Posted December 2, 2011 by Chris

“At the heart of the exploration was a need to cheaply measure water from the tap. Water meters vary quite drastically in price. We settled on a $20 water meter used for PC cooling systems (the INS-FM17N by Koolance) due to its accuracy, low price, small size, and electronic sensing method that could be easily measured by a microcontroller (such as an Arduino).”

Posted November 29, 2011 by Chris

“This tutorial will describe how to use Arduino to control a bank of four independent RC servos with your PC (or Mac, or *nix Box), using a USB cable and a modular Arduino-Python software stack.”

Posted November 28, 2011 by Chris

If you’ve ever wanted to build the famous ball and plate balancing project, here’s the project with some great documentation. A PC tells an Arduino how to move two servos which move the marble across the board where you want it to go. A webcam tells the PC where the ball is on the board. Take a look!

Posted November 24, 2011 by Chris

We’ll post-pone the final Taming Your Music Collection tutorial until next week in order to take some time and celebrate Thanksgiving. Happy Holidays and here’s a TurkeyShield to celebrate:“In the DIY spirit, of course, here’s a 5-step guide to making your own 8-bit embedded turkey:”

Posted November 18, 2011 by Chris

“We found evidence to support the suggestion that LilyPad is disproportionally appealing to women, as compared to Arduino (we estimated that about 9% of Arduino purchasers were female while 35% of LilyPad purchasers were female).” Here’s an interesting read about the growing prevalence of women in the STEM world.

Posted November 14, 2011 by Chris

“After I got comfortable programming and building with an Arduino, I decided to build a robot. I did not have any particular type in mind, so I wracked my brain (and the internet) for cool robot ideas. Eventually, somehow the idea popped into my head to build a robot that could climb trees.” An intriguing project that references my L298 motor control tutorial!

Posted October 31, 2011 by Chris

“Initially, the POV was created using 8 red LEDs, a shift register and an Arduino. This allowed for single color text based images. Once I gained experience and learned the concepts the design moved on to use 8 RGB LEDs. For this I used 8 common-cathode RGB LEDs, 3 shift registers (parallel out), and an Arduino.”

Posted October 26, 2011 by Chris

“Parallax’s Basic Stamp is the mainstay for hobbyists wanting to add intelligence to everyday devices. A new system called Arduino provides the benefits of the Basic Stamp at a greatly reduced cost, increased speed, and is entirely open-source.” A classic read for electronics hobbyists looking for the most functionality at the best price.

Posted October 13, 2011 by Chris

“Back in July I was contacted by Nikki of fizzPop Hackspace in Birmingham about making very low cost Arduino clones on stripboard. I hadn’t really given it much thought until I realised how easy it would be to make an Arduino compatible device on stripboard for something less than a fiver!”