Power efficient, adjustable, light-sensitive switch using an LED: You can use an LED as a photoelectric sensor. A previous Design Idea shows that such a switch is highly power-efficient, consuming almost no power (Reference 1). However, you cannot adjust that … Read more
Doub shared his solenoid control project in the forum: I’m working on a solenoid control board, that would allow me to do sensorless position control (the algorithm is based on the varying inductance of the solenoid depending on the plunger … Read more
Microchip capacitive proximity design guide: This application note describes how to use the Microchip capacitive sensing solution to implement a capacitive-based proximity detector, provide hardware layout guidelines and analyze several factors that can have an impact on the sensitivity.
This web-enabled rain sensor will automatically turn-off an irrigation system when it rains using a Raspberry Pi: This Raspberry Pi Irrigation System Rain Bypass uses a web connected Raspberry Pi to look up rain predictions and disable the irrigation system … Read more
Want to adjust TV sound during loud commercials? TechBitar shows you how to easily make an automatic volume control using Arduino: The TV Volume Loudness Guard will listen to your TV and if the volume goes higher than a certain … Read more
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 7 he designed a voltage and frequency logger for household mains power supply. The device is designed around the ATtiny45 microcontroller which records the frequency and voltage, and … Read more
This Instructable describes a prototype of a road condition scanner using Arduino + GPS + SD + Accelerometer designed by TechBitar: I thought it would be educational to build a prototype that I can take on the road to log, … Read more
Some I2C sensors and devices store more then one byte of data that needs to be read by a microcontroller. Many of these devices change the data once a stop bit has been received. Problems might occur if the data … Read more
As a follow up to his RS-485 temperature sensor board, Ezflyer added PCB and schematic files: I’ve been meaning to post the Eagle schematic and board files for this project for a while now, but never got around to it. … Read more
R-B built a heart rate measurement from fingertip circuit. He also provided all the design files, and general theory of it’s operation: This project describes a microcontroller based heart rate measuement system that uses optical sensors to measure the alteration … Read more
Chris added another entry to the Open 7400 Logic competition: TTL Tilt Sensor. His device works by converting accelerometer analog outputs into digital signals via 3×4 comparators, 6 are used for the X-axis and 6 for the Y-axis. From then … Read more
Mouser built a key-less entry system using Ping))) and the Arduino. The Ping))) ultrasonic sensor is used to gauge user’s hand positions. By moving the hand at different positions, a code is entered that opens the door. He used the moving average filter to keep the … Read more
Joe wrote an article on using the Bus Pirate to interface with the TI TMP006 non-contact temperature sensor covered earlier. This article explains how to interface the Texas Instruments TMP006 non-contact IR temperature sensor evaluation module (TMP006EVM) to a Linux … Read more
At recent international trade shows Epson debuted the S4E5A0A0 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). An inertial measurement unit senses inertial motion consisting of angular rate sensors on three axes and accelerometers in three directions. IMUs are primarily used to measure and … Read more
Joe posted pictures of the single-chip digital IR temperature sensor covered earlier. jbeal has measurement tables and first impressions in the forum: I got the eval kit for the TI TMP006 sensor mentioned here last week. It does seem to … Read more
In a comment on our STMicroelectronics MEMS pressure sensor post, jbeale offers his tests of the Bosch Sensortec BMP085 pressure sensor: The Bosch Sensortec BMP085 is slightly larger (5×5 mm) and has been out for some time. In its highest … Read more
In The Forum
Recent Comments