Evan tipped us off that the Great Cow Basic development team has recently released a new build of Great Cow BASIC compiler with lots of enhanced features. For those who are unfamiliar with Great Cow BASIC, it is an easy to use BASIC compiler for PIC and AVR microcontrollers. The best thing about it is that it is completely free with no restrictions on the program size. I first came across it in 2008 when I was looking for a free High-Level compiler for developing PIC applications. Great Cow BASIC looked promising to me, and was very easy to learn. But since it was in its early phase, and there were not much built-in libraries at that point, I switched to using the MikroC compiler from MikroElektronika. Since then the Great Cow BASIC has lots of updates and the team behind it has put tremendous effort in making it better with every new release. Some of the enhancements in the latest release include:

• Improved support for Microchip and Atmel 8-bit microprocessors.
• Improved IDE to make programming as easy as possible.
• An enhanced Great Cow Graphical Basic User Interface that supports the review of the demonstration files and the new chip change configuration.
• Improved Help File.
• Over 160 useful demonstration files that showcase the breadth and depth of Great Cow Basic capabilities.
• New functionality with ~90 enhancements over the previous release.
• Support for a large set of supported hardware accessories including LCD drivers and five types of GLCD support.
• I2C and TWI hardware support for Microchip and AVR respectively.

Great Cow BASIC also has a graphical programming version named Great Cow Graphical BASIC. Check out the more details on the recent release of Great Cow BASIC here.

Great Cow Graphical BASIC

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Electro-Labs has posted a new DIY ESP8266 Development Board project to experiment with PIC microcontroller and ESP8266 module. The board features LCD display, pusbuttons, indicator LEDs, GPIO extension, FT232RL USB-UART converter over a Mini-USB connector, and 5V-3.3V bi-directional level converter circuits onboard.

ESP8266 development board

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Today we are happy to announce the release of a new addition to our Easy Pulse Sensor series named Easy Pulse Plugin. Like its predecessors, the original Easy Pulse and Easy Pulse V1.1, Easy Pulse Plugin also operates on the principle of Photoplethysmography, which is an optical technique of sensing blood volume changes in tissues by illuminating the skin surface with a light source and measuring the reflected or transmitted light using a photodetector. The photodetector output contains the cardiovascular pulse wave, which is synchronized with the beating of the heart. Easy Pulse Plugin provides all necessary instrumentation and amplification on board to detect the cardiovascular pulse signal from the fingertip. The most important characteristics of Easy Pulse Plugin is that it can be easily plugged into the left headers of Arduino Uno (or its compatible clone) board for easy interfacing, and the analog pulse signal can be fed to either A0 or A1 analog input through a 2-pin jumper selection. You can buy this sensor at our Tindie Store.

Easy Pulse Plugin

Easy Pulse Plugin is easy to interface to an Arduino Board

Features

For schematic and theory of operation, please visit our previous Easy Pulse V1.1 page. It is mostly the same circuit except the Easy Pulse Plugin only provides analog pulse signal (no digital pulse output as in Easy Pulse V1.1).

• Compatible with both 5.0V and 3.3V interface. Select the operational voltage by placing jumper JP1 on appropriate position.
• Nice and clean pulse output
• On board potentiometere for amplifier gain control (rotate CCW for increasing gain)
• Output pulse signal can be routed to A0 or A1 pin through jumper JP2.
• Easily plugs into a breadboard, Arduino Uno, chipKIT Uno32 and other compatible platforms.
• LED power indicator (LD1)

Easy Pulse Plugin board

Easy Pulse Plugin on breadboard

The following table shows the pin descriptions of Easy Pulse Plugin.

Easy Pulse Plugin pin names and their functions

Configuration Examples

Easy Pulse can be configured to operate at 3.3V or 5.0V through JP1 jumper. Similarly, the output pulse signal can be routed to either A0 or A1 pin through JP2 jumper. The following pictures illustrates two of the possible four configurations.

Picture 1 powered by 5V and output at A0

Picture 3 powered by 3.3V and output at A1

Example projects
Easy Pulse Plugin and chipKit Uno 32: The first example shows a standalone digital pulse meter using Digilent’s chipKIT Uno32 board and chipKIT Basic I/O shield. The I/O shield consists of an OLED display that is used in this project for displaying the pulse waveform and the pulse rate. The details of this project can be found here. Note that the JP1 and JP2 jumpers of Easy Pulse plugin should be placed on 3V3 and A1 positions for this project.

Standalone pulse meter using Easy Pulse Plugin and chipKIT Uno32

Pulse meter display

PC-based Pulse meter: This example illustrates how to make a PC-based heart rate monitor system using an Arduino Uno board and Easy Pulse Plugin. The sensor is operated at 5.0V and the output is read by the A0 anaog input pin on the Arduino board, which then transfers the data to the PC through a serial interface. A PC application is developed using Processing programming language to display the received PPG signal and instantaneous heart rate. More details on software can be found here. The following picture shows the required jumper settings and placement of Easy Pulse Plugin on Arduino Uno board.

Jumper settings for PC-based pulse monitor project

Important note: While operating the Easy Pulse sensor, make sure the sensor connector is inserted well and pushed all the way into the audio jack as shown below.

Sensor must be plugged in well into the socket

Buy Easy Pulse Plugin at our Tindie Store.

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Amir Avni has shared the details of his cool RGB graphic equalizer build, which is controlled by the ESP8266 hardware programmed with the NodeMCU firmware. The RGB LED strings are controlled through WS2812, while the equalizer colors are chosen through a Web interface over Wifi.

RGB graphical equilizer

Two weeks ago I got my ESP8266 Version 12, which is a new version of the ESP8266 micro-controller with more GPIOs, so it seems some nice things can be done with it. If you haven’t heard of the ESP8266 check this older postfrom the blog. Also, I got the MSGEQ7 chip, which is a chip that outputs an analog equalizer from a sound signal. I was looking for a fun project to do with those two items, one which can help me also to learn LUA script, the language that is used to program the ESP8266. Finally, I’ve created this project: An equalizer display controlled by ESP8266 with the NodeMCU firmware, where the equalizer colors are controlled via WiFi. Check the video:

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Ray Visser posted an instructable on making a simple high-altitude balloon cam with minimal payload containing a smartphone to text its GPS location and a Canon Powershot digital camera to take pictures.

High-altitude ballooning, or HAB, involves sending a payload of cameras, scientific instruments, or other items on a journey into the stratosphere, strapped to a weather balloon. When the balloon bursts, a parachute brings the payload gently back down, where it (and your data/photos/freeze-dried food) can be recovered!

Most HAB systems are electronically complex, so we wanted to drastically simplify it. Our payload is only a smartphone designed to text its GPS location (for accurate recovery) and a Canon Powershot digital camera set to take a photo every few seconds until its memory is full.

Read on to see how we built it! Ours is far from the best design, and hasn’t yet been field-tested, but the instruments work well enough. This is designed more as a starting point and a collection of tips.

DIY high-altitude balloon camera

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Keep forgetting where you have parked your car in the parking lot? This Arduino-based car locator uses GPS to remember where you park with just the push of a button and later tells you how far you are from it and in what direction.

The GPS continuously reads the latitude and longitude of the CarTracker. When the button is pressed, the coordinates are saved to the EEPROM. E.g., this would be the location of your car.

Now, let’s say you walk out of a store and are looking for your car. Power up the CarTracker. Do not push button. The GPS will read the coordinates of the store and will calculate distance and direction from there to the stored location (of the car). The compass will orient the display so the display will point to the car and will display the distance.

 

GPS car locator

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Spectrophotometery is a quantitative measurement of the transmission properties of a chemical substance as a function of wavelength, and the device used for this purpose is known as Spectrophotometer. It operates by passing a beam of light through a sample and measuring the intensity of light reaching a detector through the sample. This Instructable describes an Arduino controlled DIY Spectrophotometer made by two undergraduate biochemistry students-Peter Elphick and Ed Tye, for their final-year lab project.

Arduino powered Spectrophotometer

We wanted to make a spectrophotometer that would measure the concentration of a dye called OPD; a common dye in biological assay kits. In addition to reading the absorbance of the samples, we wanted to make a spectrophotometer that worked with 96-wellmicroplates. These are disposable, multi-sample plastic dishes and are the backbone of assays in academic and pharma bioscience labs. They hold 96 samples of up to 0.35mL, arranged in a grid. Pharma labs like them because they lend themselves to robotic handling and high-throughput assays.

We reckon that the final machine cost about £500 ($750), although a lot of that could be saved if you machine your own frame.

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A global team of Makers has announced the launch of Domino, which is an affordable and high-performance 802.11 bgn WiFi hardware platform for IoT applications with a modular design architecture, unlimited extension capabilities and Arduino compatibility.

Domino WiFi development platform

Domino.IO features a modular design architecture.

At the heart of all boards is the Domino Core, which is a low-cost, high-performance 802.11n WiFi module based on Qualcomm/Atheros AR9331 WiSoC. Domino Core is completed by Domino Pi and Domino Qi.

Domino Pi breaks out all the pins of the Domino Core to easy 2.54mm pitch headers, integrates an USB-UART bridge, +5V/2A DC/DC power supply, power and wireless LEDs and a PCB Antenna. Domino Pi can be further extended with the 7 already available tile boards. It is a small Linux computer that you can customize yourself.

Domino Qi extends the Domino Core with an ATMega32U4 MCU, and is fully compatible with the Arduino Yun, but crammed into a tiny form factor. Plug the Domino Qi Mini board onto the Domino Qi baseboard to turn it into a board fully compatible with the ubiquitous Arduino Shield form factor and benefit from hundreds of already existing shields for rapid prototyping. Domini Qi Mini can also be extended using 4 tile boards if equipped with female headers.

 

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Roboteurs, Inc., a Canada-based company introduces SlushEngine, a smart stepper motor driver for the Raspberry Pi platform to control stepper motors with precision, speed, and simplicity. It is compatible with varieties of stepper motors and is controlled through a Pythan code running on the Raspberry Pi.

SlushEngine: Stepper motor controller for Raspberry Pi

SlushEngine: Model X technical specifications

• Controls up to 4 bi-polar stepper motors
• Max 7A / motor
• 9-35 V DC operating range
• 1-128 microstepping capabilities
• Integrated motion engine in stepper driver
• 4 limit switch inputs
• 4 general purpose industrial inputs
• 4 general purpose industrial outputs (3A / 24V)
• 8 additional logic level I/O
• Thermistor temperature sensing
• UEXT expansion connector
• Raspberry Pi fused power source

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Modern day microcontrollers are equipped with one or more dedicated PWM peripherals built-in that can be used to generate analog output voltages with varying range by just using a basic RC filter circuit. While this is a very simple and practical approach, it has some limitations such as it can only drive high impedance load and the processor should continuously output the PWM signal to maintain the output voltage constant, which prohibits the processor to be put into a low power shutdown state when required. This application note from Linear Technology describes the use of LTC644 and LTC2645 chips, which are dual and quad PWM-to-voltage output DACs, to overcome these problems by directly measuring the duty cycle of the incoming PWM signal and sending the appropriate 8-, 10- or 12-bit code to a precision DAC at each rising edge.

Improving PWM-to-Analog conversion

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Last month, we looked at a IKEA Molgan Lamp hack and adding ESP8266 connectivity to it. Here is another IKEA lamp enhancement project by Jesus Echavarria from Spain, where he hacked IKEA LAMPAN to include features like manual RGB controller to set the light colour, a timeout to turn off the light after 30 minutes without changes and a bluetooth connection to control the lamp with a smartphone or tablet.

Modified IKEA Lamp controller

Adding Bluetooth RGB controller to IKEA LAMPAN

The system is based on a PIC18F2550 microcontroller, with a 12MHz external crystal. This allows run up to 48MHz internal code (using the internal PLL), necessary to manage the RGB leds. The RGB led’s I use are this ones, that has built-in the WS2811 controller (are compatible with Adafruit Neopixel ones). I use 8 leds for the lamp illumination. Note the 100uF capactitor (C3) near of the led connector, to prevents the initial onrush of current from damaging the pixels. Also, R2 resistor (330 ohm) is bwtween the microcontroller pin and the first led to prevent voltage spikes. Check Adafruit Neopixel Guide for more info.

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Only 1/4 the size of the Raspberry Pi computer, Onion Omega is the latest and most promising open hardware development platform for WiFi based IoT applications. It comes with built-in WiFi, Arduino-compatible and it runs full Linux. It lets you prototype hardware devices using familiar tools such as Git, pip, npm, and using high level programming languages such as Python, Javascript, PHP. The Onion Omega is fully integrated with the Onion Cloud, making it a breeze to connect physical devices to the Web to create Internet of Things applications.

Congratulations to the Onion Team for far surpassing their Kickstarter funding goal, while there are still 11 days for the campaign to go.

Onion Omega is only 1/4 the size of RPi

Onion Omega Features

Onion Omega features:

• Dimensions: 28.2mm x 42mm (1.1″ x 1.7″)
• CPU: Atheros AR9331 400MHZ MIPS 24K
• RAM: 64MB DDR2 400MHz
• Flash: 16MB
• WiFi: 802.11b/g/n 150Mbps
• Ethernet: 100Mbps
• GPIO: 18
• USB: USB 2.0, Supports additional USB Hub
• Power: 3.3V
• Antenna: PCB Antenna w/ uFL Connector
• Power Consumption: 0.6W

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Check out this detailed build of Arduino-powered speedometer to monitor your bike speed on road. The project uses a reed switch to sense the rotation of one of the bike’s wheels. The Arduino reads in the reed switch closings and calculates the bike speed in mph. The calculated speed is displayed on a LCD screen. The speedometer is calibrated by defining the radious of the wheel in the firmware.

Arduino bike speedometer

Secure both the magnet and reed switch to your bike wheel with electrical tape (either wheel is fine).  As shown in the images above, the magnet connects to one of the tire spokes and the reed switch connects to the frame of the bike.  This way, each time the bike wheel turns the magnet moves past the switch. Connect the leads form the reed switch to the long wires from your protoboard (orientation does not matter here- it’s just a switch)

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Adam Fabio has posted a quick review of a cheap Chinese brand multifunctional component tester on Hackaday. He found its build quality was very cheap, but he was also amazed with its features and functionalities, including ohmmeter, capacitance meter, transistor tester, etc, which worked amazingly well with a reasonable accuracy. Powered with Atmega328 microcontroller, this component tester can be purchased for ~ $20 on eBay and Aliexpress.

Inexpensive Transistor tester from China

I didn’t have huge expectations for the tester, but I hoped it would at least power up.  Hooking up a 9 volt battery and pressing the magic button brought the tester to life. Since I didn’t have anything in the socket, it quickly lit up and displayed its maker information – “91make.taobao.com”, and “By Efan & HaoQixin”, then it informed me that I had “No, unknown, or damaged part”.

I had a few resistors lying around the bench (doesn’t everyone?) so I put one in. The tester read it as 9881 ohms. Sure enough, it was a 10K 5% resistor.  Capacitors – ceramic disc, electrolytic, and surface mount all worked as well. The tester even provided ESR values. The real test would be a transistor. I pulled an old  2N2222 in a TO-18 metal can, and popped it in the tester. The damn thing worked – it showed the schematic symbol for an NPN transistor with Collector, Base, and Emitter connected to Pins 1,2,and 3 respectively. Flipping the pins around and re-testing worked as well. The tester showed hFe as 216, and forward voltage as 692 mV, both reasonable numbers for a 2N2222.

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RF detection using a common LED

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This personal air conditioner is specially designed for outdoor use and runs over solar power. It uses a copper tube with circulating ice water through it to work as a heat exchanger. A small water pump helps to circulate the ice water, while a small fan distributes the cool air.

Solar powered Personal AC

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SubPos is a WiFi-based local positioning system designed using PIC microcontrollers and ESP8266 modules by Blecky on Hackaday.IO.

SupPos uses ESP8266 modules for position triangulation

SubPos

SubPos is an indoor positioning system that can be used in various environments such as metro lines, shopping malls, carparks, art galleries or conference centers, essentially anywhere GPS doesn’t penetrate. SubPos defines an accurate method for subterraneous positioning in different environments by exploiting all the capabilities of Wi-Fi. SubPos Nodes or existing Wi-Fi access points are used to transmit encoded information in a beacon frame that is utilised for position trilateration.

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Stian Eikeland’s capacitive touch banana piano is really cool.

Capacitive touch banana piano

Check out the demo here:

This weekend my niece-in-law is staying over, and to maintain my image as the crazy scientist uncle I’ve planned to make a banana piano (and lots of weird ice creams). In clojure there’s a pretty cool programmable audio environment called Overtone. Overtone features a decent sampled piano, and I’m thinking this could be a great basis for a banana-piano.There’s a couple of ways we can make bananas act as tangents, one of them is to use the bananas as capacitive touch sensors. Using a nice little hack it’s possible to do this using regular digital pins on a microcontroller. The hack is (afaik) originally from Mario Becker, Fraunhofer IGD, 2007 (website dead). Check out the article on capacitive sensors over at arduino.cc.

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Mike Doughty has posted an article showing how to add a PID temperature controller to a regular sodering iron for better performance.

Some plug-in soldering irons are adjustable. Some models have a temperature adjustment built into them and function like a light dimmer. Although better than units without any kind of temperature control, they are somewhat limited.

I was looking at PID temperature controllers and learned that they worked with K-type thermocouples. Then I started looking at K-type thermocouples and I thought that there may be a way to insert one of them inside a soldering iron and take a reading from the back of the heating element on the opposite end of the soldering tip.

Adding a PID temperature controller to a regular soldering station

ki

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Open ground penetrating RADAR is an ongoing open-source project initiated by Glenn Powers as his entry for the 2015 Hackaday Prize. The aim is to make a Raspberry Pi powered RADAR system to look into the Earth for less than $500.

Ground penetrating RADAR design

Commercial ground penetrating radar systems cost thousands of dollars. This project aims to create an open hardware alternative for about $500, using a Raspberry Pi with PiMSO to save data for later analysis and send instantaneous results to a web browser on a tablet or smartphone.

A Baofeng VHF/UHF radio is used a signal generator, which transmits via a Transmit/Recieve switch through an antenna. A RF detector is also connected to the T/R switch, which is connected to the MSO-19.

The radio controller is a 4N25 opto-isolator.

The T/R switch controller is a SN74HC04N (or similar) hex inverter.

Any Pi-compatible GPS and WiFi dongle will do.

The Raspberry Pi triggers the radio, T/R switch and MSO-19 via a buffered GPIO port once per second using a very simple python script.

 

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