What are some project ideas for the Arduino?
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+3
A:
What I dream of is smart home system, which would allow me to monitor & control various aspects of my house. For instance, it could inform me (via SMS, MMS or email) what's the temperature inside the house and on various sensors, whether there were power outages, etc.
It could also allow me to water lawn remotely, but beforehand tell me whether it was raining or not, so that not to water it excessively.
It could open garage doors whenever I drive by (RFID rocks), turn on the lights on the driveway, control house doors, etc.
Anton Gogolev
2010-02-27 16:53:33
+1
A:
I really like the idea of having my Arduino on wheels, with a light sensor and some form of measurement device. So it will "map" out the layout of your room/garden/whatever - but the kicker is, you can get it to shy away from light sources. E.g. shine a torch on it and it will "run away" to a dark spot. At the flick of a switch it will love the light and be scared of the dark! you could effectily have it basking in the light of the sun to recharge its batteries (couple of solar panels). "UH OH! I'm low on battery, find me a light source!".
Neurofluxation
2010-03-04 11:21:16
That's pretty neat! I'm getting curious about putting sonar onto a mobile robot, either a single movable sensor or a several-sensor array. Could be interesting to combine the two ideas. :-)
Dean J
2010-03-04 15:01:55
A:
Speaking of a mobile robot, here is the project I am working on right now. It's a robot which can run autonomously or controlled via a user, built on Arduino.
http://www.fisherinnovation.com/?p=fi-apartmentbot
I am still working on the project but I hope its just another idea for you.
Matt Fisher
2010-03-14 00:52:41
A:
I show kids, who have never programmed, or done any electronics before, to make a simple 'Phototrope', a light sensitive robot, in about a day. It costs under 30 GBP including Arduino, electronics and mechanics. If folks really get into mobile robots, the initial project can grow and grow (which I feel is part of the fun).
There are international robot competitions which require relatively simple mechanics to get started, e.g. in the UK http://www.tic.ac.uk/micromouse/toh.asp
Ultimate performance require specially built machines (for lightness) , but folks would get creditable results with an Arduino Nano, the right electronics, and a couple of good motors.
A line following robot is the classic mobile robot project. The track can be as simple as electrical tape. Pololu have some fun videos about their near-Arduino 3PI robot.
IMHO, the most interesting competitions are maze solving robots. The international competition rule require the robot to explore a walled maze, usually using Infrared sensors, and calculate their optimal route. The challenges include keeping track of current position to near-millimeter accuracy, dealing with real world, unpredictably noisy environment and optimising straight-line speed with shortest distance cornering.
All that in 16K of program, and 1K RAM, with real-time interrupt handling (as much as 100K interrupts/second for some motor systems), sensor sampling, motor speed control, and maze solving is an interesting programming challenge. (You might make it 'easy' with 32K of program, and 2K RAM :-)
gbulmer
2010-03-26 11:47:03
I've built sonar-controlled robots before; they were fun, but definitely not running on 16k of code. :-) An interesting algorithm to implement is the GVG (Generalized Voronoi Graph); you stay equidistant to the two nearest walls at all times, and you'll eventually traverse the entire room and see every surface.
Dean J
2010-03-26 12:57:32