SportyGoesSports

Abstract

Put on your dog training jacket with dog treat pockets and the nRF5340 DK with a 2.8" touch screen attached to the sleeve. Put on Sporty his collar with the 3D printed nRF52840 Dongle case with its tiny piezo speaker. Start training with Sporty. Touch your TFT screen to make Sporty hear prerecorded commands from the nRF52840 and train him to act to them.

Let Sporty run free in the field or in the woods. Command him with your TFT screen. If he runs too far, the collar will tell him to return.

The wrist computer

The wrist computer shows five touchable icons. For each icon, a one byte command is sent to the dog collar dongle, which will play the corresponding audio file in the built in speaker.

The dog collar dongle

In the image, the left half of the dongle contains the mp3 player module and a coin cell battery holder. Under the battery holder is a piezo element for sound producing. The right half of the dongle contains the nrf52840 dongle. The elements don't need to be glued, they fit perfectly in the 3D printed case. When the halves are screwed together, with a thin sheet of insualtion between, the components stay nicely in place. When the halves are separated, the nrf52840 dongle can be easily reprogrammed.

The state of the project

As can be seen from the pictures, things seem to be in the final state. The wrist computer however needs a cover leaving only the touch screen visible.

The dog collar dongle, however, needs more development. The nrf52840 dongle can operate on 3 V, which is what the coin cell can provide. The mp3 player unit, however needs 3.2 V. For both to work, I wanted to replace the coin cell battery with a 3.7 V lipo battery. However, user feedback on the DFrobot site, which manufactures the mp3 player, state that the player is unreliable, if powered with less than 5 V.

The uncertainty of the power supply solution led me to the decision to not complete the development of the dog collar dongle version (as well as not complete the wrist computer case design), but to concentrate on a workbench prototype version of the system.

My workbench version

With these components I have a workbench version of my project.

• The wrist computer in its half case, powered with a cell battery.
• A prototyping breadboard with the nrf52840 dongle and the mp3 player. The mp3 player has a micro SD card reader for reading the pre-recorded commands to be played through the speaker.
• A 5 V power source providing 5 V directly to the mp3 player.
• A power converter to provide 3.7 V for the nrf52840 dongle.
• A piezo for audio output.

To do

This project is far from completed. However, I wanted to upload the project at this point due to the approaching deadline of the Hackster competition this project is participating in.

After throrough testing on the workbench, the following tasks remain to be done:

• Developing a working power solution for the dog collar dongle, where the nrf52840 dongle as well as the mp3 player will work.
• Designing the cover for the wrist computer.

Further development

• Adding features to the user interface
• Adding a GPS module to the dog collar dongle
• Replacing the nrf5340 dk with an Arduino Uno sized MCU
• Including long range capabilities