RemoteXY Simplifies Arduino Control

January 30, 2020 by Al Williams 12 Comments

[Labpacks] wanted to build a robot car controlled by his phone. As a Hackaday reader, of course you probably can imagine building the car. Most could probably even write a phone application to do the control. But do you want to? In most cases, you are better off focusing on what you need to do and using something off the shelf for the parts that you can. In [Labpacks’] case, he used Visuino to avoid writing ordinary code and RemoteXY to handle the smartphone interface.

RemoteXY is a website that allows you to easily build a phone interface that will talk to your hardware over Bluetooth LE, USB, or Ethernet (including WiFi). One thing of interest: even though the interface builder is Web-based, the service claims that the interface structure stays on the controller. There’s no interaction with the remote servers when operating the user interface so there is no need for an external Internet connection.

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ESP32-Cam Does Time Lapse

January 28, 2020 by Al Williams 21 Comments

Just a few years ago, had someone asked you how much a digital camera with WiFi would cost, you probably wouldn’t have said $6. But that’s about how much [Bitluni] paid for an ESP32-CAM. He wanted to try making the little camera do time lapse, and it turns out that’s pretty easy to do.

Of course, the devil is in the details. The camera starts out needing configuration on the USB interface and that enables the set up of Arduino integration and WiFi configuration. Because it stores each frame of the image on an SD card, the board can’t take rapid-fire pictures. [Bitluni] reports a 3-second delay was about the shortest he could manage, but for most purposes, he was using at least ten seconds.

The program has a live preview window to help you set up the shot, but before your recordings start that should be turned off so as not to overload the little processor and the I/O buses. The result is a bunch of JPG images that you can easily convert to a video on a PC if you wish.

This might be a good way to fit a camera on a 3D printer, especially if the time lapse effect was desired. Otherwise, you might sync to a layer change. Now all [bitluni] needs is an orbital rig.

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Feel The Force With A Pocket Magnetometer

January 24, 2020 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

With the rise of affordable 3D printers, we just don’t see the projects in Tic Tac boxes that we used to. That’s kind of a shame. Not only are you upcycling existing plastic when you use one, they’re decently sized component vessels for pocket builds such as [rgco]’s portable magnetometer, especially if you can get the 100-count box. Best of all, they’re see-through!

Sure, you could get a magnetometer app for your phone to test out the strength of your Buckyballs, but this is more fun, and you can use it in more places. This build doesn’t take much — an Arduino Nano reads from a Hall effect sensor and outputs the magnetic flux density in militeslas (mT) on an OLED. Fortifying the sensor by mounting it inside the body of an old (also see-through!) ballpoint pen body is a nice touch.

In order to calibrate it, [rgco] made a solenoid by wrapping a length of PVC with magnet wire. The code for this very portable and low-cost magnetometer measures the magnetic field 2000 times in under three-tenths of a second, and outputs both the mean and the standard deviation of these measurements.

Magnetometers can ID all kinds of things from submarines to Suburbans. Here’s an ESP8266 magnetometer that opens a driveway gate when it detects the car.

Home Safety Monitoring With IoT

January 17, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 21 Comments

Home automation is a popular project to undertake but its complexity can quickly become daunting, especially if you go further than controlling a few lights (or if you’re a renter). To test the waters you may want to start with something like this home safety monitor, which is an IoT device based on an Arduino. It allows remote monitoring of a home for things such as temperature, toxic gasses, light, and other variables, which is valuable even if you don’t need or want to control anything.

The device is built around an Arduino Nano 33 IOT which has WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities as well as some integrated security features. This build features a number of sensors including pressure/humidity, a gas/smoke detector, and a light sensor. To report all of the information it gathers around the home, an interface with Ubidots is configured to allow easy (and secure) access to the data gathered by the device.

The PCB and code for the project are all provided on the project page, and there are a number of other options available if Ubidots isn’t your preferred method of interfacing with the Internet of Things. You might even give Mozilla’s WebThings a shot if you’re so inclined.

A Simple App Controlled Door Lock

January 16, 2020 by Gerrit Coetzee 9 Comments

[Adnan.R.Khan] had a sliding door latch plus an Arduino, and hacked together this cool but simple app controlled door lock.

Mechanically the lock consists of a Solarbotics GM3 motor, some Meccano, and a servo arm. A string is tied between two pulleys and looped around the slide of a barrel latch. When the motor moves back and forth it’s enough to slide the lock in and out. Electronically an Arduino and a Bluetooth module provide the electronics. The system runs from a 9V battery, and we’re interested to know whether there were any tricks pulled to make the battery last.

The system’s software is a simple program built in MIT App Inventor. Still, it’s pretty cool that you can get functionally close to a production product with parts that are very much lying around. It also makes us think of maybe keeping our childhood Meccano sets a little closer to the bench!

New Part Day: Arduino Goes Pro With The Portenta H7

January 15, 2020 by Tom Nardi 92 Comments

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is traditionally where the big names in tech show off their upcoming products, and the 2020 show was no different. There were new smartphones, TVs, and home automation devices from all the usual suspects. Even a few electric vehicles snuck in there. But mixed in among flashy presentations from the electronics giants was a considerably more restrained announcement from a company near and dear to the readers of Hackaday: Arduino is going pro.

While Arduino has been focused on the DIY and educational market since their inception, the newly unveiled Portenta H7 is designed for professional users who want to rapidly develop robust hardware suitable for industrial applications. With built-in wireless hardware and the ability to run Python and JavaScript out of the box, the powerful dual-core board comes with a similarly professional price tag; currently for preorder at $99 USD a pop, the Portenta is priced well outside of the company’s traditional DIY and educational markets. With increased competition from other low-cost microcontrollers, it seems that Arduino is looking to expand out of its comfort zone and find new revenue streams.

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Active Suspension R/C Car Really Rocks

January 13, 2020 by Kristina Panos 27 Comments

When you’re a kid, remote control cars are totally awesome. Even if you can’t go anywhere by yourself, it’s much easier to imagine a nice getaway from the daily grind of elementary school if you have some wheels. And yeah, R/C cars are still awesome once you’re an adult, but actual car-driving experience will probably make you yearn for more realism.

What could be more realistic and fun than an active suspension? Plenty of adults will never get the chance to hit the switches in real car, but after a year of hard work, [snoopybg] is ready to go front and back, side to side, and even drift in this super scale ’63 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 wagon. We think you’ll agree that [snoopybg] didn’t miss a detail — this thing makes engine noises, and there are LEDs in the dual exhaust pipes to simulate flames.

An Arduino reads data from a triple-axis accelerometer in real time, and adjusts a servo on each wheel accordingly, also in real time, to mimic a real car throwing its weight around on a real suspension system. If that weren’t cool enough, most of the car is printed, including the tires. [snoopybg] started with a drift car chassis, but even that has been hacked and drilled out as needed.

There are a ton of nice pictures on [snoopybg]’s site if you want to see what’s under the hood. We don’t see the code anywhere, but [snoopybg] seems quite open to publishing more details if there is interest out there. Strap yourself in and hold on tight, because we’re gonna take this baby for a spin after the break.

If this is all seems a bit much for you, but you’ve got that R/C itch again, there’s a lot to be said for upgrading the electronics in a stock R/C car.

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