Shoe-integrated sensor system to serve as a walking aid for visually impaired people

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This shoe-integrated sensor system is supposed to serve as a walking aid for a person with impaired sight. It alerts the user about obstacles surrounding him. Based on the information received from multiple ultrasonic sensors attached to the shoes, an Arduino Mega 2560 board used in the project forms a virtual map of the surroundings. The user is alerted about any obstacle through a set of vibrating elements placed in the user’s trouser pockets.

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Interfacing AC power lines with PIC microcontrollers

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Applications like automatic power factor correction, power measurement, and power line monitor require interfacing the high voltage AC power lines to microcontrollers. This application note from Microchip describes a simple method for measuring parameters from the AC power line by using only one external resistor, and is more reliable than using a bulky and expensive transformer. This method takes advantage of the input static protection circuitry that exists on I/O pins of a CMOS PIC16C5X. These protection circuits are designed to short the inputs to the power supplies when a large overvoltage is applied, thus protecting the chip from static

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MAXIM’s DeepCover MAXQ1050 Secure Microcontroller to protect your embedded systems from Malware

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Malware injection has become a critical threat to embedded systems. Implementing an asymmetric cryptography-based secure boot is the best protection against this class of attacks. This application note from MAXIM describes the key principles of such a secure boot and explains how to implement it with the DeepCover® MAXQ1050 secure microcontroller. Embedded systems security is a growing concern. There are new attacks on embedded systems every day, including on systems involved with health or safety. One type of attack is malware injection, the insertion of malicious code into a webpage. Once an attacker has succeeded in making a device run a

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Desk panic button to get rid of annoying coworkers

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Workplace is a jumble of many different personalities and we all find some difficult people to deal with. If you are often annoyed by your coworkers who just walk over to your desk and rope you into long conversations that never end when you’re on deadline, Randy Sarafon’s (from Instruclables) desk panic button will help you get rid of them without hurting their feelings. Unlike other panic buttons, this one does not summon for help in emergency. The idea is when it is pressed it calls your own phone so that you can tell your coworker that you need to answer

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Chirp: An open source plant watering alarm using Attiny44A

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Your favorite plants need plenty of water to grow. If you keep forgetting to water your house plants you might be interested in this plant watering alarm device called Chirp. Chirp uses capacitive humidity sensing technique to measure the moisture level in the soil and alerts the user through short chirps when it is time to water the plant. Based on the amount of ambient light detected by the on-board light sensor, Chirp detects day and night condition. It is very considerate and remains silent during the night time. The project uses ATtiny44A and is licensed under CERN Open Hardware

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