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Using wrist as a joystick for controlling a smartwatch

Posted on November 10, 2016 by R-B One comment

A modern smartwatch is a great wearable computer that can do a lot more than just tell time. It can track user’s activities, monitor heart beat rate, synchronize with your smartphone to work as its extension, navigate you, and many more. Most of the time, operating a smartwatch requires a free hand (not the one with the watch strapped on). In certain situations, such as when you are holding something in your hand, it becomes challenging to use the smartwatch. A group of researchers from Dartmouth College and the University of Manitoba has come up with a solution called WristWhirl, exploring the potential

ChipKIT Project 6: BME280 Weather Station

Posted on November 9, 2016 by R-B 5 comments

BME280 is a fully integrated environmental unit from Bosch that combines sensors for pressure, humidity, and temperature in a tiny 8-pin metal-lid LGA package of size 2.5 x 2.5 x 0.93 mm³. Because of its compact size, ease of use (BME280 supports standard I2C and SPI interfaces), and availability of supporting open-source Arduino libraries, BME280 is very popular among weather enthusiasts. This project describes how to read barometric pressure, relative humidity, and temperature measurements from BME280 using chipKIT Uno32 to make a standalone weather station. The sensor readings are acquired over an I2C bus and are displayed on a Nokia 5110 LCD display.

Wifi controlled FPV rover

Posted on November 9, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

First Person View (FPV), also known as video piloting, provides a more exciting driver’s viewpoint for controlling a RC rover by mounting a video camera. This FPV two-wheeled robotic rover is controlled over a WiFi network via any internet browser using an HTML-based control interface. It features an Arduino Uno board that controls the movement of the rover by driving two stepper motors. Arduino gets the WiFi capability with the help of an ESP-01 module (ESP8266 board). The communication between the Arduino and ESP8266 is through a serial interface. An Android smartphone is mounted at the front of the rover for live

One-button meeting call

Posted on November 8, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

How fast and easily can you call for a video conference? This fancy arcade button can do that with a single press. The button is connected to a Mac-Mini and initiates a Zoom meeting automatically, when it is pressed. It uses the Digispark Attiny85 microcontroller board that emulates an USB keyboard that signals the MacOS about the button press. The idea is simple, we use a really cheap micro controller and a fancy button (from an arcade mashine) and simulate an USB keyboard. This simulated Keyboard doesn’t need any special software driver because all operating systems automatically have drivers included and can use it.

What-to-wear weather clock

Posted on November 7, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

Plan your day with confidence using this fancy weather forecasting clock that tells you what kind of clothes you need to wear to be comfortable outside. The clock is powered by the Particle Photon IoT development board that retrieves the current weather information from forecast.io. Based on the weather forecast, the Particle board drives a servo motor to move a clock hand to point to the correct type of clothes needed. I split the software into 2 parts: the Photon firmware to move the pointer and a hook.io script to figure out which clothes to wear from the forecast.io weather forecast. The Particle cloud acts as

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