A while back we wrote an article on sensing orientation with the adxl335 accelerometer. In that article I mentioned all the drawbacks of trying to do this with just an accelerometer, and said that if you needed something stable, what you really needed was an IMU. Well… We are back with an article covering just […]
First off: I know… we went overboard with the motor illustration. In previous articles we have discussed how to control motors with simple transistors. And… with PWM you could control the speed. But that is just one motor, and you can only go one direction. Today we are going to talk about the TB6612FNG dual […]
In the past we have covered a few things that interact through serial, from RFID readers to controlling an Arduino’s pins using the serial terminal. Serial as we have talked about it is actually know as UART, and operates over 2 pins RX and TX (receive and transmit). These connections have previously been limited by […]
The TMP102 is a very simple, yet accurate, ambient temperature sensor which is capable of detecting .0625ºC changes between -25 and +85°C, with an accuracy of 0.5°C. And the real kicker… It does all of this while only consuming 10µA (10 millionths of an amp). The thing is quite tiny, so SparkFun has put it […]
I know… you are probably thinking “Another Thermometer! How many do you need to cover?” – Well… All of them. But really, they all have something different to offer. For instance this guy, the DS18B20, has a unique serial-number sent with it’s data, so if you needed to have 50 of these on one bus, […]
In a previous article we showed you how to control digital pins over over serial, and showed how such a simple thing can be so powerful. One major downfall with that is you need to be nearby to send commands… So today we are going to look at doing the same thing, but this time […]
Yesterday we covered how you would go about controlling pins of your arduino over the internet using the Arduino Ethernet Shield set up as a server. Today we are going to take a look at using the shield as a client to get information off of a web page, and report back. I used this […]
It seems like touch screens are plastered on every consumer electronic device from your phone to your refrigerator. And why not right? Well, even though those beautiful multitouch hi-res screens are a little pricy and crazy hard to develop with, doesn’t mean we cant still add a touch panel to our project. The touch panel […]
I’m not really sure why, but proximity sensors are some of my favorite things in the sensor world. Maybe because there are so many of them? Who knows. Whatever the reason, the VCNL4000 is another proximity sensor that caught my eye, so I picked one up from Sparkfun on this handy breakout board. The VCNL4000 […]
The Force Sensitive Resistor, or FSR is one of those parts that fills bins in interaction design labs across the world. It’s a simple guy, a finicky guy, but it has its place in the maker toolbox. A FSR is just what it sounds like – a resistor that changes its resistance with force. So […]
