Arduino

Making your own Segway, the Arduino way

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After obtaining motors from a broken wheelchair, this father-son duo went to work turning them into a new “Segway.”

The DIY transporter is controlled by an Arduino Uno, along with a pair of motor drivers that handle the device’s high current needs. An MPU-6050 allows it to react as the rider leans forward and backwards, moving with the help of a PID loop. Steering is accomplished via a potentiometer, linked to a bent-pipe control stick using a bottle cap and glue.

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James Bruton demonstrates the Coanda effect with an Arduino-controlled rig

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The Coanda effect, as you may or may not know, is what causes flowing air to follow a convex surface. In his latest video, James Bruton shows how the concept can used as a sort of inverted ping pong ball waterfall or staircase.

His 3D-printed rig pushes balls up from one fan stage to another, employing curved ducts to guide the lightweight orbs on their journey.

The fan speeds are regulated with an Arduino Uno and motor driver, and the Arduino also dictates how fast a feeder mechanism inputs balls via a second driver module. While the setup doesn’t work every time, it’s still an interesting demonstration of this natural phenomenon, and could likely be perfected with a bit more tinkering.

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DIY Soil NPK Meter || Measure Soil Nutrient Content using Soil NPK Sensor & Arduino

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In this video, we will learn about the interfacing of Soil NPK Sensor with Arduino. The soil nutrient content can be easily measured using NPK Soil Sensor & Arduino. Measurement of soil content N (nitrogen), P (phosphorus), and K (potassium) is necessary to determine how much additional nutrient content is to be added to soil to increase crop fertility.

The soil fertility is detected using NPK sensors. A major component of soil fertilizer is nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The knowledge of the soil nutrient concentration can help us to learn about nutritional deficiency or abundance in soils used to endorse plant production. Apart from measuring Soil NPK, you can also measure Soil Moisture Content using Soil Moisture Sensor, which is explained in my one the previous video.

Use This One Simple Trick to Smooth Large Fonts on Graphics Displays

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Graphic displays are great at showing rudimentary numbers and letters in block form at a small 6 x 8 resolution, but kicking those fonts up to a larger size, such as 12 x 16, makes the characters look blocky or distorted. The problem here is the larger magnification also increases the empty areas within the character block; thus, the numerals look jaggy. Electronics enthusiast David Johnson-Davies has come up with a technique to fix that issue and seemingly smooth over those characters, making them readable at a distance.

The smoothing works by checking whether one of the following two situations A or B occur anywhere in the double-resolution character. (?: Technoblogy)

The smoothing works by checking whether one of the following two situations A or B occur anywhere in the double-resolution character. (?: Technoblogy)

In his recent Technoblogy post, Johnson-Davies took a closer look at the problem, analyzed the smoothing problem, and found that the character block’s angled areas were responsible for the distortion, while the horizontal and vertical scaling of the font remained smooth. His fix entails looking at the checkered patterns at what’s being drawn, then adding a single pixel to fill in the blanks, making them appear smooth when upscaled. Johnson-Davies packaged his approach into a simple function that works in an Arduino environment, although it can easily be tailored to work no matter what language users prefer.

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