Airball system #2 is alive

A couple of days ago, I unboxed two new probes from Jeremy:

Isn't that sweet looking? Wouldn't you love to get that in the mail after ordering it from Sporty's? Well ... maybe soon. :) Anyway, this evening I got the second complete Airball system up and running:

The probe portion consists of:

• Jeremy's V4 probe board (with the Atmel microcontroller directly on the board -- no more Arduino breakout boards!)
• An actual temperature sensor probe exposed to the air
• A probe housing built by Jeremy, duplicating the 3D printed designs I made in my garage (we both have essentially the same 3D printer)
• Improvements by Jeremy to the probe housing as detailed in his last blog post

The display portion is:

• A Raspberry Pi
• A 4.3" 480x272 LCD display (still the kind with the clunky HDMI connector)
• A 3D printed case

The display dimensions and resolution are now the same as what we're planning for the more long-term, compact display that Jeremy is working on at the moment.

Note the wireless signal meter and battery gauge. The battery portion isn't quite working right yet, probably due to a software problem on my part, but the wireless signal meter seems to be doing a good job. Jeremy's new probe firmware sends battery status, and he prototyped some code to read the signal strength (RSSI) from the XBee that I incorporated into the display.

A local CFI has our first system and is trying it out with his students. Now we can have 2 more systems. So I need to build up a second display just like the above, and we'll have that!

Exciting times. Stay tuned!