An Arduino course from Udemy

While I feel like I have managed to become reasonably knowledgeable about programming Arduinos, and experiences such as at Startup Weekend and with Code for DC have validated my knowledge base and skill, I know there is a tremendous amount that I still have yet to learn.  Moreover, I feel like I have learned sporadically,…

Getting started with the ESP8266

So I purchased a few $5 (or less) Wifi chips off of ebay, the ESP8266.  It has taken the maker world a little by storm, as it makes is super cheap to get wifi into a project. You can use it as a standalone microprocessor, but to start I wanted just to use it as…

Prototyping with Dan Gelbart

Stumbled across a great intro to prototyping thanks to an article at Makezine, about billionaire Dan Gelbart.  He has a cool set of tools in his basement, and has great instructions for how to build stuff. Check out the YouTube intro and the YouTube Channel. Lessons I liked a lot were on forming plastic molds, and on building…

Bag Movement Alarm: project complete

After I completed the prototype of the bag movement alarm I spent some time turning it into something that is more of a usable product.  I designed a layout to fit onto a protoboard PCB that I got with a small project case I purchased, and then soldered it up and stuck it in the project…

Prototype complete: bag movement alarm

After figuring out the modified power circuit and the battery power monitor circuit, I could finally finish the prototype of the bag movement alarm.  I also added the same power switch circuit for the speaker, which allowed me to use a much better speaker (when I had tried it before with the old power circuit, it beeped…

Power monitor circuit

For the bag movement alarm project, I wanted to be able to monitor the battery level so I can warn the user when they need to change the battery.  A simple way to do this is just to monitor the voltage of the battery, as batteries have a pretty well articulate discharge curve:  with more…

Power circuit redesigned!

When I integrated the TrinketPro into the bag movement alarm prototype project, the power circuit did not work.  So I needed to redesign the power circuit. I had posted a question about this in the Arduino.cc forum, where forum user dlloyd had helpfully pointed me to an excellent explanation of using MOSFETs as power switches.…

Replacing the Uno with the TrinketPro

Now that I have the TrinketPro working fine, and have the sketch and prototyped circuit for the bag movement alarm project using an Uno, I wanted to replace the Uno with the TrinketPro. There were a few small changes, as there are two pins on the TrinketPro that are not available:  #2 and #7.  Since…

Trinket Pro ‘unboxing’

As part of the hackaday.io Everyday Carry contest that I am (in part) building the bag movement alarm for, I need to utilize a Trinket Pro.  Which is fine, because the product itself is a pretty affordable ~$10, and it packs pretty much to same punch as an Arduino Uno. I ordered one from the…