Main > Everything Else

Arduino?

<< < (3/4) > >>

SavannahLion:
Yeah, I have to echo what MonMotha basically said. I think the arduino series is very nice and all but I just don't like the overhead that it incurs. When I look at people using the Arduino, I think back to my Visual Basic days.

For a lot of projects, the platform really does get the job done and quickly I might add. But when you find yourself diving into straight C/C++ or digging down into assembly because of some defect in the platform, it's definitely time to move on. The important part is seeing when that happens. I didn't see that with Visual Basic and I found myself, no joke, with an app (that no longer exists) and book that documented every single known C/C++ library call for the Windows environment and the VB formatted call. In other words I was bypassing many of VB's built in ActiveX stuff and going straight for the system DLL's. Before I dropped VB entirely, I was handcrafting ASM inside VB itself. I think there was even a group for that, ExtremeVB.com or somesuch. If I recognized what I was doing and that C++ or C could have gotten me down that road a hell of a lot faster I'd be in a far different place now.

I really like the 8-bit AVR's and one is going straight into a current project. But I paid around $15 for an arduino compatible board though I don't use the arduino platform. For comparison, I just shelled out <$10 for two ARM M4F boards which I hope will ship soon. The price difference is astonishing. And there is an Arduino-style platform that just came out not too long ago for the ARM controllers so it'll get real interesting in a hurry.

saint:
Well I'm starting from the beginning here. Way back in the day I was a CS programming major in college (Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, C, C+, 808x assembler, Basic, probably something else archaic I've forgotten) but I haven't used any of my programming skills for anything serious in a long time.

I've been playing with LEDs in this hobby somewhat, but seriously started playing with them in the last year or so. Of course, there really isn't much to playing with LEDs if all you're doing is turning them on/off (ledcalc.com is my friend). Battery, resistor, and soldering. 

I'm wanting to get into playing with motors, relays, sensors, and having LEDs do something other than turn on and off (illuminate in sequences, respond to inputs, etc). My goal is costuming and haunted house and other geek-related special effects.

While I hear what you guys are saying about the limitations, Arduino and PI seemed like good ways to get my feet wet. Any other suggestions for getting started?

kahlid74:
I'm still pretty new to the Arduino but I use mine to interface with a stepper motor and rotate a 42" TV in my pedestal cabinet.

Works very well and is mostly intuitive.  I would recommend getting books with working examples.  It's so much easier to grasp.

I also plan to use an Arduino in my Battletech Pod to open and close the doors and move the three monitors into position after the door has been closed.

saint:
I've purchased this book to start with: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TI7IGI/ . Recommend any others in particular?

Mysterioii:
I'm a EE but actually hadn't done much electronics-wise for several years (been doing "legacy software" support), but I used an arduino in a project I needed to do, to "get back into things" as it were.  A lot of people bash them, actually, but you have to take them for what they are.  Some people say "just use your own microcontroller, the chip itself is only three bucks", which is true, but with the arduino they're saving you some time and there's a big community out there so you can find lots of libraries and examples all over the web.  For some things, it's woefully underpowered, for some things it's fine.

A bit about my project...  We have a sewage pump station across the street from us, and "something" allows rainwater into the sewer system whenever it rains (this is not supposed to be a combined system, but things happen).  Additionally our house was actually built really too low with respect to that system...  if it rains really hard we can have water backup into the house through the plumbing.  We have a manual shutoff valve to close off the main sewer line, but of course you have to know that there's a problem.  (By the way, the sewer company is allegedly going to be reconstructing this whole system over the next few years, so the problem should go away eventually, but in the meantime I'd prefer not to get other people's poop water in my basement).

What this project does for me is:

Has 8 water sensors in various locations of my basement.

Has a buzzer acting as an alarm, located in the cold air return right at the master bedroom.
     Has a mute switch to disable the buzzer if you know there’s a problem and would rather not keep hearing the buzzer go off.

Has tilt switches on the sewer shutoff valve so I know when the valve is closed.
     Automatically removes power to the sewer ejector pump in the basement when the valve is closed to prevent it pumping waste water into the sewer line when it can’t drain out of the house.  I have built-in redundancy as a failsafe mechanism… Two tilt switches, two relays.  I have feedback signals on the relays to ensure that they are opening and closing correctly, and use the buzzer to provide audible feedback when you close or open the valve so you know the relays actuated.

Runs on battery backup from a pretty beefy UPS.

I hacked a line from the beeper in the UPS itself and ran it to an input on the microcontroller so the system knows it’s on battery backup and alerts me.

Uses a GPIO expander chip that communicates with the microcontroller using the I2C protocol because I needed a lot more digital inputs.

Utilizes a temperature/humidity sensor module.

Incorporates an external watchdog timer chip to reset the system if it should ever lock up.

Acts as a web server so I (or anyone else) can check a detailed status of the system from anywhere in the world at any time.

Acts as an email client and automatically sends me an email whenever water is detected, the valve is closed or the system switches to battery backup. 

Has an RGB LED status indicator located on the device and another run up to a panel by the door from the garage, giving at-a-glance feedback to whether water is detected, the valve is closed, or everything is fine.

Additional LED indicators on the device indicate web activity, email activity and proper watchdog timer function.


The heart of the system is an arduino with an ethernet shield, but I did design and build an interface board included in the system that includes buffer circuitry for all the water sensors, the GPIO expander chip, the temp/humidity module, relay and speaker mosfet drivers, an optoisolator for the UPS “on battery” circuit, the watchdog timer chip and a voltage regulator. 

Despite what I consider to be a pretty full set of features all things considering, the code compiles to only about 19KB.  The system has been running 24/7 since about February without any hiccups, and it’s correctly alerted me several times to such things as a power outage, my wife closing the sewer valve, water from a dripping cleanout valve on a water heater, etc.

I've used the arduinos for several other things, but this project was by far the most involved.  I'm pretty proud of it...  I'll try to get some pics posted later.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version