Ask Hackaday: Arduino In Consumer Products

July 15, 2015 by Will Sweatman 148 Comments

Speak with those who consider themselves hardcore engineers and you might hear “Arduinos are for noobs” or some other similar nonsense. These naysayers see the platform as a simplified, overpriced, and over-hyped tool that lets you blink a few LEDs or maybe even read a sensor or two. They might say that Arduino is great for high school projects and EE wannabes tinkering in their garage, but REAL engineering is done with ARM, x86 or PICs. Guess what? There are Arduino compatible boards built around all three of those architectures. Below you can see but three examples in the DUE, Galileo, and Fubarino SD boards.

Arduino DUE uses Atmel ARM

Arduino Galileo uses Intel x86

Fubarino SD uses PIC32

This attitude towards Arduino exists mainly out of ignorance. So let’s break down a few myths and preconceived biases that might still be lurking amongst some EEs and then talk about Arduino’s ability to move past the makers.

Arduino is NOT the Uno

When some hear “Arduino”, they think of that little blue board that you can plug a 9v battery into and start making stuff. While this is technically true, there’s a lot more to it than that.

An Arduino Uno is just an AVR development board. AVRs are similar to PICs. When someones says “I used a PIC as the main processor”, does that mean they stuck the entire PIC development board into their project? Of course not. It’s the same with Arduino (in most cases), and design is done the same way as with any other microcontroller –
- Use the development board to make, create and debug.
- When ready, move the processor to your dedicated board.
What makes an Arduino an “Arduino” and not just an AVR is the bootloader. Thus:
- An Atmega328P is an AVR processor.
- An Atmega328P with the Arduino bootloader is an Arduino.
The bootloader allows you to program the AVR with the Arduino IDE. If you remove the bootloader from the AVR, you now have an AVR development board that can be programmed with AVR Studio using your preferred language.

There Is No Special Arduino Language

Arduino "blink" sketch should run on any Arduino compatible board. — Arduino “blink” sketch should run on any Arduino compatible board.

Yes, I know they call them sketches, which is silly. But the fact is it’s just c++. The same c++ you’d use to program your PIC. The bootloader allows the IDE to call functions, making it easy to code and giving Arduino its reputation of being easy to work with. But don’t let the “easy” fool you. They’re real c/c++ functions that get passed to a real c/c++ compiler. In fact, any c/c++ construct will work in the Arduino IDE. With that said – if there is any negative attribute to Arduino, it is the IDE. It’s simple and there is no debugger.

The strength comes in the standardization of the platform. You can adapt the Arduino standard to a board you have made and that adaptation should allow the myriad of libraries for Arduino to work with your new piece of hardware. This is a powerful benefit of the ecosystem. At the same time, this easy of getting things up and running has resulted in a lot of the negative associations discussed previously.

So there you have it. Arduino is no different from any other microcontroller, and is fully capable of being used in consumer products along side PICs, ARMs etc. To say otherwise is foolish.

What is the Virtue of Arduino in Consumer Products?

This is Ask Hackaday so you know there’s a question in the works. What is the virtue of Arduino in consumer products? Most electronics these days have a Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode that allows the end user to upgrade the code, so Arduino doesn’t have a leg up there. One might argue that using Arduino means the code is Open Source and therefore ripe for community improvements but closed-source binaries can still be distributed for the platform. Yet there are many products out there that have managed to unlock the “community multiplier” that comes from releasing the code and inviting improvements.

What do you think the benefits of building consumer goods around Arduino are, what will the future look like, and how will we get there? Leave your thoughts below!

Billy Club Texts Your Mother If You Hit Someone

July 15, 2015 by James Hobson 24 Comments

Mama, just ~~killed~~ hit a man, Put a gun against his head, Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead.
Mama, life had just begun, But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away…

This latest piece of half-art / half-prototype from one of our favorite hacker-artists [vtol] is a billy club equipped with a GSM-module. It automatically sends an SMS to your mother with the text: “Mom, I hit a man.” He calls it the Antenna:

The idea of the project is to create a device which strictly controls the cruelty of police. As all the standard methods of control are ineffective, this project suggests the maternity as the last stronghold of human kindness and responsibility.

An Arduino is equipped with a piezo sensor to detect impact, and a GSM shield takes care of the texting. It’s an interesting concept, similar to requiring police officers to wear body cameras. You can debate the practicality, but we’re always interested in hearing about weapons monitoring tech concepts. One of our favorites has always been the DNA gun from (Judge) Dredd. Did you know there was an Internet Movie Firearms Database? But we digress, check out [vtol’s] demo video:

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Using A TeensyLC To Emulate The XBOX 360 Controller

July 14, 2015 by Rick Osgood 13 Comments

After the release of Mortal Kombat X, [Zachery’s] gaming group wanted to branch out into the fighter genre. They quickly learned that in order to maximize their experience, they would need a better controller than a standard gamepad. A keyboard wasn’t going to cut it either. They wanted a fight stick. These are large controllers that look very much like arcade fighting controls and include a joystick and large buttons. [Zachery’s] group decided to build their own fight stick for use with a PC.

[Zachery] based his build around the TeensyLC, which is a 32 bit development board with an ARM processor. It’s also compatible with Arduino. The original version of his project setup the controller as a HID, essentially emulating a keyboard. This worked for a while until they ran into compatibility issues with some games. [Zachery] learned that his controller was compatible with DirectInput, which has been deprecated. The new thing is Xinput, and it was going to require more work.

Using Xinput meant that [Zachery] could no longer use the generic Microsoft HID driver. Rather than write his own drivers, he decided to emulate the XBOX 360 controller. When the fight stick is plugged into the computer, it shows up as an XBOX 360 controller and Windows easily installs the pre-built driver. To perform the emulation, [Zachery] first had to set the VID and PID of the device to be identical to the XBOX controller. This is what allows the Microsoft driver to recognize the device.

Next, the device descriptor and configuration descriptor had to be added to the Teensy’s firmware. The device descriptor includes information such as USB version, device class, protocol, etc. The configuration descriptor includes additional information about the device configuration. [Zachery] used Microsoft Message Analyzer to pull the configuration descriptor from a real XBOX 360 controller, then used the same data in his own custom controller.

[Zachery] programmed the TeensyLC using the Arduino IDE. He ran into some trouble here because the IDE did not include the correct device type for an Xinput device. [Zachery] had to edit the boards.txt file and add three lines of code in order to add a new hardware device to the IDE’s menu. Several other files also had to be modified to make sure the compiler knew what an Xinput device type was. With all of that out of the way, [Zachery] was finally able to write the code for his controller.

HamShield Puts Your Arduino On The Radio

July 13, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 43 Comments

Anybody can grab a USB TV tuner card and start monitoring the airwaves, but to get into the real meat of radio you’ll need your amateur radio license. Once you have that, the bandwidth really opens up… if you can afford the equipment. However, [spaceneedle] and friends have dramatically lowered the costs while increasing the possibilities of owning a radio by creating this ham radio shield for the Arduino.

The HamShield, is a versatile shield for any standard Arduino that allows it to function like an off-the-shelf radio would, but with a virtually unlimited number of functions. Anything that could be imagined can be programmed into the Arduino for use over the air, including voice and packet applications. The project’s sandbox already includes things like setting up mesh networks, communicating over APRS, setting up repeaters or beacons, monitoring weather stations, and a whole host of other ham radio applications.

HamShield operates on a wide range of frequencies and only uses a 250 mW amplifier. The power draw is small enough that the HamShield team operated it from a small solar panel, making it ideal for people in remote areas. The project is currently gathering funding and has surpassed their goal on Kickstarter, branding itself appropriately as the swiss army of amateur radio. The transceiver seems to be very robust, meaning that the only thing standing in the way of using this tool is simply writing the Arduino code for whatever project you want to do, whether that’s as a police scanner or even just a frequency counter. And if you want to follow along on hackaday.io, the project can be found here.

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Bread Online Is A Bread Maker For The Internet Of Things

July 7, 2015 by Rick Osgood 17 Comments

An engineering student at the University of Western Macedonia has just added another appliance to the ever-growing list of Internet enabled things. [Panagiotis] decided to modify an off-the-shelf bread maker to enable remote control via the Internet.

[Panagiotis] had to remove pretty much all of the original control circuitry for this device. The original controller was replaced with an Arduino Uno R3 and an Ethernet shield. The temperature sensor also needed to be replaced, since [Panagiotis] could not find any official documentation describing the specifications of the original. Luckily, the heating element and mixer motor were able to be re-used.

A few holes were drilled into the case to make room for the Ethernet connector as well as a USB connector. Two relays were used to allow the Arduino to switch the heating element and mixer motor on and off. The front panel of the bread maker came with a simple LCD screen and a few control buttons. Rather than let those go to waste, they were also wired into the Arduino.

The Arduino bread maker can be controlled via a web site that runs on a separate server. The website is coded with PHP and runs on Apache. It has a simple interface that allows the user to specify several settings including how much bread is being cooked as well as the desired darkness of the bread. The user can then schedule the bread maker to start. Bread Online also comes with an “offline” mode so that it can be used locally without the need for a computer or web browser. Be sure to check out the video demonstration below. Continue reading “Bread Online Is A Bread Maker For The Internet Of Things” →

Hackaday’s Interview With Arduino CEO [Massimo Banzi]

July 7, 2015 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

I caught up with [Massimo Banzi] at the Shenzhen Maker Faire to talk about manufacturing in China, the current and future of Arduino, and how recent events may shape the Open Hardware landscape.

The big news from Arduino at SZMF is a new partnership with Seeed Studio to manufacture theGenuino. This is an official Arduino board manufactured in China for the Chinese market. Knowing that the board is official and connected to the founders is key point to get makers to adopt this hardware. [Massimo] makes a good point about the ideal of “Proudly Made in China” which I could see as a selling point for the burgeoning maker market there. This may be a growing principle in China, but in an ocean of clone boards it sounds like a tough path forward. On the other hand, their booth was mobbed with people putting in new orders.

[Massimo] belives the current Arduino strife has actually served to move the project forward. He cites the schism between arduino.cc and arduino.org for catalyzing manufacturing partnerships with both Adafruit Industries and Seeed Studios. This has resulted in official Arduino hardware that is not made only in Italy, but made in the region the hardware will be used; NYC for US orders, Shenzhen for China orders.

Our discussion wraps up with a plea from [Massimo] for the Hackaday community to be a little less fickle about projects using Arduino. That one makes me chuckle a bit!

Restoring An Espresso Machine To The 21st Century

July 6, 2015 by James Hobson 10 Comments

[Rhys Goodwin] has a wonderful Italian espresso machine, a Brasilia ‘Lady’. But the electronics in it are a bit outdated. So he decided to give the entire thing an overhaul, while keeping it as original as possible!

As far as espresso machines go, this model is pretty simple. It uses a 300mL brass boiler with a 3-position solenoid valve. The thermostat is one of those simple bimetallic button thermostats which sadly, aren’t even that accurate — you couldn’t build a simpler machine, there’s not even a microcontroller in it. [Rhys] had his work cut out for him.

Arduino. PID controller. LCD display. New custom machined components, including a polished aluminum face plate for the LCD! He didn’t skimp out on this restoration. He even designed his own custom PCB to house the Arduino and provide the outputs for his new electronics, impressive!

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