Category Archives: Arduino

Low-tech Arduino based cell phone trigger

William Finucane of revoltlab.com posted this article describing a simple low-cost means of activating devices remotely via telephone. I wanted to be able to call my house and turn on the lights and television during nights when I was away on vacation. What’s more, I didn’t want to spend any money on cell phone bills […]

DCC 2011 – PhoneSat: sub $10k spacecraft

Mike Safyan is an amateur radio operator KJ6MVL who works at NASA. In this talk from the 2011 ARRL/TAPR DCC in Baltimore, Mike describes the PhoneSat project, whose goal is to produce a functioning satellite module for under $10,000. Picture a Nexus Android phone, Arduino and RF transmitter inside a 10cc standard flight-safe housing cube […]

DIY electomagnetic interference detector

Popular Mechanics presents this simple DIY electromagnetic interference (EMI) detector project. It’s Arduino based and requires only an 8-ohm speaker, 1-megaohm resistor and 3–5 feet of insulated solid core wire. Details on this easy beginner’s project can be found on the Popular Mechanics website, with links to the Arduino sketch on the author’s Github page.

Pinguino32-DIY PIC32 development board with the Pinguino bootloader

Pinguino design team released the design for the Pinguino32 PIC32 development board using their Pinguino bootloader. It supports PIC32MX250F128, and PIC32MX220F032B microcontrollers. The design is open source, and made with KICAD  software. Download it from their Google code area.

DIY Arduino 6-channel temperature monitor

Johnathan Hottell wanted a way to monitor and display the temperature readings at various points around the engine on his LB7 Duramax diesel truck. He developed this project for a six channel temperature monitor employing a bank of thermistors to monitor various engine locations. They are read each second by the Arduino’s analog pins, with […]

Simple Arduino motion sensor – SMS messaging project

Here’s an easy open source motion sensing project by Matt Williamson which sends you an SMS message when motion is detected. The hardware consists of an Arduino and Parallax PIR sensor (Part No. 555-28027). This arrangement communicates via serial with a Python server on an attached computer, which then uses the TelAPI service to accomplish […]

FireHero – Arduino and guitar play with fire

Chris Marion has developed an impressive and dangerous project: FireHero. It uses a complex propane system and some electric valves coupled to an Arduino controller that hooks directly into a “guitar” – a Guitar Hero input device, hence the project name “FireHero”. The result is that the notes played directly affect the flames. Now that’s […]

Printf style debugging over AVR-ISP pins

ihsan kehribar from the Little Wire project informs us of his recent work entitled “Printf style debugging over AVR-ISP pins.” He writes, “if you are breadboarding an AVR chip, you are already using the SPI pins for programming the device; therefore it would be nice to use that cable for low-level debugging also. I wrote […]

SuperScope: circuit simulation through Arduino-Processing interface

Here’s a novel application. Supecapacitor has developed a circuit simulation project using Arduino-Processing. As he describes it: “SuperScope is a circuit simulator app for representing and calculating analog circuits. What’s so cool about SuperScope is the ability to actually import circuit components (via Arduino Serial) into the program where you can physically manipulate them. Arduino […]

GOduino II motor driver

Hazim Bitar writes in about the GOduino II motor driver project. In addition to the Atmega328p w/Opti bootloader, he uses a L293D h-bridge and various supporting caps and resistors giving the project a total estimated cost of about $20. Visit the TechBitar blog for project build details, along with schematic and Arduino sketch. Via the […]

Arduino RFID time clock

FRIC at ivoidwarranties has developed an Arduino addiction. So when his company needed a replacement time clock he wasn’t content to settle for a substandard commercial unit. In the true hacker spirit he designed his own superior time clock system using Arduino and a Stronglink SL018. The SL018 is an RFID reader/writer that interfaces via […]

2boots: Arduino/AVR serial and SD card bootloader

Martin tipped us off to an AVR/Arduino  serial and mmc/SD card bootlaoder. It was designed to fit the same 2kb memory area that the usual Arduino booloader fits into, but can load firmware from an SD card too. Very useful for on “in the field” programing. This is a proof-of-concept dual bootloader for Atmel AVR […]