NEW PRODUCT – PIR motion sensor with cable! This is now back in stock and comes with a cable! PIR sensors are used to detect motion from pets/humanoids from about 20 feet away (possibly works on zombies, not guaranteed). This one has an adjustable delay before firing and we include a 1 foot (30 cm) cable with a socket so you can easily reposition the sensor or mount it using the two drills on either side. Runs on 3.3-6V. Digital signal output is high/low. For a full tutorial with wiring diagrams, code examples and project ideas, PIR sensor tutorial page!
We needed a datalogger that provided a timestamp, and that would last 2 weeks in the woods. Using a laptop would require a generator or humongous battery. This Instructable shows how to make a datalogger from an Arduino and datalogger shield connected to a TelosB wireless sensor board and a battery that is large, but not wheelbarrow large. Your data goes onto a SD memory card on the datalogger for pickup later (whenever you have to change the batteries on all the wireless radios in your network, for example). The main challenge is getting the serial signal out of the TelosB before it gets translated into USB. We could probably have reprogrammed the TelosB to output the serial on another pin, but why program when you can solder?
You can get going quickly – saving data to files on any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis program. We even have a tutorial on how to use two free software programs to plot your data The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you know precisely what happened when!
Please note that this item does not come with an Arduino (you’ll need one to use with the shield), or an SD card. It does come with the RTC battery, however. The kit is un-assembled, You’ll need some basic soldering skills to put it together, but even if you don’t have much experience you can get it done in under 1 hour.
SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry prevents damage to your SD card
Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery backup lasts for years
Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that require a lot of power to run
NEW PRODUCT – Thermocouple Type-K Glass Braid Insulated – K. Thermocouples are best used for measuring temperatures that can go above 100 degC. This is a bare wires bead-probe which can measure air or surface temperatures. Most inexpensive thermocouples have a vinyl covering which can melt at around 200 degC, this one uses a fiberglass braid so it can be used in high temperature measurements such as heaters and ovens.
Slurp is tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp can extract (slurp up) and inject (squirt out) pointers to digital objects. We have created Slurp to explore the use of physical metaphor, feedback, and affordances in tangible interface design when working with abstract digital media types. Our goal is to privilege spatial relationships between devices and people while providing new physical manipulation techniques for ubiquitous computing environments.
We test-charged an iPad with our solar backpack and it worked, but with two caveats: 1) The iPad charges from a USB port like a phone, but its battery is 25 Watt hours (about 5x that of an iPhone), so charging the iPad will take about 5x as long. 2) You’ll need to put the iPad into sleep mode for it to charge.
This is not a bug in our charger, it is due to the size of the battery and the charge circuitry within the iPad. Since the iPad has such a large battery, it is designed to charge best off a wall charger or high-powered USB port found on a Mac and some other computers. If you plug it into a normal USB port on a PC, you’ll get 2.5 Watts instead of the 10 Watts or more you get from a high-powered USB port.
If you want to solar charge your iPad from one of our Backpacks, you should plan on plugging it into a full Voltaic battery at night or at a time time when you’re not planning to use the device. We are going to do more testing, but it took us an hour to get from 77% to 83% charge.
You might also want to carry a spare battery as it will take about 3 full Battery Pack V11s to fully charge the iPad.
The other option is to use our Generator battery, which outputs 2Amps / 10 Watts and will appear more like a wall outlet to the iPad, although we currently out of stock.
Update: A customer using our earlier Silver JetPack battery (14.4 Watt hours capacity) reports going from 38% full to 81% in three hours. He did put the iPad into sleep mode before charging.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
For my third blog entry on the Intel® Energy Checker SDK, I will take on a two-part DIY and super fun project. I always wanted to extend the use of the SDK into my home and be able to monitor my personal energy consumption. As an engineer, I live by the motto: “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. Isn’t the electric bill all about that, one may ask? Sure, it is a good year-to-year and month-to-month trend indicator and it will likely fit the needs of most of us for a while. However, using my bill, I cannot break down my energy consumption per function. What is the cost of running my lab equipment in the garage? How much does the entertainment system cost us per month? Etc. To be honest, I do not know if this information will trigger some good changes in the way I run my electric equipments – I sincerely wish so –, but at least I will have the knowledge.
I was aware of the existence of a cool little device called Kill A Watt produced by P3 International (P4400). This power analyzer actually fit requirements #1, #2 and #4 out of the box. Unfortunately it is a closed device and it cannot share its readings with the outside world. Luckily, there is also a cool DIY kit from Adafruit Industries – called Tweet-a-Watt – which precisely allows you to turn a P4400 into a wireless power analyzer using Digi’s XBee® 802.15.4 RF modules. With this kit, requirement #3 can be met. Sure, there are many other devices and kits available in the market, but for my project, this was the best pick. If you decide to take on similar project using different device(s), please share your experience with us!
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
We are having an ADAFRUIT EARTH DAY SOLAR SALE! For today only we’re going to sell our solar cells for $20, 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out – they will never be this price ever again. It’s today only, sale ends 11:59pm ET 4/22/2010 – the price is usually $25 each. We have 400 of these ready to go immediately.
These panels come to us from Voltaic Systems, makers of fine solar-powered bags and packs. These are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. They use a high efficiency monocrystalline cell. They output 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out via a 3.5mm x 1.3mm DC jack connector. The substrate is an aluminum / plastic composite, specifically designed to be strong and lightweight. They can easily stand up to typical outdoor use including being dropped and leaned on.
Get them today only for $20 each – in the Adafruit store.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels!
A user in the customer forums had a problem with multiplexing analog signals, they seemed to be very noisy and inconsistent. Turns out it was because the sensors are high impedance. This means that if there is capacitance on the ADC line or on any sort of sample&hold capacitor, it may take a while for it to charge up. Read these threads for some great analysis! View here and here…
Sequence of events:
-Detect motion (IR sensor)
-Trigger Silly String (servo)
-Play sound (funny laugh on a $4 Wal-mart toy recorder)
-Transmit RF signal to second Arduino
-Second Arduino receives RF signal
-Wifi shield sends tweet (follow on Twitter: hackolantern)
-Wait 20 seconds before it can shoot again
Longashes (a cigar social network) made a twittering humador… They write -
I know what you’re thinking.. “not another device that tweets something!” Yup, another device that tweets something. This time it’s a humidor and it tweets that status of it’s relative humidity and temperature levels. For cigar aficionados, this means a lot. In order to keep your cigars “fresh” for any amount of time over a few days, they must be contained in an environment that is controlled with the perfect amount of relative humidity and temperature levels. The purpose of this is so that your cigars don’t dry out or get too moist which would amount to a terrible smoking experience. The Tweetidor uses a digital precision relative humidity and temperature sensor (SHT75) along with the arduino.
PIR sensors allow you to sense motion, almost always used to detect whether a human has moved in or out of the sensors range. They are small, inexpensive, low-power, easy to use and don’t wear out. For that reason they are commonly found in appliances and gadgets used in homes or businesses. They are often referred to as PIR, “Passive Infrared”, “Pyroelectric”, or “IR motion” sensors.
PIRs are basically made of a pyroelectric sensor (which you can see above as the round metal can with a rectangular crystal in the center), which can detect levels of infrared radiation. Everything emits some low level radiation, and the hotter something is, the more radiation is emitted. The sensor in a motion detector is actually split in two halves. The reason for that is that we are looking to detect motion (change) not average IR levels. The two halves are wired up so that they cancel each other out. If one half sees more or less IR radiation than the other, the output will swing high or low.
Along with the pyroelectic sensor is a bunch of supporting circuitry, resistors and capacitors. It seems that most small hobbyist sensors use the (BISS0001 (“Micro Power PIR Motion Detector IC”), undoubtedly a very inexpensive chip. This chip takes the output of the sensor and does some minor processing on it to emit a digital output pulse from the analog sensor.
For many basic projects or products that need to detect when a person has left or entered the area, or has approached, PIR sensors are great. They are low power and low cost, pretty rugged, have a wide lens range, and are easy to interface with. Note that PIRs won’t tell you how many people are around or how close they are to the sensor, the lens is often fixed to a certain sweep and distance (although it can be hacked somewhere) and they are also sometimes set off by housepets. Experimentation is key!
PIR sensors are used to detect motion from pets/humanoids from about 20 feet away (possibly works on zombies, not guaranteed). Usually this sensor comes with a straight 3-pin header soldered on. This makes it annoying to use because its is not easy to plug into a breadboard and you can’t solder wires in. So we requested to leave it off and include a 3-pin right-angle header instead which you can solder in for breadboard use or skip and use wires. Runs on 3.3-6V. Digital signal output is high/low. In the shop now, $10 !
Flex (bend) sensor! This sensor can detect bending in one direction. They were popularized by being used in the Nintendo PowerGlove as a gaming interface. These sensors are easy to use, they are basically resistors that change value based on how much their flexed. If they’re unflexed, the resistance is about ~10KΩ. When flexed all the way the resistance rises to ~20KΩ. They’re pretty similar to FSRs so following this tutorial will get you started. You can use an analog input on a microcontroller (with a pullup resistor) or a digital input with the use of a 0.1uF capacitor for RC timing. Flex (bend) sensor, in the Adafruit store.
Printable catalog (PDF)
