Building a Nanode: Day One
tl;dr This post is quite long and goes into some detail about the Nanode and how I was introduced to it. You'd be forgiven if you didn't want to read the whole post and so, in short, I'm building a Nanode kit and I'll be posting details of my progress and experience.
My introduction to Nanode at Homecamp 4
Homecamp wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be. I'd been expecting an auditorium with a big projection screen on stage and industry professionals on stage enlightening the captive audience with news of innovative products being released to the mass market in the near future. I couldn't have been more wrong! C4CC is a great venue but it's far from an auditorium, it's a "cozy" little hub tucked down a back street in Kings Cross; the projection screen was a wall with a pillar running down the middle. But somehow, all of this helped to set the mood for what turned out to be a fantastically exciting and informal get together of hardware builders, software developers and energy saving enthusiasts from all over the UK.
It very quickly became clear that the majority of people attending were very passionate about monitoring and improving energy use in the home and that many of these dedicated guys and girls had spent many years "hacking" the appliances in their homes with Arduinos and other custom electronics with amazing results. One particular component appearing in almost every presentation, demonstration and discussion was the Nanode. Until this moment I'd never heard of a Nanode, I had no idea what it was or why I needed one but it sure did look cool!
So, what is a Nanode?
In short, a Nanode is a variant of the Arduino project. It's a microcontroller that allows the user to customise the circuit board and use software to program it to do just about anything you could imagine. The Project Nanode entry on the London Hackspace website describes it as,
Nanode is an open source Arduino-like board that has in-built web connectivity. It connects to a range of wireless, wired and ethernet interfaces. It allows you to develop web based sensor and control systems - giving you web access to six analogue sensor lines and six digital I/O lines. It costs under £20 as an easy build it yourself kit. Nanode was designed with Hacking in mind.
A few of my friends have been playing around with Arduinos lately and I never really joined in on the fun and geekery. My fellow Ruby nerd, @MrJaba has been experimenting with an Arduino project that allows him to play the timeless classic "Pong" on his television using a Nintendo Wii controller, very cool.
Whilst the possibilities are near endless, the Nanode projects that I've come across since Homecamp seem to focus on using a network of the kits to monitor and control energy usage in the home. I've not yet decided what to do with my Nanode but I'm sure it'll get lonely sitting on its own and so I hope that it'll be joined by a family of Arduinos and Nanodes to perform some worthwhile task.
Electronics 101: Remembering how to solder
Unlike most of the Arduino kits that are available on the net, the Nanode comes in a pink plastic bag as a mash of unsoldered components and a PCB (printed circuit board) and so this, ladies and gentlemen, is where my adventure begins.
Many moons ago, back in high school (circa 1999), I learned how to crudely solder a selection of electrical components to a PCB and I've not touched a soldering iron since. After appealing for help on Twitter, another techy friend of mine @DanHigham pointed me in the direction of Farnell where I managed to pick up a soldering kit and a very cool "third hand" which were dispatched immediately and delivered next day.
In order to remind myself of the basics, I found an amusingly drawn comic strip by MightyOhm which does a brilliant job of describing the basic steps for soldering electronic components. I'd recommend this strip to any wannabe kit builders who are in need of a refresher.
And so, armed with my shiny new soldering equipment, my bag full of resistors, capacitors and many other components I propelled myself into the project with great enthusiasm. The Nanode step-by-step building guide suggests that it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to complete the build process and to have the board ready for programming but, being a beginner, it took me that long to fix the first of the 10R resistors into place! Well...maybe not quite that long but I eventually got the hang of the soldering process and soldiered on.
With the first evening drawing to a close, I've managed to attach all of the resistors on the PCB along with the IC units. As a relative novice when it comes to electronics (and hardware in general) I am using each step of the build process, not only as a step to completing the build, but also as an opportunity to study each of the components, what role it has to play in the world of electronics and ultimately its role on the Nanode PCB.
You can find an artsy-fartsy snap of the PCB so far at the top of the post. Extra credit goes to anyone that the can spot the annoying flaw in the resistor line-up, leave a comment if you spot it.
What next for Nanode #0899?
Over the next few evenings, I hope to continue with the build and become the proud owner of a funtioning Nanode. What to build with the finished article is open to discussion and I'd love to hear you thoughts and ideas no matter how complicated, crazy or pointless, just dump them in the comments section below. Following the popular theme of home energy monitoring and saving, I've been pondering constructing a thermostat for the Creative Intent office that will monitor the temperature and time/day of the week in order to control the lighting (our only heat source at present) and have the office warm for us as winter draws in.
Another possibility that I hope to explore involves a network of Nanodes uploading data to the pachube service which allows data to be collected and extracted via API. This would open the opportunity to build web apps, iPhone apps and the like to display data and control electronics remotely in order to reduce energy use.
If you find electronics interesting, then you may want to check back later, or even better subscribe to receive updates on the project. I shall endeavour to post progress, interesting tidbits and some useful pictures as I solder, code and learn my way into Nanode (and Arduino) paradise.
If you have any ideas, corrections, criticisms that you would like to share then please do so by commenting below and if it helps in anyway I shall make sure to credit you in a future post.
