Arduino Weather-station To Internet Bridge

November 30, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s a project that looks to eliminate the PC necessary for pushing weather station data to the Internet. When you think about it, getting data from your own weather sensing hardware to a site like Weather Underground doesn’t require very much processing at all. The largest chunk of the puzzle is a window to the Internet, and that can be easily accomplished with a microcontroller rather than an always-on computer.

In this case, [Boris Landoni] is using an Arduino along with an RS232 shield and an Ethernet shield. The weather station, a La Crosse WS23xx series, already has an RS232 serial port for grabbing the data. The shield is necessary to step the voltage down to levels that will play nicely with Arduino. It also gives you a D-Sub connector for easy hook up. From there he hit up the documentation for Weather Undeground API, writing code to build the necessary string which is pushed over the Ethernet connection at regular intervals.

If your weather station only offers a USB port you’re not out of luck. Using an embedded platform with USB host functionality you can achieve the same results as we see here.

Audio Output Selection Courtesy Of The Internet

November 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

[Peter] was tired of crawling behind his desktop computer to switch between headphones and speakers. We feel his pain, as the headphone port on our computer speakers has its own demonic hum rendering the jack useless to us. His solution was to build this output selector board, then control it via the network.

A relay is responsible for routing the single input to one of two outputs. One output is wired to the normally closed pin on the relay, the other to the normally open pin. The important thing here is to make sure you have a separate audio ground so as not to pick up noise from the rest of the hardware.

What you see above is only the switching circuitry. This is where [Peter] went a little overboard, using an Arduino along with an Ethernet shield to drive the relay via a transistor. For this particular application there must be an easier way. But if you’re working on home automation from your smart phone, this might be just the thing to make your audio setup browser-controlled.

[via Build Lounge]

Open-source Sprinkler Controller Keeps Your Lawn Looking Great

October 9, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

open_source_sprinkler_controller

[Ray] wrote in to share a great project he just recently wrapped up, an open-source sprinkler valve controller. Built in collaboration with Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief [Chris Anderson], the sprinkler controller is designed to replace the limited commercial sprinkler timers that typically come with a new home sprinkler setup.

Their system greatly expands on the idea of a standard sprinkler timer, adding Ethernet connectivity, web-based scheduling, and 8 separate controllable zones. At the heart of the controller is an ATmega328 running the Arduino bootloader, which means that the system is easily tweakable to fit your specific needs. The controller works off a standard 24V AC sprinkler transformer, which means that the controller can easily act as a drop-in replacement for your existing system.

The pair sells kits through the web site, but you can always simply download the schematics, PCB layout files, and BoM to build one yourself. Whichever path you choose, be sure to swing by [Ray’s] site and take a good look around – there is an incredibly detailed assembly and programming guide there that will be a great resource as you go along.

Continue reading to see a video of the sprinkler controller in action.

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Upload Firmware Over Ethernet

September 13, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

The team at Wicked Device has been working on working on a way to upload Arduino sketches over Ethernet for the Nanode and Arduino Ethernet boards. The team has gotten far enough along to show the world, and the new boot loader shows a lot of promise.

A new boot loader was needed to perform this magic. The boot loader sets up a TFTP with a server over DHCP or a static IP. An unmodified .hex file is downloaded from the server and the sketch starts up. The team is still working on a way to push new apps to the board over Ethernet, but that feature is expected to be completed sometime soon.

Booting over Ethernet isn’t a new idea – TFTP was proposed for this very purpose. Because Wicked Device’s Ethernet-enabled boot loader only works over a local connection and requires a press of the reset button, it should be considered an alpha build. That being said, the boot loader works as advertised, so check out the demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Upload Firmware Over Ethernet” →

Stream Music Anywhere In Your House With These WiFi Speakers

August 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

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[Rui] needed an easy way to play music in several different zones from one centralized location, but he didn’t want to run any new wiring in the process.

He figured that the best way to do this would be to stream his music directly to his speakers over Ethernet. Earlier this year, he put together a handful of Ethernet-connected speaker nodes using a few Arduinos equipped with both Ethernet and MP3 shields. To interface with these speaker nodes, he wrote an application utilizing VLC’s network streaming engine. This software monitors his network for newly attached speakers, adding them to his inventory automatically. He can choose to play music on any set of speakers using a multicast audio stream.

The setup was pretty slick, but what about locations that didn’t already have Ethernet drops? He thought of that too, revising his design just recently. The newest set of speakers he constructed ditches the Ethernet board for a Wifly shield, all of which he crammed inside the speaker cabinets. Now, he has the ability to stream music anywhere he’d like, no matter what sort of infrastructure is in place.

If you have a need to do this in your home, [Rui] has made his software available for free on his site, so be sure to grab a copy.

Continue reading to see a short video of the speakers in action.

Continue reading “Stream Music Anywhere In Your House With These WiFi Speakers” →

Nanode: A Low-cost Network-enabled Arduino Ethernet Alternative

August 11, 2011 by Mike Nathan 32 Comments

nanode_ethernet_enabled_arduino_board

The folks over at Hackspace London have been working hard to create a “very low cost, open source, Internet connected platform on which others can develop their ideas”, which they have dubbed “Nanode”.

Essentially an Arduino with Ethernet networking on-board, the Nanode is armed with an ATMega 328 microcontroller along with all the other standard goodies you would expect from an Arduino-compatible device. The Nanode can be controlled with a web browser right out of the box, thanks to some custom Ethernet libraries. Additionally network of Nanodes can be easily configured to communicate with a “master” unit via a multidrop serial bus, allowing the device to be used for a wide array of distributed control tasks.

Obviously most of these features can be had in the form of an Arduino Ethernet board, or achieved by using an Ethernet shield. The Nanode is a touch cheaper than either option at $40 for a kit, and the native networking capabilities sound like they would be quite handy. That said, we are a bit bummed that it only has 10BaseT networking capabilities, though it is always nice to have options when it comes to choosing a microcontroller board.

[Thanks, TheHypnotist]

LAN-connected Washing Machine Lets You Know When Your Clothes Are Done

August 5, 2011 by Mike Nathan 44 Comments

lan_connected_washing_machine_laundruino

[Micha’s] washing machine is equipped with a rather inaccurate timer, so it is always difficult to estimate when the load will be finished. Since it is located in his basement, he hated having to check on the machine continually to know when his clothes were done. Instead of hauling up and down the stairs over and over, he decided to hack in an “end of cycle” notifier of his own.

The washer has an LED that lights when it is finally done doing its thing, so [Micha] removed the LED and soldered in two wires, which he then connected to his Arduino. When the washer is finished and the LED should be lit, the Arduino senses that the input has been pulled low, signaling the end of the cycle. The Arduino was hooked into his home network via an Ethernet shield, enabling him to monitor the process from the comfort of the nearest web browser.

It’s a clever implementation, and it sure saves him a lot of time trudging up and down the stairs. Nice job!