Environmental Monitoring with Arduino - Building Simple Devices to Collect Data About the World Around Us

Build a robot that responds to electrical activity in your brain—it’s easy and fun. If you’re familiar with Arduino and have basic mechanical building skills, this book will show you how to construct a robot that plays sounds, blinks lights, and reacts to signals from an affordable electroencephalography (EEG) headband. Concentrate and the robot will move. Focus more and it will go faster. Let your mind wander and the robot will slow down.

You’ll find complete instructions for building a simple robot chassis with servos, wheels, sensors, LEDs, and a speaker. You also get the code to program the Arduino microcontroller to receive wireless signals from the EEG. Your robot will astound anyone who wears the EEG headband.

This book will help you:

• Connect an inexpensive EEG device to Arduino
• Build a robot platform on wheels
• Calculate a percentage value from a potentiometer reading
• Mix colors with an RGB LED
• Play tones with a piezo speaker
• Write a program that makes the robot avoid boundaries
• Create simple movement routines

Arduino is the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taken the design and hobbyist world by storm. This thorough introduction, updated for Arduino 1.0, gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you work with them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is here!

Inside, you’ll learn about:

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram

Getting started with Arduino is a snap. To use the introductory examples in this guide, all you need an Arduino Uno or earlier model, along with USB A-B cable and an LED. The easy-to-use Arduino development environment is free to download.

Join hundreds of thousands of hobbyists who have discovered this incredible (and educational) platform. Written by the co-founder of the Arduino project, Getting Started with Arduino gets you in on all the fun!

Makers around the globe are building low-cost devices to monitor the environment, and with this hands-on guide, so can you. Through succinct tutorials, illustrations, and clear step-by-step instructions, you’ll learn how to create gadgets for examining the quality of our atmosphere, using Arduino and several inexpensive sensors.

Detect harmful gases, dust particles such as smoke and smog, and upper atmospheric haze—substances and conditions that are often invisible to your senses. You’ll also discover how to use the scientific method to help you learn even more from your atmospheric tests.

• Get up to speed on Arduino with a quick electronics primer
• Build a tropospheric gas sensor to detect carbon monoxide, LPG, butane, methane, benzene, and many other gases
• Create an LED Photometer to measure how much of the sun’s blue, green, and red light waves are penetrating the atmosphere
• Build an LED sensitivity detector—and discover which light wavelengths each LED in your Photometer is receptive to
• Learn how measuring light wavelengths lets you determine the amount of water vapor, ozone, and other substances in the atmosphere
• Upload your data to Cosm and share it with others via the Internet

"The future will rely on citizen scientists collecting and analyzing their own data. The easy and fun gadgets in this book show everyone from Arduino beginners to experienced Makers how best to do that."
--Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine, author of Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (Crown Business)

If you want to experiment with radio frequency identification (RFID), this book is the perfect place to start. All you need is some experience with Arduino and Processing, the ability to connect basic circuits on a breadboard with jumper wire—and you’re good to go. You’ll be guided through three hands-on projects that let you experience RFID in action.

RFID is used in various applications, such as identifying store items or accessing a toll road with an EZPass system. After you build each of the book’s projects in succession, you’ll have the knowledge to pursue RFID applications of your own.

• Use Processing to get a sense of how RFID readers behave
• Connect Arduino to an RFID reader and discover how to use RFID tags as keys
• Automate your office or home, using RFID to turn on systems when you’re present, and turn them off when you leave
• Get a complete list of materials you need, along with code samples and helpful illustrations
• Tackle each project with easy-to-follow explanations of how the code works

Get ready to create distributed sensor systems and intelligent interactive devices using the ZigBee wireless networking protocol and Series 2 XBee radios. By the time you're halfway through this fast-paced, hands-on guide, you'll have built a series of useful projects, including a complete ZigBee wireless network that delivers remotely sensed data.

Radio networking is creating revolutions in volcano monitoring, performance art, clean energy, and consumer electronics. As you follow the examples in each chapter, you'll learn how to tackle inspiring projects of your own. This practical guide is ideal for inventors, hackers, crafters, students, hobbyists, and scientists.

• Investigate an assortment of practical and intriguing project ideas
• Prep your ZigBee toolbox with an extensive shopping list of parts and programs
• Create a simple, working ZigBee network with XBee radios in less than two hours -- for under $100
• Use the Arduino open source electronics prototyping platform to build a series of increasingly complex projects
• Get familiar with XBee's API mode for creating sensor networks
• Build fully scalable sensing and actuation systems with inexpensive components
• Learn about power management, source routing, and other XBee technical nuances
• Make gateways that connect with neighboring networks, including the Internet

Want to create devices that interact with the physical world? This cookbook is perfect for anyone who wants to experiment with the popular Arduino microcontroller and programming environment. You’ll find more than 200 tips and techniques for building a variety of objects and prototypes such as toys, detectors, robots, and interactive clothing that can sense and respond to touch, sound, position, heat, and light.

You don’t need to have mastered Arduino or programming to get started. Updated for the Arduino 1.0 release, the recipes in this second edition include practical examples and guidance to help you begin, expand, and enhance your projects right away—whether you’re an artist, designer, hobbyist, student, or engineer.

• Get up to speed on the Arduino board and essential software concepts quickly
• Learn basic techniques for reading digital and analog signals
• Use Arduino with a variety of popular input devices and sensors
• Drive visual displays, generate sound, and control several types of motors
• Interact with devices that use remote controls, including TVs and appliances
• Learn techniques for handling time delays and time measurement
• Apply advanced coding and memory handling techniques

This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that's taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.

Inside, you'll learn about:

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram