How-To: Forrest Mims Puff Switch
A puff switch can be useful when a user cannot be expected to activate a switch by more conventional means.
Technology
The Monday Jolt: HarvestGeek Rules the Greenhouse
The Monday Jolt is a new series about microcontrollers and electronics that appears in MAKE every Monday morning. HarvestGeek is an ambitious project to automate a greenhouse or other growing environment through the use of a variety of sensors hooked up wirelessly to an Open Source, Arduino-compatible base station. An additional unit can trigger greenhouse […]
Raspberry Pi for Web Initiated Coffee
When Shawn Wallace and I wrote Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, we wanted to include a few projects that demonstrated the strengths of the single-board computer. One of those strengths is the ability to run a fully-fledged dynamic web server that could take direct control of the GPIO pins for turning on and off household […]
How Shift Registers Work
Kevin Darrah explains how those clever shift registers can trigger 8 LEDs with just two pins. [via Anton Olsen]
Prison Door System Built Using Only Timers and Relays
When the trustees of a southern prison insist that no microprocessors or transistors be used to create a new door and gate locking system, a young engineer springs into action with relays and timers.
How-To: Control AC Appliances with Spacebrew
When I visited the Intel booth at International CES in January, I was introduced to Spacebrew, a software toolkit for connecting interactive things to one another. It’s what linked up all the ultrabook screens that represented the leaves of a beautiful, metallic tree at the corner of the booth. The folks at Rockwell Group’s Lab […]
Track Facebook Likes with Arduino
Using an Arduino Uno equipped with an Ethernet Shield and an LCD Keypad shield, MAKE reader Kedume demonstrates how to create a simple text display for the number of likes on any Facebook page. I think that this is a great project for an Arduino beginner because all you need to do is stack the […]