
Miscellaneous Arduino bits and pieces - Jerry2
http://vwlowen.co.uk/arduino/index.htm
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sleavey
I love this kind of stuff. I recently built a slow cooker controller to make
yogurt that essentially consisted of an Atmel ATmega328 (same as the Arduino
Uno) controlling a relay using a DS18B20 digital thermometer. Then, when I was
building it, I thought it'd be cool to have a touch screen display to set the
desired temperature. Then, I figured that I might as well power the Arduino
using the mains supply instead of having a separate 5V input on the box.

In the end, I learned about mains filtering, switch mode power supplies,
safety clearances, fail-safety, microcontrollers and programming touch screens
all at the same time. Despite there being cheaper, off-the-shelf solutions
available, I preferred this approach.

~~~
sleavey
One downside I've found with hobbies like this: milling enclosures for the
electronics is expensive in terms of either money (to have it done externally)
or in terms of favours from your machinist colleagues. For anything beyond
holes drilled with a drill press, I have to ask a friendly technician where I
work. If enclosures/panels could be milled as cheaply as PCBs can be printed,
that would be awesome.

~~~
sokoloff
You can use PCB as a front panel. It has arbitrary routing, colored soldermask
(as background), silkscreen (as labeling).

Some enclosures are extruded aluminum with screw on end caps. If your device
is suited to the endcap being made of PCB, you just have another PCB (printed
end panel?) to layout.

Here's one example video that shows the technique:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj0Bv4UEFSs&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj0Bv4UEFSs&feature=youtu.be&t=119)

~~~
swimfar
Here's another nice tutorial. It looks like it's a nice way to make sturdy
custom enclosures.

[https://hackaday.com/2015/06/03/how-to-build-beautiful-
enclo...](https://hackaday.com/2015/06/03/how-to-build-beautiful-enclosures-
from-fr4-aka-pcbs/)

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retSava
meta: I really like these kind of blogs which are more or less a braindump
with heart to it. I'm sure there are many nice nuggets of wisdom and
experience if you go through the posts.

To take an example, [http://vwlowen.co.uk/arduino/spectrum-analyser/spectrum-
anal...](http://vwlowen.co.uk/arduino/spectrum-analyser/spectrum-analyser.htm)
about taking a simple 2.4 GHz module and building a spectrum analyzer, is a
nice post. You can tell he enjoyed doing it.

~~~
johansch
If you can stand the video format, this one is unusually rewarding for being a
youtube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff](https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff)

I started with this one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la-
sGpTpkxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la-sGpTpkxE)

"My old BBC Micro system" ... which kind of established his credibilities in
my mind, and then I just kept going, devouring his entire channel. Recommended
- this guy knows his stuff, and unlike certain other youtube channels in this
genre there is no annoying bravado.

~~~
digi_owl
Watching that BBC Micro video made me sorry i missed that era. Doing anything
like that these days would be just, ugh, painful. Too many layers, both
hardware and software, to dig through to get anything close to brass tacks,
and we keep adding more every odd year or so...

~~~
bonzini
One of my long-time project ideas is a BASIC interpreter (Commodore-style) for
the ESP8266 or one of the more powerful Arduinos, with statements to control
GPIO pins or I2C devices and a web-based REPL. It would be great for teaching.

~~~
photojosh
Have you seen this? BASIC interpreter hidden in the ESP32 ROM.

[https://hackaday.com/2016/10/27/basic-interpreter-hidden-
in-...](https://hackaday.com/2016/10/27/basic-interpreter-hidden-in-
esp32-silicon/)

~~~
bonzini
That's pretty close indeed! Lost my idea (almost, the web-based IDE would be a
bit easier to work with, and TinyBasic did not have strings or floating
point), but on the other hand it must have been a good one. ;-)

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amelius
I have a nice project idea: build a replacement for HP's iLO (integrated
lights out) system. Basically, all it needs to do is provide remote power and
reset buttons for a server. An advanced version could also provide a remote
keyboard, mouse, video, and port for an USB stick. The main reason why I'd
want this is because HP's support system is a mess, iLO is expensive, and
restricted to HP servers.

I think it could be done with a Raspberry Pi, and hopefully with minimal
soldering inside the server itself.

~~~
the-dude
Ideas have little value.

~~~
unkown-unknowns
Execution beats talking about ideas for sure, but having ideas beats having
nothing at all.

~~~
the-dude
True, they make you feel good.

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squarefoot
And for those wanting to use small AVR processor modules without the Arduino
IDE and libraries, here's some information. Those modules cost less than €2 on
Ebay, just search for "attiny85 module"

[http://blog.ithasu.org/2014/12/blinking-a-digispark-
without-...](http://blog.ithasu.org/2014/12/blinking-a-digispark-without-
arduino-ide/)

~~~
gh02t
A heads up for these, the ATtiny is a different family than the ATmega's in
the Arduino Uno. They are not 100% compatible, and if you are a beginner that
can be problematic. Also the Tiny85 in particular that these modules use
expose very few pins (5 usable).

That said, I use the Tiny85 all the time as they require minimal external
components, so they are good to drop into a design for taking care of
functions like interfacing peripherals or simple logic. For people just
starting out though I'd recommend a Nano clone, they can be had for about the
same price.

