R-B | Embedded Lab

Author Archives: R-B

A very simple posture sensor for your chair

Posted on April 24, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

If your job involves sitting in front of a computer for long hours everyday, a poor posture might result in neck, shoulder, and back pain. Sitting up straight helps to get rid of some of these problems. This ATtiny85 based posture sensor uses the HC-SR04 ultrasonic ranging module to sense the position of your head while you are sitting on a chair, and generates an acoustic alarm if you are not sitting up straight.

Ultrasonic posture sensor

[via]

Turn your Arduino board into a digital multimeter with this shield

Posted on April 22, 2014 by R-B One comment

Here is an instructable that describes a DIY shield which would convert your Arduino board into a multifunctional digital multimeter. This shield can be used with “Arduino” UNO und Duemilanove boards, and can display the measurements on a 16X2 character LCD and/or on the serial monitor window on PC. This digital multimeter Arduino shield has the following features:

voltmeter ranges : 0-10V; 0-30V; 0-100V
ampmeter range : 0-500mA
ohmmeter ranges : 0-1KOhm, 0-250KOhm
diode, LED, continuity tester
LED functionality tester
transistor Beta meter

Digital multimeter shield for Arduino Uno

chipKIT Project 4: Digital light meter

Posted on April 21, 2014 by R-B 3 comments

A light meter is used to measure the intensity of illumination in a given area. It is widely used in schools, warehouses, factories, hospitals, office buildings, museums, art-galleries, parking garages, stadiums, and many more, to measure and maintain proper lighting levels. The intensity of illumination is usually expressed in Lux or foot-candles. As the 4th project in our chipKIT tutorial series, today we are going to build a digital light meter using the chipKIT Uno32 board and the BH1750 digital light sensor. This project uses Digilent’s chipKIT Basic I/O shield for displaying the measured light intensity in Lux, foot-candles, and Watts/m^2 units.

Digital light meter using chipKIT Uno32

Noodle: A new robotic sensing project using Raspberry Pi

Posted on April 21, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

Noodle is a Raspberry Pi based prototype machine that has capabilities of sensing the surrounding space with its audio and video sensors, and of reacting to the sensed activities in the vicinity. The Noodle can respond with words, images, and sounds, and can also be programmed to take decisions, if required. The Noodle is Wifi-enabled and uses a camera and a microphone for visual and audio sensing. This instructable describes the construction of Noodle, including setting up the Raspberry Pi, connecting all the electronics, and creating the enclosure. While Noodle is currently in an early stage with the basic framework and enclosure ready, I believe it has a lot of potential, which is yet to be explored.

Noodle: A Raspberry Pi based robot

chipKIT Tutorial 6: Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) communication

Posted on April 20, 2014 by R-B 2 comments

I²C or IIC (Inter-Integrated Circuit) is a simple bidirectional serial interface, which requires only 2 signal lines for data transfer. It was originally developed by Philips in 1980′s to provide easy on-board communications between a CPU and various peripheral chips in a TV set. Today, it is widely used in varieties of embedded systems to connect many low speed peripherals, such as external EEPROMs, sensors, LCD drivers, port expanders, real-time clocks, etc, to the host microcontroller. In this tutorial, we will explore the chipKIT Wire Library for establishing an I²C communication link between the chipKIT Uno32 board and two I²C sensors. The Uno32 board receives the sensor outputs through the I²C link and displays the results on the serial monitor window on the computer screen.

I2C communication demo

« Older Entries Recent Entries »