Latest in arduino

A while ago, I showed you how to setup an internet control system for your Arduino - but it had to stay connected to a computer through USB in order to maintain the internet connection. If you have an Ethernet shield though, that's not necessary Today we're going to look at setting up an Arduino as a basic webserver so we can host our own device control website.
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I love my Arduinos. At any point, I have quite a few projects on the go - prototyping is just so easy with them. But sometimes, I want to keep the project functional without buying another Arduino. Spending $30 each time for a fairly simple microcontroller than I only need some of the functionality for is just silly. It's at that point that building an Arduino clone becomes a viable option.
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Last time, I showed you a few ways of making your Arduino projects speech controlled via SiriProxy, OS X's built-in speakable items, and some Automator scripting, or even a dedicated voice recognition hardware chip. I left you with a quick demo of me turning on my lights, but didn't explain how I achieved that on the hardware side. Let's look today at how you can control high power devices - like your kettle, or some floor lamps.
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I'm really starting to love my Arduino lately; having gone through the basic tutorials and even made an LED cube, I was ready to tackle something far more complex. Fortunately, speech controlling an Arduino project really isn't as complex as I'd thought - so here are 3 distinctly different approaches you can take.
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You’ve bought an Arduino starter kit, you’ve followed all the basic guides, but now you’ve hit a stumbling block - you need more bits and bobs to realise your electronics dream. Luckily, if you have an Arduino board, you can simply stack functionality on top in the form of Shields. Shields are specifically designed for the Uno board to be the same shape and pin alignment; you simply plug them on, and you have instant upgrade of functionality.
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One accessory you'll no doubt be after is a remote shutter; this allows you to place the camera on a tripod or rest it somewhere and trigger the shutter without the chance of shake that can occur when just holding it, or to use for self portraits without a timer. Today I'll explain the magic of remote shutter releases, how to make one yourself, and how to extend this for high speed photography too.
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For the last few weeks, I handed over control of the mood lighting in my studio to viewers during the live broadcast of Technophilia Podcast - you can see the results of that in the recorded episode here. Today, I thought I will explain exactly how I accomplished that using a little JavaScript, Processing and an Arduino. The method I’ll outline does not require an Ethernet shield for your Arduino, and I’ll provide full code samples for you to also use.
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If you watch a lot of movies on your PC or media center, I'm sure you've faced the lighting dilemma; do you completely turn off all lights? Do you keep them on full blast? Or do you use a dimmer switch to keep a dull yellow glow somewhere? Well, suffer no more. For less than $100, you can set up an amazing lighting system that's going to reflect what's on-screen. Welcome to world of ambient RGB lighting.
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Has your Arduino been sitting around gathering dust? Well, no more. Today I’ve scoured Instructables to find 8 fun, family friendly, or just really cool Arduino projects for you to have a go at these Christmas holidays, inbetween the bouts of pies and brandy of course. If you’re stuck for Christmas ideas, an Arduino might be an ideal gift for children or the hacker in your life.
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Over the years I've organised some pretty awesome parties and even entire summer camps. I like to think I know how to throw a cool party, and technology always plays a part of that. Here's 6 essential bits of technology to MakeUseOf at your Halloween party!
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With food prices at a record high, chaotic weather systems destroying crops the world over, and no signs of population growth slowing down anytime soon - never has growing your own produce been more important than it is right now. So as city dwellers turn to mini-farming, technology is playing an increasingly important role in maximising crop yields from a small place. Today I’d like to highlight some of those great projects.
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Last week, I built an LED cube - 64 LEDs that you can program to make fantastic futuristic light shows - and I hope you did too, because it's a great project to motivate you and expand your Arduino skillset. I left you with a few basic apps to get you thinking, but today I'll be presenting a few more bits of software that I made for the cube, along with code explanations.
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If you’ve dabbled with some beginner Arduino projects, but are looking for something a little permanent and on a whole other level of awesome, then the humble 4 x 4 x 4 LED cube is a natural choice. Construction is far easier than you might think, and using a multiplexing we can control all the LEDs directly from just a single Arduino Uno board. It’s great soldering practice, and the total cost of components shouldn’t come to more than about $40.
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Today I’ll attempt to teach you a little bit about Shift Registers. These are a fairly important part of Arduino programming, basically because they expand the number of outputs you can use, in exchange for only 3 control pins. You can also daisy-chain shift registers together in order to get even more outputs. This is a significant jump in difficulty from previous tutorials.
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This is the next part in our learning Arduino series, and this time we’ll be learning about and using Arrays to make a little Christmas tree ornament with various flashing sequences. This would be an ideal project to keep the kids occupied if you'd like to teach them basic soldering - just mount the LEDs on a piece of card, and you can get power from a standard 9v battery.
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