Drawbot #2 Lives!. Peter writes -

Friday Night Drawbot now has a brother. (This one is using an Adafruit Boarduino.)

Building an Arduino LCD Clock. Dan writes -

The first step in my Arduino monitored / controlled orchid vivarium is giving my Arduino the ability to track time with reasonable accuracy and display information on an LCD.  I went with a Boarduino for ease of prototyping, but the final build will probably use an Uno or Mega.

Automated builds should be easy! At my job we use the Jenkins continuous integration server to build our software every time someone commits a change. I wanted to improve the visibility of the build results (especially for failed builds), so I combined a Boarduino and two PowerSwitch Tails from Adafruit with a Staples EasyButton to create an automated build controller.

It has three LEDs to indicate the status of the Jenkins server: red means the last build failed, yellow means a build is in progress, and green means the last build was successful. The PowerSwitch Tails correspond to the red and green LEDs: one turns on when the build fails and the other turns on when it is successful. We connect red and green lamps to the PowerSwitch Tails (although at one point we had a strobe light attached to the “fail” PST — very visible, but not popular).

The EasyButton triggers an automated build. Since we have Jenkins configured to build the software continuously, we use the EasyButton to trigger an automated deployment of our software to our QA machine.

Supporting the hardware is a small Python script. Its job is to poll Jenkins web services to check the build status and to trigger a job whenever someone presses the EasyButton.

Pictures, documentation, and schematics are available at http://counterorbit.org/abc/. The source code for the firmware and Python script is available at http://hg.counterorbit.org/abc/.

The democratization of hardware @ PowerSource | Blog on EDN.

Adafruit got into the parts/kit business with its detailed tutorials that include step-by-step instructions and photographs to lead newbies through the basics of Ohm’s Law and soldering, and on to programming the open-source hardware Arduino platform. Unlike traditional electronic distributors that rely on application engineers, the site effectively crowdsources its application engineering support through its forums and FAQ pages on the kits and parts. This reliance on the knowledge of the site’s fans is part of a well-thought-out business plan: Adafruit’s founder, Limor Fried, detailed the company philosophy in, “15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business.”

Individual parts offered by Adafruit benefit from its excellent documentation and  tutorials. Speaking from personal experience, a couple of years ago I bought a TLS2561 light-to-digital converter from TAOS Semiconductor (now part of austriamicrosystems.) It seemed like a handy component to have in getting a quick, objective measurement of LEDs. However, although documentation existed for the part, its outputs were hard to interpret and it was not easy to hook it up to a computer for datalogging. I quickly gave up and forgot about it.

Then, last summer Adafruit introduced the a new product, aTLS2561 premounted on a small pc board with a couple of chip resistors and some headers, with a tutorial as well as a software library for the open-source Arduino platform. As theAdafruit tutorial says, “To use this sensor and calculate Lux, there’s a lot of very hairy and unpleasant math. You can check out the math in the datasheet but really, it’s not intuitive or educational – it’s just how the sensor works. So we took care of all the math and wrapped it up into a nice Arduino library.”

My sentiments exactly – I just wanted to start using the sensor. It worked great. (See photo, which shows a boarduino, a slimmed-down version of the arduino.) Adafruit was able to take a part that sells competitively for about $2 each, add a couple of passive components, and a well thought-out online tutorial, and sell it for $12. And it was worth every penny of it to me.

Digi-Key had a similar start back in 1972, selling its “Digi-Keyer Kit” to ham radio enthusiasts and today it’s a $1B company. History could repeat itself with a whole new generation of parts and kits providers.

Read more!

Office Bling By DairDair

Our offices have these little peek-a-boo sections in the frosted glass. Some people stick post-it notes up describing what’s going on with them, but I wanted something more complex. I had recently picked up the Adafruit “RGB backlight negative LCD” display and was evaluating the X-Bee radios and decided to make an “almost wireless” LCD display for the front of my office. It’s not very complex – using a Boarduino (Arduino) running a little sketch that has a few modes – static text, alternating text describing what I’m working on, plus a mode that cycles through a bunch of “Burma Shave” four-liners just for silliness. The modes and backlight color are controlled from my PC via the other X-Bee. People seem to like it, so I’ll probably commit it to a perf-board and get rid of all those ugly wires.

RGB backlight positive LCD 20×4 + extras [black on RGB]. To match our popular 16×2 RGB Character LCDs (http://www.adafruit.com/products/399 & http://www.adafruit.com/products/398) we’ve now added 20×4 LCDs! Get more text, with an RGB backlight. Both positive and negative type! This is a fancy upgrade to standard 20×4 LCDs, instead of just having blue and white, or red and black, this LCD has black characters on a full color RGB background! That means you can change the display background color to anything you want – red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse. This LCD looks strikingly good in person. This LCD is the most daylight readable character LCD we have and is very beautiful and easy to read no matter what color/brightness you have for the backlight.

One nice thing about these LCDs is that they are an elegant upgrade, but you can use them in existing LCD projects and they’ll still work – just that only the red LED will be used (so it will appear black-on-red). The extra two pins (17 and 18) are for the green and blue LEDs. The LCD has resistors on board already so that you can drive it with 5V logic and the current draw will be ~40mA per LED (there are two LEDs, 20mA each). There’s a single LED backlight for the entire display, the image above showing 3 colors at once is a composite!

Comes with a single 20×4 RGB backlight LCD, 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header. Our tutorials and diagrams will have you up and running in no time!

In stock and shipping now.

NueWire – 8 Foot LED Pixel bar powered by Arduino & MSGEQ7. willnue writes -

First a little background… Last year I built a color organ type project using the hackable GE RGB LED Christmas lights and the MSGEQ7 Graphic Equalizer Display Filter. The project changed the lights based on the audio signal presented to the MSGEQ7. I wrote several effects for the lights and changed them based on pressing a button.

Upon seeing the GE lights in all their glory a friend of mine thought it would be cool to have something similar for his entertainment center. I happened to have another set of GE lights, so I said sure no problem. Fast forward 6 months of both of us forgetting about it and me thinking up another use for the extra set of GE lights I had, so now I needed to source a new set of lights. After looking around at several options I decided on the 20mm Clear Digital RGB LED Pixels from Bliptronics/Adafruit. The LED Pixels are very bright and with the available Arduino library they are easy to control. In addition to a button to change effects in my old design I also added an IR receiver and mapped a few unused buttons on the standard FIOS remote, so now you can switch effects without ever leaving the couch!

While working on the new hardware I also came up with a few new effects, some of which are based on the audio running through the EQ and some of which are not. The EQ effects are mainly driven by 3 channels from the MSGEQ7 (Low, Mid, High). Each of the channels corresponds to a Red, Green or Blue LED in a pixel and the value of the channel as determined by the MSGEQ7 sets the intensity of the colors. This basic mapping makes for a great visualization of the music and theoretically the same song will always produce the same effect.

Uses our 20mm pixels and boarduino!

Technology in the Appalachian Foothills: DHT22 Temperature/Humidity Sensor.

Here’s a little something I cobbled together from a DHT22 Sensor, an Adafruit DC BoArduino, and a 3-digit LED display. More to come!

@adafruit in a @radioshack ad…. well, USB Boarduino Thanks Tyler! Just to make it clear, we didn’t know about this ad, USB Boarduinos are not for sale in RadioShacks as far as we know!

Want to run your own TV-B-Gone Arduino workshop? Here are some great notes and tips from Mitch!

The BoArduinos (and FTDI cables) were way popular because I use them for a workshop I’ve given three times (more than 50 people each time) now that is way super popular:  Arduino For Total Newbies Workshop (using TV-B-Gone as an example project).  I created a website to show how I do the workshop so others can do it, too…

Arduwino writes -

Here is my son’s BoArduino-brained robot, out for a romp in the snow.

Spotted in the Adafruits flickr pool: this clever take on the MAKE Drawbot using a DC Boarduino. Pete (aka Raster) writes:

Friday night turned into Robotics/Art night at the 2XL Makerspace. I remembered seeing this Drawbot Project, and while you can modify normal servos to be continuous rotation servos, I already had some continuous rotation servos on-hand, so we got to work. (Or play, if you prefer.)

The Drawbot consists of just a handful of parts. Here’s a list of the items we used:

• DC Boarduino
• Continuous Rotation Servos (2 of them)
• Servo Wheels (2 of them)
• Half-size breadboard
• 9V battery holder with switch & 2.1mm plug
• Breadboarding wire bundle

All of these pieces are available from our friends at Adafruit Industries.

Check out the complete how-to here. Nice work, Pete!

New experiments using ‘shape memory alloy’ for pick and place feeders – driven by an Adafruit Boarduino!

NEW (AND UPDATED) USB Boarduino (Arduino clone) Kit w/ATmega328 – v2.0. If you’ve ever struggled to use a solderless breadboard with an Arduino, you understand how frustrating it can be!

This clone acts just like an Arduino, and works with the latest Arduino software. For many projects it can even be preferable! The kit includes all parts necessary, the assembly is straightforward and well documented, using just a soldering iron anyone can complete it within 10 or 15 minutes. This version of the Boarduino does not have a DC jack. That means you cant use a 9V adapter or battery holder with it (unless you build a 5V power supply). it does have USB built in and you can power your project or USB or by using a Mintyboost kit (which takes 2 AA batteries)

Specifications:

• Designed to plug into a breadboard for easy prototyping
• Petite size, only 2.75″ x 0.8″ (75mm x 20mm)
• All ‘standard’ pins are brought out – Digital 0-13, Analog 0-5, ARef, 5V, 3V, Ground, and Reset
• Chip comes pre-programmed with a “no-wait” Arduino bootloader (Read more here)
• 4 LEDs! There’s a green power-good LED, a red “pin 13″ LED (just like the Arduino), and a pair of RX and TX indicator LEDs for debugging the serial connection
• Nearly-all-surfacemount design. We left the chip as through-hole to make it easier to upgrade and repair. All surface mount parts are pre-assembled and tested.
• Reset button
• ATmega328P, running at 16.00 MHz, just like all Arduinos
• 6-pin standard ICSP header
• USB miniB jack
• 500mA fuse protects your computer’s USB port from overcurrent
• Auto-reset capability

There’s a lot more to read at the USB Boarduino webpage.

In stock and shipping now!

Boarduino Proto Shield…

We are very happy to announce a new product. I have always liked the Boarduino as a concept, but have been frustrated that you can’t easily use it for that semi permanent prototyping, and you can’t use it with Arduino shields. Both these problems are now solved with the Boarduino Shield. Available at the wickeddevice store. It uses long pin headers, so you can mount shields on the top and/or the bottom of the proto-shield. We think it’s pretty nifty.

Interesting! We are hoping Wicked Device makes it an open source hardware project too, like the Boarduino – Update: The makers say it’s open source hardware! (We couldn’t find the files, license, etc. Sorry for any confusion on our part).

Blalor writes..

I whacked together a Boarduino “shield” that triggers my Canon 40D for the photobooth I put together for our wedding. When the red button’s pressed, it waits five seconds and then takes three pictures five seconds apart.

My Arduino powered, Megajolt-driven Nixie Tachometer ! More Information here – This is a prototype I made to test several technologies I am developing for my other Project (a 1976 Valiant Hemi Charger). Most of the details are in the Video. Arduino (AdaFruit Boarduino), I2C Bus powering the OLED Display and Tayloredge Smart-Nixie Sockets running In-1(4) Nixie Tubes, In-13 Nixie Bargraph, Megajolt Distributorless Ignition Controller controlling the ignition timing and feeding the RPM (and other data) to the controller. Source code and Construction Tips (but no drawn circuit diagrams yet) are available if you contact me on the MegaJolt (www.autosportlabs.org) Forums. No, I won’t build one for you (unless you are prepared to pay consulting engineer hourly rates), but I will describe and help you build your own. Yes, I know the Gemini is hardly an impressive Street Machine, but its my daily driver parts-getter that I’m testing this stuff on while I build my Triple-Webered Hemi Charger where the final version is intended for.

I love developing on the arduino, but really enjoy the form factor of my RBBB (ModernDevice.Com) and Boarduino (AdaFruit.Com). Problem is, it’s a real hassel to use a bread board arduino with a standard arduino shield. Well, I jumpered a boarduino to one protoboard shield, And that worked pretty well. Lots of wires though. So, I was thinking about a bread board shield, bbshield for short.

This is a keypad to start my motorcycle (I kept losing the key). I used a Boarduino, three pushbuttons, three LEDs, and two five-volt relays wth driver transistors (redundant, for safety).

This is the inside of my Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller with the DaveyBot hardware interface installed.

If you recall… Len made a Boarduino based Guitar Hero hardware cheating system (see previous post). Nice sticker!

Jonathan asked me, if I would like to do a project with him on Braitenberg vehicles. After some research and reading the first couple of chapters in Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, I was hooked in. Here is the first version of a Braitenberg vehicle, powered with two RC-Servos and an Arduino as its brain. Best of all, it needs no soldering, drilling or hot glue. And if you’ve played already with Arduinos, there is a good chance, that you have already most of the needed parts at home..

A TagTool seems to be a sort of physical computing drawing tablet. Sliders and knobs change drawing parameters, and a minicomputer inside does the heavy lifting.
Sam T. built one into a suitcase using a Boarduino!

See the video which he kindly sent to me:

Wiring it up to a boarduino is not as easy as simply plug&play as with an Arduino, so you’ll need a few wires. Still its very straightforward!

when you power it up it will immediately start doing its thing which is fading thru some nice colors

But the real fun is programming it…upload the Arduino Communicator sketch and then run the blink Sequencer on your computer. Connect and then select which colors to display

2 years ago when I worked on Duel Nature, I made a table of data that approximates a heartbeat. I couldnt quite duplicate it directly because the loop time is 3 seconds not 1 second, but I didn’t do too bad. Here it is in ‘autoplay’ mode with the heartbeat script. Sadly it doesnt seem like you can save the script to share it.

Click To Play

Add a coin cell, and you’ve got a ValenThrowieM (Valentine LED Throwie M)!

Click To Play

Next I wanted to experiment with talking to the BlinkM over i2c. I decided to make a little temperature display. When its cold, the LED turns blue, when its hot it turns red. For the sensor I simply used a LM34 which is super simple: just give it 5V and ground and the middle pin will be at +10mV/degF. So 68 degrees is 680mV.

I used a little heatshrink to protect the wires:

Then wrote a sketch to tell the LED to change color, here it is at room temperature

(65deg, its cold in here)

Squeezing the sensor brings up the temp a bit, to maybe 85 degrees, a little pinker

Then some icey water (its in a plastic bag to protect both the sensor and my drink!)

and some hot tea

The final analysis?
The BlinkM worked well and is a nifty little thing, the Sequencer software could be improved (can’t save scripts, cant adjust loopspeed, clicking on a ‘frame’ doesnt display the RGB value…) but its impressive that theres any software at all. It seems like the real control comes from sending it direct i2c commands, so one would have to write a custom Arduino sketch to make it do what you want. (Or, probably better yet, a python script that talks to the Arduino communicator since at least then you’re not uploading sketches) While its not the right thing for people who want to make 100-LED blinky projects (since its ~$12 each), its probably a good accessory for someone with an Arduino who just needs a few lights for a standalone project. I could see them being popular as integrated into wearables/fashion technology. They’re hella bright too!

ps. I’d like to see someone show how to control them directly using a motherboard i2c port such as the ones that have temp (and sometimes IR) sensors.

Terminal screw-blocks allow lightweight ultra-quick prototyping: just tighten the little screws to add or remove components! Use Phoenix brand 0.1″ terminal blocks, part 1725672 (4-position), 1725698 (6-position), 1725711 (8-position), 1725724 (9-position)

Here’s an example I soldered up. You cant use huge wires, but for most small projects with 20-ish gauge wire it should be just fine!

Here is a ‘standalone’ light sensor (CdS cell, pullup resistor to Analog In 0, VRef tied to 5V)