It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an engineer in possession of a solid-state flammable gas detector, will shortly make a fart detector with it. I’m sorry, but call it childishness, simple-minded curiosity, or the results of a diet high in polysaccharides, but this is something I have to get out of my system. (It’s okay; I’ll waft the door.)
This all started when our carbon monoxide detector decided it was past its best, and started to emit an ear-splitting shriek. Thinking there might be some cool parts inside, I took it apart. Inside, in amongst the other stuff, I found this:
Thankfully, David Cook of Robot Room had once had the same idea as me (well, minus the puerile bits), and he documented the sensor board very well: Explosive Gas Detector Board. Here are the four pins that you really need to get the thing going:
Pin # (from left) Function
=================== ==========
1 Vcc
2 /Enable
3 /Gas
5 Gnd
Pins 2 and 3 are active low signals. To be typographically correct, I’d write them as Enable and Gas, but that’s hard to do in fixed-pitch ASCII. I can understand why the Gas signal should be active low (think about it; if the Figaro TGS 2611 sensor fails or shorts, it will likely fail to an alarm state, so you’ll still be alive to curse the bloody noise that woke you at 03h00), but the Enable being active low? Dunno.
I was hoping to have presented a little sketch for the Digispark that would have typed something unhelpful every time that gas was detected, but it was not to be. It seems that Macs and Digispark keyboard emulation is a thing of great wobbliness, so I had to resort to an Arduino and a serial connection.
Here’s the code:
/*
gas_detector - uses board scavenged from CO detector
scruss - 2013-02-18 (unfortunately)
*/
int gas = 2; // /Gas line on pin 2
int val = 0;
int lastval = 0;
void setup() {
pinMode(gas, INPUT);
Serial.begin(115200);
}
void loop() {
val = digitalRead(gas);
if (val != lastval) {
if (val == LOW) { // LOW means gas detected
Serial.println("gas");
Serial.println();
delay(1000); // wait 1s for air to clear
}
}
lastval = val;
}
Before you ask, I tested the circuit by briefly hitting the button on a gas lighter. Honest.
I’ll keep working on the Digispark; it’s such a nifty little device, and this is such a worthy project …
), which puts CHDK in Alt mode. Hit Menu in Alt mode, and you should see this menu:
