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Fake Fat Pink TILT

Using an Arduino NANO BLE 33 Sense even expensive and XXL pelting it is possible to easily build a Fake TILT, and hence here named “Fake Fat Pink TILT”.

BLE 33 Sense contains a lot of sensors, including MPU for angle detection, and also a temperature sensor. BLE 33 is low powered and hence last long on big battery.

Needed parts (Links for mainly European sellers) and Diagram

  • Arduino BLE 33 Sense (LINK).
  • LiFePO4 battery charger, TP 5000 (LINK).
  • LiFePO4 battery 26650 mah (No Lithum ion Polymer, they give to much voltage) (LINK).
  • Cord, wood (2.8cm x 12.3cm), glue.
  • XXL Petling (LINK).
  • JTS connector.
Diagram for “Fake Fat Pink TILT” where red is positive and black ground. The yellow indicates the 4 soldering points for this project. See more details below.

Building a “Fake Fat Pink TILT”

To build the “Fake Fat Pink TILT” you need to solder 4 points. Beware the antenna on BLE 33 Sense is very fragile and any of the very small metal connectors at top can easily break off. The BLE sense is placed on top and solder steady with 2 cord with needlepoints. Further, I add some glue. The charger is glued to the wood on Battery holder side and connections between battery and BLE 33 Sense is soldered together to the + and – of the chager.

1Before building the 3.3v connector must be cut to enhance battery life with a factor of 3.
The BLE 33 sense is steadied to the woord by 2 needlepoint cords with drilled holes. Charger is glued. or use JTS connector as seen on later pictures.
The Needlepoints seen from top side. To ensure BLE 33 Sense is secured attached a bit glue is added in each corner too. Beware the small connectors on the antenna is fragile, and hence, the BLE 33 Sense must be placed a bit away from top of wood.
Consider to use an JTS connector as it lower power drain to separate charger from the build.
The battery is just taped on till the wood, and best is to buy battery with sleeves as make it easier to attach power and ground cords/solder. The VCC and GRD is attached till 26650 battery and JTS connector is sometime attached.
Topside of XXL Petling and BLE 33 Sense.
To ensure the wood is kept in place an hence to secure the components do not shift positions (e.g. angle is not changed) during handling and charging I have added a screw and bolt to tighten it in place. the battery got som filt to steady/tighten it at bottom, but the most important place to secure the stability/tight position is at top as here we attach charger and same time hold the IMU there is measuring the angle we need.

A fully charged 26650 battery with the current run of each 2 min taking a reading of angle/Tilt + temperature following pinging the Bluetooth Ibeacon signal every 20 seconds, it is expected to last around 30 days.

Please notice, when 3.3v is cut, you cannot power the BLE 33 Sense by USB power, and hence, to upload it needs both battery power and ofcouse to be connected though USB till BLE 33 sense. As I dont foresee any updates to this code it should not be an issue

Last, but not least, then the sled or wood must be very tight in the petling to ensure the angle is not changed by movement of the components/sled especially critical when attaching the charger.

Download and install bin file for “Fake Fat Pink TILT”

Fake Fat Pink TILT ver1.0 (874 downloads)

After building your “Fake Fat Pink TILT” you will need to install the bin-file on it. For this you need a Widows machine.

  1. Go to “Devices” (e.g. use win10 search and write “devices”).
  2. Ensure the BLE 33 module is connected till USB and got power from battery by ensure battery is installed too (e.g. notice you need to attach USB till BLE 33).
  3. Double tab the BLE sense white button twice fast. This send it into bootloader mode (yellow light starts to blink). BLE 33 Sense should come up under “Ports” in Devices. Notice this USB port number!
  4. In the “Window batch file” named “SETUP_USB_COMX” change the port number: bossac.exe -d --port=COM10 -U -i -e -w Fake_Fat_Pink_TILT_ver1.0.bin -R
  5. Hit and run the “Window batch file” named “SETUP_USB_COMX”
  6. Now the “Fake Fat Pink TILT” software get installed.

Code can be found here: https://github.com/kbaggen/Fake-TILT-Hydrometer

How to use?

The “Fake Fat Pink TILT” do send temperature, but instead of gravity it send the angle/tilt as decimals, eg. 90 angle is send as 0.900:

The 2 “Fake TILTS” in action. The “Fake Pink” in pelting in the water having a Angle of 19.4, where off the “Fake Green” holding 91.8 laying flat on table.

Hence, to translate this into gravity the user need to make either a test brew or sugar dilution to make a polynomial/translation in the TILT app:

Here we calibrate the 6 calibration points of a weak till strong sugar dilution for “Fake Fat Pink TILT”.

After the calibration we can now check if we in clean water got the right value:

Fake Pink Tilt after calibration.