Difficulty: Difficult. My older son recently started school and needed his own desk for doing homework. I wanted to make something nicer than a simple tabletop with legs, and realized that I could also build in a bit of fun for when the homework is finished. Both my boys and I still had space travel on our minds from our summer trip to Kennedy Space Center. For this desk project, I decided to go with a NASA theme. I researched the Apollo Program as well as NASA's Mission Control Center, and designed my own console roughly based on those. I say "roughly" because the actual Mission Control does more monitoring than controlling, and isn't awash in the whiz-bang rocket noises young kids appreciate. The desk resides under my son's loft bed (which I also built), and stays closed until the homework is finished: When playtime begins, the lid flips up to reveal the Mission Control console: As I mentioned in the video, I painted the underside of the lid with magnetic primer.
Difficulty: Moderate. My older son recently started school and needed his own desk for doing homework. I wanted to make something nicer than a simple tabletop with legs, and realized that I could also build in a bit of fun for when the homework is finished. Both my boys and I still had space travel on our minds from our summer trip to Kennedy Space Center. For this desk project, I decided to go with a NASA theme. I researched the Apollo Program as well as NASA's Mission Control Center, and designed my own console roughly based on those. I say "roughly" because the actual Mission Control does more monitoring than controlling, and isn't awash in the whiz-bang rocket noises young kids appreciate. I took great liberties and made more of a "space-themed" play console than an accurate simulator. My goal was simply to provide some extra ideas and sound effects for my two sons to play "space" together.
The desk resides under my son's loft bed (which I also built), and stays closed until the homework is finished: Difficulty: Easy. My older son recently started school and needed his own desk for doing homework. I wanted to make something nicer than a simple tabletop with legs, and realized that I could also build in a bit of fun for when the homework is finished. Both my boys and I still had space travel on our minds from our summer trip to Kennedy Space Center. For this desk project, I decided to go with a NASA theme.
I researched the Apollo Program as well as NASA's Mission Control Center, and designed my own console roughly based on those. I say "roughly" because the actual Mission Control does more monitoring than controlling, and isn't awash in the whiz-bang rocket noises young kids appreciate. I took great liberties and made more of a "space-themed" play console than an accurate simulator. The desk resides under my son's loft bed (which I also built), and stays closed until the homework is finished: When playtime begins, the lid flips up to reveal the Mission Control console: Control a Servo with a Force-Sensitive Resistor. Aquaponics – Online Temperature and Humidity. This project is a part of the Arduino Data Acquisition and Control System described in the upcoming book Automating Aquaponics with Arduino.
You can see a live version of this tutorial here: While this project is designed with aquaponics in mind, it does not require an aquaponic system, making it useful for other projects such as home automation. The included application is, therefore, bare-bones, making it easier to integrate into any other App Engine project. How It Works Every sixty seconds, the Arduino will test its connection to App Engine. On startup, the web browser (client) will create a temperature and humidity gauge with values at zero.
Software Versions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Update I removed the dependency on the Timer library – it simply wasn’t needed for this application. The Arduino code has been updated. For whatever reason, the Arduino fails to connect on the third HTMLRequest. Finally, I have the serial output on by default. RGB Liquid Crystal Display Tutorial. Step #2: PrevNext Now we will prepare everything to start connecting to the Arduino. Insert the display into the breadboard with the pot next to it. Then connect 5V and GND to the breadboard rails as I have done. Good. Step #5: Connect pin 15 to 5V and then connect either pin 16, 17, or 18 to GND depending on what color you want for your backlight.
Step #8: Now you have connected the display to the Arduino. Step #9: If you got everything right, this is how it should look. Charlieplexing LEDs with an AVR ATmega328 (or Arduino) Charlieplexing is an ingenius method for controlling many LEDs without using many microcontroller pins. You can turn on or off one LED at a time. To light more than one LED at a time, you can scan the LEDs by turning a sequence of them on and off really fast. The number of LEDs you can control is determined by this formula: N pins * (N pins – 1). For example, if you have 4 pins, you can control 12 LEDs (4 pins * 3 pins).
If you have 2 pins, you can control two LEDs, which makes it a little silly to employ Charlieplexing, since you could simply connect each LED to an MCU pin and then to ground. Here is an ATmega328 on a custom PCB controlling 20 LEDs (the 21st is on its own pins) with just 5 pins: Charlieplexing takes advantage of the fact that LEDs are diodes: Current flows in only one direction through an LED. The ATmega328 pins can source upwards of 40 mA. In this project, we’ll set up a simple Charlieplexing circuit with 12 LEDs controlled by an Arduino that will look like this: Secret-Knock Gumball Machine. One of the best things about exhibiting at Maker Faire is giving attendees a challenge. For the 2010 Maker Faire Bay Area, I decided to combine a past project of mine, a door lock that opens only when you give a secret knock, with a standard crowd pleaser: candy.
The result was this Secret-Knock Gumball Machine, which tempted and tested the crowds at Maker Faire to guess the right rhythm and receive a treat. Since the knock was not terribly secret (I happily handed out hints), it distributed hundreds of gumballs over the event’s two days. The “secret” knock defaults to the famous “Shave and a Haircut” rhythm, but you can program custom knocks by simply pressing a button and knocking a new pattern. The machine only listens for the rhythm, not the tempo, so the correct knock will dispense a treat whether you perform it fast or slow.
Downloadable files MAKE: Amends.