This application explains how to make a light detector for ARobot. This can be used to tell when a light is on or off, whether the robot is inside or outside, or for light following. This is a simple expansion and does not require soldering if using a breadboard.
It does assume that you have attached a breadboard and an expansion cable to the ARobot . This circuit and the light sensor could be mounted and soldered to a perf board and located to a movable head. Multiple light detector sensors could be used to detect the direction of light.
Light Detector Application: [Link]
The project it’s based on a nice little 3-axis accelerometer from STMicroelectronics with a SPI bus, which makes it handy for interfacing in microcontroller style applications. This device could be interfaced with an AVR, but the author chose to interface it with the Arduino, since it’s pretty easy to get up and running in that environment.
LIS3LV02DQ Triple Axis Accelerometer: [Link]
This project will make use of the MAX6675 Cold-Junction-Compensated K-Thermocouple-to-Digital Converter. It basically takes the millivolts produced by a standard K-type thermocouple, amplifies it, and outputs it’s temperature reading. This reading is received by a microcontroller, which then displays the reading on an LCD display. This unit will be capable of reading temperatures up 1800 degrees fahrenheit.
As you can see the author of this project also used adapters for smd parts. Myself i like to work directly with SMD parts, but sometimes it’s just not possible, especially when prototyping because you always have to tweak something.
MAX6675 Thermocouple: [Link]
This is actually version 2 of the syringe logic probe, so it has some improvements over the first one. The advantages of using a syringe as a logic probe are obvious, you can reach small pins or solder points. The probe wassn’t yet tested at high frequencies, but it works well enough for sniffing AES keys from an SPI bus.
Syringe Logic Probe: [Link]
This simple circuit is designed to report the temperature via any standard FM broadcast band radio at regular intervals. It uses a simple low bit rate tone signalling scheme which can be interpreted easily by both humans and machines. Such a device can be used stand-alone or as part of a PC-based weather station or HVAC system.
There are endless practical applications for such a device, just think about how many time you wanted to measure a temperature and for that you needed to run wires to the sensor. Now with this circuit you can place the device where you need the temperature reading and no more wires need to be connected.
Wireless Digital Thermometer: [Link]
