News

News News 2011-04-27 17:Apr:th 2011-04-27 17:Apr:th http://www.practicalarduino.com jon@oxer.com.au Copyright 2011 Practical Arduino Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:44:25 +1000 Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:44:25 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/791 New shield available for the Weather Station Receiver project The <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/weather-station-receiver">Weather Station Receiver</a> project (which is also a great basis for receiving data from a bunch of other devices) is now even simpler to implement. Freetronics have released version 3 of their Receiver Shield, and it's now available in both 433MHz and 315MHz versions. <img alt="" src="/sb_cache/news/id/71/f/SH-RECEIVER-notes.jpg" style="width: 480px; height: 386px; " /> The new layout has the RXB6 module lying flat on the left end of the shield, allowing other shields to be stacked on top. More details at: <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/receiver">www.freetronics.com/receiver</a> Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:14:08 +1000 Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:14:08 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/781 Video created using the Time Lapse Camera Controller project Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au">Jonathan Oxer</a> Reader Jacob Ried constructed the <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/time-lapse-camera-controller">Time Lapse Camera Controller</a> project from the book and used it to create a cool video of his yard. <iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/14064949" width="480"></iframe> <a href="http://vimeo.com/14064949">Time Lapse (Using Practical Arduino Circuit)</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user4473951">Jacob Ried</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>. Nice work, Jacob! Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:08:38 +1000 Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:08:38 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/771 Online Thermometer project updated Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au">Jonathan Oxer</a> The <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/online-thermometer">Online Thermometer project</a> is a great demonstration of using Arduino to connect sensors to a network and make them accessible online, but it was based on a version of the Seeed Studio Ethernet shield that is no longer in production. Many people have asked me how they can modify that project to make it work with an Ethernet shield based on the popular Wiznet W5100 chipset, which includes the official Arduino Ethernet shield and also the new <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/ethernet-shield">Freetronics Ethernet Shield with PoE Support</a>. So I've created a modified version of the sketch using the very cool Webduino library, and the details are written up on the Freetronics site. Check it out: <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/pages/online-thermometer">  www.freetronics.com/pages/online-thermometer</a> Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:07:53 +1000 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:07:53 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/761 Freetronics TwentyTen is here Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> It's kinda old news now but I totally forgot to post about the Freetronics TwentyTen! Things have been so busy that I haven't been updating the Practical Arduino site as often as I should, so sorry about that. So without further ado, here it is: our version of the Arduino Duemilanove, but with a bunch of improvements applied. <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/twentyten"><img alt="Freetronics TwentyTen" src="/sb_cache/news/id/51/f/twenty-ten-480.jpg" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; width: 480px; height: 380px; " /></a> The basic philosophy we followed when designing the TwentyTen (which is named in homage to the Arduino Duemilanove, which means "2009" in Italian) was that we wanted to stay true to the original spirit of the Duemilanove while fixing a few things that bugged us about it. Our little thought-experiment was "what would we want the successor to the Duemilanove to look like?" I could write a heap more about it, but it's already well written up on the Freetronics site so please check it out there! <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/twentyten">www.freetronics.com/twentyten</a> Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:28:46 +1000 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:28:46 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/751 Talking Poker Timer Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> Practical Arduino reader Pat James has used the <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/speech-synthesizer">Speech Synthesizer</a> project in a creative way: he's linked it to a timer for tracking poker game rounds. He and his buddies have a weekly Texas Hold 'Em tournament with 20 minute limit per round, and they needed a way to keep track of how long each round has taken. <img alt="" src="/sb_cache/news/id/31/f/project-poker-timer.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 232px; " /> See more on <a href="http://www.patjames.com/Default.aspx?Page=PokerTimer">Pat's blog</a>. Mon, 31 May 2010 16:37:10 +1000 Mon, 31 May 2010 16:37:10 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/741 Weather Station Receiver shield now available from Freetronics Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> The Weather Station Receiver project has been crazy-popular, and now you can buy a pre-assembled 433MHz Receiver Shield from <a href="http://www.freetronics.com">Freetronics</a> so you don't even have to build the circuit yourself. Just plug it in, load the sketch into your Arduino, and away you go. Even better, the Freetronics version of the shield uses an RXB6 module instead of the RXB1 that we used in the original project. <img alt="" src="/sb_cache/news/id/11/f/RXB6.jpg" style="width: 315px; height: 138px; " /> The RXB6 is a multi-mode module with better sensitivity than the RXB1, and by loading different firmware it can operate in different ways. The Freetronics shields are fitted with an RXB6 running on firmware that makes it behave in the same way as an RXB1 so it remains fully compatible with the original design while giving the advantage of greater sensitivity. Check them out: <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/433mhz-receiver">Freetronics 433MHz Receiver Shield for Arduino</a>. Tue, 04 May 2010 21:55:34 +1000 Tue, 04 May 2010 21:55:34 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/731 Modelling river systems with Arduino water flow gauge Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> Yet another spin-off I could never have predicted is a group in Illinois who have used the <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/water-flow-gauge">water flow gauge project</a> in a river-system simulator. This is uber-cool: <img src="http://www.practicalarduino.com/pics/emriver-table.jpg" /> As Steve Gough mentions in the blog post "<a href="http://lrrd.blogspot.com/2010/04/open-source-science-tools-at-lrrd.html">Open source science tools at LLRD</a>", river simulators normally require use of US$600 flow gauges and being able to do the same thing for about $75 with an Arduino and a few other parts is a big deal. Check out their excellent work at <a href="http://emriver.com/">emriver.com</a>.  Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:57:24 +1000 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:57:24 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/721 Joystick shield for Arduino MAME controller Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> I have a Google Alert set on the term "Practical Arduino", and it often finds me very cool things that people have done using projects described in the book. One of those tidbits was this: <a href="http://batchpcb.com/index.php/Products/31584">batchpcb.com/index.php/Products/31584</a> I don't know anything much about it other than what's shown on that page, but from what I can deduce it's the circuit from the <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/virtual-usb-keyboard">Virtual USB Keyboard</a> project converted into a nice PCB with a bunch of buttons included for controlling games running under the arcade machine emulator <a href="http://mamedev.org/">MAME</a>. I love seeing stuff like this, so if you've created anything based on things you've learnt from Practical Arduino please <a href="mailto:jon@oxer.com.au">send me an email</a> and tell me all about it!  Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:26:49 +1000 Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:26:49 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/711 Weather Station Receiver project modified for La Crosse TX4U Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> When whittling down the list of projects for <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/">Practical Arduino</a> I never expected the <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/weather-station-receiver">Weather Station Receiver</a> project to be one that gained so much attention. To be honest I was dubious about whether enough people would build it to justify its inclusion, but felt that even if it wasn't built very often it was still worthwhile as an example of how to do signal timing analysis and bitstream decoding. I'm glad we put it in, because it seems to be one of the more popular projects! Reader Kelsey Jordahl contacted me yesterday with details of a modified version that reads data from a La Crosse TX4U system, using the circuit from Practical Arduino but with modified software to deal with the different data format. <img src="http://www.practicalarduino.com/pics/wsr-kelsey-ardweather.jpg" /> Kelsey's system logs the data and generates nice-looking graphs that are displayed online. For more information (including the modified source code) check out: <a href="http://mysite.verizon.net/kajordahl/weather.html">mysite.verizon.net/kajordahl/weather.html</a> <a href="http://mysite.verizon.net/kajordahl/weather/weather.html">mysite.verizon.net/kajordahl/weather/weather.html</a> Oh yeah, and this is probably a good time to mention that <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/">Freetronics</a> is now stocking fully pre-assembled Arduino shields for the Weather Station Receiver project. The very first one was sold and shipped to a reader in Queensland, Australia, yesterday morning. <img src="http://www.practicalarduino.com/pics/SH433RX.jpg" /> The shield implements exactly the same circuit as shown in Practical Arduino, but with a dedicated PCB design rather than using a protoshield. There's more info on the <a href="http://www.freetronics.com/products/433mhz-receiver-shield">433MHz Receiver Shield for Arduino</a> page at the Freetronics site.  Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:34:53 +1000 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:34:53 +1000 http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/701 Arduino shield standards Posted by <a href="http://jon.oxer.com.au/">Jonathan Oxer</a> A few weeks ago I wrote about Andrew Oke's efforts at <a href="http://www.practicalarduino.com/news/id/661">standardizing comms for Arduino shields</a>, which many people have since told me is a great idea. Andrew has now written up his guidelines and put it up on his website, so if you're doing any shield design I highly recommend you check it out: <a href="http://www.diy-labs.com/node/69">Arduino Shield Design Standards</a> Andrew's guidelines are oriented around making sure shields are stackable by keeping them physically low and also using comms that don't make shields mutually exclusive. I've written in the past (and ranted a bit in video blogs) about other rules I think all shield designers should observe, such as marking pin use on the overlay. Hopefully we'll see more shields start to observe these sorts of Best Practice guidelines - many already do, but an awful lot don't. Including many of my early attempts, but at least I'm getting better!