My thoughts in e-text

I have recently posted my purchase experience with Simple Labs . This post is the continuation of that. That same day I ordered these components from www.probots.co.in 4 channel wireless relay board Power supply for relay Power supply for transmitter The 4 port relay board will turn on/off any lights and fans connected to them. And the on/off state of these relays is controlled from the transmitter. The transmitter and receiver talk over a 433 MHz frequency in their own protocol. The transmitter controls the relays by the way of 4 physical buttons or by a micro controller like the arduino board. There are 5 pins on the transmitter (one for each of the relays and one ground) which should be connected to the arduino board. When a relay pin is connected to ground, the relay on the receiver turns on. When the relay pin is open, the relay is off. The relay requires a 12V DC supply and the transmitter requires a 5V DC supply, which also I purchased. Make sure the power supply co

After my quick Hello World app , I became a bit more adventurous and decided to interface with the LCD screen that was part of the basic kit from Simple Labs (see this post for more details). Fortunately, arduino has a library called LiquidCrystal to interface with LCD displays that are driven by Hitachi HD44780 compatible drivers. All you have to do is add a #include <LiquidCrystal.h> in your code to start using the library. But before going into the coding part, I had to first make the proper connections from the LCD display to the arduino board. I looked up the datasheet for my LCD display, but found a much simpler connection diagram over at  http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal . I did not make the exact connections like in the diagram. This is what I did LCD                            Arduino PIN 1 (GND)                    GND PIN 2 (Vcc)                    +5V PIN 3 (Contrast adjustment)    Voltage divider (see below) PIN 4 (Register select)        D

Having received my arduino and basic components kit earlier last week , I sat out to write my first arduino program. A hello world of sorts. I started out by installing the arduino package in Kubuntu. What you get from the package is a simple IDE which can compile and upload the code to the arduino board. For installing the IDE on other flavors of linux, head on over to the arduino site . I connected the InduinoX board to my laptop using a USB cable. Selected the correct board type i n the IDE using   Tools --> Board --> Arduino Deceimila, Duemilanove, or Nano W/ ATmega 168 . Next select the correct USB to use fr om  Tools --> Serial Port . A nd finally wrote these first lines of arduino code :) void setup() {   pinMode(11, OUTPUT);  // Prepare red LED for output   pinMode(12, OUTPUT);   // Prepare blue LED for output   pinMode(13, OUTPUT);   // Prepare white LED for output } // a function which executes again and again void loop() {   redLight(HIGH);  

I have been having this itch to work on a home automation project for a long time. And finally the day has come to scratch the itch. I have been putting off this idea for a while and it is high time I did something about it. So as a first step I at least wanted to get the basic electronic components. Perhaps staring them long enough would finally motivate me to do the project. I wanted to start off on a very simple setup. Basically, get a proximity sensor to detect if there are people in the room, talk to a light sensor and see if we need to turn on the lights, talk to a temperature sensor to see if we need to turn on the fan and do the necessary based on the sensors' response. To interface with these sensors I wanted to use an arduino board, which I have been wanting for a while now. The list comes down to Arduino board Proximity, light and temperature sensors Relays to turn on/off lights and fans I searched for the stuff online and found these 2 online stores (in India)