Over the last few years my family has been keeping ex-battery hens – they are about 18 months old and have had a horrendous life kept cooped up in small cages in large warehouses. As much as we love these little bundles of joys and eggs it can be a drudge getting up in the […]
Arduino Chicken Coop Controller Continue Reading
I’m going to show you how to use your Arduino to control up to 12 servos at once with minimal jitter. Using a simple serial interface you can control the position of up to 12 servo channels. Up to 10 snapshot positions can be saved and played back at any time. Start up values for
Serial Servo Controller with Arduino Continue Reading
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
DIY 3D Controller using an Arduino Continue Reading
I recently dug up my old RC transmitter and receiver and thought “How can i control my arduino with this?” so i powered on my scope to see what was going on at the receiver. Sure enough, it was sending out the standard PWM signal that servos use. Now I just needed something to control. What’s easy
Using FM RC Controllers using an Arduino Continue Reading
The purpose of our final project was to create an unstable system that would allow us to investigate classical control design methods by controlling the system using a microcomputer. This was accomplished by creating a teeter-totter that pivoted around a central fulcrum and was controlled by a servo. The beam acted as a track for
Balance Beam Controller Continue Reading
For our final project, we designed a 4-channel temperature controller using PID control. The system was designed to monitor and regulate the temperature of four individual channels by applying 120V to heating elements using on/off switching. This switching was indirectly manipulated by the micro-controller using relays. Data was continuously collected from resistive thermal devices (RTD’s)
Four Channel Temperature Controller Continue Reading
Further to my instructable 12V NE555 PWM Controller for Under $3 I have designed and built a simple and cheap DC Motor Direction Controller that can either be used with the PWM Controller, for speed control or by itself with a 12V power supply. I designed this DC Motor Direction Controller so that I could
L293D Motor Direction Controller Continue Reading
Therm is a very small PID controller with an OLED display, thermocouple interface, and USB port. It can switch an external solid-state relay for driving large loads, or a transistor for driving small loads. When attached to a computer, it enumerates as a USB serial port for easy control and logging of data. The design
Therm: a Tiny PID Controller Continue Reading
Welcome to the never ending saga of Andy and his reflow controllers. About a year ago I published a project writeup showing how I built a PID-based reflow controller. It featured a 640×360 graphical LCD from the Sony U5 Vivaz mobile phone and was all-surface mount. It worked well and continues to serve me well
An Android Reflow controller that anyone can build Continue Reading
Key Features Wide input voltage range: 4.5V to 60V Wide output voltage range: 0.6V to 54V Light-load efficiency enhancement Low ripple diode emulation mode with pulse skipping Programmable soft-start Supports prebiased output with SR soft-start Programmable frequency: 100kHz to 2MHz External sync PGOOD indicator Forced PWM Adaptive shoot-through protection No external current sense resistor Use
Buck controller allows 48V to 1V direct step-down Continue Reading
