Arduino-based Temp Control Via SMS

September 25, 2013 by Marsh 7 Comments

smsTempController

As connected as we are, reliable and affordable internet is still a luxury in the far reaches. [kohleick’s] country home is not just remote; with temperatures dropping to -30C in the winter, it’s practically Arctic. His solution for controlling the thermostat from afar was to take advantage of the GSM network and implement a SMS-based heater controller. The unit typically operates in “antifreeze mode,” but sending a simple text message prior to visiting causes the heater to kick it up to a more comfortable setting for your arrival. Daily logs report the system’s status, and an alert will trigger when temperatures fall below a set limit, thus indicating potential faults with the heater.

The build uses a Freeduino paired with an external GSM modem for communication and an LCD to display current status and menus, which users access via three buttons on the side of the picture frame. [kohleick] connected two temperature sensors: one directly to the Freeduino’s shield and a second outside the house. After the temperature sensors detect deviance from the set point, or upon SMS instruction, the Freeduino will crank up the heat through a 5V relay attached to the home’s boiler. Head over to the Instructables page linked above for a bill of materials, schematics, and the code. The Siemens GSM modem in this build is nothing to worry about, but be careful if you try to reproduce this project with an Arduino GSM shield, or your house might really heat up.

Zero Gravity (sort Of) On A Budget

September 25, 2013 by Marsh 32 Comments

zeroGravRoom

At $250,000, Virgin Galactic is probably out of most people’s price range; even reduced gravity flights run $5k. You may be in luck, though, as [Justin] and his friends have built a spinning room for $350 (Warning: loud noise @ beginning) that can turn your world upside down. The video provides a time-lapse of the build, but you’ll probably want to skip ahead 5 minutes in for the real fun.

It may not be anti-gravity, but holding onto furniture to keep from flying into the ceiling looks pretty entertaining. The room works like the fairground favorite “Gravitron” ride turned sideways. 2 forklifts support a massive wooden cube, which includes familiar features from home: drywall, flooring, and some furniture. [Justin] managed to borrow two car wheels, which he mounted in the middle of the walls on opposing sides of the cube. Two casters support each rim, and the forklifts hold the casters just high enough to allow a few friends to manually sling everything around.

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Classic PDA Finds Second Life As A Network Touch Screen Display

September 19, 2013 by Adam Fabio 18 Comments

pocketviewer

[Tomas Janco] had an old Casio Pocket Viewer PDA collecting dust. Rather than throw it away, He decided to re-purpose it as a display for time, weather, and the current status of his garage door.

The Casio Pocket Viewer was a competitor to the Palm Pilot. The two systems even shared the same LCD resolution – 160×160 monochrome. [Tomas’] particular model is an S660, sporting 6 megabytes of ram and an NEC V30MZ (Intel 8086 compatible) processor. Similar to Palm, Casio made an SDK freely available.

The SDK is still available from Casio, and [Tomas] was able to get it running on his PC. Development wasn’t without pitfalls though. The Pocket Viewer SDK was last updated in April of 2001. Software is written in C, but the then new C99 standard is not supported. The SDK does include a simulator and debugger, but it too is not as polished as todays systems – every simulator startup begins with setting the clock and calibrating the touch screen. Keep reading after the jump to learn about the rest of the hurdles he overcame to pull this one off.

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Tooth Fairy Goes Pneumatic

September 13, 2013 by Marsh 33 Comments

pneumaticToothFairy

Kids’ fantasy figures are long overdue for some tech upgrades, so MAKE’s [Jeff Highsmith] carved a few holes in the walls and built a pneumatic transport system for his children to deliver their teeth to the Tooth Fairy. The project uses a system of 1.5″ PVC pipe with a central vacuum in the attic and two endpoint stations, one in each child’s room. Alternating which station has the closed valve and open door dictates the airflow path and shuttles a small plastic travel bottle from one station to the next.

Each station has its own iPhone interface that sends data to a Raspberry Pi and relays information, including a simulated map indicating the travel path taken by the tooth. Apart from controlling the vacuum via one of the Pi’s GPIO, the phone serves primarily as a visual distraction for the children while one parent sneaks off into the other room and replaces the tooth with some pocket change. [Jeff] made sure to add a locking door on each station to limit access and hopefully keep the mystery alive.

Watch his son’s face light up with sheer glee at the whole event in the video below, and regret that your childhood happened before the maker revolution. Then celebrate your adulthood with a beer fetching robot.

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Web Connectivity And Other Addons For An Automatic Schnauzer Feeder

September 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

web-enabled-automatic-dog-feeder

[Ben Miller] and his dad combined forces to create this automatic dog feeder. It not only keeps their two schnauzers happy, but gives them peace of mind as they can double-check that he feeding happened by pulling up an image on the Internet. Make sure you make it through all three posts of the build to get the entire picture.

The project started with some research which turned up a project that used a commercially available automatic feeder. That one used Arduino, but because of the cost the board plus a WiFi shield is a bit high, [Ben] went with a Raspberry Pi and a USB WiFi dongle instead. The Pi is much more powerful and adds the functionality for capturing images via a webcam.

After a convoluted process of connecting the Pi to the existing button traces on the automatic feeder it was time to start coding. The system runs from a Perl script which monitors a Gmail account for remote commands (in addition to a regular feeding schedule). The final touch is a bit of mechanical engineering which splits the output into two bowls so the dogs each have their own serving.

We still use the Autodine we built several years back but its single-serving limitation has always kept a second version on our project list. Hopefully seeing a well-executed system like this will motivate us to get building!

A Facelift For The View Out Your Livingroom Window

August 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

livingroom-view-facelift

[Ken Kawamoto] turned the rather bland view from his livingroom into that of some high-priced real estate. It only works at night, which is going to seem odd since the image above shows a daytime scene. But it’s still a pretty sweet concept.

The video below shows the actual view from his window. We don’t think it’s all that bad (we once lived in a ground-level apartment looking out on a parking lot… yuck!). But the view of the Abbey of St. Étienne in Caen, France seen above is much better. He simply put a projector on his balcony and closed the light-colored blinds. So far he has to bring it in after each use, but we see this as more of a thing to use only when entertaining anyway.

We’ve seen a few other attempts over the years at hacking your view. Here’s one that adds fake windows using LCD screens. The thing that makes that one work is the ability of the system to track the viewer and change the perspective accordingly.

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[Lou] Puts Invisible Fence Inside And Outside His Home

August 19, 2013 by Mike Szczys 55 Comments

invisible-fence-inside-and-out

Leave it to [Lou Wozniak] to go beyond ordinary when installing invisible fencing. Invisible fence is an electronic system that contains your dog by triggering a shock collar. The install requires a loop of wire to generate a field detected by the collar.

[Lou] starts off by buying a do it yourself kit. He has previous experience with this (check out his battery hack for the collars) and found that the cheap solid core wire didn’t hold up to animals and shovel accidents. He headed down to the hardware store and came back with a spool of stranded wire with extra thick insulation which should hold up much better.

The image above shows the model he built to plan for the installation. He’s not just making a single area in the yard. Look closely and you’ll see he’s going to use it to keep the dogs out of the dining room as well. This loop will be installed just below the floor from the basement.

With planning behind him he doesn’t fail to innovate with the installation technique. He recommends an angle grinder with a diamond blade to cut the slot for the wire in your yard. The one caveat being that you need to wait until the yard is super dry or it will muck up the blade. Dry dirt creates a lot of dust, but he uses a leaf blower or floor fan to blow it away from him as it works. To help minimize the amount of shocks the dogs receive while learning their new area he placed some white rope above the wire run as a visual cue.

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