Justin's Page

Just a reminder that tomorrow's tutorial will be a three hour session.

To get the most out of it, please bring along any hardware/electronics that you've been working on. If software is more of an issue for you, please bring a 'flowchart' of how you want your project to behave. Look up flowcharting on the Web for how to draw a flowchart.

If you can blog about any issues you have *before* the class, I'll have a chance to be prepared to give you the best help I can.

Cheers,
Justin

As a great number of you are considering using motors in your project, I thought I'd lay out the options for the different kinds of motors available.

1. "Standard" inductive motor. This type (usually DC) will simply turn in one direction, usually many times a second. If you reverse the polarity to the motor, it will spin the other way. DO NOT drive these directly from the Arduino- either use a relay, or what is known as an "H-bridge". An h-bridge will allow you to drive the motor in either dire… Continue

Hello there,

Tutorial four will be, as mentioned in the class, a straightforward but important one.

Use a digital output on the Arduino to switch a relay. The relay should switch a completely different circuit, which uses a different voltage. Here's the most common case:

You use a a 5V relay (the type I showed you in class) to switch 12V.

Ideally you will switch on and off a device that could not be switch with the Arduino alone.

This will be due the day before you come back to class. The k… Continue

OK- use 'fun with pots' as the tag.

Here's the tutorial for this week. We want to 'electrically decouple' the analog input from a digital output.

Your task is to correctly wire a potentiometer into an analog input of the Arduino, and have it alter the PWM modulation of an LED. This means simply that when you change the resistance of the potentiometer, the pulse width (and therefore the brightness) of the LED changes.

The software in Arduino will be:

1. Read the value of the variable resistor… Continue

As per Andrew's recommendation, here is a list of components you'll need to source so that:

a. We have what we need in the tutorials
b. You have what you need for your individual projects.

At least for the first category, don't bother ordering components such as resistors, switches, etc. from Little Bird- it'll far faster to just nip down to Jaycar or Dick Smith's and buy them there. Take this list with you and they're sure to know what you mean. If they don't, then that's a sad reflection on… Continue