At this year’s “Arduinos in the Physics Lab” workshop at the AAPT meeting, one of the participants asked for a simple way of using the Arduino as a tethered A/D converter for data collection direct to a computer. This is my quick & dirty demonstration solution. Here’s the code for the Arduino. It waits for
Simple Arduino data-collection Continue Reading
Energino is a plug-load meter that measures the amount of power consumed by whatever DC electrical appliance is plugged into its. It was originally designed to monitor the energy consumption of simple networking devices such as Ethernet switches and WiFi access points, but it can be used to monitor any DC appliance. Energino “sits” between
Energino: an Arduino-based energy consumption monitoring shield Continue Reading
I teach Modern Physics here at CSUC, and we occasionally use isotopes with half-lives of a year or less (such as Zinc-65 and Cadmium-109) for energy-calibration sources for a gamma-spectroscopy lab. I thought it might be fun to try measuring the activity of one of these sources over time and thus get a looooong-scale half-life
Arduino-based event counter Continue Reading
One of the most fun and useful projects on instructables is to create your very own solar USB/ iPhone charger. They’re not overly difficult to make, nor are the parts overly expensive or hard to find. For the most part they do a rather good job of charging up small gadgets. Mostly. The big flaw
Lithium Battery Solar USB – iPhone – Arduino Charger Continue Reading
If you have looked at my 5 LED ATtiny85 POV display, we programmed the ATtiny with the Arduino. (If you haven’t seen it, click here) We will be doing the same thing for this LED Dice project. The total parts cost for this project is about $5-$10. (Not including the Arduino board and the tools.)
ATtiny85/45/25 LED dice (Super Simple and CHEAP!) Continue Reading
My kids are learning Morse code this summer, so I threw together this little circuit to help them learn. And to make it more fun… It uses an ATtiny85 ($2.26 at digikey.com) to drive a piezo beeper (≈ $3.50 at Radio Shack.) The ATtiny85 takes 5.5V max, so I built the circuit on a piece
Morse-Code Trainer Using Arduino Continue Reading
Hello all! In this Instructable I’ll be showing you how to make a robot similar to the “Mobile Arduino Experimental Platform” (MAEP) that I made. It is equipped with two motors that can steer the robot and the ability to see obstacles in front of it with a PING))) ultrasonic sensor. With the attached breadboard,
How To Make an Obstacle Avoiding Arduino Robot Continue Reading
I’m teaching “Electronics for Scientists” this semester, and I wanted to allow each student to have their own Arduino to play with for microcontroller lab exercises and possibly use for their final projects. The Arduino is not very expensive at roughly $30 per, but they add up quickly when you have a whole class of
“Ayrduino” Single-Sided Arduino Clone Continue Reading
Fijibot is an autonomous, self-charging photovore. I built him using a 1.5 liter Fiji Water bottle, an Arduino Uno, 6v solar panel (plus various other parts) from Radio Shack, an Arduino Proto Shield (plus various other parts) from Adafruit, and the wheels and steering arrangement from an RC car. I decided to use a Fiji
Build A Fijibot A Self-Charging Photovore Using Arduino Continue Reading
I run a NFS/NIS network under a combination of OS’s for the upper-division physics lab here at CSUC, and one source of irritation is when one machine goes down and nobody lets me know until suddenly that machine is absolutely necessary NOW! So I figured an Arduino, living in the machine on my desk, might
Network-status indicator Using Arduino Continue Reading
