Posted June 21, 2015 by Chris

" The last thing you want to do is clear up your Monday schedule to go kitesurfing and find yourself cursing the gods on a windless lake after two hours of driving. I needed to know the wind conditions of my favorite kitesurfing spot—in real time. So I decided to build my own weather station."

Posted June 19, 2015 by Chris

"These devices work by having a infrared LED on one end of the slot and a phototransistor at the other end. There are transistor like devices in the catalogs and there are logic devices as well. Since the current flows when the light is blocked I assumed this was a logic based device and not just a raw optotransistor for the sensor."

Posted June 18, 2015 by Chris

In today’s PyroEDU lesson we continue with our new course: An Introduction To Sensors and take a look at how to sense light. Light Sensors like the photoresistor and photocell are very important and use throughout society. In this lesson we will go through the theory about photoresistors and perform a fun experiment to give you a hands-on feel for how they work. Here’s a quick intro of what this PyroEDU lesson is all about:

Light is an element that is crucial for life on earth and it is also something we can easily sense electronically. In this lesson we will use a photoresistor to detect changes in brightness by making a laser trip-line.

Posted June 15, 2015 by Chris

"This document captures all the relevant efforts that were made in construction of this quadcopter. The timeframe of the project is January 2011 to April2011."

Posted June 14, 2015 by Chris

"Fortunately in the world of open source technology, the solutions to many technical challenges lie online. This great example by Zitron shows how to use hardware interrupts to read in the data from the hall effect sensor outside of the loop() function."

Posted June 12, 2015 by Chris

"This post introduces the hardware itself and the work I’m doing on this side to establish a decent test-bed for my continued experiments with finding iOS control patterns for BTLE applications along with determining the magnitude of the work and the code footprint when adding BTLE Radio support to an embedded project."

Posted June 11, 2015 by Chris

Today we delve a little deeper into object detection with proximity sensors in our new PyroEDU course: An Introduction To Sensors. In this lesson we’ll look at everything there is to know about Ultrasonic Proximity Sensors and perform a fun experiment to give you a hands-on feel for how they work. Here’s a quick intro of what this PyroEDU lesson is all about:

Proximity detection is important for any application that needs to know if an object has crossed a sensor’s path. In this lesson we will learn how to use an ultrasonic proximity sensor to detect how far away an object is.

Posted June 10, 2015 by Chris

"Last time I left you with a video showing the control board running a toaster oven. Today, I’m going to start with a video showing a PCB getting reflowed in the oven. I will cover the changes I made after the video."

Posted June 8, 2015 by Chris

"This robot head was originally built as a end of the year project for my physical computing class, but over the summer it has ‘learned’ how to talk. The head is powered by two Freeduinos, 3 TLC5940NT chips and an Adafruit Industries Wave Shield. The head is currently connected to a computer by two USB cables, one for power, one for sending it serial commands on what to say/emote."

Posted June 7, 2015 by Chris

"A team of Michigan State University (MSU) researchers has created a transparent solar concentrator able to turn any window into a photovoltaic solar cell. What makes this development different? The panel is truly transparent."