Hey Kids, Don’t Leave Your Naked Grill Sensor Out Overnight!
Naked hardware and moisture don’t mix! Duh!
Tag: hardware
Found: Plantower PMS3003 and PMS5003 Connectors
I’ve been working on an air quality monitoring project using the Plantower PMS5003 particle detector. It’s a cool little device that uses a laser to count particles of various sizes (1.0µm, 2.5µm and 10µm). It won’t tell you what kind of chemicals are in the air but it will give you a good idea of what size and how many particles the sensor is seeing.
tl;dr
The Plantower PMS3003/PMS5003 particle sensors usually come with an 8 wire cable with male plugs on each end. The cable needs a Molex 053261-0871 female connector, which has a 1.25mm pitch “PicoBlade” header. You can find it at Digikey, Mouser, eBay (but don’t, the prices on eBay were ridiculous last time I looked) and even Amazon.
The toughest thing about using it isn’t the software or hardware, it’s mechanical – I had a very difficult time finding a compatible connector. The sensor ships with a short 8 wire cable with two male ends. I ended up just cutting the wires in two and soldering them to a perfboard, but this is a less flexible and more permanent solution than I was happy with.
Raspberry Pi
I was fortunate enough to manage to get an order in for a Raspberry Pi a few weeks back and finally received a unit.
The Raspberry Pi has gotten a lot of press… it’s a tiny, very inexpensive Linux computer. The basic specs are minimal (700MHz ARM processor, 256MB RAM, boots off SD card) – but when you consider that you’re paying roughly $35 for a board, it’s quite impressive.
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