Aurduino projects

[RivennHewn]

Anybody coming up with interesting projects?

My son is just getting started.

Looks like fun.

I don't know anything about it at all.

 

[visionguru]

Anybody coming up with interesting projects?

My son is just getting started.

Looks like fun.

I don't know anything about it at all.

I have several Arduino boards, started from helping my 3rd grade daughter to a robotics project.

I was planning to build a cloud controlled garage door opener, but after considering the cost of parts and the time to debug the design, I bought a ready made one from Chamberlain.

With good programming and ingenuity, the possibility is endless.

 

[dogdog]

have him / her review these 28 videos.... in sections... was really helpful when I started.
It's gear toward school kids..... but easy to understand for learning adults too... I found this guy is the best so far better than others ...... No BS.

 

[dogdog]

A sun tracker is a cool project for kids.... if you are interesting in one of those... it covers both mechanical, and physics, logical thinking , aspect I guess of it.... Don't cheat

A combo lock breaker is cool .... by Samy Kamkar. but does require you to 3d print some parts.
you'll learn at least combo lock logic... driving stepper motors , encoders.... But not sure if you want teens into those knowledge.....

 

[ChevyEFI]

have him / her review these 28 videos.... in sections... was really helpful when I started.
It's gear toward school kids..... but easy to understand for learning adults too... I found this guy is the best so far better than others ...... No BS.

Thanks.

 

[Outlander]

have him / her review these 28 videos.... in sections... was really helpful when I started.
It's gear toward school kids..... but easy to understand for learning adults too... I found this guy is the best so far better than others ...... No BS.

Good link! I have yet to start my projects

 

[RivennHewn]

dogdog,
Thanks for posting up the link.

Seems I have a lot of catching up to do

 

[rustybill]

I'm a network admin, so at work I use them for automation. You can emulate keystrokes, so we use them to automate setup tasks. Here is one we use to automate chromebook enrollment:

 

[superfragl]

I built a PWM radiator fan controller for my car using Arduino mini.
The controller can handle loads up to 120A.

 

[garagelogician]

Might not be appropriate for the kid, but if you haven't come across AvE on Youtube...you should check him out. He does tool tear downs, machining, troubleshooting, electronics and dabbles in various projects using arduinos.

 

[gte718p]

Ardunios are fun. I almost always have 4 or 5 on the work bench. Though recently I have found myself moving towards single board computers. The PI zero costs about the same as an Arduino dev board and is orders of magnitude more powerful.

I'm currently working on a remote telemetry project using these cool little Arduinos
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3078#tutorials. They have wifi, Bluetooth, and LoRa radio built in.

Blinky light is always the first project.

For beginning I recommend
LED clock
LED sign
NeoPixel or WS2811 art
Line following robot
Mini Sumo robots
Robot arm

I've done really advance projects with them for automation and control. However my favorite is coke bottle lights. I took 15 glass coke bottles and stuffed three 12 mm LED WS2811 LEDs in each. The WS2811 led are three color leds you can control hue, intensity, and saturation on. I wired them all in a string and programmed an Arduino to make them do patterns and effects. They are hanging on my porch. When ever people come over they get a kick out of them.

Once your son gets advanced building you own quad copter and teaching it to hover is a lot of fun. However that is really not a beginner project.

For a beginner, beware of knock off boards. Chinese knock offs abound on eBay and Amazon. Arduino boards are pretty basic and most of the time Chinese Arduinos are acceptable. However, they have a high failure rate and they normally don't have a real FTDI chip for programming. When you are starting out messing with defective chips is a good way to get turned of to them. Spend the $20 bucks and get a real Arduino from the foundation. It also supports a good cause. Once you are proficient, buy the knock off for 1/4 of the price and throw away the ones that don't work.

 

[gte718p]

I don't know anything about it at all.

Adafruit has really good basic tutorials on their website. They walk you through how to setup and use everything they sell. They are on the expensive side, but the customer service is top notch. A lot of what they sell is made custom for them. They use a Chinese board fab, but it is pretty good. For a beginner it is well worth the price.

 

[Decline58]

I have a project in work, but it's progress has stalled, so maybe this thread will give it a kick start (delayed pun intended).
I am turning a 1974 Yamaha XS650 into a cafe racer. A friend is an ardueno guy and he's helping me do all the electrical distribution using it. Speed will be a GPS driven servo inhe OEM speedo, all lights will be LED with the blinkers rate controlled, start circuit will also be controlled via ardueno with Bluetooth to allow start via phone.
I need to get back to this project, the engine is back together, tank painted, the seat was hand formed from flat pieces of steel by a craftsman (not me),assembling it all "dry".
Hopefully this will give the project the kick start it needs.

 

[gte718p]

I have a project in work, but it's progress has stalled, so maybe this thread will give it a kick start (delayed pun intended).
I am turning a 1974 Yamaha XS650 into a cafe racer. A friend is an ardueno guy and he's helping me do all the electrical distribution using it. Speed will be a GPS driven servo inhe OEM speedo, all lights will be LED with the blinkers rate controlled, start circuit will also be controlled via ardueno with Bluetooth to allow start via phone.
I need to get back to this project, the engine is back together, tank painted, the seat was hand formed from flat pieces of steel by a craftsman (not me),assembling it all "dry".
Hopefully this will give the project the kick start it needs.

I did a similar project with my YZF 600 several years ago. I used and RF ID tag to authorize the push button starter. One piece of advice, make sure you have a good power supply circuit. I had a lot of issues with voltage dropping out for a second and the arduino resetting itself. Activating the starter caused a voltage drop that caused the arduino to reset. I didn't use LED light, but if the headlight and a turn signal where on and the horn was pressed it reset the arduino.

The way I set it up, that opened the main relay and shut down the bike, just like turning off the key.

Unfortunately that bike was stolen years ago. I have a great video of two locals picking it up and loading it into a UHaul. I bet they never figured out how to get it running

 

[dkmc]

I found this guy is the best so far better than others ...... No BS.

Thanks for that!
I want to use one to remotely monitor all the vitals (Pressures and Temps) on a Diesel Air Compressor.
Gotta be low cost, and gotta start somewhere.

 

[rsanter]

A friend runs his homemade 3D printer from an arduino

 

[dogdog]

Remember OP is asking for his kids.... so .... not exactly sure how old his kids are... but start with basics then you can jump into the more advance stuff....

I think one of the free online university's (open course, but not MIT) have few course on these micro controllers.... one is specific for arduino, the other is an ARM base controller .... if I find that link (not youtube, but one of the open course), I'll post it up... it's more of a high school / college level ...

 

[dogdog]

Thanks for that!
I want to use one to remotely monitor all the vitals (Pressures and Temps) on a Diesel Air Compressor.
Gotta be low cost, and gotta start somewhere.

There are modules pre-made for temp (but no temperature sensor under pressure that are 0-5V range) but not so much on pressure.... I think the arduino sensors have to be 0-5V range for arduino stuff or else you either have to do a voltage divider and or lose some resolutions..... I bought an Ebay 0-200 1/4" NTP linear pressure sensor 0-5V 3 Pin ( +5v, gnd, linear output) I was going to use that for similar project.... and a K-type temp sensor module.... I think that Paul guy covers it on his videos , Linear equation for linear analog voltage inputs.... video 10 and 12..... for that.. You'll have to write your own linear equation base on your sensor output maps.

I have my test rig but that is it (basically 2x of 1/4 NTP Ts connected together, a analog pressure gauge, a 1/4 NTP shredder valve, and that 1/4 ntp analog pressure sensor)... haven't gone further, cause I have not bought my larger compressor for it.

 

[dkmc]

Thanks for that info

 

[RivennHewn]

My son is a 3rd year ME student. No worries about age appropriate projects.

Thanks again for all the responses.

A new subject for me, enjoying learning about it.

 

[dkmc]

Temp logging....check this out

https://blog.adafruit.com/2010/09/07/a-thermocouple-datalogger-based-on-the-arduino-platform/

 

[dogdog]

These guys are the ARM folks .... very good not exactly Arduino but another lesser known more powerful micro controllers like the TI ones....

http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/Volume1/E-Book/



This is another one Robert Paz that is also very good.... but more toward college lectures type instead of high school student and adult learners like the first one.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnvE9iJk1wvib_pdUPdQGYZrkrmg9mf__



You can always join meetup and search for a local club most of the cities have something for it, sometimes bundle with "Makers" or MakerSpace....... No it's not a Dating service....

http://www.meetup.com/

 

[kkroger]

I used one to build DRO for my little Mill Drill a few years back.

 

[Guster]

A friend runs his homemade 3D printer from an arduino

Same here using the Ramps v1.4 shield. Was going to use one to run a CNC router with a GRBL shield but decided to go with a DSP pendant based controller instead.

I used one to build DRO for my little Mill Drill a few years back.

Good for non-quadrature based scales. I used the TI based solution as I had better scales for my lathe using the TouchDRO interface. Works well.

Since then I also converted my rotary dividing head for my mill from manual division to motion control using an Arduino as the controller(some details on page 5 of my thread)

Currently collecting parts for something a little more fun, an arduino controlled lightsabre for my 7yo StarWars-mad son.

 

[RivennHewn]

Very cool stuff.

I'm still trying to get my head around what all these things are capable of.

Maybe in this life.........

 

[HoosierBuddy]

I finished my first arduino project a few months back.

I got a lot of the parts from adafruit.

It's a digital clock in a wood box. The funkiest thing about it is probably the fact I used capacitive touch sensors for the controls. So, the coins you see in the pictures are soldered to wires that hook to a sensor board and then into the arduino to control all the clock functions like setting the time and alarm etc.

The time is regulated by a chronodot RTC. Essentially the arduino advances through the code a second at a time, but checks with the RTC every minute to verify that it hasn't gained or lost any time.

One other feature I like is my silent alarm. The adafruit 1.2 display can be set to different brightness levels via the arduino. I have it set on the dimmest setting possible when it's normally on, as that is still brighter than a standard digital clock. When my alarm time is reached, rather than start beeping, the arduino pulses the display super bright to dim to super bright to dim for a minute before the beeper kicks on. 90% of the time the display wakes me up so I can get the alarm turned off before it beeps and disturbs my wife who doesn't have to get up quite as early as I do. To turn it off I just have to touch the big center coin on the top there. The good thing about an arduino project is you can implement features like that which don't exist on commercially available products.

It was a fun project. The code was especially interesting to write because it was the first time I'd written anything in C++.

I'm working on another analog clock project now where I've cut the time regulating circuit board out of a regular analog clock and am using the arduino to directly advance the hands a second at a time. It's actually a garage project. I'm going to use it on a high wall clock so I can make it automatically reset itself for DST like newer digital clocks do. That way I won't have to climb up on my workbench to do it...plus that clock keeps terrible time. With the ardunio and a chronodot, it should be accurate to +/- a second or so per year.

Phil

 

[Guster]

I finished my first arduino project a few months back.

I got a lot of the parts from adafruit.

It's a digital clock in a wood box.

Nice!

Reminds me I have a colleague who made a word-clock using Arduino, neopixels and RTC. He also made a retirement countdown clock for a team member that reads out the time remaining if you press a button. Basically a MP3 playback controller based around the word-clock design.

 

[Steve.S]

I used one with a relay pack to switch 120v to control a traffic light.

Here's the relay pack: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057OC5O8/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[Richard D]

You can always join meetup and search for a local club most of the cities have something for it, sometimes bundle with "Makers" or MakerSpace....... No it's not a Dating service....

http://www.meetup.com/

Something similar, I found in my area, Creatorspace. Haven't contacted them yet.
http://www.creatorspace.org/

 

[dogdog]

I think meetup is just a listing services for all hobbies.... you can search and filter by your area.... including creatorspace is one of the groups. listing in there.... Sometimes a peer / group might help push the motivation / innovation.... hopefully for good and not cult stuff.....

https://www.meetup.com/find/events/...null:29.3013479:-94.79769579999998&change=yes

 

[wolf_from_wv]

I built a vehicle similar to this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/RC-Truck-Arduino-Robot/


I buy the cars without controllers at Goodwill for a couple dollars.

 

[RivennHewn]

All interesting stuff:lowdown:

Thanks for taking the time to post your projects.