Arduino Hacks

3063 Articles

Defcon Status At A Hosting Company

August 3, 2009 by 33 Comments

defcon

[Aaron] has been working at iweb hosting for about 5 years. When he started, the number of servers was small enough that managing them was fairly painless and could be done by just manually verifying that everything was operational. As the number of servers grew, this task became more and more difficult. They employed various methods of tracking problems, but found them all lacking in one way or another. They got an idea to build a Defcon status page based on all of the information collected about their server status. The page was built and all rejoiced. As with most projects, they just couldn’t leave it alone. Next, they built an android app to be able to see the defcon status from their phones. As cool as that was, they felt they needed to have yet another way to keep track. They What you see above is the prototype for the office defcon status display. It is extremely simple, using an Arduino (yes, we know, massive overkill) to receive status updates to change the display number. [Aaron] says that right now it is a mess, and you have to shield it from the light with your hands to see it, but it works. What should the next step be? A giant Alpha Numeric LED indicator? A nixie tube?

Greenhouse Guard

July 24, 2009 by 15 Comments

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[Seth King] sent in his latest hack where he used an Arduino to regulate various aspects of a greenhouse. He has sensors for soil and air temperature as well as light and moisture. He built a custom circuit that uses relays to power fans, lights, and heaters. Using timers and the sensor data, the devices can be triggered to create the perfect environment for sprouts. He hopes to make the whole thing wireless by integrating XBees, but for now he ran a USB cord to his computer.

Related: Automatic grow light

Touchpad + Arduino

July 23, 2009 by 12 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt_VmJljmKU]

[Jani] directed us to his tutorial on making a laptop touchpad work with an Arduino. After seeing the recent post on touch pad and VFD hacking, he couldn’t resist finding one of these to play with. He shows us how to connect it all up and offers two methods of using the data from it. The first method is to determine the direction of finger travel and the second, shown above, is to use it more like the volume control on an iPod. Source code for both is available on his site.

Ceiling Fan POV

July 22, 2009 by 30 Comments

FDG3AFAFXETSIYM.MEDIUM (Custom)

We know some of you are getting sick of POV projects, but this one was just so cool, we couldn’t resist. [UncleBone] thought POVs were pretty cool, and wondered if he could use one on his ceiling fan.  It would have been a breeze  just to toss something like the RGBike POV on there and call it finished, but he designed his own.  Opting to blow away the norm of using a single row of LEDs, he chose to do 5 different rows of LEDs, one for each blade. The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino,  with a spreadsheet for image manipulating. Unfortunately, we don’t see any source files for the project available. Maybe he’ll put them on there if we ask really nicely. If he could get it playing animations, we would just chill and watch it for hours.

Capacitance Sensor Guide (AD7746)

July 18, 2009 by 20 Comments

capacitive_sensor

[Marcus] has written up his experiences using the AD7746 capacitance sensor. He used the SparkFun breakout board in conjunction with an Arduino. The available Arduino code wasn’t that great so he rewrote it to be easier to understand. The AD7746 is an I2C device that can be continuously read, but this doesn’t mesh well with the Wiring libraries. Additionally, the calibration routine from the data sheet is difficult to understand. He’s included all of the code he used plus a Processing sketch to help visualize the input which will hopefully make your experience with the chip much more smooth.

Lunar Lander Remade

July 16, 2009 by 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnKzeHPgWy8]

For those that are lucky enough to remember it, Lunar Lander was a fantastic game. Though it had simple vector graphics and highly repetitive game play, it kept us captivated. We probably lost entire weeks of our lives competing with friends to be the best. Well, now we can relive that experience with a physical version of the game. [Lain] built this fantastic arcade style game to replicate Lunar Lander’s game play exactly. The style of the project is fantastic with giant analog meters and dials giving real time feedback.  You even get a prize if you complete all 3 levels. You can get plenty of build details by going through his blog. Maybe he should hook up with the folks that built the Apollo landing computer replica to build the ultimate simulator.

[thanks Mike]