I have been getting into robotics lately for my robot vacuum project (which some of you have are aware of).

Anyway, trawling the intratubes as you do, you see some cool ideas with regards to microcontrollers. This one is particularly cool - an Arduino microcontroller attached to the dude's burglar alarm that sends a tweet when there's an intruder. Of course you can hook it up to SMS or whatever.

For SMS from my computer I personally use floAt's Mobile Agent which has a pretty solid API so you could do it with that.

Anyway, thought it was worth sharing.

I already ordered an Arduino Duemilanove board last week from this Aussie distributor.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/3082/arduinoalarmck3.jpg

sounds like an idea the dude who made the website n*****stolemy.tv did, except he had a webcam with motion sensors upload pics when he wasn't at home.

To be honest I don't really understand the purpose of the Arduinos. They sort of make interaction with the AVR chip more abstract, but if you're tinkering with microcontrollers I'd imagine you'd have enough knowledge or motivation to program for the AVR directly? Unless the purpose is just to standardise the hardware so that different people could run the same code without worrying about pin and clock configurations, etc.

I was working on a GPS project a while back, which I stopped due to lack of spare time. Basically the idea was having a saved copy of a map of brisbane on an SD card, talking to a GPS receiver, doing the maths and drawing your position on the map on an OLED board with a HUD - pretty much what car GPS units do. Half the fun was just being able to talk to the OLED and writing an SD/FAT16 driver, etc. I think I'd lose interest if most of that was already done for me?

last edited by parabol at 15:49:40 12/Feb/09

I'd imagine you'd have enough knowledge or motivation to program for the AVR directly?

Yeah, the purpose is just rapid-prototyping really. It has the clock, reset button, built-in LED's, USB connector, etc - all the things you'd probably want to put together on a board to program an AVR anyway.

I'm not so much interested in the electronics aspects - I'm interested in the control aspects - processing numerical data from accelerometers, gyro, various other inputs (interpolation, filtering, etc) and producing usable outputs for servos, steppers, and so on.

So since I'm new to uC's I had to decide what I was going to program, and ultimately what I want my experience to be like - do I want to produce my own PCBs and spend time soldering, or do I want to focus on programming and just use a ready-made prototyping platform with a breadboard for connecting input devices to? I am going for the latter.

Only thing I can't appreciate yet is the limitations of the ATMega168 - I'm so used to computers that it just seems unbelievably gutless I'm surprised it can do anything at all :-) I almost selected the PIC route into micros and thoroughly considered the Parallax BASIC Stamp and Javelin as well but I have settled with Arduino as a quick starting point because I like the C/C++ style code (since I do mostly PHP and Java at the moment) and also the layout of the board and some of the shields that are available (Ethernet, XBee, Bluetooth, etc).

ATMega168 - 16K Byte self-programming Flash Program Memory, 1K Byte SRAM, 512 Bytes EEPROM, 8 Channel 10-bit A/D-converter(TQFP/MLF). debugWIRE On-chip Debug System. Up to 24 MIPS throughput at 24 MHz. 1.8 - 5.5 Volt Operation (ATmega168V).

To be honest I don't really understand the purpose of the Arduinos.

Arduino just simplifies the process of doing physical computing stuff, especially when integrating it into other things (ie a flash interface). It lets people prototype devices and cool stuff without the need for a low level understanding of what is going on. Its also a good way to teach kiddies about electronics and coding at the same time, without exposing them to the underlying fun. Anther benefit is being able to get various shields, and just hook them straight up. And again its easy to talk to/from the arduino via a computer through usb or bluetooth. To be honest I prefer Phidgets just because they are a lot more plug and play, but thats just because of the type of projects I work on.

Yeah, had a good look at Phidgets as well, they look really cool and I will probably end up using some of their sensors and the Parallax ones anyway ( like Ping))) )

This site is pretty good for some inspiration btw, http://www.hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

Yeah, the purpose is just rapid-prototyping really

Yep that's fair enough. I can see why it would be good having a dev-board already set up .. would save heaps of time not having to mess around wiring up stuff from scratch. My setup usually looks like: this, fairly messy.

I almost selected the PIC route

I started off with PICs at uni because I didn't know any better. After so many headaches with the hardware, documentation and dev-tools I tried an AVR chip. It's just a whole new dimension. Everything is logical, well documented and supported, tools are all free and open, etc.

heh i just had a webcam setup using 'active webcam' when i was trying to catch c***s in my room
would have caught theievs who eventually robbed me too, if i had a UPS (They turned off the power before coming in...)

s'ok, cause I had insurance

but jolly good show old chaps

we use those maxstream xbee wireless modules on a few of our products at work. although that one in the pic looks like a series 1... we use the xbee pro series 2 coz it has much better range & is generally more robust.

i've bodged together a little home security system which monitors switchs on the doors & windows & logs times n stuff... pretty simple. i did originally think about designing my own hardware from scratch but apathy got the best of me & i just hacked into existing ccts for the products my company makes to do the job. (had help with the firmware from the softies at work coz i have nfi in that area :/ )

i am experimenting with a motion detection device based on a cct for a theremin (lol) atm.

we use those maxstream xbee wireless modules on a few of our products at work

Yeah they are pretty damn good and easy to use. I've only used a Series 1 and they were 100x better than the regular 2.4GHz transceivers that were common. No messing around with FIFOs, interrupts, state machines, etc.

Plus you used to be able to use the "Energy Detect" feature to measure channel noise. Good to see if there's any other crap (wireless AP, microwave, etc) nearby causing interference. Unfortunately I think they removed that command in a firmware update, damned if I knew why.