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Simple Skillet Surface-mount Soldering

In this Instructable, I will cover how you can reflow solder surface mount components on single-sided circuit boards using an ordinary skillet and jus...

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DIY CNC Router Plans : How to Build

 by MakeItWithJason

Ever since I saw my first CNC, I knew I wanted to own one.  I'm a realist though, and I also knew that I wouldn't own a REAL $20,000 one.  So, on a whim this spring, I decided to design and build a homemade 3-axis Computer Numerical Controlled milling machine myself. I looked all over the web and decided to build one using drawer slides as my rails, an arduino as my microcontroller, and try to keep everything within the $300 mark.

Link:

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-CNC-Router-Plans-How-to-Build/?ALLSTEPS

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Analog VU meter and Clock (Arduino Powered)

 by tech-e

This project brings back the old time Analog VU Meter, with the added functionality of a neat looking clock! When you turn off your music the meters automatically swing into to clock mode. Behind it all is the popular and easy to use Arduino.

Link:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Analog-VU-meter-and-Clock-Arduino-Powered/?ALLSTEPS

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Have you ever wanted to impress your friends by saying something crazy like, I think there's going to be an earthquake soon moments before an earthq...

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How to measure dc current with a microcontroller?

Microcontrollers usually don’t have specific ports for measuring currents, but they do have ADC channels through which you can measure analog voltages of a certain range. This means a dc current can be indirectly measured by a microcontroller’s ADC channel by first converting the current into voltage.....

Link:

http://embedded-lab.com/blog/?p=1906

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A brief overview of Allegro ACS712 current sensor (Part 2)

  In the first part of this discussion, the features of ACS712 device were briefly discussed. Now we will use that theory to implement the ACS712 sensor to make a simple DC current meter. The analog output voltage from the sensor is measured through an ADC channel of the PIC16F1847 microcontroller. A voltage to current conversion equation will be derived and implemented in the firmware of the PIC microcontroller and the actual load current will be displayed on a character LCD....

Link: http://embedded-lab.com/blog/?p=4529

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A brief overview of Allegro ACS712 current sensor (Part 1)

Sensing and controlling current flow is a fundamental requirement in a wide variety of applications including, over-current protection circuits, battery chargers, switching mode power supplies, digital watt meters, programmable current sources, etc.....

Link:

http://embedded-lab.com/blog/?p=4469

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Back in 2003, I used to connect my computer on the my old 32′ TV, those huge and heavy TVs, to watch stuff from the internet, at that time, eMule was ruling the p2p community (can’t talk about USENET right? :} ). Then in 2008 I decided to build a better HTPC (Home Theater PC), a full dedicated computer connected to my TV, with good MotherBoard/VGA/SoundBoard, well, a good computer, with gaming capacities. It was good while it lasted, but you know, it was huge black box below my TV, bit noisy, but it did the job.

Link:

http://www.danielandrade.net/2011/08/29/diy-home-ubuntu-nas-server/

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During the First Meeting of Electronic Arts in Florianópolis, we built a Breathalyzer using the Alcohol Gas Sensor MQ-3 and a Arduino Board to use in the last day of the meeting, in which we gave a party. You can see a quick video two posts below. Last days I received many emails asking for the code or how to make one, so I decided to build the sensor again, take pictures/videos and make a tutorial showing how you can make one, so here it is. Link: http://www.danielandrade.net/2010/03/07/building-an-breathalyzer-with-mq-3-and-arduino/

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This page and linked pages detailed below document how to build whole house energy monitor that has a display for easy, quick access to current energy use information, usb datalogging for detailed long term data storage and Internet connectivity for online graphing.

Link:

http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/43

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The heart rate, also referred to as pulse rate, has been recognized as a vital sign since the beginning of medicine, and it is directly related to a person’s cadiovascular health. Today, we are going to make a PC-based heart rate monitor system using an Arduino board and Easy Pulse V1.1 sensor. Easy Pulse is a pulse detecting sensor that uses the principle of transmission photo-plethysmography (PPG) to sense the pulse signal from a finger tip. The sensor output is read by the Arduino board, which then transfers the data to the PC through a serial interface. A PC application is developed using Processing programming language to display the received PPG signal and instantaneous heart rate. Original post: http://embedded-lab.com/blog/?p=7485

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How to make an Arduino shield with Eagle CAD – Tutorial

There are many CAD developed to assist the electronic designers during drawing of PCBs and schematics; often they are integrated in complete suite to project, simulate and realize a whole electronic system. Besides the many commercial versions, there are also free CADs available. Today we'd like to analyze one of the most diffused and known software: Eaglecad (eagle does not mean the powerful bird but it is the acronym of Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor) made by Cadsoft, actually at version 6.2.0. We have chosen this one because, as you know as an Arduino's fan, the official pcbs and schematic files of the boards are developed and available free of charge to everybody in Eaglecad format; you can find also a lot of libraries and circuits made by famous DIY website (Sparkfun for first) available for free. Eaglecad is a professional software that have gained a lot of popularity due to the Arduino's success. One of the most important difference between [...]

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RTLSDR Scanner

Last year while developing Linux drivers for digital TV, Antti Palosaar noticed a hidden debug mode, which allowed you to sample relatively large chunks of radio spectrum.  Thanks to this the RTL-SDR library was born and Software Defined Radio was available on the cheap, after all these dongles tend to cost less than £20.

A little while ago I uploaded my contribution to this, a GUI called RTLSDR Scanner, to GitHub.

The software scans a range of frequencies and plots the result, allowing you to find signals to investigate.  The RTL dongle has a maximum bandwith of about 2.8MHz but with this you can scan the full range of the dongle, allowing you to see signals with ease.  For example the screen capture shows my local FM radio stations.

Once you've installed the RTL-SDR library the dependencies are a little more involved.  On Ubuntu 12 installing them is straight forward using the Software Centre, Windows is trickier and although I've had reports of it working on OSX I haven't had the chance to try it.

Each of these dongles is based around the  RTL-SDR library chipset which interfaces the computer via USB to a tuner chip.  Several tuners are available, I've tried a FC0012 and E4000, the latter was recommened but is now hard to find so the Rafael Micro R820T is the one to look for.  Details of compatible dongles are listed on this page.

Original post: http://www.eartoearoak.com/blog/rtlsdr-scanner

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Mediacenter with Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi, thanks to the Videocore 4 GPU integrated in the Broadcom BCM2835 chip, is perfect for a home mediacenter; the GPU is indeed capable to decode full HD videos. In this tutorial I'm going to explain how to install and use Raspbmc. What you need Your home mediacenter will be composed of: a Type B Raspberry Pi (you need ethernet&

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Interface Arduino to MySQL using Python

Here's a brief tutorial that should get you up and running interfacing your Adruino with a MySQL database. For the sake of this tutorial, I am assumin...