Group:Not Just Arduino

This is the wiki for "Not Just Arduino", a user group meeting every 2 weeks for people who want to learn, share and experiment on all microcontrollers.

• Our next event will be on the 11th of February at 7PM.
• Read the report on our last event
• Click here for the documentation on the PCB / etching workshop run by Eugene

Feel free to add all relevant info to this page.

contact: Marc and Dean or just ping our new mailing list.

Summary

• Building an active user group around Arduino and micro-controllers
• Organise workshops and talks where we can all share and learn skills
• Bi-monthly events where we can bring our projects demo them and / or get help

Events

• Next event: MONDAY 28th January at 7PM in London Hackspace's quiet room

Past events

Event Number	Agenda
1	8th October 2012
2	22nd October 2012
3	5th November 2012
4	19th November 2012
5	3rd December 2012
6	17th December 2012
7	14th January 2013
8	28th January 2013

Skills

Skills that the group has or are happy to share.

Name	Electronic Skills	Programming Skills	Platform	Prepared to mentor
Dean	Basic	Learning Basic's	Arduino	Yes - Set Up in Windows
TheHypnotist	Analogue-basic, Digital-medium	C mostly now	os/Linux ARM/Atmega328/MSP430	Yes
Ulisses	Basic	Advanced (C like)
Shane	Basic	basic C,	Will try
Mentar	Analogue-basic, Digital-medium	Arduino, C, C++, S4A	Arduino, AVR, PIC	Yes
TimS	Basic	C, Make	ATMega326 (AVR)	Yes
Riccardo	Basic	Arduino, Programming, Basic C,	Arduino	Can try
brendan	Basic	Very basic	Arduino	Can try
Dave	KISS digital, copy analogue	Good C, C++;	Arduino, AVR	Sure
Robert	Basic	Basic C	Arduino UNO

Name	I would like coaching support in	At Level
Add Your Details here	??	??

Training

Training will be determined by the needs of the user group meetings. Members of our group will offer mentoring, though we might find some kind of trade system (skill-share, beers, travel-cost...). We need to be able to provide a mentor during sessions to help those who have difficulty getting off the ground - without tying the mentors up too much. Beginners will help each other and when progress will take over some part of the training.

Each project should be listed here, to source help and document what they have done/learned: if not documented directly it does not exist.

Mentors (tbc)

• Mentar
• Morris - TheHypnotist
• Nneil
• Dean Forbes Basic Setup
• add your name here!

Group Project

Let's work as a group on a micro-controller project!

We are building a new LED notification board for the workshop, adapted from Solexious' project.

We're using this project as a learning platform for the new Not Just Arduino members.

>>>> Please add your links, suggestions, code, specs on the project page

Projects

Please list here your projects using micro-controllers here

• Weather Station - to feed into openweather map and cosm (Deanforbes)

• Sousvide Water Bath - Precision water heater using PID controller (Deanforbes)

• Kinect Robotic Arm - with 3D "Vision" - Have Arduino and Raspberry Pi control a robotic arm and have input from Microsoft Kinect's infrared depth sensor to guide the arm to pick stuff User:Ulisses
• Build a simple ethernet driven relay (2x) - anyone wanting to join in is welcome, we will learn the basics as we go along User:Dariomolinari
• With basic electronic-circuit training (printing, etching, soldering), would eventually like to build a Nanode User:Dariomolinari
• 1-wire iButton decode User:Dariomolinari

• Object detection - begin with RFID and then go on to explore other options with longer ranges (Kieron)

• Autonomous Rover Project - a robot that can put out a room and plug itself in to a power socket (ambitious)

• I attempted to interface a microcontroller and a timed mains outlet and let out the blue smoke - it's on my User page. User:TheHypnotist

• Build a self-balancing robot example- anyone who wants to join is welcome (Riccardo)

• Motion-sensing greeting bot (brendan)

• LED cube controller (brendan)

• remote-controlled hot air balloon/zeppelin (Qpnaosc)

• Skype LED board status notifier (Marc)
• RFID Reader & Writer : RFID module Kit 13.56 Mhz SPI Write and Read For Arduino (Necati )

• 434Mhz RTTY transmitter Transmits text over the air and is picked up by software defined radio, would like some help with taking it further.

• Harry Potter Clock - A christmas gift for my girlfriend, uses Arduino, Raspberry Pi and a USB modem to 'magically' point to where I am. It's finished now but I wrote up my experiences and the design of it on my website if anyone's interested in reading about it and learning from my mistakes! (Alastair)

Suggestions

• Using AVR-GCC, Make and AVRDude i.e. progamming Arduino's using C instead of being reliant upon the Arduino IDE.

• • There's a lovely, supported Makefile at http://ed.am/dev/make/arduino-mk (project page http://dev.ed.am/arduino-mk)

• Using hardware programmers.

• Graphical Programming for Arduino see "Interesting Links" below

Recommended Reading

The Hackspace library has some decent Arduino books:

• Arduino Cookbook
• Beginning Arduino - By Hackspace member Mike McRoberts (Earthshine)
• Arduino Playground
• Ladyada Arduino
• TronixStuff Arduino Tutorials

etc...

but please add here suggestions.

Group order

• Teensy
• Atmel chips

Interesting Links

Add your links here with a small description.

Alternative platform for Arduino

• http://hackaday.com/2012/10/07/freesoc-for-when-you-need-68-io-pins/
• http://hackaday.com/2012/10/09/single-sided-arduino-is-a-great-introduction-to-pcb-etching/.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone

Raspberry Pi breakout boards

• http://picru.st/
• http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm
• http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Raspberry/Buffer_Board.html

Graphical Programming for Arduino

• http://seaside.citilab.eu/scratch/arduino

• http://www.modk.it/

Motion Control

• http://openmoco.org/

Weather Station

http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/User:Njh/Wired_Weather_Station

PID

• https://github.com/br3ttb/Arduino-PID-Library

• http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2011/04/improving-the-beginners-pid-introduction/

• http://hackaday.com/2012/01/05/ospid-the-open-source-pid-controller/

Programmers

• http://blog.makezine.com/2012/10/08/a-fine-example-of-dead-bug-style-circuit-wiring/

Tutorials

• Arduino video tutorials on RS youtube channel
• TronixStuff Arduino Tutorials

Logo designs

You can still contribute to the perfect NJA logo quest.

As for now we received 3 logos (3 by Perry, 1 by mentar, 2 by Ian) but other members said they were interested in creating their own designs.

Please add your creations to this mailing list thread so all members can see them and comment:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/not-just-arduino/oPrMdG62xAA/discussion

For inspiration you can compare to what the other London Hackspace subgroups have done:

Music Hackspace logo http://bit.ly/Sstcvz

Video Hackspace logo http://www.videohackspace.org/

Graphics Hackspace logo https://twitter.com/ihackgraphics