If you saw the Good Morning thread, you'll know what I was up to today. I've just a good stopping point. The back-story:
For the last two weeks I've had the use of a shiny Megger X1. While I'm automatically biased and grumpy towards against anything new and expensive, I have to concede that an X1 coupled with their CertSuite is a brilliant combination and together they make the admin connected with testing larger installations much simpler. Without me saying anything my wife noticed I was getting home a bit earlier and not spending half the evening writing up certificates. So I'm going to be keeping it. (I'd just never use it for fault finding as I'd fall asleep before the IR tests finished!)
This then got me thinking that it would be nice if one of my backup testers did at least primitive data collection, and hence the decision to invest some time today in adding functionality to my old battered Megger 1502.
I realised a long time ago that the Raspbery Pi Pico W was a potentially very useful little device: it accepts 5v power, has two TTL UARTs, has on-board wifi and blueooth, and internal flash based storage, all for ÂŁ11.75
As Megger 15 and 17 series also have pinouts that supply 5v and TTL serial data I've been aware for a while of the potential to simply hook 4 wires between existing pin headers on the two devices and do some programming to make a useful little gadget.
To cut to the kill, I've now got the concepts proven and it just about does enough to be useful. A very shaky video and poor quality video demonstrates the idea:
In abstract the steps are:
-get pico Pi W and make/buy 4 jumper header wires.
-install micropython
-install TinyWeb and Logger libraries
-install my code file
-join 0v, TX,RX,5v on Megger (under sticker in battery box) to pins 8,6,7 and 49 on Pico Pi
-Turn Megger on, join the hotspot wifi network, browse to 192.168.4.1
-Select site, board, circuit (using circuit 0 for board/supply data) and test column.
-Do the test, press Read to capture last test result, and Save to log it.
-results are written to internal flash storage
-hitting Results parses the results for the currently selected board
-a couple of special URLs can download the raw data and clear the data
In due course I'll get another Pico Pi W that doesn't have headers, and a little box for it, and I think the whole thing will likely fit inside the Megger.
If there are any python programmers in our midst that see value in helping developing this further or (re)writing it properly(!) PM me.
If anyone loves the idea I'm not opposed to sharing code or ready-to-go boards in due course but want to think it through more first.
(The same thing should work on a 1700 series Megger with minimal changes but I don't have here one at the moment to confirm)
Time for beer.
For the last two weeks I've had the use of a shiny Megger X1. While I'm automatically biased and grumpy towards against anything new and expensive, I have to concede that an X1 coupled with their CertSuite is a brilliant combination and together they make the admin connected with testing larger installations much simpler. Without me saying anything my wife noticed I was getting home a bit earlier and not spending half the evening writing up certificates. So I'm going to be keeping it. (I'd just never use it for fault finding as I'd fall asleep before the IR tests finished!)
This then got me thinking that it would be nice if one of my backup testers did at least primitive data collection, and hence the decision to invest some time today in adding functionality to my old battered Megger 1502.
I realised a long time ago that the Raspbery Pi Pico W was a potentially very useful little device: it accepts 5v power, has two TTL UARTs, has on-board wifi and blueooth, and internal flash based storage, all for ÂŁ11.75
As Megger 15 and 17 series also have pinouts that supply 5v and TTL serial data I've been aware for a while of the potential to simply hook 4 wires between existing pin headers on the two devices and do some programming to make a useful little gadget.
To cut to the kill, I've now got the concepts proven and it just about does enough to be useful. A very shaky video and poor quality video demonstrates the idea:
In abstract the steps are:
-get pico Pi W and make/buy 4 jumper header wires.
-install micropython
-install TinyWeb and Logger libraries
-install my code file
-join 0v, TX,RX,5v on Megger (under sticker in battery box) to pins 8,6,7 and 49 on Pico Pi
-Turn Megger on, join the hotspot wifi network, browse to 192.168.4.1
-Select site, board, circuit (using circuit 0 for board/supply data) and test column.
-Do the test, press Read to capture last test result, and Save to log it.
-results are written to internal flash storage
-hitting Results parses the results for the currently selected board
-a couple of special URLs can download the raw data and clear the data
In due course I'll get another Pico Pi W that doesn't have headers, and a little box for it, and I think the whole thing will likely fit inside the Megger.
If there are any python programmers in our midst that see value in helping developing this further or (re)writing it properly(!) PM me.
If anyone loves the idea I'm not opposed to sharing code or ready-to-go boards in due course but want to think it through more first.
(The same thing should work on a 1700 series Megger with minimal changes but I don't have here one at the moment to confirm)
Time for beer.
