Daisy is an old “Discovery Kids” projection alarm clock turned into an autonomous obstacle avoiding bot. The brain is an Arduino Mini. Two small servos, modified for continuous rotation, are used for a differential drive and a combination of 3 infrared sensors (under the “skirt”) and 1 HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor (the “eyes”) detect obstacles. I […]

This  is a side project from my endeavor to program an Arduino Uno wirelessly (over Bluetooth) using a cheap HC06 JY-MCU Blueetooth Module I got from eBay. In order to kick off the Arduino bootloader and upload a new sketch, you need to reset the Arduino at the right moment, and hold the reset pin “LOW” […]

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ernest Hemingway A few days ago my son came back from school with something that he had build in a Tech-Ed class. You had to carry a copper ring across a maze made of […]

Breadboards and hook-up wires are great for prototyping and testing out basic circuits. At some point though, you will want to create something more permanent and robust. Robots move around, bump into things, shake and vibrate and wires tend to disconnect way to easy. Soldering will help fix that! The best part is that even […]

In a previous post I shared my notes on  how to connect an Arduino to an Android phone using the the popular and cheap HC-06 Bluetooth module. In that example I used the Bluetooth module with its default settings. That works fine, but some applications may require changing the communication speed (Baud rate), the pairing code, the module […]

I am working on circuit that will allow me to program my Arduino boards (I have an Arduino Uno and a couple of Arduino Pro Minis) over a wireless Bluetooth connection. I am planning to use my cheap and easy to find HC-06 Bluetooth module  for this. One of the first thing to figure out is the […]

Erik Verberne teaches Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Netherlands and looked into the Arduino platform in an attempt to enhance his department’s curriculum. He diligently documented his research and is now sharing it with the community. The result is an e-book of over 200 pages full of examples and tutorials, from Arduino and ATTiny […]

Piezo buzzer background Piezo buzzers are simple devices that are commonly used to produce beeps and sounds in many electronic gadgets, like alarm clocks, toys, pc boards, etc. They consume very little current and have high impedance, which means that you can safely connect them directly to a micro-controller pin. Buzzers have a piezoelectric ceramic […]