Make a 3D interface using an six resistors, aluminum foil, and an Arduino. Take that, Wii. Update: a much more thorough explanation of this project is available from Make Magazine. It might be easier to follow their instructions, and I think their code is more up to date. The basic goal here was to make […]
How to make an “analog” input device from fabric and a few other necessary materials. “Analog” in parenthesis because, although it is made up of 4 analog inputs, the only analog transition between the directions (up, right, down and left) comes from the buffering material (in this case 3cm thick squishy packing material) that absorbs […]
Impressed by these two LEGO® Dragster sets, a 250 pieces LEGO®TECHNIC Dragster 8847 (released in 1983) and a 391 pieces Top Fuel Racing 5533 (released in 1999). These two Dragsters inspired me to build my own LEGO® dragster, the “12 Thumbs”. The name “12 Thumbs” came after I finished the design. While I was playing with my finished […]
After a break of around two decades I’ve recently started building a model railway. One of the issues I’ve faced is trying to work out how fast I should be running the trains so that their speed reflects reality given the scale at which they are modelled. I’m guessing the details won’t interest everyone reading […]
One of the projects in Practical Arduino is the “Online Thermometer”, which combines an Ethernet shield with a number of DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensors to allow you to read multiple temperatures and make the values accessible using a web browser. In that project I chose a specific model of Ethernet shield that was available at […]
General purpose Arduino shield for self-balancing machines. Why did I make it? I previously made an Instructable in 2010 on how to build a self-balancing skateboard. http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-build-self-balancing-skateboardrobotsegway-/ There are >500 comments on this and many express confusion setting up the balance sensors, software and electronics. On top of that, the analog output inertial measurement units […]
The other day I was confronted with an interesting problem, I needed to control a series of lights from an interaction on a computer screen and it had to be as inexpensive as possible. I instantly thought of an Arduino. It had everything that I needed, more than enough I/O, an integrated USB and its only […]
Waveform generators (also called function generators) are useful for testing and debugging circuits. They can be used to test the frequency response of electronic components like op amps and sensors or to characterize and troubleshoot audio effects boxes and pedals. This waveform generator shield is powered by an Arduino. It outputs four waveforms: sine, triangle, […]
DAC is short for Digital to Analog Converter. In this article we play around the code Michael Smith created for a PWM based DAC. I modified his code so that other DAC options could be tried. I compare the 8-Bit PWM DAC with the R2R DAC at various numbers of bits. You might be surprised […]
Time for another instalment in my irregular series of clock projects. (Or should that be “Time for another instalment in the series of irregular clock projects”?) In contrast with the extreme “blinkiness” of Clock One, in this article we describe how to build this single-digit digital clock: Once again the electronics of the clock will […]
