Internet of Watercooler

[Cprossu]

Hello. Cprossu here, someone left the water cooler uncovered and without a bottle for a fair bit of time.

This allowed grime, laser dust, and sawdust to get into the water cooler's reservoir.

I had to take the machine apart last night to give it a cleaning, I have not gotten it back together yet for a few reasons:

1) Turnout at HYH yesterday, 01/23/2019 was poor and we didn't get any new water to put in the unit

2) The clear plastic shell is hard to get inside of once everything is back together and filled back with water which leads to

3) It would be cool to have blinkenlights and sensors added to it since it has translucent blue shell...

So let's use this opportunity do do something crazy cool bring out watercooler into the 21st century with:

Thermoresistors on the both the hot and cool side

Blinkenlights and or arrays of blinkenlights

Internet connectivity/twitter, perhaps with some kind of news generator thing which also indicates stuff about the cooler itself

I am not sure when I will be back to reassemble it, I was hoping for today, but things might get in the way, I will need to run a bleach solution through it in order to sanitize it.

That is all.

[Cprossu]

I made some progress but I really failed pretty bad, to the point that painful modifications will have to be done since the watercooler is put back together and working again....

First:

SOME LESSONS LEARNED!

1) FREAKING TEST YOUR ELECTRONICS before you put them into a place that's hard to get it instead of getting everything in place then programming it for testing later

2) ANY CABLES THAT YOU CAN RUN, RUN! (EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK YOU WILL USE IT!) You don't need something important like a 5V power supply input to a display or the output from the neopixel screen somewhere you can't reach

So onto the water cooler side, the cooler has been sanitized with bleach, the hot side was descaled, and a fresh batch of water has been run through both hot and cold sides.. I expect the hot side to have floaters from the descaling operation for a while, this is normal. Please purge the hot side a little bit at a time. Again, the floating debris on the hot side is expected and normal.

Pinouts from stuff

Neopixels: (3 wires, should be 5, the other two are for power and I did not wire them due to brain fart)

Red - 5v

Green - Gnd

White - IN

Temp (Cold) (Analog)

Yellow - 5v

Green - Gnd

Orange - Signal

Temp (Hot) (18B20)

Yellow - 5v

Black - Gnd

Brown - Signal

Humidity

Violet - 5v

Grey - Gnd

Blue - Signal

There's a power plug extension cord wired into the main power, and it's got a 5v wall wart hanging off of it (near the switch for the heated water power on the back). It's been added inline with connectors so it can always be put back to original.

There's a laptop next to it right now powering an arduino clone with some example code trying to run the panel, and it's not quite working, probably due to the current need of the neopixel display. I really don't know when I am going to be back, so please, if you want to try your hand on it or mess with it, do so. I'll have to go in there and find a way to add the power to the panel I think, if I want to get it to work properly, let me know if I am wrong about this.

I haphazardly downloaded someone else's code to test with, so I don't know if it's right.

http://kevindarrah.com/download/arduino_code/WS1812_V4_FOR_VIDEO.ino

[Cprossu]

Had to fix a lot of broken things.

Pinout is now

Neopixels: (3 wires, should be 5, the other two are for power and I did not wire them due to brain fart)

Red - 5v

Green - Gnd

Yellow - Top Left Neopixel in display as installed, input -> Arduino Digital 8

Temp (Cold) (Analog)

Yellow - 5v

Green - Gnd

Orange - Signal - Arduino Analog 0

Temp (Hot) (18B20)

Yellow - 5v

Black - Gnd

Brown - Signal - Arduino Digital 2

Humidity

Violet - 5v

Grey - Gnd

Blue - Signal - Arduino Digital 4

Target board is Leonardo.

The display did not work properly (Input pin on the back of the board I guess went to a faulty location or nowhere, a resistor on the top was burned out), tried replacing resistor with similar value, failed, gave up, wired it in direct with a bodge wire and everything started actually working, so I actually saved the screen and got it going!!!! This is when I found that my copy pasted code was wrong and would not drive the display correctly either. Always great to have multiple things wrong going against you!

Went to the adafruit code as suggested by monteslu and well it works now and stuff.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NgMCVQzUjgzxyHpU6

The smoke detector case is temporary unless it becomes permanent. Everything appears good, I need to know if the cooler starts to leak, so please let me know.

I really want to goto bed now. BTW this thing is freaking BRIGHT AND ANNOYING.

I left a USB cable attached to the arduino with a laptop attached, PLEASE! feel free to make this thing do things and add code!

You have 2 kinds of temp sensors and a humidity sensor and a freakin' awesome 16x16 RGB screen to play with.

[Eric Ose]

I love that this is a thing. Someone has animated the LED matrix.

-Eric Ose
Robot Ambassador
Southwest Maker Fest President

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[Nate Plamondon]

This is the best thing that's happened to that water cooler since we started cleaning it.

Great work, cpro! (and whoever else has been making it to do neat things)

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Nate Plamondon

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[Cprossu]

I had to dismantle the internet of watercooler due to the hot water tank failing in a catastrophic way (heating element started flaking apart and the pipe to the hot water tank to the cold one cracked).
 

Oh well! Sometimes even if it's well built it don't last forever. I had thought about replacing the entire hot/cold assembly from a like oasis cooler, however it would be time consuming with no guarantee of success.
It's dragged on long enough, we'll figure something else _cooler_ out later down the road!

[Mike Wolfson]

I am a water drinker and I have a water-cooler...if I bring the replacement working one, can we get rid of the old one?

Mine is from Costco, and is the type you load the bottle inside, and it has hot and cold dispensers. It works perfect, I added an under-sink filter so don't need to shlep bottles anymore.

-Mike

I will bring the cooler by (with the initial bottles full of water)...the only thing I need to clarify, is that it is cool to dispose of the old water dispenser).

[Mike Wolfson]

We need a place to put stickers, so I propose the water cooler becomes that.

Actual Unit.  Yellow rags can be included for an extra percentage of original price.

-Mike

[Heather Jackson]

Mike, what a generous offer!!  I love that idea.  I’ll look around for a sticker contribution. 

On Jun 3, 2021, at 6:59 PM, Mike Wolfson <mwol...@gmail.com> wrote:

We need a place to put stickers, so I propose the water cooler becomes that.

Actual Unit.  Yellow rags can be included for an extra percentage of original price.

<PXL_20210604_015620552.jpg>

-Mike

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<PXL_20210604_015620552.jpg>

[Cprossu]

"can we get rid of the old one? "

- Old one was dismantled, taken apart, and is no more. It is an Ex Watercooler!

The shell should be gone, let David know if it's not as it might become a part of an escape room.

Bottle on the bottom would be preferable, just as long as it's easy to keep that part clean or if there's a procedure to do so!

I'm all for it.

One thing we have to do though is make sure that everyone knows to NEVER put the empties out without being covered so we can keep that asset clean and workable!

[Mike Wolfson]

I don't have a vehicle that I can bring this down to the lab in...because I can't lay it on it's side (right?! refrigerators should always be upright).

If folks tell me it is no big deal for it to be on its side (for half hour probably of transit time) I can bring it down ASAP, otherwise, I will need to ask my friend with a truck (Luis) to help me.

-Mike

PS. I am in Central Phx (Glendale and Central) if anyone with truck is going to HSL anyway.

[Thorsten Barth]

From what I know and experienced, it should be ok if you lay it on the side, but let it rest then for a while, maybe a day or so.

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[Cprossu]

No damage shall occur to the refrigeration bits. The warnings are just to make sure that you leave it sit for a time period to let any oil that migrated up the coils to fall back down so it doesn't 'slug' the compressor. Leaving it sit for a couple of hours is generally enough, I let bigger machines sit for a day.

A bigger issue in your case is however they made the pump/tank system in your watercooler. I'd refer to the instructions that came with it for transport instructions, as it likely has a draining procedure of some kind. Getting your car back/seats all wet could be annoying, so look into that first I'd say!

[Mike Wolfson]

It is there with 4 bottles (with caps) of water.  I will plug it in sometime this week when I go to the lab.

-Mike

[Darrell Wertz]

Did you say sticker 😂

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Darrell Wertz

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