A Nokia Shield For The Arduino

May 21, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

The Nokia 3100 is a classic in the circles we frequent. The LCD in this phone is a very cheap and very common display, and it was one of the most popular phones since the phone from Bell, making it a very popular source of cool components.

Now everything is an Internet of Thing, and cellular data for microcontroller projects is all the rage. [Charles] thought it would be interesting to use the famous Nokia 3100 to transmit and receive data. After battling with some weird connectors, he succeeded.

The Nokia 3100 doesn’t have a USB connector, as this phone was made before the EU saved us from a menagerie of cell phone chargers. Instead, this phone has a Nokia Pop-Port, a complex connector that still has TX and RX pins running at 115,200 bit/s 8N1. By fitting a USB socket onto a prototyping board, adding a few level shifters, and connecting the pins in the right order, [Charles] was able to get his Arduino talking to an old Nokia Brick.

[Charles] isn’t quite at the level of sending SMS from his confabulation, and even following a tutorial from [Ilias Giechaskiel] didn’t work. [Charles] is looking for help here, and if you have any suggestions, your input would be appreciated.

There is a problem with using a Nokia 3100 as a cheap Arduino cellular shield: it’s only 2G, and sometime soon those cell towers will be shut down. For now, though, it works, and once those 2G towers are shut down, there are plenty of options with cheap, early Android and iOS phones.

Steeping Tea Perfectly With An Arduino

May 21, 2015 by James Hobson 32 Comments

While most of us here at Hack a Day can’t live without our daily java, we do understand and respect the tea drinking hackers out there, like [Brian McEvoy] the 24 Hour Engineer. Like any self-respecting hacker, [Brian] seeks to improve the efficiency of day-to-day tasks in order to spend his time on things that really matter — so he decided to automate his tea cup.

He’s 3D printed a small tea-bagging mechanism that a little RC servo motor can actuate, which allows him to control the amount of time a tea bag spends steeping in his mug. Another 3D printed enclosure includes the Arduino, a few buttons, and an LCD screen to allow you to select the steeping time for your favorite herb. In fact, the majority of this project is 3D printed which means the majority of the cost comes from the minimal electronics required — stuff you probably already have lying around. He’s also included all the design files you need in order to make your own.

The project has been in process for a while, but he’s finally finished it off, and it works great. If you’re hungry for some of the nitty-gritty build logs and troubleshooting a long the way, he’s got a whole bunch of blog posts from throughout the process.

Continue reading “Steeping Tea Perfectly With An Arduino” →

Turning A Page With Your Voice

May 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

[Justin]’s friend [Steve] injured his spine a while ago, and after asking what would make [Steve]’s life simpler, the answer was easy. [Steve] missed reading books. Sure, e-readers exist, but you still need to turn the page. Now [Steve] can do that with his voice thanks to some microcontrollers, Bluetooth modules, and a voice recognition module.

A voice-activated page turner wasn’t the first attempt at giving [Steve] the ability to turn a page on a Kindle. The first prototype was a big blue button that sent a keyboard code for ‘right arrow’ over Bluetooth, turning a book one page at a time. This worked well until multiple pages turned, and with no back button it was a major nuisance.

After playing with the voice recognition in an Amazon Echo, [Steve] and [Justin] wondered if the same voice recognition technology could be applied to page turns on a Kindle. With a voice recognition Arduino shield from SparkFun it was easy to detect a ‘page down’ command. A Bluetooth module sends HID commands to a Kindle, allowing [Steve] to read a book with only his voice.

[Justin] put all the design files for this build up on Github.

Adafruit And The Arduinos At Maker Faire

May 18, 2015 by Elliot Williams 67 Comments

The apparent lull on the Arduino front the last few weeks was just the calm before the storm that is the Bay Area Maker Faire (BAMF). Both companies claiming the Arduino name were there over the weekend, with news and new products in tow. Ironically, you could see from one booth straight over to the other. Small world.

Perhaps the biggest news from Arduino LLC is that hacker-friendly Adafruit is now going to be making officially-licensed boards in the US. Competing with this news, Arduino SRL brought its new boards, including the Yun Mini and ARM-powered Arduino M0. And [Massimo Banzi] and Arduino LLC seem to be taking an end-run around the Arduino SRL trademark by announcing the “Genuino” brand for European production. For all the details, read on!

Continue reading “Adafruit And The Arduinos At Maker Faire” →

Fixing A Product Design Flaw In A Misting System

May 14, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 17 Comments

[Xerxes3rd] works at a place where they raise reptiles in terrariums. Such enclosures require controlled lighting, temperature and humidity. Humidity is maintained using “misting” devices. These are usually water containers with a pump whose outlet ends in a series of very fine spray nozzles which create the mist. A timer controls the pump’s on and off cycles.

[Xerxes3rd] purchased an Exo Terra Monsoon RS400 misting system – a low-cost misting device and soon discovered that it had a serious design flaw. The built-in timer malfunctions, and it mists a hundred times more than it should! A lot of folks who buy a product and discover it has an inherent design flaw will return it back for a refund. Instead, [Xerxes3rd] decided to break in and fix it instead – “warranty void if tampered” be damned.

To start with, he needed to figure out what the problem was. He went about it in clinical fashion, eventually creating a slick document (PDF) outlining his observations and diagnosis. The timer controller board has a PIC micro, some buttons, potentiometers, LED’s and an IR receiver. The misting cycles are set using the two potentiometers – Off time and On time for the pump. His analysis and resolution makes for interesting reading.

What he found was that the PIC micro was reading inconsistent values from the potentiometers. More specifically, the software isn’t doing any smoothing on the analog values it reads from the potentiometers. Since the PIC that controls the system wasn’t easily re-programmable, he opted to replace it with an Arduino Nano. At the same time, he got rid of the potentiometers that were used to set the misting frequency and duration, and added a 16×2 LCD. Time setting is now done using the three on board buttons. He removed the PIC micro and replaced it with two female header sockets, onto which he plugged a small board containing an Arduino Nano and a few components. He also cut the original PCB in half, removing the potentiometers and crystal oscillator in order to make room for the 16×2 character LCD.

The lizards are now probably thanking him for their perfectly timed doses of moisture. Having done this, he could probably add in more features such as a temperature-humidity sensor, a water level sensor or maybe even throw in an ESP8266 module and have the Lizards tweet when they need to be hydrated. Because that’s another thing hackers love – feature creep.

Vacuum Gauge Display; Arduino Replaces Industrial

May 14, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 21 Comments

Arduinos! They’re a great tool that make the world of microcontrollers pretty easy, and in [cptlolalot]’s case, they also give us an alternative to buying expensive, proprietary parts. [cptlolalot] needed a gauge for an expensive vacuum pump, and rather than buying an expensive part, built a circuit around an Arduino to monitor the vacuum.

This project goes a little beyond simple Arduino programming though. A 12V to 5V power supply drives the device, which is laid out on a blank PCB. The display fits snugly over the circuit which reduces the footprint of the project, and the entire thing is housed in a custom-printed case with a custom-printed pushbutton. The device gets power and data over the RJ45 connection so no external power is needed. If you want to take a look at the code, it’s linked on [cptlolalot]’s reddit thread.

This project shows how much easier it can be to grab an Arduino off the shelf to solve a problem that would otherwise be very expensive. We’ve been seeing Arduinos in industrial applications at an increasing rate as well, which is promising not just because it’s cheap but because it’s a familiar platform that will make repairs and hacks in the future much easier for everyone.

Arduino IDE Becomes More Open, Less Snarky

May 13, 2015 by Elliot Williams 56 Comments

Version 1.6.4 of the Arduino IDE has been out for a little while now, and it has a couple of notable changes. To our eyes, the most interesting change makes adding support for non-standard boards and their configurations within the Arduino IDE a lot simpler. We’ll get into details below.

But before that, it’s time to bid farewell to the cheeky little popup window that would deliver a warning message when using a board bearing the USB IDs of their former-partner-turned-competitor. We absolutely agree with [Massimo] that the issues between Arduino SRL / Smart Projects and Arduino LLC are well-enough known in the community, and that it’s time for the popup to fade away.

Now on to the meat of this post. The new “Board Manager” functionality makes it significantly easier for other non-Arduino products to be programmed within the Arduino IDE. Adafruit has a tutorial on using the Board Manager functionality with their products, and it basically boils down to “enter the right URL, click on the boards you want, download, restart Arduino, bam!”

The list of unofficially supported third-party boards is still a bit short, but it includes some stellar entries. For instance, Adafruit has provided the files needed for the ESP8266, which recently received the Arduino treatment. This means that you can simply point your IDE at Adafruit’s URL, and it’ll set you up with everything needed to develop for the ESP8266 from within the comfy Arduino IDE.

Continue reading “Arduino IDE Becomes More Open, Less Snarky” →