Posts with «iot» label

SPINES Design Makes for Modular Energy Harvesting

The SPINES (Self-Powered IoT Node for Environmental Sensing) Mote is a wireless IoT environmental sensor, but don’t let the neatly packed single PCB fool you into thinking it’s not hackable. [Macro Yau] specifically designed SPINES to be highly modular in order to make designing an energy harvesting sensor node an easier task. The way [Macro] sees it, there are two big hurdles to development: one is the energy harvesting itself, and the other is the software required to manage the use of every precious joule of that harvested energy.

[Macro] designed the single board SPINES Mote in a way that the energy harvesting portion can be used independently, and easily integrated into other designs. In addition, an Arduino library is being developed to make it easy for the power management to be done behind the scenes, allowing a developer to concentrate on the application itself. A solar-powered wireless sensor node is one thing, but helping people get their ideas up and running faster in the process is wonderful to see.

Hack a Day 17 Jul 19:30

2018 hackaday prize arduino energy harvesting iot power harvesting sensor node solar solar hacks spines the hackaday prize wireless

Arduino and Distrelec launch a new automation & robotics contest!

How can you help advance Industry 4.0 using the Arduino ecosystem? From robots and predictive maintenance to remote control and data acquisition, we’ve teamed up Distrelec to launch a new Automation & Robotics Contest challenging our community to create innovative solutions that can make the industry faster, cheaper, more flexible, and efficient.

Participants are required to tap into our extensive range of IoT boards like the MKR1000 WiFi and MKR GSM 1400, libraries, and online platform to bring their ideas to life. Industrial automation projects could target energy management, remote monitoring, machine safety, or predictive maintenance, for example, using Arduino Create to set up, control, and connect your Arduino, Intel, and Arm-based devices. Robotics projects could include designs for surveillance drones, robotic arms, rovers, or autonomous transportation, leveraging feature-rich boards like the Mega and Due to prototype advanced systems.

How to Enter

Create a free account on Arduino.cc (or log in if already a member).
Register for the contest by clicking “Register as a participant.”
Send your concept to the Arduino/Distrelec: Automation & Robotics Contest by June 29, 2018. The top 150 makers will receive a coupon for Distrelec online store. Moreover, there will be a series of micro contests, with weekly prizes handed out from Distrelec.
Design, build, and submit your project by September 16, 2018. Winning projects will be selected based on their originality, quality, creativity, and social impact.

Prizes

1st Place: Keithley DMM6500 Bench Top Multimeter and a trip to Maker Faire Rome
2nd Place: Weller WT1010 Set: WT1 Soldering Station, WTP90 Soldering Iron, Safety Rest 200, XNT A Soldering Tip
3rd-10th Place: Grove Starter Kit for Arduino

Ready to get started? You can find more information on the contest here and browse Distrelec’s entire Arduino lineup on their website. To submit your ideas, please visit the Arduino Project Hub. And remember, projects must use an Arduino board in order to be eligible to win!

Arduino Blog 23 Apr 12:04

arduino arduino contest featured industry 4.0 iot maker faire rome uncategorized

Programming Linux Devices With Arduino And The Cloud

Back in the olden days, when the Wire library still sucked, the Arduino was just a microcontroller. Now, we have single board computers and cheap microcontrollers with WiFi built in. As always, there’s a need to make programming and embedded development more accessible and more widely supported among the hundreds of devices available today.

At the Embedded Linux Conference this week, [Massimo Banzi] announced the beginning of what will be Arduino’s answer to the cloud, online IDEs, and a vast ecosystem of connected devices. It’s Arduino Create, an online IDE that allows anyone to develop embedded projects and manage them remotely.

As demonstrated in [Massimo]’s keynote, the core idea of Arduino Create is to put a connected device on the Internet and allow over-the-air updates and development. As this is Arduino, the volumes of libraries available for hundreds of different platforms are leveraged to make this possible. Right now, a wide variety of boards are supported, including the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and several Intel IoT boards.

The focus of this development is platform-agnostic and focuses nearly entirely on ease of use and interoperability. This is a marked change from the Arduino of five years ago; there was a time when the Arduino was an ATmega328p, and that’s about it. A few years later, you could put Arduino sketches on an ATtiny85. A lot has changed since then. We got the Raspberry Pi, we got Intel stepping into the waters of IoT devices, we got a million boards based on smartphone SoCs, and Intel got out of the IoT market.

While others companies and organizations have already made inroads into an online IDE for Raspberry Pis and other single board computers, namely the Adafruit webIDE and Codebender, this is a welcome change that already has the support of the Arduino organization.

You can check out [Massimo]’s keynote below.

Hack a Day 15 Mar 12:00

arduino arduino create arduino hacks beaglebone ide iot news raspberry pi

GO-4 SMART HOME ARDUINO BOT

Primary image

What does it do?

IOT Robot

In this project I will

Cost to build

$50, 00

Embedded video

Finished project

Number

Time to build

24 hours

Type

URL to more information

Weight

150 grams

Control Your Light Switches from Your Phone

Ahmet Akif Kaya built a system. that incorporates an Arduino, Bluetooth module, and servo. to control his light switch from his cel phone.

IOT AI in the Cloud using Reinforcement Learning

Demo Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18kzysV3wMw&feature=youtu.be

Synopsis

Introducing the Arduino MKRFOX1200

On Arduino Day, we announced the latest member of the Arduino MKR family: the MKRFOX1200. This powerful IoT development board offers a practical and cost effective solution for Makers looking to add Sigfox connectivity to their projects with minimal previous networking experience.

The MKRFOX1200 shares several similarities with other MKR products, like the MKR1000 and MKRZero, including a compact form factor (67 x 25mm) and a Microchip SAM D21 32-bit Cortex-M0+ microcontroller at its core. The recently unveiled board also features an ATA8520 module for long-range, low-energy consumption, and is capable of running for over six months on two standard AA 1.5V batteries.

Designed for Makers ready to take their IoT projects into the real world, the MKRFOX1200 comes with a GSM antenna that can be attached to the board and a two-year subscription to the Sigfox network. This provides users with full access to Sigfox’s efficient messaging system (up to 140 messages per day), cloud platform, webhooks, APIs, as well as the new Spot’it geolocation service.

MKRFOX1200 can be used in a wide variety of settings, from agriculture (livestock management, smart irrigation and weather stations), to smart cities (dumpster monitoring, air quality networks, street lighting or parking lot tracking), to utility metering and other industrial applications.

“Sigfox loves Makers,” says Nicolas Lesconnec, Head of Developer Relations. “Sigfox aims to empowers billions of new IoT solutions. We’re proud to partner with Arduino, the leading open-source electronics platform, to offer the simplest way to connect anything.”

Sigfox currently operates in over 30 countries, with more to follow in the next few years. (Use this map to see whether it has been deployed or is rolling out in your area.) The first version of the MKRFOX1200 is compatible with Sigfox Radio Configuration Zone 1 (868MHz, 14dBm), meaning it is only supported in network-covered regions of Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa.

Interested? You can find the MKRFOX1200’s specs here, and watch Massimo Banzi’s overview below. The board is now available on Arduino’s European online store!

Arduino Blog 18 Apr 12:14

arduino featured iot mkrfox1200 sigfox

Hacking Robotic Arm using Controllino and Cayenne

Description

This tutorial will show you how to take over the controls of the OWI Robotic Arm with the help of an Arduino compatible, open-source PLC called the Controllino MAXI, together with Cayenne (my go-to iOT application for remote connection to my Arduino projects). The Controllino MAXI will provide the physical connections to the OWI robotic arm, and Cayenne will allow me to control the arm via my web browser or via the Cayenne app on my phone.

Parts Required:

Arduino Libraries and IDE

The Arduino IDE can be used to program the Controllino. You can dowload the Arduino IDE from here: https://www.arduino.cc/en/main/software.
You will also need to read the Cayenne Ethernet library installation instructions in order to install the Cayenne Ethernet Library.
The Controllino will connect to the internet via the Ethernet port onboard.
You do not need the Controllino library for this project, however, if you have a Controllino, you might as well install the library. You can read the Controllino library installation instructions from their GitHub webpage here: https://github.com/CONTROLLINO-PLC/CONTROLLINO_Library.
You will need to notify the Arduino IDE of the Controllino MAXI board by pasting the supplied URL into the "Additional Boards Manager URLs" in the Arduino IDE.
This is located under: FILE - PREFERENCES - Additional Boards Manager URLs.
The URL that you need to paste is in STEP 3 of the Controllino Library installation instructions on their GitHub page.
The video at the top of this tutorial may help clarify the process.

ARDUINO CODE:

The code above is very simple, however you will need to create a dashboard of widgets from within your Cayenne account in order to control the OWI robotic Arm from your phone or via the Dashboard webpage.

Setting up Cayenne Dashboard

Once you have created your Cayenne account, you will be presented with a webpage to choose a board to connect to. Controllino is an Arduino compatible PLC, so make sure to follow these instructions for setting up the Controllino in your Cayenne Account.

Select Arduino from the available list of boards.
Make sure to install the necessary libraries if your have not done so already.
Select Arduino MEGA from the avaliable list of Arduino boards
Select Ethernet Shield W5100
Copy and paste the Arduino code that pops up on screen into your Arduino IDE and upload to the Controllino.
Alternatively, copy and paste the code from above, however you will need to insert your Authentication token to get it to work

After you upload the code to the Controllino, and providing it has an ethernet cable connected to the internet router (and has access to the internet), and is powered on, it will connect to your Cayenne Dashboard. You can now add widgets to the dashboard in real time to interact with the Controllino, and without uploading any more code to the open source PLC.

Adding Widgets

We need to add a number of widgets in order to activate the relays on the Controllino. The relavent digital pins that we will need to know about can be found on the Controllino website here: https://controllino.biz/downloads/.

Here is the direct link to the PINOUT file for the Controllino MAXI.

"Armed" with that knowledge, we can now create the widgets which are necessary to control the relays on the Controllino. From within the Cayenne dashboard, please follow these instructions to create a widget:

Select - ADD NEW
Select - DEVICE/WIDGET
Select - ACTUATORS
Then - RELAY from the dropdown box
Select - RELAY SWITCH
Give the widget a descriptive name to differentiate it from the other widgets and a name that is somewhat informative (eg. R0 - Pos)
I gave the first widget the name "R0 - Pos", because it will connect to Relay R0, and that relay will be connected to the Positive (POS) terminal of the OWI robotic arm.
Select the device you would like to connect to. Be aware that you can change the name of the device in the settings. If you followed this tutorial, it should have the name "Arduino MEGA", but I changed the name of the device to "Controllino" to be more accurate.
We will be using a digital pin to control the relay, therefore select "Digital" as the Connectivity option
For this specific widget, we will be controlling R0, which is activated by digital pin D22 on the Controllino. Therefore select "D22" from the "Pin" dropdown box.
Choose a "Button" as the widget type
Choose an icon from the dropdown box that makes sense to you
Skip Step 1
Select Step 2: Add actuator

You should now see your new widget on the dashboard. Select the widget to enable or activate that relay. If you do this, and if everything goes to plan, you will see the LED for R0 illuminate on the Controllino. You now have to add the rest of the widgets to the dashboard in order to control the rest of the relays on the Controllino.

Widget Dashboard

Here is a table to show you how I setup my dashboard.

Fritzing diagram

OWI Robotic Arm Pins

Normal OWI Robotic Arm Circuit

The following circuit diagram will show you how the wired control box is normally connected to the OWI Robotic arm. This is the circuit diagram of the OWI robotic arm under normal operating contidtions.

OWI Robotic Arm Circuit when connected to Controllino

The following circuit diagram will show you how the OWI Robotic Arm will be controlled by the relays of the Controllino. This is the circuit diagram of the OWI robotic arm when it is connected to the Controllino.

All connected

The OWI Robotic Arm is connected to a breadboard using the female-to-male jumper wires. Solid core wire is then fed through to the relay terminals of the Controllino. You could just wire it up so that the robotic arm is connected directly to the Controllino, however, I did not have the right connectors for this purpose.
The Controllino is also connected to my internet router via a normal RJ-45 ethernet cable, and is powered by a 12V DC power adapter.

Summary

Now that you have all the physical connections made, uploaded the code to the Controllino, and have created your dashboard in Cayenne, you should be able to control your OWI Robotic arm from anywhere in the world. As demonstrated in the video at the start of this tutorial, the robotic arm has quite a bit of give on each of the joints, which makes it difficult to achieve certain tasks that require an element of precision. There goes that idea of being able to perform surgery with this thing !!! At least you can get it to make you a cup of tea, and if you are patient enough, you might even get a grape once in a while.

Thank you to Controllino and Cayenne for making this tutorial possible. If you would like your product featured in my tutorials, please contact me on my contact page.

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ScottC 27 Mar 07:08

arduino compatible open-source plc cayenne controllino iot owi robotic arm project smartphone tutorial