Tag Archives: Arduino project


Advanced Arduino data logger

educ8s.tv has posted a video tutorial on building an advanced Arduino data logger that records temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and ambient light intensity on a micro SD storage card. It uses some easily available sensors, like DHT22, BMP180, and BH1750, for sensing the surrounding environment and the DS3231 RTC module for time-stamping the measurements. The tutorial describes in steps how to setup the complete project on a breadboard. The data logger runs for about 2 weeks using simple AA batteries and the data are stored on the SD card in a .csv file for easy transport to PC for further processing.

Arduino data logger

Arduino data logger

 

Arduino controlled motorized Solder Paste Dispenser

Zapta shares his design files of his Arduino motorized solder paste dispenser for SMT soldering.

SMT solder paste dispenser

SMT solder paste dispenser

This is a motorized solder paste dispenser for soldering SMT boards that was inspired by this thing http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:384680. The home directory of this project is on github here https://github.com/zapta/misc/tree/master/paste_injector and it include hardware and firmware design of a compatible controller board that is Arduino compatible (it looks to the Arduino IDE as an Arduino Pro Mini).

Schematic:https://github.com/zapta/misc/raw/master/paste_injector/eagle/paste_injector_schematic.pdf

BOM:https://github.com/zapta/misc/blob/master/paste_injector/eagle/paste_injector_bom.csv

EEVBLOG discussion:
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/solder-pasteflux-manual-syringe-applicator/150/

I printed successfully using both PLA and ABS and standard slicing parameters (3 layer shells, 20% infill).

Arduino capacitance meter

Electro-Labs’ DIY capacitance meter can measure capacitors rated from picofarads to millifarads. The circuit is based on Atmega328P and is Arduino IDE compatible. The capacitance is computed by measuring the capacitor charging time and is displayed on a Nokia 5110 LCD.

DIY capacitance meter

DIY capacitance meter

The main component of the circuit is Atmega328P microcontroller (MCU) and it runs at 16MHz. RESET, MOSI, MISO, SCK, RX, TX, 5V and GND pins are extended to the connectors from J4 to J11 to let the user use an Arduino or an AVR programmer to program the microcontroller in ICSP mode. MCU reset button, a general purpose button and a general purpose LED are also connected to the MCU. You can check out this tutorial to see how to burn a Arduino bootloader to a new microcontroller and then program it using the Arduino IDE.

There are two linear voltage regulators on the board. L78L05 and L78L05 generate 5V and 3.3V from 9V input. The MCU needs 5V and the LCD needs 3.3V to operate. The current consumption of the board is low, so no cooling is required.

Arduino controlled low-cost robotic arm

Induatrial robotic arms are quite expensive. Dan Royer is building an Arduino-controlled open-source robotic arm affordable to the DIY makers community.

Open-source 5-axis robotic arm

Open-source 5-axis robotic arm

Industrial arms starts at $10k each and go up from there. With low cost hardware everywhere now, I see a market opportunity for low cost arms to serve small industry. I’d like to drive the cost down by making an arm that others can tinker with, improve on, and build community around. I’d like to see two arms assemble a third.

Tell Elon Musk I need his rockets – lets put Marginally Clever robots to work building that lunar colony.

Arduino Mini weather station

Matej Blagšič posted instructions for building a Bluetooth-enabled Arduino-based mini weather station that can measure ambient temperature, pressure and humidity.

Arduino mini weather station

Arduino mini weather station

The main question is why did I/we choose the Seeeduino V4. If we were going for a cheap Chinese alternative, we could have gone with Funduinos or anything like that, as the Seeeduino is only a few bucks cheaper. The answer is the features. I see it as an upgrade to the Arduino Uno. It has all the features labeled with arrows. Some are subtle like the micro USB port, as many of us have smart phones that uses the same plug, option for soldering male headers parallel to female ones and the convenience of the already built in ports form I2C and serial data.

The major ones are really blessed by me. The 3.3V – 5V logic switch is priceless because so many arduino peripherals and mostly sensors work with 3.3V. I wasn’t aware about this a few years ago, as 5V stood to me as a standard but really a lot of sensors work with 3.3V and the most of 5V ones can operate with that voltage without any problem. Refer to the sensors datasheet for that information.

This board will work on 3.3V great with one of our I2C sensor and the other one that operates with 5V. Also some of the bluetooth modules work with 5V, but the logic works with 3.3V. I will address this topic in the bluetooth step of this tutorial.

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