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Brandon Satrom is back to discuss the future of connected devices with Particle Mesh Networking.
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Other Resources
MacroFab Engineering Podcast
Blog
eBooks & Guides
Webinars
Videos
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MacroFab Platform Help
May 31, 2018, Episode #122
- Brandon Satrom
- Developer evangelist for Particle
- The founder of Carrot Pants Press
- Loves to talk about Javascript, open source, microcontrollers, robots, and what ever new shiny tool or technology that is currently distracting him
- Kitchen Sink of badges designed for Maker Faire San Mateo.
- Favorite Bagel
- Blinky of IoT
- Parker unboxed a Particle Photon
- Included in the box is a photoresistor, a LED, breadboard, and some resistors
- Parker built the circuit and programmed the Photon in under 5 minutes
- Building an IoT Device
- Spec Sensors 3SP Ethanol 1000
- Low Power Consumption of around 10 to 50 uW
- Individually Calibrated with NIST Traceable serial number
- 0-1000ppm Ethanol range
- It has 3 analog outputs
- Vgas which is proportional to the gas we are measuring
- Vref which is around half the supply voltage and is used as a fixed zero reference
- Vtemp is the temperature of the sensor used to set the temperature compensation
- Particle Photon reading the analog outputs of the Spec Sensors 3SP Ethanol 1000
- Posts to the cloud about the status of the sensors
- Code for this can be found here
- Issues porting the Arduino Code to the Particle Platform
- Floats -> Doubles
- Particle.Variable do not show up if you are doing Particle.Publish too fast
- Another Particle Photon pulls data from the particle cloud and drives a relay board
- The relay board is connected to an industrial light tower
- Light tower – NPTL5-W-E
- 24V
- Pull down I/O lines to turn on lights
- Light tower – NPTL5-W-E
- Spec Sensors 3SP Ethanol 1000
- Other Questions
- Future of IoT?
- Particle Hardware Tech Details
- Cellular
- Mesh
- BLE5
- 4G
- Why use a Particle device over a ESP32 or ESP8266?
- Discount codes for MEP Listeners
- Particle is giving MacroFab Engineering Podcast listeners a discount
- Use the URL https://store.particle.io/discount/MacroFabFam to get 15% off anything in the Particle Store
- For free shipping use the code “”ParticleFamShipping”
- Gets a free starter kit with the mesh Particle boards by using the code “ParticleFamStarter”
- Announcements
- Houston Hardware Happy Hour
- June 7th at Slowpokes
- Bring hacks and hang out
- Houston Hardware Happy Hour
Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes and please review us, wherever you listen (PodcastAddict, iTunes). It helps this show stay visible and helps new listeners find us.

Brandon Satrom of Particle

Unboxing a Particle Photon

Setting up the “Blinky” hardware for the Particle Photon

Particle Photon hooked up to the Ethanol Sensor

The latest IoT craze that will be on Kickstarter soon!
About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
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