DIY Your Own Voice Controlled Lights Two quick things: There is a thriving knockoff market for Arduino boards and shields on eBay (a nano clone is less than $10) and many are pretty good quality. For a lot of my single purpose projects, I've started using Arduinos to program ATTiny chips rather than dedicating a dev board - works for more projects that I expected and the dedicated cost is ~$2 for the chip + whatever components you need. A single AVR shield can be used as a central command and could communicate to your projects all over the house, (you'd probably need zigbee or some form of network access on your projects). those are great tips! Yes, many of the clones are close to 100% compatible with the brand name Arduinos although they often don't have as robust voltage regulators. Keep in mind that Arduino shields are only compatible with certain models, so don't expect to plug in a knockoff nano to an uno ethernet shield as a snap in - the pins aren't in the right place.
How to build an arduino energy monitor Including voltage measurement via AC-AC voltage adapter and current measurement via a CT sensor. This guide details how to build a simple electricity energy monitor on that can be used to measure how much electrical energy you use in your home. It measures voltage with an AC to AC power adapter and current with a clip on CT sensor, making the setup quite safe as no high voltage work is needed. The energy monitor can calculate real power, apparent power, power factor, rms voltage, rms current. All the calculations are done in the digital domain on an Arduino. Step One – Gather Components You will need: 1x Arduino Voltage sensing electronics: 1x 9V AC-AC Power Adapter 1x 100kOhm resistor for step down voltage divider. 1x 10kOhm resistor for step down voltage divider. 2x 470kOhm (for voltage divider, any matching value resistor pair down to 10K) 1x 10uF capacitor Current sensing electronics 1x CT sensor SCT-013-000 1x Burden resistor 18 Ohms if supply voltage is 3.3V or 33 Ohms if supply voltage is 5V.
4 Operating Systems for the Arduino I was working in the lab, late one night, when my eyes behold an eerie sight... Yes, Halloween is a long time ago, but that stupid song is still stuck in my head. I miss Halloween. I never got to post up pictures of my skeleton running off IXM's. :-)Anyway, I was browsing the Arduino forums and saw this cool post about DuinOS, a real-time embedded "operating system" for the Arduino. DuinOS by RobotGroupIt's a simple little realtime OS (RTOS) built by the guys at RobotGroup (hello!), and can be downloaded here. Well, that's something of a stretch, but it's getting there... we won't get into context switching an RAM page swapping just yet :-) So then that got me thinking, why not write up the other "OS's" out there for the Arduino platform. Pyxis OS by ArduinoWillThis is a graphical OS built on top of the Arduino and TouchShield platform, and is written by ArduinoWill (aka Thom). Ok. And it's all zipped up over at the Open Source App Store here. I wish I still had screen shots...
Arduino Shield List Top 10 Things You Can Upgrade with a Little Electronics Hacking it is a skill to do a good solder joint, it comes with LOTS of practice. so most people who rarely do it will ever get good at it. Bingo. Of course, part of the issue is having a soldering iron at the right temp with a properly tinned tip. Newbies aren't using soldering stations but a cheap iron they got at rat shack (You have questions? I don't expect to ever master tricky stuff like smts or even multilayer pcbs so I'm not much better then a newbie, anyway - and I totally suck at sweating pipe joints. Ah, well... SMT is actually a bit better than through-hole once you get the hang of it. Top 10 DIY Arduino Projects and HOW-TO Tutorials! Arduino has been widely popular among hackers and DIY-addicts out there for modding/hacking things. For those of you just entering the Arduino world, here’s a bunch of great Arduino tutorials/projects that can help you jump-start your next project. 1) Did you know that you can program/flash your Arduino wirelessly? For those of you who are going to be making devices where the Arduino is hidden from easy access, read up on how you can program your Arduino wirelessly using Xigbee modules over at Lady Ada’s site. 2) Arduinome is a project the Monome for audio sequencers. 3) For energy eco-projects, you can refer to this great site on OpenEnergyMonitor, which uses Arduino and complete details are provided for making your own home energy monitor. 4) DIY Arduino Earthquake Seismic Detector can actually detect earthquakes, perhaps great for any project requiring sensing of vibrations and whatnot. 5) Need some resources on robots using Arduino? 9) The Magic Mirror is one of my all-time favorites.
Can you move over? The 74HC595 8 bit shift register OK, so say you have this crazy cool idea where you need to control a ton of LEDs (I know, I know… LEDs). You looked at the multiplexer article, and that was great, but this idea is so cool, you need individual control of each LED, and turning them on one at a time just won’t do. Well again, we are here to help, and now it’s time to introduce you to the Shift Register. Not just any shift register, the super cheap, incredibly awesome 74HC595 8-bit Shift Register! What does a Shift Register do? Basically a shift register will, in the end, let you expand on the digital outputs you have on your mictrocontroller. But the way it works is a little confusing to think of at first, and these are helpful enough that it is really worth understanding what the heck is going on under the hood. You can imagine a shift register as a row of chairs. Now, every 10 seconds or so, someone rings a bell, and everyone has to get up and move one chair to the right. How does this let me control LEDs again? Code
Build Your Own Electronically Powered Self-Watering Plant System For those that want an off-the-shelf option I bought one of these and I love it for the most part: The reservoir is 6.6 gal so it is huge which is a good and bad thing. Might seem like a lot of negatives, but this has saved me so much time since I bought it about 6 months ago before a 2 week vacation. Fabriquer une éolienne pour moins de 40 € ? | Energethique C’est le défi qu’a relevé Max Robson, jeune étudiant de 22 ans. Son projet avait pour but de créer une éolienne vraiment pas chère avec des éléments de récupération. Cette éolienne pas chère est destinée selon lui à être utilisée dans les pays en voie de développement. Une éolienne DIY qui lui aura couté 20£, actuellement équivalent de 23€ et pas mal de pièces de récup, le petit alternateur d’une Vespa par exemple ou encore une batterie de vieille Ford Fiesta… Ce qui élève certainement déjà un peu le coût du tout et surtout il faut avoir les éléments à disposition, peut-être pas toujours le cas dans les pays en voie de développement auxquels il destine sa création. La petite bête développe une puissance de 11,3 W, ce n’est pas énorme mais c’est déjà ça de pris ! L’article complet du Daily Mail Be Sociable, Share! Parle de ce post à tes amis !
Circuits@Home Hack Your Door to Lock and Unlock via Text Message @hahn: I don't know about all that. With the right safeguards in place, I think this would be secure enough for my tastes: 1. Ensure it only responds to messages from ones' own phone. (Perhaps with a log of attempts from other users.) 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Believe it or not, I'd feel a bit more secure with this system (with some tweaks) than a traditional lock-and-key system for the same reason I feel better about having extraneous cards in my wallet: If my phone (or overstuffed wallet) is missing, I'm going to know it.