Arduino: Eh, just grab some pliers and bend the pins

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Arduino: Eh, just grab some pliers and bend the pins

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Additionally the Arduino starter kit includes a book with a bunch of more or less silly experiments that still teach you basic electronics and arduino coding. It's basically the same experiments as in the tutorials section on the Arduino web site.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 15:13

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 12:02

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

ravenkult posted:

Is there any decent starter guide? I bought one of those Funduinos and I can't really get it to work.

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 12:35

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Sh4 posted:

Anyone interested about working together on a motorbike computer project, was thinking about functions like speedo, mileage, fuel level, oil warning, water temp, maybe RPM too but I have no idea how to proceed.
I'm decent at code but I have never did any electronics. I'm pretty sure there's a market for it too, as all my racing 2 strokes buddies are complaining all the time that aftermarket computers are terrible or way too expensive.

If your bike has an OBD plug (or some other CAN bus access) there are a few CAN/OBD shields which will let you get a lot of that data straight from the engine controller.

Though if you want something for a non-ECU engine you probably have to put a bunch of sensors all over it yourself.

Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Mar 25, 2015

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 09:34

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

DaveSauce posted:

What's the best way to go about hooking an Arduino Uno up to a battery source?

I presume I don't want to just toss 4 AA batteries at it. I would guess I will want a voltage regulator and a reverse-polarity protection diode at a minimum. I have various bits sitting around, including a few rat shack 5V regulators and many 1N400X diodes. Are there any special considerations I need to know about to keep from frying the board, or is giving it voltage good enough?

The Arduino Uno board has a built in voltage regulator and you can feed it anything from 7 to 12V. I'm going to assume it's polarity protected too. I normally run mine off a 9V battery.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 13:23

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I don't think it has any low voltage shut-off. The Arduino Uno page says:

quote:

The board can operate on an external supply of 6 to 20 volts. If supplied with less than 7V, however, the 5V pin may supply less than five volts and the board may be unstable. If using more than 12V, the voltage regulator may overheat and damage the board. The recommended range is 7 to 12 volts.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 15:14

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Not the answer you're looking for, but a low tech solution is to just get a water wick. It's basically just a cotton rope in a plastic sheath. Stick one end into the soil and the other in a container of water and the soil will automatically suck up water through the wick to stay moist.

It's saved several of my plants from my own neglect.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 11:59

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Hadlock posted:

it's pretty hard to catastrophically damage an arduino. At least, I haven't managed to fry any of mine yet.

I think I managed to brick a friend's Nano. We hooked it up to a long Neopixels string and didn't tie the grounds together or put a resistor on the data pin. It seems to boot up (LEDs are flashing when it powers on) but the programmer doesn't work, avrdude just times out. :saddowns:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 08:00

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I don't think so, but I don't have it here to check. It still works per se, the program we had loaded runs when it's powered on, we just can't reprogram it.

Another guess is that we toasted the UART, but it seems unlikely.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 14:33

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Aurium posted:

In ours, not so much. 9v batteries are pretty terrible at delivering high current, so they'll empty much faster. Around 75ma is a ok upper limit for good useability. They were originally designed around loads of ~15ma or less.

Under heavy load it'll quickly drop voltage, and go below what the LED's need. I couldn't tell you how fast, but it probably won't last an hour. Insert graph here. It's not a great graph, because it does show the 2 hours that you'd expect, but it also has arrows for where you'd expect different voltages, and they'd be way below what you'd need.

I learned this when dicking around with some Neopixel sticks. I stuck a 7805 on the Vcc input and powered it from a 9V battery. Just powering 8 RGB LEDs (about 30mA draw each at 5V) it lasts slightly over an hour. At first I thought I had burnt something because the LEDs suddenly stopped working, then I measured the battery and it was already under 7V.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 23:35

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Parts Kit posted:

What's a good, small battery for use with a 5v Trinket? 4 AAAs should do it, but that's too much space and weight. I was thinking maybe 2 CR123As? That'll give me 6v, and while it's an uncommon battery I have plenty on hand from other hobby stuff.

A 3.7V Li-Ion pack and a DC booster? Adafruit has a couple of different tiny ones with or without built in Li-Ion charging circuitry.

edit: Booster only or booster with charge.

Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Aug 13, 2015

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 16:41

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I picked up a Pro Micro at my local electronics store. I'm pretty sure it's a chinese clone and not actually a Sparkfun Pro Micro, but the layout and chips are identical.

I'm having some issues getting it to accept my code though. It identifies as an Arduino Leonardo when I plug it in, which according to the Sparkfun docs is normal, and it works with their drivers. But when I try to program it (using the sparkfun hardware definitions) it compiles the code, resets the board, then the Arduino IDE gets stuck on "Uploading...".

Is there any dark magics you have to perform to get it to accept code?

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 10:09

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

peepsalot posted:

Did you read this? https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Arduino/Boards/32U4Note.pdf

No I didn't.. That could very well explain it.

I'll wire up a reset button when I get home and give it a try.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 12:01

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Assuming you can interface your laser projector with an arduino, yes.

To get the information from your computer to the arduino, look at Processing which has a bunch of libraries for extracing information from your computer and send it via serial to the Arduino.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 20:39

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Easiest is probably just to measure the power flowing through the line(s) to your shop tools and flip a relay based on that. No arduino needed, you could make it completely analog by having a capacitor keep the relay energized for a few seconds after the power turns off.

Similar to so called smart power strips which allow power to flow to certain outlets only if power is flowing to the master outlet.

Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Jan 9, 2016

# ¿ Jan 9, 2016 15:47

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

huhu posted:

I misread the pinout and assumed that two of the pins weren't required for the camera to run. They were.

Vcc and Gnd? :v:

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 08:49

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Nah that's perfectly doable with an Arduino. Basically all you need is a sunlight sensor, a stepper controller chip and a stepper motor to turn the blinds. The hard part will be to fab a mount for the motor to let it drive the blinds.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 23:01

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

mod sassinator posted:

And remember that next person might be you years from now trying to remember what the heck you were doing.

I've had that several times. Finding some old script or piece of code in production and going "Wait what? But why? What kind of blockheaded idiot wrote this? ... Oh, I did." :downs:

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 10:33

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

I like to compare inductive loads (motors, solenoids and other things that use induction coils) to a spring. While you're supplying current you're compressing the spring. Remove the current and the spring will kick back out past its original size due to inertia. The diode works like a damper.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 12:19

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

You'll want a motor driver board regardless because the Arduino doesn't provide enough juice to power the motors on its own, especially not 9v motors.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 01:37

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Platystemon posted:

David Hahn. He died last year at the age of thirty‐nine.

Turns out nobody really knows the cause of death, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume it was related to radiation exposure. :v:

The wikipedia article states that when he was arrested again in 2007 his mug shot had obvious signs of radiation burns.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 10:51

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

You're describing an outlet auto-off timer, which you can buy off the shelf in any appliance store. You might have to shop around a bit (or talk to an electrician) to find one that can handle the draw of a cooktop though..

Something like this, assuming your cooktop draws less than 10A: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005C9S0I8/

e: vv What evil_bunnY said. Don't mix DIY and things that can burn your house down. Talk to an electrician.

Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Oct 5, 2017

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 11:56

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Take ten minutes to watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

Then go find a timezone library. A quick google search came up with https://github.com/JChristensen/Timezone which seems to do what you need.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 11:06

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Data Graham posted:

*Only localize dates at display time

Yeah this is important. Always handle time in UTC internally.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 14:45

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Couldn't you just run it in the setup block and leave the loop empty?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2018 18:21

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 12:02

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Long answer: "Nooooooooo."

# ¿ Jan 5, 2024 00:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Arduino: Eh, just grab some pliers and bend the pins