Category: Arduino

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Python Teaser

After a deal of success with the command line interface-to-Arduino project, I am in the middle of stepping it up a notch. I ended up on a few blogs due to that last effort, which indicates that I am doing something worthy of note. Hats off to me, perhaps. Well, my tool belt is what it is…if I can’t do it via shell scripting, I reach next for Python. In an attempt to parse stuff that I have been ‘getting’ via wget, I found myself trying to do some clunky regex from the command line. Guess what…I can do that without as much heartache via Python via BeautifulSoup…

beautiful soup
so...beautiful

Thus far, I have python doing the website getting and Beautiful Soup doing the parsing of my site…basically just grabbing some info at this point that I can modify. I have my LCD driven via my trusty Arduino, and that is that. Instead of redirecting standard out to serial, I am writing to serial via python. Easy breezy.

I have some sloppy sloppy code at this point, and need to add some hardware and stuffs to my prototype. Stay tuned…this could be a good one.

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Command Line LCD Arduino Interface

Liquid crystal displays are pretty awesome. Command line interfaces are very awesome. Hmm…

I started daydreaming at work about how to go about making hardware interface with an RSS feed. I have seen some projects that use Arduinos with ethernet shields to check Twitter, for example, but they seem unnecessarily bulky. Or clumsy. I spend a lot of time working on the command line, and love to put together dirty little scripts to solve problems. It sort of goes along the lines of ‘when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’…I figured that the same thing could be implemented with a little shell scripting and my trusty Arduino, sans anything complicated.

So far, so good.

bad lab mobile
bad lab mobile

I put together a sketch (after the bump) to drive my LCD, writing serial output to the screen. After verifying that the sketch worked via the Arduino IDE’s serial monitor, I popped open a CLI and got to work. FWIW, I am using Ubuntu 11.04 still…ctrl-alt-t pops open a terminal window…unity has me all over shortcuts these days. Anyhow, I was able to verify that I could echo text and direct it to the USB port that the Arduino was mounted to. No sweat.

As a proof of concept, I decided to display the number of times that I had the word “awesome” on swantron.com. Once the LCD was shown to work, the sky is the limit…see some regex, pipes, wget, and so forth in action:

CLI
CLI FTW

Survey says:

+1 awesome
+11 awesome

Eleven “awesome”s. Awesome.
(Hit the bump for some code, an oddity, and more fun…)
Continue reading “Command Line LCD Arduino Interface”

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Easy LCD Arduino Display

I am tired of looking at wobbly windows full of Eclipse. The best and worst part of the IOIO board is the fact that the libraries are Java-centric…unfortunately, I am in the middle of a ‘worst’ phase. I am sort of stalemated. Unfortunately, my issue lies in something that should be trivial, namely naming. Once I can figure out how to orient the crap out of these object-ass pins, I will be good to go. Until then…I am going back to the basics. Processing looks so safe and warm. Coziness, for the win.

How about a 20 by 4 LCD project? Okay.

easy blue LCD arduino +1 easy
+1 blue

I have had this sitting on the workbench of bad lab for a while. Time to get after it.

The unit came assembled, minus the jumpers I needed to plug this into my breadboard for prototyping. Coincidentally, my soldering station needed to come out of retirement. Sixteen pins…sounds about perfect.

(hit the bump for several more pics, a snippet, and some other awesome stuff) Continue reading “Easy LCD Arduino Display”

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Projects in Flight

I have two projects running right now…both are really grinding my gears. Colloquially speaking. You know what? That is a stupid term. Scratch that.

I have two problems that I am trying to solve. Number one: figure out how to assign a dynamic IP address to my ethernet setup for the Arduino

enet
my bane

Getting old. I need to figure this out in a hurry, as it will open up a whole range of project possibilities. I have been tempted to throw in the towel on this thing and go at it through the Android, but think I need to grind through this on principle. We’ll give it another few hours.

Project two involves an image recognition algorithm. I am trying to port a Windows/Matlab proof of concept over to Debial/Octave. This has been my real time-suck…having issues with libraries. I’ll likely dump several more lunch hours into this guy…could be very cool if I can get it running. Pics once I get something aside from a command line to post.

Stay tuned.

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DIY Minority Report

Spoiler1: This is awesome.
Spoiler2: I’ve never seen Minority Report.

I do know that there is some sort of hands free interface, and that is what I have put together.

minority report
+1 dizzy

Long story short, I have extended upon my PING))) project to include some sweet touchless home automation. I have the ultrasonic sensor interfacing with my garage door and a lamp, utilizing a servo and a PowerSwitch Tail, respectively.

Hit the bump for an awesome video of this thing in action, and for my spippet.

Continue reading “DIY Minority Report”

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Garage Door Hack

Introducing Open-er-o-matic 3000. OOM3K. My finest project to date. I have my Arduino poking around with a PING))) sensor, a servo, some LEDs, and best of all…my garage door opener. End result: some Star Trek-ass shit.

hit the vid
Ronco alert

Check this footage of the OOM3K in action. Here, I had it configured to open the door when the ultrasonic sensor echoes off of something within 8 cm…

After the bump, of course

Continue reading “Garage Door Hack”

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Driving Multiple LEDs with an Arduino

I have had a bunch of white LEDs in my Amazon shopping cart for quite some time. I was tossing around the idea of doing a 5×5 cube a while ago, but ran out of steam on that project. I blame the PowerSwitch Tail…I had relays on the brain, big time. Still drafting out my big project on that front; stay tuned for some sweet garage door action. I rarely find my self with two projects in flight, that may actually turn into something, but I just might have stumbled back into the LED arena.

Long story short, I had my Arduino, Mini 9, some white LEDs, and exactly seven jumper wires in my backpack. I stepped upstairs at work for lunch, and decided to horse around with them…see what it takes to run multiple LEDs. Seems basic, and it is. Fortunately…

Here is he setup…

six shooter
not much to it

I put together a little sketch. I managed to grab the time-stamp notion from this sketch that is included with the IDE, and run with the rest of it. There will be snippet, but snippet will follow A SWEET VIDEO FTW

Video / snippet / wrap-up after the bump
Continue reading “Driving Multiple LEDs with an Arduino”