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Water softener salt level monitor

Posted on November 1, 2014 by R-B One comment

Hard water contains more minerals (calcium and magnesium) than ordinary water. Although it is non-toxic, it is less desirable as it can clog water pipes and complicate soap and detergent dissolving in water. It also builds up scales in water heaters over time, thus shortening their operational lifetime. In residential units, hard water is usually softened by installing a water softener unit connected directly to the water supply line. The water softner exchanges salt for the dissolved minerals, which results in softer water. David Cook’s water softener appliance stores the salt supply in a brine tank, which requires refilling in

Introducing Easy Matrix: A cascadable 8×8 LED dot matrix display module

Posted on October 31, 2014 by R-B 9 comments

Easy Matrix is an easily cascadable 8×8 monochromatic LED dot matrix display module with onboard MAXIM’s MAX7219 LED driver chip. The MAX7219 allows you to drive the LED matrix using only three I/O pins of Arduino or any other microcontroller. The LED matrix module used in Easy Matrix has a bigger dot size (5mm) and has the overall display dimensions of 60.2mm x 60.2mm (2.4″x2.4″). It is easily cascadable in series with the help of precisely aligned male and female header pairs located on the left and right sides of the display module. With lots of freely available Arduino libraries

FlowPaw: A new rapid prototyping tool for electronics and robotics

Posted on October 30, 2014 by R-B Leave a comment

With so many other development platforms already out there in market, DSP Robotics, in collaboration with MikroElektronika, is going to introduce a new tool, FlowPaw, for rapid prototyping with electronics and robotics. FlowPaw is an expandable development board that carries a STM32F415RG MCU and four mikroBUS™ sockets, which provides a simple Plug-and-Play solution for connecting mikroElektronika’s several dozens of accessory boards called Click Boards. The Click boards are available for a wide range of applications including GPS, WiFi, MP3 decoding, Bluetooth, CAN, IrDA, GSM, and Ethernet. The FlowPaw is programmed directly through a PC USB port using FlowStone, a drag-and-drop

Portable Bluetooth-enabled scrolling LED matrix display- Part 2

Posted on October 29, 2014 by R-B 31 comments

In Part 1 of this project, we described the construction of Easy Matrix, which is a cascadable 8×8 LED matrix display with MAX7219 chip on board. We developed an Arduino sketch for scrolling text display, whereby the Arduino receives text messages from its serial port and displays the message on a 8×40 LED matrix constructed by daisy-chaining five Easy Matrix modules. The Arduino firmware is also capable of receiving user commands for controlling the scrolling speed and brightness level of the display. In this part, we will discuss about extending the project to cascade 8 Easy Matrix modules and control

Portable Bluetooth-enabled scrolling LED matrix display- Part 1

Posted on October 29, 2014 by R-B 30 comments

LED matrix displays are great fun. They are visually charming, and readable from a far viewing distance with a much wider angle of view as compared to many other types of electronics displays. They can display all kinds of information, including text, graphics, and animation. This project is about making a portable Bluetooth-controlled 8×64 monochromatic LED matrix (total 512 LEDs) for displaying scrolling text message. I made this display to use at home parties or other occasions for displaying greeting messages. The text data to be displayed can be sent from a smartphone using the Bluetooth connection. The display is Arduino-controlled and uses the

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