34,34);
ellipse(184,120,34,34);
ellipse(92,120,70,70);
ellipse(46,120,34,34);
ellipse(138,120,34,34);
ellipse(92,80,34,34);
ellipse(92,160,34,34);
rect(167,80,34,40);
rect(75,80,34,80);
rect(46,103,88,34);

//prepare for serial communication
String portName = Serial.list()[1];
arduinoPort = new Serial(this, portName, 9600);
}

void draw()
{
//initialize a few things each time.
rowPressed = 0;
colPressed = 0;
translate(-10, -15);
smooth();

//see if there is a serial message from the arduino
if (arduinoPort.available() > 0)
{
codeText = arduinoPort.readString();
code = int(codeText);
findPressed(code);
}

//use loops to draw the buttons on the remote
for(int col = 1; col <= 4; col++)
for(int row = 1; row <= 7; row++)
{
//draw the buttons different colors
if(row == rowPressed && col == colPressed) //red if pressed
fill(255, 0, 0);
else if((row == 4 && col == 1) || (row >= 5 && col <= 3)) //silk screened blue buttons
fill(0, 0, 255);
else //unpressed buttons
fill(240, 240, 240);
ellipse(col * 46, row * 40, 30, 30);
}
delay(100); //delay to leave the button lit a moment
}

//use the code id from the arduino to map to a button on the remote
void findPressed(int code)
{
switch(code)
{
case 28:
rowPressed = 1;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 4:
rowPressed = 1;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 17:
rowPressed = 1;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 12:
rowPressed = 1;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 80:
rowPressed = 2;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 20:
rowPressed = 2;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 81:
rowPressed = 2;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 30:
rowPressed = 2;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 84:
rowPressed = 3;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 26:
rowPressed = 3;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 85:
rowPressed = 3;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 31:
rowPressed = 3;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 18:
rowPressed = 4;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 23:
rowPressed = 4;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 73:
rowPressed = 4;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 27:
rowPressed = 4;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 5:
rowPressed = 5;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 6:
rowPressed = 5;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 7:
rowPressed = 5;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 16:
rowPressed = 5;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 9:
rowPressed = 6;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 10:
rowPressed = 6;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 11:
rowPressed = 6;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 72:
rowPressed = 6;
colPressed = 4;
break;
case 13:
rowPressed = 7;
colPressed = 1;
break;
case 14:
rowPressed = 7;
colPressed = 2;
break;
case 15:
rowPressed = 7;
colPressed = 3;
break;
case 88:
rowPressed = 7;
colPressed = 4;
break;
default:
rowPressed = 0;
colPressed = 0;
}

}