Every time I fly and have to drop off my luggage at the check-in counter, I wonder what goes inside it during the trip.

• Is it stored in a cold location? At high altitudes, external plane temp can reach -30F. Is my stuff exposed to that extreme weather?
• Does it gets opened when I’m not around? As far as I know only customs and security have permission to open the luggage; no one else.
• What about being dropped? Throw a few feet is probably expected, but how about a 3-meter free fall? Not cool!

To answer those question I decided to create a small device that I could place in my luggage and record some environmental data around it. The idea for OpenLoggage was born!

I have decided to make it an open-source hardware and software project. For several reasons:

• get the community to collaborate on the application software
• have fun in this project!

Slides

Check out these slides I put together and presented at an Arduino Minnesota meeting in March 2014. It shows a bit more about the project:

 

 

Proto1 – Credit Card size

This was the first OpenLoggage board. It’s credit card sized.

It was used to test out all the subsystems. After all is tested, I created proto board 2 where all has been shrunk down.

Here’s what it looks like.

 

Proto 2 – Gum Stick size

 

As you may imagine by the name of this board, the Gum Stick board has the size of a standard stick of chewing gum: 2-7/8 inches in length, 7/8 inch in width.

The GS board is the second board I made. The first board was a credit card size and was done that big so that I could quickly test out components, cut traces, etc.

Funny fact: there’s a  Military Standard for chewing gum sticks.

 

Board Features:

• Microcontroller: Atmel’s ATMEGA328 (same as in the Arduino Uno)
• MicroSD card socket
• Coin cell battery holder
• Li-ion charging circuit
• Sensors: temperature, light (LDR)
• Size: standard chewing gum stick (xx , yy )
• two unused I/O pins for expansion
• Very low energy design!!!  (see slides above)

Customization Features:

• Jumpers for selecting power source (USB, Li-Ion or Coin Cell)

Optional Headers:

I added these headers as an alternative of populating the components directly in the b

• Header for Arduino Mini (? double check) in case you do not want to hand solder the SOIC chip on the board.
• Header for RFduino (p/n xxxxyyyy). Easily add Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE) to your board.
• Header for Accelerometer board (p/n GY-45 with Freescale MMA8451)
• Header for RTC clock (p/n xxxxyyyy)

Circuit Board Layout

 

Files:

• Download Gerber files
• Eagle Cad schematic & layout (coming soon)
• Sample Sketches & Library (to be ported from Proto1 board)

 

What’s Next