Monday, 8 June 2015

Manual Melt Using Thor

Version 1.03 of Thor now includes video recording and playback, there is enough functionality to perform a melt.

1. Build Your Test Rig



Here I'm using a Chipsee Android computer, an SMP40, a USB camera and Salicylic Acid as my test chemical.

Take extra caution due to the chemicals, heat and electricity! Do not leave the test rig unattended.

2. Set up the Camera

Click here to find out how to turn off the auto-exposure and set the gain so that the image is bright.

This is what your image should look like



3. Set up the Heater

Salicyclic Acid melts at 158°C, so you need to set the heater to start ramping from 153°C


The heater will quickly heat to 153°C and then spend a few minutes settling, once settle the Plateau temperature is reached and you can then press the Ramp button to start raising the temperature at 1°C per minute.

4. Start Recording


Press the record button to start recording the video stream, the video streams a 640x480 image at 4 frames per second. Videos are stored in the Movies folder on the device.


5. Watch the Melt





The melt has finished when all the chemical solid has melted into its own liquid (the Clear Point).
Press Stop button, to stop recording and finish writing the video file.

6. Turn Off the Heater



Press Stop button to start cooling, the fan will blow until the temperature of the block is below 50°C

7. Watch Your Video

Go to the videos screen and choose your newly created video


Press on a file to play the video


Pause the video and use the seek bar to manually determine the Clear Point (when all solid has melted into liquid).

8. Copy to PC


You can grab you videos off the Android device and copy them onto your PC, use a Mini USB B cable to connect to the Beagle computer.

Your videos are stored in the Movies folder, note you may need to power off/on you device to refresh the files.


The video is stored as an AVI file, suitable for most media applications.



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