With the help from Lindsey French, some houseplants in Chicago have enjoyed a concert generated by the vibrations of a cherry tree in western Massachusetts.

Attached to the cherry tree was a piezo sensor, which measured the tree’s vibrations. These were uploaded to the world wide web using an Ethernet Pro as a server, and a friend’s wireless router, configured to allow port forwarding. On the chicago end, a processing sketch gathered the data and wrote it to the serial port my laptop. An Arduino attached to the laptop output the data to transducers, which were attached to ceramic saucers (and later, a plywood shelf) as the medium for the vibrations. The Arduino and breadboard were housed in a custom laser-cut box, based off of a modified thingverse template.

Read here the full story.

Did you ever look for a cheap temperature monitor capable of collecting up to six sensor readings?

Johnathan Hottell needed to monitor the engine temperature of his LB7 Duramax diesel truck to avoid over-heating problems in hot days. Looking for commercial products, he found several quite expensive scanners (around hundreds of dollars), so he decided to build its own monitor using an Arduino Pro Mini, six NTC thermistors and a Nokia 3310 LCD screen to display the temperature readings.

The result, which is described here in great details, cost around 40 $.

Via: DangerousPrototypes

JeeLab’s Jean-Claude Wippler has been “rethinking the Arduino interface” since 2008, when he first attached an ISM band radio to a Modern Device Real Bare Bones Board. Three and a half years later he has built quite a library of sensors and breakout “plugs” for the JeeLabs Platform. The heart of the platform is the JeeNode (see below), which adds an inexpensive radio to an RBBB-style development board.

All of the pins of the Atmega328 are reorganized into four ports that have the same pinout: IRQ, Analog In, Regulated Power, GND, Digital In, Power In.

Sensor plugs can be small and all have the same interface; most communicate with the microcontroller using I2C (a common on-board option in a lot of sensor ICs). A set of Arduino libraries provides a consistent interface to the sensor plugs and the wireless module.

Jean Claude’s blog is worth setting aside some time to dig into. The latest posts are about analyzing supercap discharge rates, but some of the previous 1000 odd posts include an Oscilloscope buyer’s guide, the design process behind the various products, and lots of analysis of power usage of Atmega-based microcontroller projects.

JeeLabs will be represented at the 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire by his Stateside collaborator Modern Device.

Ford sends out OpenXC beta, vehicle-aware apps should be just around the corner originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Capacitive touch allows electronics to sense when your finger is within a few millimeters of a surface to simulate a button “press” without the use of an actual mechanical button.  You’ll notice the feature on the new Xbox 360 Slim.  Here’s a simple way to make your own CapTouch surfaces.   All it takes is some inexpensive copper tape, a few resistors, and a microcontroller.

The Arduino CapSense library regulates the timing of the readings so all the hard work is done for you. Readings will vary based upon how the metal is touched (finger tip or full finger pad).  View the full project details.

Top TouchScreen Projects

• Flexible Interactive Multitouch Display
• iKitchen – DIY Touch Screen Wall-Mount Computer
• Touchpad Built With an Arduino and Infrared