HMC5883L Compass Tutorial with Arduino Library - Tutorials - Love Electronics Using a magnetometer can be a little tricky, especially if your unsure about the formulas to use to get the correct bearing and when other magnetic objects are interfering with your signal. We've created a library for our HMC5883L Breakout Board , which will also be compatible with other HMC5883L breakout boards made by other manufacturers. Join us whilst we cover the following: Understand what is a magnetometer and how they work. Introduce the HMC5883L Arduino Library Explain how to extract data from the HMC5883L. How do compasses work? Firstly an introduction, a (standard handheld) compass works by aligning itself to the earths magnetic field. Our magnetometer uses these magnetic fields, however it doesn't pull on a little needle inside it! How do we use one? Okay, so now we know how to use one, the first step is to get some data out of our compass. Once you have the library installed start your Arduino IDE and we can get coding. Using the HMC5883L Arduino Library Wire.begin();
RGB Accent Lighting with Remote Control Our good friend Tod Kurt, of ThingM, shows how to control a strip of RGB LEDs using the BlinkM MaxM driver and a FreeM IR remote receiver. I used some similar strip lighting and a MaxM for a friend’s Halloween costume, and really liked being able to program the blink pattern via Arduino. The addition of an IR remote opens up interesting possibilities. Invisible Accent Light with BlinkM MaxM & FreeM Related
xoscillo - A software oscilloscope that acquires data using an arduino or a parallax (more platforms to come). About This is a multiplatform software oscilloscope and logical analyzer. It supports arduino(with custom firmware) and a Parallax USB oscilloscope. More platforms to come. Features Panoramic view Load and save waveforms Zoom in and out Can open several waveforms at the same time Can run several oscilloscopes/logical analyzers simultaneously Frequency analysis using FFT Filtering, so far it has a low pass filter, probably more to come. Supported platforms Support Ask here in our forum Screenshots Basic screen shot showing the oscilloscope displaying a simple waveform Logic analyzer screenshot Displays the FFT of the signal and underneath the FFT over time. This screen shot shows an arduino based oscilloscope and a parallax one working simultaneously in realtime. Linux Notes from the Author The code is not by any means great, its just a quick exercise I did to learn c#. License
Partlist Wednesday: NPN transistors Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: NPN transistors Transistors do lots of analog tricks, but we only use them to switch high powered stuff with a weak microcontroller pin. Usually an LED. See the IR Toy, #twatch, PICqueno, or USB POV Toy for the sad truth. We’ve standardized on the BC818 for most stuff. If you’re choosing a substitute part be sure to check the pinout. Verify your schematic and footprints too. For a bigger load, or a continuous load where an SOT-23 package gets hot, we’d go for something similar in SOT-223. This is meant as a summary of what we use, not an essay on transistors. We interrupt this program to bring you an Arduino interrupt tutorial Ah yes… the wonderful and oft-misunderstood world of microcontroller interrupts. Are you looking to build a project that relies on very precise timing or needs to react quickly to an input? Then don’t change that channel, my friend. In this tutorial we’ll cover what interrupts are, what they do, and how to use them. What is an interrupt? On a very basic level, an interrupt is an signal that interrupts the current processor activity. ISR? If you’re new to the world of software development, you might wonder why all this complication is necessary just to respond to external events. You certainly can do all of these things in your main code, but interrupts give you a key advantage – they are asynchronous. Let’s use a real-world example. Instead, imagine if the package was sent Fedex or UPS with delivery confirmation. The AVR chips used in most Arduinos are not capable of parallel processing, i.e. they can’t do multiple things at once. Types of Interrupts Implementing an interrupt in a program
433Mhz RF link kit [WLS107B4B] - $4.90 Hello, I need to broadcast sensor values (16 bits), to several receivers at the same time, 10 times per second (it means 10 messages of 16 bits per seconde). is it possible to use that 433 Mhz RF link for that ? or does it take more than 100ms to send a message ? Thank you very much, Arnaud Hi, I purchased 3 units, but the range is very limited (i get less than 10m in direct sight of view). I would like to add an external antenna pigtail and connector to the transmitter and receiver. what is the maximum baudrate i can use safely in this product? Hi, the maximum baudrate is 4,800 bps. Answered by Welcome
Microcontroller Projects: Nokia 1100 LCD Interfacing with Microcontroller Displaying content on a normal alphanumeric display is very limited ,we have to be limited with the font size and we can't draw any graphics also. but convention Graphics lcd are really very expensive so here is the solution, you can use Nokia 1100 monochrome LCD to display your large font text and graphics . the reason behind using this LCD is ,it is really very cheap and can be powered with 3 volts supply. so it is really good for battery powered application. Driver IC on this LCD panel is PCF8814 which even though has I2C protocol support - doesn't use it. Instead it uses simple bit-banging mechanism for communication. Project Description however you can use almost any microcontroller (need a little bit extra circuit to work with mcu who doesn't support 3v) do display content on this LCD, may be that micro controller is PIC , AVR or MSP 430 ,8051 but in this demonstration we will be using Microchip PIC 18F458 Microcontroller. About LCD:- Addressing Mode Vertical addressing Mode 1. 5. 6.
GamePack Were you ever the kind of person to hack up your own Playstation controllers and hook it up to something else? Well, those shards of plastic can be mighty dangerous, so I’ve done it for you. And hey, with the GamePack you’ll even have something you can hook it up to. The GamePack comes with an Arduino, MeCap Backpack, TouchShield Stealth or Slide, ExtenderShield and an InputShield- everything you need to create your own open source, portable gaming device. I’ve just added a new option for wide screen that includes the new TouchShield Slide. Components Specifications TouchShield Slide: 320×240 LCD Screen Resistive Touch Screen Holds 60 128×128 bitmap images Compatible with Arduino Environment Only Uses Arduino Pins: 3 and 4 Graphics Library Ready to Go Draw Shapes, Pixels, Colors, Graphs, Buttons 2.83 inch diagonal Tutorials/Blogs Reference and Firmware Media Another shot of the Open Source Gameboy Project
Blaise Jarrett's Portfolio This project enables your microcontroller to communicate in real time to a web browser. I started this project after seeing a similar implementation on hackaday from mbed.org. Their implementation uses their own device, the mbed Cortex-M0 beta. I've been a hobbyist microchip PIC developer for a few years, so I set out to write my own version for microchip's 8bit pic devices in C. The microcontroller used is a microchip PIC18F4620. The wifi module used is a Roving Networks RN-XV. My dev board: WebSockets is a new protocol of being standardized by the IETF. The client: mbed.org implements a relatively old version of websockets. The server: I wanted to run my own custom server, so I took a look at wiki's Comparison of WebSocket Implementations and chose to use Autobahn for my server software. For control applications the server needs to function like this: The device broadcasts to all browsers, the browsers only talks to the device The server used is Autobahn. The port is set in main.
Towards a sensor commons | Technology Treason The Internet of Things, a term being bandied to the point of almost meaninglessness now it’s hit the mainstream of the NYT and the BBC. Yet, while the mainstay of the media struggles to describe how and why smart sensor arrays are going to mean you spend less time in traffic, ultimately pay more for your electricity but make sure your fruit is always fresh, there is a quiet revolution taking place. The action taking place is the creation of what I call the Sensor Commons. Why is this a revolution? Because as a population we are deciding that governments and civic planners no longer have the ability to provide meaningful information at a local level. Two posts summarise this activity and its implications beautifully for me. The first, by Ed Bordern from Pachube, is on the creation of a community driven Air Quality Sensor Network. The implications of this quiet revolution are discussed by Jauvan Moradi in his post on how open sensor networks will affect journalism. Gaining trust Price
» Adding web connectivity (via USB) to remote controlled sockets – Part 1 (hardware) Jake Rowan Byrne This project page provides a guide to adding both USB and a Web based User Interface (UI) to remote control socket set. In the process we will unlock even more capabilities than are available when you use the socket set as they were originally intended. Part 1 (this post) deals with the hardware, Part 2 deals with programming the chip and Web UI. It essentially builds upon this blog by [befinitiv] Radio controlled sockets are a great way to save power in your home. This gives a pretty good justification for doing this, plus I wanted a worthwhile project to learn a little about programming standalone AT Megas (most of my experience has been with Arduino and PicAxe to date). The main components are: Energy Efficient Remote Control Mains Socket SetAT Mega 8Nokia CA-42 Data Cable (cheap ones here)Arduino (or other AVR-MK2 programmer)Web-server (I used a Raspberry pi, but any computer will work if it’s running Apache and PHP)Lego (if you want to make a Raspberry pi case)