When you make a project using an Arduino board, you often need a case to attach the Arduino onto your project. This small project is my first attempt to make such a case that can be adapted to all my projects. To make it parametric I am using the OpenScad application. OpenScad is an...
Arduino Motor Controller Using an L293D Chip
Controlling DC motors is at the heart of many robotic projects. Servo motors are sexy but DC motors are cheap and a lot more useful to control wheel based robots. In this article I’ll display a “robot shield” circuit that allows you to use cheap motors to drive your robot. Wiring This shield has been built...
Wireless Arduino/XBee Game Controller
For this project, I keep the same controller as in the previous post but, instead of controlling a servo motor through a second Arduino, I will use it as a game controller. The game will be played on my desktop computer. Since I am not very good at writing games, I downloaded the PyGame...
A simple Arduino Task Scheduler (video)
I uploaded a new video to demonstrate the task scheduler in action. In this example I am driving two servo motors, two LEDs and a print-out to the serial port. You will find more details on how to use the task scheduler on my previous post. The code is available for download from my...
A Simple Arduino Task Scheduler (1)
My motivation to write a task scheduler framework is to help me faster develop new Arduino projects. In most projects, we repeat the same tasks over and over before getting to play with the new stuff. You can jump into the code right now by downloading it from my github account at: https://github.com/pchretien/scheduler. ITask...
Wireless Arduino/XBee Remote Control with Compass and Accelerometer
A few weeks ago we played with XBee wireless devices. Last week we played with accelerometers and compass. This week we will put it all together in a custom remote control. Our first project will be to remotely control a servo motor by using two Arduinos and two XBee modules. The remote control (transmitter) should be...
Build a Custom Arduino Clone (Part 3) – Add a Compass
This post is the last part of this series of articles (part1, part2) showing how to build a project using a custom Arduino board. To the accelerometer I added a compass. It begins to look more like a forest than an electronic circuit. The compass uses the IC2 protocol to communicate with the Arduino...
Arduino LED Matrix – Video
A short video to show the Arduino LED Matrix project in action....
Build an Arduino Clone (Part 2) – 3 Axis Accelerometer
I just received a adxl335 triple axis accelerometer breakout board from sparkfun.com. I decided to test it on my custom Arduino board. Make sure, while wiring the accelerometer, to respect the maximum voltage of the device. This specific accelerometer accept a maximum voltage of 3.3v. You can get 3.3v from the Atmega328 Avcc pin #20....
LED Matrix and Arduino
Light Emitting Diodes (LED) are everywhere. There is a good reason for that, we love them! Most of us are using LEDs to communicate information, debug our code or simply add some style to our electronic projects. One of the first things one normally want to do is pack a bunch of LED to...