Arduino – Page 6 – SuperHouse Automation

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Stacking Arduino Shields

One of the great things about the Arduino is the ability to expand your board using shields which provide all sorts of additional capabilities. Interestingly, you can even “stack” shields so that you can have lots of different combinations of added features. Whilst it might look easy to simply stack shields together, not every combination of shields can be stacked together and there are a number of complications that should be considered. Fortunately our friends at Freetronics have put together a great tutorial which explains the ins and outs of stacking Arduino shields. This tutorial should provide you with really useful information if you have been stacking Arduino shields in your home automation projects. Checkout the following link to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Have you successfully stacked shields in the past? Are you working on a project you would like us to feature in this blog? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Reading Resistor Colour Codes

Resistors are a fundamental part of almost all electronic circuits. Regardless of which project you are working on you will need to make sure that you are using the right resistors! To help you learn about how to determine the value of your resistor using the colour bands that are present on through hole resistors, our friends at Freetronics have put together a comprehensive tutorial. You can check it out at the following link.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Reading Sensor Values Online

If you want to take your projects to the next level and add online capabilities this tutorial is for you. Although it is relatively simply to connect up a sensor to your Arduino and read sensor values onto an LCD or your serial monitor, making these sensor values accessible over the internet adds a whole new level of complexity! With this tutorial you can learn how to create your own online thermometer. To get started checkout the following link.

If you are looking for a temperature sensor to use in this project the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics temperature sensor module. To find out more about check out the product page.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 29, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Solar Charger Control Panel

With recent advancements in battery technology it is increasingly common for homeowners to go off the grid and power their homes using a solar and battery system. This is fantastic if you have a smarthome as it means you can avoid power outages and save money on your power bills! However, if your home is powered from a battery system it is important to be able to monitor the charging rates, battery percent and typical discharging times. Often there may be a small control panel in located with your batteries, however, it can be a real pain to have to go into your garage every time you want to check your battery status. This is why Hannes has put together a great project which uses an internet connected Arduino to extend the control panel to a smartphone app so that you can access the information you need anywhere, anytime! To find out more checkout the following link.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Uploading to your Arduino via a Network

Although it is fairly straight forward to upload a sketch to your Arduino by plugging it into your computer, there are certain times when this can be very inconvenient. If, for example you have an Arduino under your house collecting temperature and humidity values and you need to push a bug fix to your board it can be a real hassle to get under your house with a laptop and updated your firmware! This is where this tutorial comes in. With the help of a protocol called the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) you can easily upload sketches to Arduino boards that are connected to your home network, right from the comfort of your computer. To get started learning this useful skill check out the following link.

If you are looking to for an Arduino board with network capabilities why not checkout the Freetronics EtherTen. The EtherTen is a 100% Arduino compatible board that can talk to the world. Do Twitter updates automatically, serve web pages, connect to web services, display sensor data online, and control devices using a web browser. Check out the following link to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

IoT Propane Tank

If you live in a remote area it is possible that you are living in an area not service by a gas connection. For many people this means relying on a propane tank. Wouldn’t it be great if you could reliably track the amount of gas remaining in your tank so that you could schedule a top up and not risk running out of gas! This project from Julio Aguirre you can turn your propane tank into a solar powered IoT device that sends you up regular information about your propane tank. Not only does it provide you information but it also automatically emails or SMS’s your gas supplier to arrange a new delivery when you are running low. To get started on this project check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to work on this hack the team at SuperHouse automation recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino Disco Lights

If you have managed to blink an LED using an Arduino you should be able to easily build this project! ToughRocket52 has put together a fantastic instructable which teaches you how to build your own Arduino controlled disco lights. Not only do these disco lights look fantastic but you could very easily modify the project to make disco lights in any shape or form! THey would make a great addition to your smarthome. To find out more check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to work on this hack the team at SuperHouse automation recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 19, 2016September 19, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino Oscilloscope!

An oscilloscope is a must have tool for any electronics enthusiast, however, they are typically extremely expensive ($600+), so price can be a real barrier to owning your own. With this fantastic project from BramMylemans you can use an Arduino to create your own oscilloscope very cheaply!

Not only is it great to be able to build your own oscilloscope, but this project will cost next to nothing as it only requires an Arduino Leonardo and a few capacitors, diodes and resistors. Furthermore, when you are working on home automation projects having an oscilloscope can really go a long way to helping you design and debug your system. To get started building your own oscilloscope check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino Leonardo compatible board the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics LeoStick. The LeoStick is very similar to an Arduino Leonardo, however it comes in a compact, convenient USB stick style format! Checkout the product page to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 18, 2016September 19, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino WiFi Rebooter

Does your WiFi router frequently drop out and need rebooting? This can be a very frustrating problem! However, like many problems, it can easily be solved with Arduino. This awesome project from Sameer sets up an Arduino which monitors your wifi connection, whenever the wifi is down a warning buzzer sounds and then a relay turns the router off and boots it back up again a few seconds later, just as if you had rebooted it yourself! If you have a home full of IoT devices, having the WiFi go down can be a huge problem and this project goes a long way to overcoming that! This is an extremely useful project, and best of all it shouldn’t be too hard either. To get started checkout the following link.

If you’re looking for a buzzer module to use in this project the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics Piezo module. For more information and to order, visit the product page.

Want to learn more about awesome automation hacks like this? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Have an idea for a project you would like us to feature? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Visualising Arduino Sensor Data

As fantastic as the Arduino IDE can be, it doesn’t provide an easy way to graph data that you receive from sensor inputs on your Arduino projects. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to visualise in real time how the light levels inside your house have changed over time? Or be able to track fluctuations in temperature or humidity? Instructables member CrtSuznik has put together a neat set of instructions which outline how you can send data from your Arduino into Excel and visualise it. This is a really useful skill when you start to build your own smart home and are looking for ways to effectively turn sensor values into useful information! To find out more check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to collect sensor data, the SuperHouse team recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board, click on the link to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.