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Tutorial: Servos and Pots with the Arduino
Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
This great video shows you how easy it is to wire-up a potentiometer to an Arduino microcontroller board, read the resistance value, and then control a standard hobby servo in unison. The simple software reads the analog to digital converter to read the pot value and then does a simple calculation to arrive at the [...]
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GPS logger is super small and light
Posted on23. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
When you need to read and log a device’s location via GPS, things can get complicated very quickly. There’s arcane things needed like high frequency radio receivers, complicated triangulation calculations, and other thing generally beyond the ability (or desire) of someone just wanting to build a project. That’s why using a pre-made GPS module is [...]
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Add mp3 sound to your projects
Posted on16. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
If your project calls for producing sounds or even pre-recorded voices you will really like this module! If you were to try to design your own sound output circuit, you’d have to delve deeply into analog calculations and amplifier designs, which is definitely not “modular electronics”. However, this handy, inexpensive mp3 module lets you records [...]
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Project: Brewtroller system helps automate home brewing
Posted on14. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
The Brewtroller is a control system aimed at helping home brewers concoct the perfect batch of beer through the use of low cost automation and sensors. It’s based upon the Sanguino project (which is based upon the Arduino project) and melds a series of six sensors for the various temperatures to be measured, along with [...]
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Project: Arduino + Twitter = fresh baked goods
Posted on11. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
Here’s an interesting example of what you can do with interfacing the inexpensive, easy-to-use Arduino open-source microcontroller platform and the hottest social media platform right now. Everyone loves hot, fresh baked goods. Knowing this, a bakery in the UK went to their marketing firm looking for a way to build traffic to their business. Poke, [...]
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Tutorial: Using an accelerometer with the Arduino
Posted on08. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
This video tutorial shows you how easy it is to use the Memsic 2125 accelerometer module with an Arduino. The Memsic module is a very easy to use six pin, cost effective module that measures acceleration in both an X and Y direction. Each signal is output as a series of pulses on a dedicated [...]
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Phidgets add USB sensing and control to your computer
Posted on05. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
If you like to build projects using a regular computer as the main control center, whether it’s due to needing the processing power or that you are familiar with programming on the platform, you may feel left-out when you’re viewing the wide variety of electronics modules available. It seems that most pre-build electronics modules are [...]
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Cheap Xilinx FPGA experimentation board
Posted on02. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
Field Programmable Gate Arrays, or FPGAs, are high-speed chips which are filled with thousands of structures called logic blocks. These blocks allow you to build, using a specialized electronics programming language like Verilog or VHDL, a custom circuit on the chip to do whatever you need done in your circuit. The FPGA offers much of [...]
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Arduino Mega gives more powah!
Posted on01. Apr, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
The Arduino platform has become a big player in the hobbyist electronics community. It is affordable, capable, and the compiler is free and simple to use. The first Arduino came with an ATmega16, then people began changing over to the beefy ATmega168 which offers more memory for more complicated project. Like any computing resource, though, [...]
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Basic Stamp 2 – Powerful and easy to use
Posted on30. Mar, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
The Parallax Basic Stamp series really started a revolution many years ago when the Basic Stamp was introduced. Since then, the Basic Stamp product range has been increased to include the BS2 and a number of other handy pre-built electronic modules that are designed to work with the Stamps. The BS2 is a self-contained microcontroller [...]
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Project: Nickel-O-Matic prints on wooden nickels
Posted on29. Mar, 2009 by ModuleTronics.
This is a neat project that shows some of the really cool stuff you can do with pre-built, easy-to-use modular electronics. The concept is simple: the machine uses an inkjet printer module to print text or graphics on blank wooden “nickels”. The whole thing is controlled with a Basic Stamp 2 and a Propeller chip. [...]
