Simplest Of SL4A Microbridge Examples

June 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys No comments

We’re familiar with the daunting task of sifting through mountains of code in hopes you can learn how something works. So when a simple example like this SL4A LED toggle comes along we’re thankful for the trimmed fat. If you’re looking to use an Android device to control your Arduino hardware this will be huge shove in the right direction.

The microbridge is used to get the Arduino talking with the Android phone. It involves a USB host shield that lets you connect the two devices via a USB cable. With the USB debugging enabled on the phone, you can use Scripting Layer for Android as a user interface. In this case, a set of Python scripts builds the button and readout seen on the screen above. They also handle sending and receiving commands based on user input. This means you don’t really need to know anything about Android development. We think it would be a great way to get your project through the development stages, and you could learn to write a traditional App later on.

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Update: Androcade 2.0

June 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

[Chris] has been going about his business, letting his interest guide him as it will. But always in the back of his mind is his Androcade project, and he’s spent the last year making improvements. It’s an arcade controller for playing games on an Android tablet. It connects to the device via Bluetooth, and includes a built-in stand.

His original version was featured here last year. It was made from wood (with a nice Android green finish) and included three buttons and a joystick. This time around he moved to some black laser-cut acrylic for the case, and has doubled up on the buttons. It also now enumerates as an HID Bluetooth device, whereas before it was pushing serial data over the BT connection.

He’s had enough interest from his friends to also create an iPad version all in white. It connects and works just the same as the Android flavor. Check out a bit of Donkey Kong gameplay after the break.

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New IOIO In The Works

May 29, 2012 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

There’s a new version of the IOIO on the way and we think you’re going to like the goals this redesign aims to achieve. If you’re not familiar, the IOIO is an Android accessory board. It connects to the phone via USB and is aimed at making it easier to build your own hardware peripherals for the handhelds. Just look around here for a while and you’ll find a bunch of projects that are built around this board (for instance: adding MIDI control to your phone).

With [Ytai’s] announcement that the second generation IOIO is in the works he touches on price and functionality improvements. Certainly the $50 cost of the original board is pretty low, but if you’re just planning on hacking for giggles it’s a roadblock. Although no number has been quoted, the plan is to make the new rendition more affordable. As for functionality, the next generation will be a USB On-the-Go device. This means it can be a master when connected to the phone, or a slave when plugged into a computer. There are also a smattering of electrical design improvements.

APC Android Computer Isn’t A Raspberry Pi

May 23, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 60 Comments

VIA Technologies, ostensibly in an attempt to compete with the Raspberry Pi (if you can believe all those bloggers out there), is releasing a tiny single board computer called the APC Android PC. The VIA website for the APC is down, so just search Google News for all the details.

The specs are somewhat similar to the Raspberry Pi – HDMI out, Ethernet, SD card, and a few USB ports – but that’s about where the similarities end. The APC runs a version of Android 2.3 customized for mouse and keyboard input where the RasPi runs Linux. The APC can only display 720p video (compared to the RasPi’s 1080p), and doesn’t have GPIO pins that can be used with Arduino shields.

We’re pretty sure VIA is going after the media center PC market here with a low-power board that can easily stream movies or a season of TV shows over a network. At $50, we’re sure the APC will find a home in a few homebrew devices, MAME machines, and carputers.

If anything, this only portends a whole bunch of single-board ARM/Linux computers riding on the coat tails of the RasPi. That’s awesome no matter how you look at it.

If a $50 Android board doesn’t whet your whistle, VIA also released a Mini-ITX board with 12 hardware serial ports. Hardware serial ports are getting rare nowadays despite how useful they are for embedded applications. 12 (with riser cards, natch) serial ports seems overkill, but we’re sure some Hackaday reader has been looking for this board for a while now.

A DSLR Shutter Cable For Android

May 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Here’s a very easy way to trigger your DSLR camera using an Android device. It’s a similar method used with IR triggered cameras, in that all you need to do is assemble some simple hardware to plug into the headphone jack. The app that triggers the camera simply plays back a well crafted audio file to do so. The thing that this cable adds is the ability to use the focus feature, since the cable has two data lines.

The hardware is dead-simple. A pair of NPN transistors and a pair of resistors are hosted by this small chunk of strip board. The audio jack for Android uses left and right audio channels to drive the base of these transistors. On the camera side of things the transistors are pulling the focus, and shutter contacts to ground. Once this is covered with shrink tubing it’ll be pretty rugged, and ready to be thrown in your camera bag for use on short notice.

[Thanks Hannes]

Hacking IPod Headphone Controller For Use With Android

May 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Buddhra] wanted to use a set of ear buds that also had a controller built into the wire. The headset he chose to go with is meant for use with iPod, but he figured it should be possible to make it work with Android too. He was right, and managed to alter the controller for Android use and still fit it into the original case.

He had already made a custom control module that has fast forward and rewind features and play/pause events. The signals used for the controls are based on resistive dividers. The play/pause button on the iLuv headset already worked, so he cracked the controller open to see why the forward and back buttons didn’t work. It turns out all he needed to do was add the right resistors to those buttons. Here you can almost see the 0603 surface mount packages he used to add a 220 Ohm resistor to the back button, and a 600 Ohm resistor to the forward switch.

Building Sensors For The Scratch Programming Language

May 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Kevin Osborn] is making it a bit easier for young programmers to write programs that interact with the physical world. The device he’s holding in the picture is an Arduino based accelerometer and distance sensor meant for the Scratch language.

Scratch is a programming language developed at MIT. It has kids in mind, and focuses on graphical building blocks. This can make it quite a bit easier to introduce youngsters to programming concepts without the roadblocks and gotchas that come with learning syntax.

As you can see in the clip after the break, [Kevin’s] Arduino sketch includes hooks that automatically pull the accelerometer and distance data into the Scratch environment. We figure his example provides everything you need to get just about any type of sensor up and running, be it a magnetometer or LDR (both of which would make a nice burglar-alarm type project). Give it a try with your own hardware and see what you can accomplish.

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