Arduino Projects
The arduino is a neat little board which is designed with the hobbyist in mind, and it works off of some Atmel microcontrollers. The arduino main page describes the arduino as follows:
“Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.”
One benefit of arduino is its ease of use. The version which is possibly the most frequently used is one which combines a microcontroller with USB. Additionally the microcontroller has a “bootloader” which allows it to be programmed without any extra hardware. Typically microcontrollers require the use of an external programmer to write new programs to the chip.
Also related to this project is the freeduino with less strict open-source licensing on the hardware.
Since I bought my first arduino in late 2006, I’ve set out to interface a number of things to the device to accomplish various tasks. Here are a few of the projects I have worked on:
DS18x20 on Arduino / Wiring / Atmel AVR – One-wire digital temperature sensors
Switchboard – Accessibility tool for having user-defined functions controlled by external switches
Bluetooth – Connecting an Arduino wirelessly to a PC using a BlueSMiRF bluetooth modem
Remote bluetooth temperature / humidity sensor – combining past projects into one.
Cheap 400MHz RF Links on Arduino – Using ASK / FSK / OOK and encoding schemes such as manchester code to send & receive data wirelessly without external encoder/decoders