Author Archives: R-B

Raspberry Pi All Sky Camera

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Thomas Jacquin built this Raspberry Pi based all sky camera to capture the Northern Lights. Capable of taking pictures of the entire sky over a certain amount of time, the camera is best suitable for recording meteor showers and other astronomical phenomena.

All sky camera to photograph the sky

All sky camera to photograph the sky

I built mine to monitor the northern lights. I live in the Yukon and we sometimes get beautiful aurora displays during the night. However, I also have a day time job and I need my 8 hours of sleep. I created this camera to record a movie of the entire night. That way, I can replay the movie in the morning and never miss any aurora night.

SolarSurfer: A robotic surfboard

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The SolarSurfer is a neat concept of building a solar-powered robotic surfboard submitted to the 2014 Hackaday Prize by Rusty Jehangir and his team at BlueRobotics. It’w built using an 8 feet surfboard and is powered by a 120 W solar panel and a 12V lead acid battery. It’s also equipped with a GPS system, satellite modem, and sensors that collect ocean temperature and pH values during the journey.

surf2

Solar-powered autonomous surfboard

The surfer is guided by a 3D Robotics APM2.6 with a uBlox GPS. A RockBLOCK satellite radio from Rock Seven let’s us communicate back and forth with the SolarSurfer to monitor its position, status, and update its course. Temperature and pH sensors collect useful ocean data along the way.

The ocean is a harsh place – corrosive saltwater, intense sunlight, constant motion, and life everywhere. There’s lots of challenges to overcome and a lot of potential for awesomeness.

The project is open-source and we’d love your input and contribution! The software is available on our Github page and licensed under the GPL license. We leverage a lot of inspiration from other open source projects like ArduPlane and ArduCopter.

surf1

SolarSurfer components

Arduino music player

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Dejan Nedelkovski from How to Mechatronics recently posted a new project tutorial on making an Arduino-powered MP3 Music Player plus Alarm Clock. It features a professional looking touchscreen user interface using a 3.2″ TFT LCD. The home screen displays time, date and temperature along with touch control buttons for running the music player and setting the alarm clock. While the music being played, you can also see a progress bar for the song.

speaker

Arduino mp3 player plus alarm clock

The project is built using an Arduino Mega board. For mp3 player, it uses the BY8001 module, which is a MP3/WAV player with MicroSD support and a built-in 3W audio amplifier. The time keeping is done using the DS3231 RTC module.

arduino-music-player-and-alarm-clock-parts-list-circuit-schematics

Arduino mp3 player schematics

Automatic solar charge controller

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Based on Michael Davis’s circuit, vina1991 built an automatic solar charge controller for a 12V battery using the 555 timer IC. It is a switching circuit controls the connections between the solar panels output and battery terminals. You can set the upper and lower thresholds for battery voltage so that the charger can automatically switch back and forth between charging and cut-off mode. When the battery terminal voltage goes below the lower limit, the charging process begins, which stops automatically when the battery voltage reaches the upper limit. The switching is performed using a relay switch.

555 Timer based automatic solar charge controller

555 Timer based automatic solar charge controller

Getting started with ESP32

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Hackaday has posted a quick tutorial on how to get started with the ESP32, the successor of ESP8266 WiFi MCU, with both WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy radios built in.

Getting started with ESP32

Getting started with ESP32

The ESP32 module comes preloaded with a ROM image with an AT command set, just like the ESP8266 did. If you want to waste 95% of this chip’s potential by using it as a glorified serial-to-WiFi modem, you’re all set! But you all want to dig in, right? Right!

The toolchain for programming the ESP32 in C is pretty straightforward. You’ll need Espressif’s software library (esp-idf), a cross-compiler and build tools that are specific to the chip (xtensa-esp32-*), and a utility to flash the resulting binary file to the device. I’ll guide you thought that and then we’ll get Espressif’s demo application compiled and flashed in, at which point everything’s up and running.

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