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Electronics Projects

kenon

When I finished electronics in college I was determined to keep playing around with it as a hobby but unfortunately my time is limited and I find it difficult to get started on something I'd enjoy.

Something like this really intrigued me. They basically attached a small helium balloon to a load of electronics and camera gear and let it go as high and as far as it could go. The electronics included microcontrollers, an IMU, temperature/pressure sensors, radio comms etc.

Check out the video that was recorded using the balloon setup. Things go a little pear shaped when the temperature drops and the pressure increases at around 2.48.

This would be a project I would love to do but you are risking a lot of money on it as even with GPS tracking you could end up losing the lot!

So, has anybody got any decent projects that they are working on or is planning?

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Chet T16

I've seen a couple of these videos and i've always wanted to do it.

I can't imagine it being that expensive? Certainly not so much that it wouldn't be worth it!

I wonder what permission you need to launch a balloon.

kenon

The project I linked cost about $1200. They used a HD GoPro camera and their radio system was quite expensive too. I'd say you could get that cost well down but then there is always the risk that the balloon could land over water which could make retrieval very awkward!

The more I think about it, the more I want to do it.

Chet T16

I don't think you'd need to go crazy with a camera. Maybe just borrow one and don't say what you're doing

A cheap android phone could go a long way with one of those usb interface boards too

Fysh

Huzzah! We has Electronics forum! Time to dig out that Arduino kit I got a while back and start actually doing stuff with it.

One thing I've been idly considering is a basic home security/alarm system - eg basic optical sensors to track when a door's opened without disabling the alarm first, or some sort of sensor to detect high vibration in windows (ie breakage), hooked into some sort of monitoring system that then determines an appropriate response. The notion being that you could have the monitoring system do things like switch on a high-quality webcam and start streaming the feed to you (so that you can check whether it's a real problem or just the cat going bananas while you're not home), but also do things like phone/text/email you with a notification so that you can respond sooner. Obviously I realise this would be less useful than a full-on alarm installation, it's more curiosity than anything else that has me considering it.

On a totally different note there was a great article in the most recent issue of 2600 about building your own remote control helicopter from parts, which would also be a lot of fun (assuming you've got some money to spare for parts).

Padington

I'm currently in the market for a project! I'll be keeping a close eye on this forum.

Anyone else dream of a "smart" house? Like you've described Fysh with Arduino you can really rig up some cool pieces.

It's hardly electronics but I plan on centrally wiring speakers around the house at home so the mother can listen to her radio as she flies around doing her jobs. Hardly hardcore electronics I know, but when I then think; right let's start with motion sensors so that the sound will follow her...it could be the start of a cool system.

Fysh

Padington wrote: »

I'm currently in the market for a project! I'll be keeping a close eye on this forum.

Anyone else dream of a "smart" house? Like you've described Fysh with Arduino you can really rig up some cool pieces.

It's hardly electronics but I plan on centrally wiring speakers around the house at home so the mother can listen to her radio as she flies around doing her jobs. Hardly hardcore electronics I know, but when I then think; right let's start with motion sensors so that the sound will follow her...it could be the start of a cool system.

You might be interested in this article - along the lines you describe, but specifically it interfaced with their doorbell such that, when someone rang the doorbell, the speakers around the house would pause music playback, play the sound of a doorbell ringing, then resume playback.

Really your limitations in terms of home automation are down to how much time and money you want to put in - you can get temperature, humidity and lighting sensors as well as motion sensors, so you could automate the control your heating, lighting, air-conditioning and home entertainment systems. While I've never really understood what drives people to eg set up a website where you can turn their living room lights on, it does mean that it's now possible to set up a secure remote portal to control your home systems.

kenon

This would be a very rewarding project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYMnzXQEtw

kenon

Fysh wrote: »

One thing I've been idly considering is a basic home security/alarm system - eg basic optical sensors to track when a door's opened without disabling the alarm first, or some sort of sensor to detect high vibration in windows (ie breakage), hooked into some sort of monitoring system that then determines an appropriate response. The notion being that you could have the monitoring system do things like switch on a high-quality webcam and start streaming the feed to you (so that you can check whether it's a real problem or just the cat going bananas while you're not home), but also do things like phone/text/email you with a notification so that you can respond sooner. Obviously I realise this would be less useful than a full-on alarm installation, it's more curiosity than anything else that has me considering it.

I'd be interested in this project as I work in the security products industry. Glass break detectors are normally very basic so seeing what success you would get with an accelerometer or whatever you choose would be interesting. The webcam stuff would be useful too. Most security product companies are putting quite a bit of effort into mobile apps. If you could access your webcam stream via an app it would be a great way to polish off your project.

Chet T16

I have a live stream from my daughters bedroom that can be watched from anywhere, either via a browser or with an app on my phone

Chet T16

Chet T16 wrote: »

I have a live stream from my daughters bedroom that can be watched from anywhere, either via a browser or with an app on my phone

Eh, i should point out that shes two and its set up as a baby monitor

kenon

I have a live stream from my daughters bedroom that can be watched from anywhere, either via a browser or with an app on my phone

Chet T16 wrote: »

Eh, i should point out that shes two and its set up as a baby monitor

I'm glad you cleared that up...

Fysh

Chet T16 wrote: »

Eh, i should point out that shes two and its set up as a baby monitor

Glad you cleared that up - for a horrifying second I was worried this thread was going to turn into a "Unusual ways to use your electronics projects to overcome the recession" thread :eek:

Chet T16

Yeah i did think it was a little creepy after posting

Some people think its creepy anyway

Heres a vid from ages back i made with it. It was taking a picture then ftping it to one of my webservers. I had to combine them into a video myself. It also does (image based) motion detection and can ftp or email in that case. Y-cam

Fysh

One of the lads in the Arcade & Retro forum has an awesome project underway with a Raspberry Pi, which I'll be stealing heavily fromdrawing inspiration from when I get time - making a RasPiBoy.

I don't know whether I'd bother reusing a GameBoy chassis (I still have my ancient original-series Gameboy, and I think it even still works, but I gave away all my carts for it years ago along with my SNES and Super GameBoy

) but my idea would be to have a Pi-powered handheld, with an internal LCD and controls (most likely using the guts of a folding USB gamepad) - alongside an HDMI output and perhaps a fold-out keyboard. The goal would then be to have the SD card bootloader give two options - one for "handheld mode", the other for "external display games mode". I figure it should be able to do what I used to use a GP2X for - ie play 8- and 16-bit retro games in emulated form, along with suitably-encoded media.

Chet T16

Heres something i was working on yesterday/today. Heating timer with manual bluetooth activation. It will also be setup as a slave and controlled by a master connected to the net via i2c. Ultimately i want to control this via google calendar. At the minute the times are hardcoded. I think getting the calendar thing working will probably be easier than coding a menu to set the timer.

The bluetooth is pointless but it was a case of why not!

newmug

I have electric gates, and a remote control to open them. I was thinking of installing a switch in my dash, and hard wiring the circuit from the remote to the car battery and an ariel, with an amplifier thrown for good measure. I could open the gates from much further away and actually have them open when I get there, as opposed to having to wait the (unbelievably annoying) 10 seconds for them to open when I'm sitting right in front of them.

Chet T16

Chet T16 wrote: »

Heres something i was working on yesterday/today. Heating timer with manual bluetooth activation. It will also be setup as a slave and controlled by a master connected to the net via i2c. Ultimately i want to control this via google calendar. At the minute the times are hardcoded. I think getting the calendar thing working will probably be easier than coding a menu to set the timer.

The bluetooth is pointless but it was a case of why not!

We've been using this at home for about 10 days now, i tweaked it a bit and added the option to manually turn it on for 1, 2 or 3 hours like our old timer.

I've decided on a new direction for the controller but I'm waiting on some bits to arrive before I can get it finished. Details when it's finished!

Knifey Spoony

Thought I might as well throw up a video of my final year project, the last project that I managed to complete.

It's basically a maze solving robot. It uses two Arduinos in a master/slave setup to control the motors, keep track of it's position, apply the maze solving algorithms and communicate with a computer via Bluetooth.

It uses three algorithms to solve a maze, which one it uses depends on which one the user selects on a GUI designed using the Processing program. All processing is done on board the master Arduino, while the computer is only used to display data sent to it from the robot. The most intelligent algorithm is the Flood Fill algorithm but it can also uses the Left Wall Following algorithm, as shown in the video, and a version of the Random Mouse algorithm. The Random Mouse algorithm give the user wireless control over the robot using a PS1 controller and through the use of an on board camera, gives the user a view of the maze from the robots point of view.

There are also other features such as a display of a map of the maze on the GUI as the robot transverses the maze, battery charging circuitry to enable on board charging of the Nimh batteries and proportional controllers to keep the robot as close to the middle of the maze path at all times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpcKbDBvmMA

Chet T16

That sounds very interesting. What is the slave arduino doing? Is the video passed back to processing or is it a standalone setup?

Knifey Spoony

Chet T16 wrote: »

That sounds very interesting. What is the slave arduino doing? Is the video passed back to processing or is it a standalone setup?

The slave Arduino controls all the motor functions as well as the battery charging algorithm, while the master controls all the mapping, maze solving and communication algorithms as well as telling the slave when it should execute certain manoeuvres. So, this allowed us to separate out the low level robot movement algorithms from the high level maze solving ones, since we had trouble running all of these algorithms serially on a Lego Mindstorms robot before we built the actual robot.

The video is standalone. It wasn't really necessary for the project but we thought it would be cool thing to add. The robot actually uses ultrasonic sensors to determine where walls are in the maze and this info is passed back to the computer and then a map of the maze is displayed on the GUI.

Chet T16

Sounds like a decent way of doing it without having to worry about running both in code at the same time.

Are you allowed publish code and stuff on your project?

Knifey Spoony

Not really sure about since the project was funded by UCC and completed using their equipment, but even if I was allowed, I would only have access to my have of the code, since my friend is no longer in the country.

Fysh

Coming back to the handheld Pi-based gaming device project I mentioned upthread, I've just stumbled across this magnificent story. Chap deserves a medal made out of smaller medals.

Chet T16

Thats brilliant, i love the little screen in the top!

Fysh

I also just spotted this post about an upcoming camera expansion for the Raspberry Pi. Which will no doubt come in handy for that security-system project I mentioned upthread. No confirmed specs on it yet, but there are some suggestions that it's of the order of a 5MP unit similar to those seen in decent cameraphone systems and suggestion that it should be able to handle 30fps 1080i recording, which would make it a good candidate for a cheap CCTV/door entry system.

kenon

Just saw this in YLYL. What a fantastically...rewarding... project this would be!

TOMP

Anybody know a way to use electronics to mute the TV when the ads come on?

kenon

TOMP wrote: »

Anybody know a way to use electronics to mute the TV when the ads come on?

Here ye go...