This here is the exotic scandinavian straw-spined porkypine. During the mating season, it illuminates into a magical rainbow, so as to attract other boarduinos
Controlling so many RGB leds is quite a challenge, especially without hardware support!
Read more about it at the ladyada.net forums…
Want your Arduino to check email? How about sending a twitter (which can then be easily forwarded to a phone via SMS)? Or grabbing data from a website? There are so many possibilites for projects that connect to the Internet to get data, now there’s an easy way to do it with an Arduino.
This shield allows you to add and use an XPort or XPort direct(+) Ethernet module (they cost only US$30-$50) using any 4 pins. All of the TCP/IP stack awfulness is done for you in the module so its super easy to just connect to any server.
Specifications
Read all the info on the website,
check out some of the example code, and buy the kit from the shop.
Arduino is a great starting point for electronics, and with a motor shield it can also be a nice tidy platform for robotics and mechatronics. Here is a design for a full-featured motor shield that will be able to power many simple to medium-complexity projects.
This is a totally awesome laser harp project, make by Stephen Hobley using a Boarduino!
Ask nicely and maybe he’ll post up details on how he did it!
So I got my new boarduino design in (with built-in USB!) and I have to test it so why not put it thru its paces with a BlinkM? Why not indeed!
Wiring it up to a boarduino is not as easy as simply plug&play as with an Arduino, so you’ll need a few wires. Still its very straightforward!
when you power it up it will immediately start doing its thing which is fading thru some nice colors
But the real fun is programming it…upload the Arduino Communicator sketch and then run the blink Sequencer on your computer. Connect and then select which colors to display
2 years ago when I worked on Duel Nature, I made a table of data that approximates a heartbeat. I couldnt quite duplicate it directly because the loop time is 3 seconds not 1 second, but I didn’t do too bad. Here it is in ‘autoplay’ mode with the heartbeat script. Sadly it doesnt seem like you can save the script to share it.
Add a coin cell, and you’ve got a ValenThrowieM (Valentine LED Throwie M)!
Next I wanted to experiment with talking to the BlinkM over i2c. I decided to make a little temperature display. When its cold, the LED turns blue, when its hot it turns red. For the sensor I simply used a LM34 which is super simple: just give it 5V and ground and the middle pin will be at +10mV/degF. So 68 degrees is 680mV.
I used a little heatshrink to protect the wires:
Then wrote a sketch to tell the LED to change color, here it is at room temperature (65deg, its cold in here)
Squeezing the sensor brings up the temp a bit, to maybe 85 degrees, a little pinker
Then some icey water (its in a plastic bag to protect both the sensor and my drink!)
and some hot tea
The final analysis?
The BlinkM worked well and is a nifty little thing, the Sequencer software could be improved (can’t save scripts, cant adjust loopspeed, clicking on a ‘frame’ doesnt display the RGB value…) but its impressive that theres any software at all. It seems like the real control comes from sending it direct i2c commands, so one would have to write a custom Arduino sketch to make it do what you want. (Or, probably better yet, a python script that talks to the Arduino communicator since at least then you’re not uploading sketches) While its not the right thing for people who want to make 100-LED blinky projects (since its ~$12 each), its probably a good accessory for someone with an Arduino who just needs a few lights for a standalone project. I could see them being popular as integrated into wearables/fashion technology. They’re hella bright too!
ps. I’d like to see someone show how to control them directly using a motherboard i2c port such as the ones that have temp (and sometimes IR) sensors.
Awesome-pants Joe Grand designed the Parallax RFID reader, an easy way to add RFID reading to any electronics project. Maybe you want to plug it into a project with your Boarduino? Well, Johannes Otto did, and it works great!
Check out his flickr photoset and then download the code from Erik Sjodin’s site. Now get spime’ing!
Fabien Royer has a strange project up his sleeve…
“What’s got 6 eyes, 6 fingers, 6 brains and plays Guitar Hero III? If you answered ‘The Beast’, you’re close. It’s actually the Guitar Hero ‘bot’ that I’ve been building around 6 Arduino cores (Boarduinos actually). It uses 6 photodiodes mounted on a LEGO rig to ’see’ the notes on the screen and drives a wireless XBOX 360 controller through a series of 6 Reed relays in real time. So how does it perform? Right now, with some quick and dirty code to decode and play the notes, it’s tuned to play Medium-difficulty songs with a hit ratio between 80% and 90%. The bot also controls ‘Star Power’ by itself when it’s charged enough. I have high hopes that with some more work, it will be able to handle Expert-level songs with good results. I’ll post a demo video of the bot playing GH 3 later this week. ”
it is like -19213 degrees outside, so i spent the day workin’ on my motor shield design and then had a MOTOR PARTY!
Here is a preview of the motor shield for Arduino that I’m workin’ on…it can drive 2 hobby servos as well as up to 2 steppers or 4 bidirectional DC motors.
servo_init();
servo1_enable();
servo2_enable();
motor_init();
stepper1_enable();
motor4_enable();
while(1) {
servo_setpos(1, -2000);
servo_setpos(2, -2000);
motor(4, FORWARD);
for (i=0; i< 250; i++) {
stepper(1, FORWARD, SINGLE);
motor_setspeed(4,i);
_delay_ms(5);
}
motor(4, BACKWARD);
servo_setpos(1, 2000);
servo_setpos(2, 2000);
for (i=0; i< 250; i++) {
stepper(1, BACKWARD, SINGLE);
motor_setspeed(4,i);
_delay_ms(5);
}
}
I’ve got some comments that the Boarduino kit is too wide and thus crowds out space on a breadboard…
Here’s an example of how to use 2 halfsized breadboards to make a nice workspace.
First, get 2 halfsized breadboards (this will work with fullsized ones too, of course, but itll be huge!)
Slice the backing of one of the power rails and pull it off
Snap together the two pieces
Plug in your boarduino, now you have tons of workspace!
You can peel off the backing and stick the breadboards (and extra rail) onto a piece of cardboard (or anything really) to give it more support.
Thinking about the Arducopter project I posted about yesterday, as well as the RepRap project…I thought how useful it would be to be able to wire up a Boarduino without any soldering or breadboard. Then I remembered the terminal blocks I used for MidiSense!
Terminal screw-blocks allow lightweight ultra-quick prototyping: just tighten the little screws to add or remove components! Use Phoenix brand 0.1″ terminal blocks, part 1725672 (4-position), 1725698 (6-position), 1725711 (8-position), 1725724 (9-position)
Here’s an example I soldered up. You cant use huge wires, but for most small projects with 20-ish gauge wire it should be just fine!
Here is a ’standalone’ light sensor (CdS cell, pullup resistor to Analog In 0, VRef tied to 5V)
