A Brief Introduction to Analog Signals on Arduino Boards [shorts #5]

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Some Arduino boards, like the MKR Vidor 4000, come with built-in digital-to-analog converters (also often simply abbreviated to DACs). With other popular development boards, for example, the Arduino UNO, you’ll have to live with a PWM pseudo-analog output. Or do you? This short article investigates the difference between true analog outputs and PWM pseudo-analog signals, and what you can do to get a true analog signal without having to own one of the more expensive Arduino boards.

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A simple custom I2C character LCD interface for Arduino projects

Posted on by nerdhutblog

Character LCDs are a fantastic and cost-effective option when your project calls for a user-friendly output method. Besides being cheap and easy to use, these displays often offer enough usable screen real-estate for displaying simple status messages and interactive menu screens. However, the standard 16-pin interface can be quite a hassle to work with, and all the wires quickly clutter up your previously simple Arduino project. While there are some I2C character LCDs out in the wild, these models are often more expensive and sometimes difficult to work with. Therefore, I decided to build a simple-to-use alternative that allows you to control pretty much any standard 14 and 16-pin LCD display with only four wires.

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 5

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In this part of the Arduino capacitive touch timer series, I discuss the final working version of the project and what changes I had to make to the previous revisions. Towards the end of the article, I’ll have a look at what lessons I’ve learned while working on this project.

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Getting started with the Seeedstudio XIAO

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This video takes a look at the Seeedstudio XIAO board. In it, I unbox the device, take a look around it, assemble it, and I also show you how to prepare the Arduino IDE to get the XIAO up and running in no time!

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 4

Posted on by nerdhutblog

The fourth part of the Arduino capacitive touch timer series discusses the case design of the project. It also outlines how to assemble the individual pieces of the enclosure and how I plan to improve the design in the near future.

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 3

Posted on by nerdhutblog

This part of the Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer series discusses the software that will make the capacitive kitchen timer come alive. It also talks about how I implemented the capacitive touch ring and some experiments I conducted to ensure good gesture detection and user experience.

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 2

Posted on by nerdhutblog

This part of the Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer series discusses the hardware aspects of the project. In the last part, we took a look at the project idea itself, the goals, and skimmed over the theoretical principles behind capacitive sensing. So, it was now time to design a simple circuit and a PCB, which proved to be quite a bit more difficult than expected…

Continue reading Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 2