A great Arduino project book and site via Hacker Space Tech – Be a hacker not a slacker

I received a message on twitter asking if I knew how to test if a GSM Sim900 module was working.  I have not worked with that module hands on but did recall a great write up on it from a trusted source, John Boxall of http://tronixstuff.com. I learned of John through Arduinos site under Mannuals and Curriculum. His book, Arduino Workshop, was listed right along with Massimo Banzi’s Getting Started With Arduino.

What impressed me most with this book is that all 65 of the projects from the book can be found on the authors website along with videos documenting his build of the project.

Actually, each of the projects from the book are well documented on the site and has great educational content on it’s own.

Read A great Arduino project book and site via Hacker Space Tech – Be a hacker not a slacker

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† Available from the LA Public Library

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

This Video Is Not Sped Up: Ridiculously Fast 3D Printing via MAKE: Blog

As you watch this video, it can start to feel like the footage is sped up. It isn’t. This person’s printer is just simply blazingly fast.

A common complaint I hear (and have said myself) about 3d printing is that it can be painfully slow. Prints, even simple ones, are usually measured in hours per print. In a scenario like a classroom, this greatly limits the ability of multiple people to benefit from the machine.

MirageC posted this video showing their blazing fast 3d printer, and explaining what they did to get there. The entire time the narration is happening you can watch as they fully print a “Benchy” in 7 Minutes, 10 seconds.

One thing that stood out as an interesting side effect of the speed is that ABS appears to behave differently (largely do to massively different operating temperatures). They are blasting the ABS with cooling, something that traditionally you’d try to avoid so that it doesn’t warp. In this case, their benchy – which only took a bit over 7 minutes to print – came out looking fantastic.

Read This Video Is Not Sped Up: Ridiculously Fast 3D Printing via MAKE: Blog

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Recalbox, the OS specialist in retrogaming, integrates into two new portable consoles via The Saxon

Released in 2015, Recalbox is an operating system well known to gamers who still enjoy “old” games. Free and open source, this software is developed by a team of passionate developers and it is easily installed on Raspberry Pi for cheap use. Recalbox supports more than a hundred systems, in an interface that is intended to be as easy as possible to use.

Read Recalbox, the OS specialist in retrogaming, integrates into two new portable consoles - The Saxon via The Saxon

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Why You Should Turn On Two Factor Authentication via Tom Scott on YouTube [Video]

The short answer is: "because it'll make things more secure". The long answer involves Ronald Reagan

Watch Why You Should Turn On Two Factor Authentication via Tom Scott on YouTube [Video]

Keep track of your laps in the pool with this Arduino counter via ブログドットテレビ

PeterQuinn925 swims for exercise, and to train for the occasional triathlon, but when doing so he often zones out and forgets how many laps he has swam. To solve this problem without spending a lot of money on a commercial solution, he created his own counter using an Arduino Nano and an ultrasonic sensor.

The sensor detects when a swimmer approaches, and the system calculates distance based on this, assuming that a lap is roughly 50 yards or meters. This info is announced audibly via a speaker/amplifier using an Arduino speech library and is shown on a 7-segment display.

Read Keep track of your laps in the pool with this Arduino counter via ブログドットテレビ

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Slack Status Updater with ESP8266 // Becky Stern via YouTube

 

Read Slack Status Updater with ESP8266 // Becky Stern via YouTube

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Official Arduino Day live stream March 27th at 4pm CET via Geeky Gadgets

Read Official Arduino Day live stream March 27th at 4pm CET via Geeky Gadgets

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Getting Started with the Raspberry Pi Pico via Hackster [Raspberry Pi]

You're probably used to hearing about Raspberry Pi in regards to their lineup of small, credit card-sized computers that are able to run Linux operating systems. They're great for situations when low power, great connectivity, and plenty of compute capability is needed, but it falls flat in situations requiring real-time performance and precise timings.

This is where the Raspberry Pi Pico excels. It has plenty of great peripherals, including I2C, SPI, USB, and more. The Pico contains two fast Arm Cortex-M0+ cores on a custom chip, along with a special subsystem called Programmable I/O, or PIO for short. It lets programmers create specialized state machines (up to 8) that can handle IO tasks with pins without the need for tons of CPU interaction, thus freeing up the two cores for other tasks.

Read Getting Started with the Raspberry Pi Pico via Explore all projects

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Discord Bots 3: Coding a Bot with discord.js via Coding Train on YouTube [Video]

 

It's finally time to write some code! In this video, I demonstrate the very basics of coding a "hello world"-style bot with discord.js.

 

Read Discord Bots 3: Coding a Bot with discord.js via Coding Train on YouTube

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

DIY Simple Weather Forecast Device via Hackster

Barometer is an instrument for determining the pressure of the atmosphere and hence for assisting in forecasting weather. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather. A device that shows a tendency change in atmospheric pressure in a unit of time is called Tendencymeter. The video describes how to make such a device with the help of Arduino microcontroller and 9g servo motor, which serves as a pointer.

Read DIY Simple Weather Forecast Device via Hackster

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An interesting link found among my daily reading