Arduino Solar Cell-Based Detector

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*Proof of Concept Warning*-*Proof of Concept Warning*-*Proof of Concept Warning*

Mission: Utilize a solar cell to vary the intensity of an LED

Supplies: Arduino Duemilanove <--> USB <--> Notebook (Linux, por supuesto)
Breadboard, Jumper Wires, Make-shift Jumper Wires (spare resisters), LEDs, Solar Cell

Setup: Here it is

work at work

I herd you like to work, I set you up so you can work at work

The setup is pretty straight forward: Read analog, write digital. The primary hurdle was figuring out the initialization step. Basically, I needed to provide a time-frame where you can read in minimum / maximum values from the cell. The LEDs in the awesome video below show the results… v

This project is full of take-off ideas. Reverse the range on the LED outputs, and you have a setup that powers up a light as the ambient light levels fall. Motion detector…you bet. You could implement a setup to run the initialization cycle at intervals, to provide a real-time average light level, and check for a delta of some size. Boom. There you go.

I’ll clean up the code, use some real jumpers, horse around with things in general, and throw up a post. With a snippet. Check back.

Solar Cell Teaser

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+1 doing Arduino proofs of concept at work on lunch break

solar-y

+1 capaciters as jumpers

I packed a solar cell and a little breadboard to work today…put together a little sketch together over my lunch break to control LED brightness with solar cell analog readings.

I shot a little vid that I will toss on YouTube. Expect a full write-up soon. You suckers might even get a snippet…

Let’s Talk Toner

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Where do you buy your toner? From a brick and mortar toner store? Get with the times…

toner

wait, what?

As with pretty much anything tech-based, the only practical way to buy toner cartridges these days is to buy them online. Not only do you save yourself a trip to the store, but a little shopping around will get you a far better price than heading down to the neighbourhood Staples to grab some toner.

Toner Tips

For the best toner selection, shop online
For the best toner price, shop online
For the best toner time savings, shop online

If I would have heeded my own advice, I would not be writing toner articles to keep the lights on. But, lo and behold, I am. For the loss.

Regardless, hit that hyperlink and buy some toner. When all things are said and done, it is, in fact, far cheaper to buy this stuff online than in a store. It is the same racket as HDMI cables…fairly certain that a 8-foot HDMI doesn’t cost thirty bucks to produce. But, I digress…

Woops

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Nuked that LED from space…

blown led

and boom goes the dynamite

In my ongoing fight with my Ethernet Shield, I had a bright idea that the sucker might have some bad jumpers. Welp, I put together a little blinking LED code and let it rip…which worked. I then tried to run the LED through the 3V lead…but…plugged the bastard into the 5V slot.

Fire and brimstone. Long story short, the board is getting power, the jumpers are fine, and that sweet clear LED is toast.

Network Admin Fail

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I haven’t had much to publish as of late. Not for lack of trying; I have been quiet because of a damned roadblock. I figured I could smash my way through a few MAC/IP settings, and have my Ethernet Shield doing all sorts of cool stuff with my Arduino. I was sorely mistaken.

This afternoon, I took another stab at the thing. Even after attempting to put together a cross-over setup…I still cannot telnet to my goddamned card. I don’t know how many arp and ifconfig commands I have sent, but it has to be in the triple digits. To no avail.

Looks like it is back to network 101 for this guy. Son of a bitch. We’re going manual. On the bright side, I worked inside today…

pledge

+1 counter-height table

Bonus Pledge, courtesy of Katie.

For what it is worth, I found a few commands that don’t seem to work on the command line…

arp -a

command not found

I think I will pack this thing to work and tackle it on my lunch breaks. Enough is enough.

Home Security Chat

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When I think security system, my brain immediately jumps to a webcam. More specifically, a webcam and a couple of servo motors. Most specifically, a webcam, a couple of servo motors, and a slick web interface with which to drive said servos and see a live stream of said webcam.

I’m getting closer to making that a reality. Bear with me.

Here is the 20,000 dollar question: what happens when I see something awry?

freeze

*~freezing~*

I could take and save footage all day, but then what? I’ll assume that everyone has seen advertisements for ADT…they have the missing piece in the puzzle I laid out. Monitored alarm system…I can throw together a system to capture, but do not have the time to do the monitoring. I think I would sleep better, having someone on the other end of the line. ADT is, without a doubt, the best to have on the other end.

I would love to spend some time with one of their systems…they have a lot going on. Pet insensitive sensors? Yep. How do they do that? Must be one hell of an algorithm that goes into that infra-red sensor. Positioning and triggering would be very cool to tear into. Wireless keypads…ditto. Not sure how they keep that secure.

I’ll wrap this up. Check into home security, for sure, and more specifically into ADT. Go with the best.

Android GPS Test

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As I type this, there are over thirty satellites blasting around geo-sync orbits transmitting GPS data. As luck has it, my battery-ass-draining phone has a receiver built-in GPS receiver, of which now I am a master.

Not really, but I can read the info…

screenshot

Boring, FTL

Location, time, velocity, etc. Not sure how to tune this yet, as the above was done via an emulator. Since my Studio 15 doesn’t exactly (read: at all) have a GPS receiver or accelerometer, I’m working somewhat blindly. I did have some luck when I dropped my app on the Droid 2…

hmm

'Lab' is too cold, FTL

…but that screen cap does a better job of showing the MLB Network reflection than the info on the screen. Sweet Lou should be in the top ten list of managers, FWIW. Glad he could make an appearance.

Back to the GPS stuff. Cross referencing the data that I managed to pull in from the SDK library info, I was able to verify that the elevation was fairly accurate (w/in a hundred yards of Bozo Wikipedia listing) and the latitude / longitude was functioning well to several yards accuracy, relatively speaking. Not too bad.

The next step would be to figure out how to put this to use. A ballistics chart would be pretty cool (read, profitable) if the elevation info could be read in automatically along with weather conditions. I’m not really sure…this one was more of an exercise in reading sensors and tossing out output. The accelerometer is next…I’ll shoot to provide a better write-up at that point. Less bonus baseball footage…or far more bonus baseball footage. Stay tuned.

Arduino Proof of Concept Vid

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As promised, behold the much-anticipated footage of my Arduino AC Interface proof of concept. It was dark in my ‘lab,’ so the footage leaves something to be desired.

So, if anyone is in need of a strobe light, hit me up. I’m all over that.

Stay tuned…I am working on the web-side of the Android dev kit, so hopefully I will have another test coming soon. Ethernet shield, Android, Arduino, and 120V…I’m getting giddy.

Arduino AC Interface

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I finally got around to throwing out a little proof of concept with my new toy. I managed to utilize a PowerSwitch Tail to gain control of 120V AC with Arduino…and I did it without electrocuting myself. Not getting electrocuted, FTW.

Long story short, the PowerSwitch Tail is a simple switch. 120V AC in, and either 0V AC out or 120V AC out, with the later being the case when a 5V DC signal is introduced to the unit. Here is what it looks like…

switch tail is switchy

Activity: locate brass monkey

I used some jumper wires I had sitting around “the lab.” You can feed anything into that sucker; speaker wire would throw the switch. Moving on…

Well, it turns out that the Arduino loves to dump 5V signals…like it was made to do so. So, this switch setup is perfect for my microcontroller projects…whatever they may turn out. Anyhow, all you need to do is pick a digital out and ground from the Arduino board, and hooks it up. Hooks it up like this…

bonus url

shameless plug

One of the best things (most handy?) is that the IDE makes pushing code to the unit quick. Plug a USB cable in, crank out some code, and there you go.

hook up them shits

hook up them shits

Good news.
It’s MF-ing snippet time!

/*
Relay Switch proof o’ concept
*/

// Assign digital pin 12 for chatting

int ledPin = 12;

// Define setup method

void setup() {

// Define pin 12 as output

pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

// Define loop

void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // Switch on
delay(406); // wait
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // Switch off
delay(406); // wait
}

That is all there is to it…signal for a while, no signal for a while. 406 is a random value, chosen because I like the 406.

I plugged one of Katie’s lamps into the switch…which was plugged into my “lab” power strip.

tubetv

protip: use discarded tube TVs as experiment stations

Uploaded the code to the controller, and there you have it…

darkness was upon the face of the deep

darkness was upon the face of the deep

Survey says…

let there be light

let there be light, mofo

There it is. I shot a video, but YouTube puked during my upload. Not too upset, seeing as how it was just a video of a DIY strobe lamp. The cool part of this lies in the possibilities to extend upon the concept. Throw a web interface in the mix, and you can have a web-controlled lamp. Replace the lamp with something more useful, and you get the point.

EDIT: 1/24

I uploaded the video I snapped to YouTube…here is a hard-link, and I’ll toss the vid in a post shortly. I think I need to enable video embedding, but if you really have a hankering to watch the thing, knock yourself out.

Just…About…Published…

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Getting close to having my live wallpaper on the Android Market. I’ve hammered down the image, polished up the cube, tested the app on several emulators, and optimized the rotaion rate. More importantly, I haven’t drop kicked my notebook or tossed my Droid 2 out the door. I’m going to chalk this one up as a…
+1 probably the best Android App developer I know of.
For the win. I don’t know any other Android app developers, but I’m still giving this a big For the win.

Here is a sneak peak of said wallpaper:

new cube

-1 no animated gif

Not too shabby, huh? I’ll figure out how to sign the cert tomorrow, and see if I can get an account started with Google. Stay tuned, Android folk. I’m going to offer this for free.99, so you all better fire this up on your mobiles and report some bugs.

Stay tuned.