ESP8266 galore

More than a year ago, I tried out the ESP8266, but didn't get very far. The scene and products have evolved a lot since then, and today it's as easy...

DIY Arduino Debug Shield

Debugging with LEDs; it's probably even more primitive than debugging with printf statements. However, to get a very immediate feedback on what's happening, or which pins are in use, it...

Hello World! from the UG-2864 "OEL Display Module" / SSD1306

There is a wide range of cute small OLED (organic LED, aka. Organic Electro-Luminescence) display modules around. Adafruit has a range, the same or similar can also be found all...

RFID tag reading with the RDM630 module

To read RFID tags with an Arudino is easy using the RDM630 card reader module (also sold as RDM6300 in a slightly different version). It's available from DealExtrme, including a...

Wifi with the ESP8266

The ESP8266 is an interesting chip that has gained a lot of traction lately. At only $5, it's quite impressive what you get: a wifi to serial adapter, a TCP/IP...

Soil Moisture Sensor

Over at gardenbot.org Andrew Frueh has an interesting article on a DIY soil moister sensor. It is simply two large nails with wires attached. By measuring the resistance of the...

3x3x3 LED cube with fewer wires

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that it would be possible to optimize the number of wires and components needed for a 3x3x3 single colour LED cube by using "the...

16x2 LCD and button shield

I recently picked up this 16x2 character LCD and button shield from DealExtreme. It is similar to the Hitachi based shields and displays sold elsewhere, but with a slightly different...

Sparkfun orders

Here's a list of items I've ordered from Sparkfun over the years. Mostly for my own reference than anything else, and maybe not of much interest to others.

Simple multiplexing with two shift registers

There are many ways to drive multiple LEDs, which in sum would require more IO pins and more current than is available on the control chip. The simplest way is...

Large bright 10 mm LED

Earlier this year, I found some uncommon LEDs at Clas Ohlson: Large bright 10mm LEDs (note that the link takes you to selection of different kinds; I got the "ultra...

Nexa Home Automation - 433 MHz codes

After successfully decoding the Everflourish home automation controls, and integrating that with a DIY Android app, I thought it was time to expand the system. I picked up a new...

8 bits shift register - 17 bits of data

Although the serial-in, parallel-out shift register, aka. SN74AHC595, SN74AHC594 or just "595" / "594", is an easy component to hook up and use, it might not be immediately obvious what's...

How to make an LED Cube

User "fruitkid101" has a short and to-the-point video up on YouTube on how to construct a 3x3x3 LED cube, and drive it with an Arudino. What distinguishes his video from...

Home automation with Arduino and Android

Last year I made the first progress towards a DIY remote for my home automation light switches (using the Everflourish RF based system). The goal was to use the 433.92...

Small DIY keypads

Looking for a simple remote control solution, I came across these small 4x4 button keypads seen in the pictures below. The first two are similar in that they are simple...

Arduino on Fedora 17

Working with the Arduino on a changing Fedora environment is a bit of a challenge. For every release or update, there's something new and exciting which breaks the Arudino IDE,...

Arduino adapter shield for the RPi

The H recently wrote about the AlaMode board which lets you use Arudino compatible shields with the Raspberry Pi. The board connects to the GPIO headers of the RPi, and...

Home Automation on 433.92 MHz with Arduino

Last year I wrote about my plans with the RF Link Transmitter, Receiver, and Everflourish home automation system seen in the pictures below. The idea was to replace the remote...

Autonomous Coaxial Helicopter - Stage 1

Using the Double Horse 9053 Volitation (Revell “Big One Pro”) I wrote about earlier, I've now embarked on a project to make it an autonomous flying and stabilizing helicopter. (First...

Sensors: Ultrasonic Range Finder

In yet another shipment from Deal Extreme, I picked up a HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Range Finder. It seems to be a widely used and supported component, as there are plenty of...

Moving Parts - Part 1: Stepper motors

After the new Atmel ATMega was installed yesterday, I'm now ready to experiment with some stepper motors. First out, the Mercury Motor SM-42BYG011-25, a medium sized motor with quite a...

Burning a bootloader with the STK500v2

After picking up a few blank ATMega328P I was ready to upload the Arduino bootloader with the latest Olimex AVR-ISP500 USB STK500v2, but ran into a few issues. Here's how...

RF Communication on 433.92 MHz

I recently got a Sparkfun order on my door, so it's time to play. In the box was a RF Link Transmitter, and Receiver. They are sold as 434 MHz...

Arduino, Fedora 15, and the gpsd incompatibility

Even though the Arduino is very popular amongst makers and other electronics hobbyist, it is still a fringe platform in most settings. And even though the arduino package is available...

Arduino news

Some interesting news from Arudino yesterday: Arduino 1.0, we finally froze the Arduino API, the IDE and the layout of the boards. Arduino Leonardo, a low cost Arduino board with...

555 Contest

Evil Mad Scientist is showing some of the entries for the 555 Contest. There's some great creations, but perhaps the most entertaining is the "Le Dominoux" (or “LED dominoes”) by...

Teensy USB Development Board

The Teensy is a complete USB-based microcontoller development system, in a very small footprint. It is similar to Arduino boards in that it uses an ATMEGA Atmel AVR processor, however...

Interacting with the Button Pad Controller SPI

By popular request, here's an update to the first code for the Button Pad Controller SPI. This sketch now includes interactive feedback, in the form of changing colours based on...

Arduino for Fedora

It's old news, but I missed that the Arduino IDE now is available in the Fedora repository, since Fedora 13. sudo yum install arduino You might also have to include...

Arduino IDE - Adding a little Emacs

Voidman  has a great hack for the Arudino IDE: Adding some of the most common Emacs short cuts to the editor. It's only a few lines of added code, compile,...

Physical tone matrix

As an update to yesterday's post on the Tone Matrix, here's a very stylish realization from the Reenigne blog. Featuring 16x16 LED lights (just like the Flash app),  the same...

Monome as Tone Matrix

The Tone Matrix by Andre Michelle is making its rounds. It seems this shouldn't be too difficult to implement in hardware, using the 4x4 button pad. Or in other words,...

We are the robots

I've been looking up a few robots lately. There are a lot of impressive kits out there, and many of them pass as toys for kids, even if the technology...

Online Parts Suppliers

Nathan Seidle, founder of SparkFun, recently told the story of how his business started from his bedroom in 2004. Since then, there has popped up a lot of good suppliers...

Smallduino: Ardweeny

Here's probably the smallest fully functional Arudino out there: Ardweeny. At $10 from Maker Shed, you can't go wrong. They market it as a bread board item, however I can't...

Panorama Robots

It somehow seems inevitable; if you are into photography and electronics, you want to build a panorama robot. Coupled with very good software to stitch and render a panorama image,...

Scavenging old computer mice

Lately I've taken some old computer mice apart. There are a few interesting components which can be reused in there: On a ball-mouse, there are two pairs of infra-red emitters...

Arduino Shield List

Jon Oxer has launched a site to catalogue all Arudino shields: Arduino Shield List (shieldlist.org). At the time of writing, there are "pin usage details for 166 shields from 70...

Motors and robotics

Looking at the 12 V stepper motor at SparkFun, I came across a few other fun links. Including instructions for stepper motor wiring, a DIY surveillance camera, and an example...

First code for the Button Pad Controller SPI

I recently got the Button Pad Controller SPI from SparkFun. Today I had some time to play around with the code, and got it working. Currently, it is only blinking...

Controlling RGB Matrices with Arduino

SparkFun just put a new tutorial on controlling their 8x8 RGB matrix with an Arduino. It includes a new library, so things should be easy to set up. Hopefully, I...

Maple: Arudino at 72 MHz

Just for the record and to save the links for myself: Maple from LeafLabas. "Maple is a 72 MHz 32 bits ARM Cortex M3 chip [...] built from open source...

New Arduino Boards Ready

Arduino.cc just announced two new Arduino boards: The Arduino Uno, replacing the Duemilanove, and Arduino Mega 2560, succeeding the Mega. The Uno gets a programmable USB chip which can "make...

8 bits Shift Register - 74HC595

On the heals of the success with the Arduino kit last week, I went ahead and bought some extra parts: a 74HC595, 8 bits Shift Register, some red/green/orange LEDS (TLUV5300),...

Arduino on Ubuntu 8.04

A few days ago I set up the Arduino development kit on Fedora 11. Here the steps for Ubuntu 8.04 follow, based on this. I was using a slightly custom...

Ethernet2VGA (Arduino w/ethernet -> microVGA PICASO)

I recently bought an Arduino starter kit along with the Ethernet "shield". In addition, I got a uVGA-PICASO-MD1 Graphics Controller chip, which attaches on to the PICASO Universal Base Board....