If you’d like me to add your Arduino project(s), let me know via the contact form.

Link

There are lots of Arduino starter kits available, but none of them cover my specific starter needs. So I decided to pick one that more or less has the basic component set, and I filled it up with a few other components that I plan on using in the very near future.

First the obvious, I’ll need an Arduino board. For this sake I’ve chosen the Arduino Uno Rev 3 as that is the most popular board available. This way it will be compatible with most of the projects one can find on the internet. Recently the newer Leonardo has become available, and I’m pretty sure that this new board is better than the Uno, but it would also complicate things for a beginner like me.

The kit I chose was just one that was in stock It had already an Uno R3 in it, a breadboard and assorted jumpwires, some resistors, some extra LEDs, switches and a bunch of other commonly used components in electronics.

For my personal needs, I added some extra LEDs (you can never have enough LEDs), some 7-segment LED numeric diplays, a LDR, an IRDA LED, a temperature sensor. That should get me started. Now why does it always take so much time for delivery? I’m already waiting a whole day

This must be the coolest electronics project I’ve seen so far. This dude built a working cellphone using Arduino.

An exploration into the possibilities for individual construction and customization of the most ubiquitous of electronic devices, the cellphone. By creating and sharing open-source designs for the phone’s circuit board and case, we hope to encourage a proliferation of personalized and diverse mobile phones. Freed from the constraints of mass production, we plan to explore diverse materials, shapes, and functions. We hope that the project will help us explore and expand the limits of do-it-yourself (DIY) practice. How close can a homemade project come to the design of a cutting edge device? What are the economics of building a high-tech device in small quantities? Which parts are even available to individual consumers? What’s required for people to customize and build their own devices?

The source code, circuit design files (Eagle), and case design files (Inkscape) are hosted in thedamellis/cellphone repository on GitHub.

More on his Website

I just discovered something previously totally out of my reach. Single-board microcontroller programming/hardware building. In fact, originally I wanted to study electronics, but along the way ended up in software development.
Arduino is an open source hardware/software platform with a huge following. Their most popular microcontroller board is the Arduino Uno. Other platforms do exist, but arduino is the biggest one. Really, there are thousands of resources to be found on the interwebs about this little critter.
Basically it does this: you plug it in your computer, you write a program for it, upload it to the board and the board will take it from there. It will (when powered) execute your program automnomously. Of course, you’ll need to add some hardware to it in order to do something useful, like LEDs, motors, sensors, …

Open source hardware?
This means that you can look at the hardware design and build something similar based on it. There are many other boards based on the Arduino implementation.

What is so cool about the Arduino platform?

It’s open source, easy to start with, extremely cheap, versatile, has numerous of interfaces (you can connect anything electronic to it), expandable with shields, fast, easy to prototype, ….
One thing one cannot do (yet) is streaming video and the likes, however an arm-based version is in the works.
As a software developer, I think I may have a different point of view on this stuff than others do.
I already wanted to order one, but still waiting for the new ones that should be coming out soon.

Why Arduino?

I’ve looked at other platforms, but I chose this platform mainly because of the very big following (I think it’s the most poplular platform available today), and it’s relatively cheap. The only drawdown in my opion is the less powerfull platform. For example it will not do video streaming, doesn’t play high quality music. Actually it can play high quality music, or stream internet radio, but only using a mp3 shield. Because of this huge following, you can find many examples how to interface with other hardware.
This being said, I firmly belief that the current version packs plenty power for the most electronics projects. Plus, the new Arduino Due is around the corner (besides the cheaper less complex Leonardo) that is believed to have much more punch (ARM processor 32bit Cortex-M3 ARM running at 96MHz) than it’s predecessors.

Connectivity.
There are numerous electronic devices that can be connected to this board. Some directly, others via so-called shields. A shield is a specific function board that can easily be plugged on top of the main board. Some examples: wireless connections (wifi/bluetooth/RF/xBee/irDa…), (touch)screens, FM radio’s, ethernet, relays, … you can find an extensive list of shields here: http://shieldlist.org/
Note: multiple shields can be used together, if their connected pins are different.
Besides these shields, lots of simple devices can be connected almost directly to the main board : LED’s (using a resistor), a shipload of sensors, motors, …

Programming.
Programming happens in C++. Don’t let that scare you, it’s easier than you think. Plus there are a lot of libraries available that do the hard stuff for you. You write the program on your computer (Windows, Linux or OS/X) using the Arduino IDE, and when done transfer it via a standard usb cable to the board.

What’s next?
I will do some (hopefully a lot) small projects, beginning with some proof of concept projects, going to more useful projects, to finally end up in some bigger projects. (I plan to do my home automation project with this platform, eventually, but more on that later)
Imagine for a moment what awesome things one could create:
-domotics
-gps tracking/geofencing/…
-sensory networks
-robots
-monitoring
-remote control
-digital clocks
-thermometers
-funky led cubes
-controls stuff from the web
and whatever else your creative mind can come up with.

Some useful links.
Arduino.cc : the official home of arduino hardware and software
Freeduino : A lot of links to projects and examples
The wikipedia page
The biggest list of shields
Instructables projects
Makezine
Makezine projects
Tronixstuff

I hope this gives a first impression of the platform.

More later…

That’s right, it’s not iPad 3 but Apple calls it The new iPad. It has 2048 by 1536 pixels retina display, which is very very sharp, 4G connectivity, an A5X processor dual core CPU, quad core graphics GPU, 5mp back camera. All with the same battery life of 10 hours, same price as the iPad 2.

All in all a very nice upgrade if you’re in the market for a new tablet.

Pricing for The new iPad remains the same as when the iPad 2 launched. Expect to pay $499, $599 and $699 for a 16GB, 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi only model, respectively. Wi-Fi + 4G variants will set you back $629, $729 and $829 for the same capacities. Pre-orders are being accepted now with availability starting March 16. A huge international rollout will take place on March 23.

If you’re getting tired of playing Angry Birds, this might make the game a little bit interesting. The hack makes it a real sport! Ford was inspired by a demo on how easy it is to make USB peripherals.

The slingshot is hand-made. It contains several sensors to make the magic happen.

This is how it works:

With a real slingshot, you tilt the slingshot and stretch sling. The idea to measure these was using:

• An accelerometer – this can measure the tilt by tracking the gravity vector (which way is down!)
• A rubber stretch sensor – this can be used as the sling, and measure how much it is stretched

That is the input, but to play Angry Birds, you actually click on the bird, then drag to the launch angle and strength you want, then release. This means we have to translate the real slingshot movements in to a series of different mouse movements.

For those interested, more info can be found on the mbed website. Or mayby you can even build one yourself?

After six years, the credit-card sized computer Raspberry pi can be pre-ordered from now on at either Premier Farnell or RS Components.

It appears that the demand is so high that the first batch was already sold out within an hour. So what makes this little critter so special?

First of all, it’s only $35 (without shipping) for a very small computer. It features an ARM11 processor, 256MB of RAM, 2 USB ports, a LAN port, an SD card slot, audio-out and HDMI-out. It’s capable of running an Ubuntu install or a version of Xbox Media Center, but nothing comes per-installed so you’ll be spending some time at a command line. It can even run Quake III, and stream video via airplay.

Due to high demand the website is changed to a static version. For the latest updates, you can follow their twitter page.

As expected Apple is doing the new iPad launch on March 7th at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and is scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern.

Also rumoured is a new Apple tv release at the same event.

Finally the iPad will have a decent resolution so small letters will be finally much more readable. At least I hope so

Retina quad core anyone?

• Convertible PCs and Tablet PCs must have a screen resolution of 1366 x 768. Apart from that the machines should have the property of 5 point multi-touch.
• Those x86 machines should have a resume in less than 2 sec. It is interesting that this resume time perimeter is not built in to ARM-based Win8 PCs.
• All these machines should have a fair collection of sensors plus a digital compass, gyroscope, ambient light and 3-axis accelerometer.
•  Five software specified hardware buttons like rotation clock, power, volume up and down and windows key should be included. The final button’s diameter must be of at least 10.5 mm but there is a choice for manufacturers to make it in various shapes like square, circular or any shape they would like.
• Microsoft technology is definitely moving towards something innovative for the usability of latest hardware, something that can mainly be improved than the short-ranged Wireless tech’s array.
• Win8 Pc should have some kind of warning printed on the manufactured item to show where the NFC contact point is built.
• The new PCs for Win8 must have at least 10 GB of drive capacity free to support the new feature of no-reboot graphic driver’s installation.
• CTRL+ALT+DEL is converted into pressing WIN key and power button concurrently for restarting and joining a domain.
• Webcams must be of 720 p and Direct 3D 10 devices graphics are compulsory along with WDDM 1.2 drivers

The initial Win8 Tablets are expectedly coming in second half of year 2012.

Via Voicable