Introducing our second project, the Arduino Stripper (first was the USB Temperature Thingy. Still looking for a decent name for it, btw)

Does the world really need a yaac (Yet Another Arduino Clone?):

Allow me to explain. I love using the little Arduino Pro Mini from Sparkfun. These little boards are perfect for space constrained and low voltage applications. I have built a number of projects using it. My only problem using it was that I always had to solder components/sensors directly on to it which is a) ugly and b) prone to short-circuiting. To solve this problem, I started building bare minimal Arduino's using perf/strip boards which is almost perfect space wise, but becomes a really laborious work (2-3 hours to get it all right) Sometimes, I just need an Arduino for a quick idea I have in my head and neither of the above two options quite cut it.

Necessity is often the mother of an invention, and the Arduino Stripper is a perfect example. I built it to solve my own problem and love it for its small size, rapid prototyping, and flexibility.

Its a complete Arduino Board. See the video below to see it in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cRSKLPLPfg


Did I say it's 100% arduino compatible. To get started all you have to do is:

1. Select "Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (3.3V, 8MHz) w/ ATmega328" from the Arduino IDE.
2. Open Examples->Basics->Blink sketch from the File menu
3. Compile
4. Upload

You will see the on board LED blink! Throw your components on it and you are good to go.

Features:

1. Arduino Pro Mini compatible (ATmega328 running at 8MHz with external resonator)
2. 3.3V regulator
3. Access to all Arduino pins (Analog/Digital inputs, Reset, TX/RX etc)
4. 1.6" X 2"
5. Plenty of prototyping space for most projects!
6. FTDI programming header
7. ICSP programming header (yes! you can burn your own boot loader)
8. DC input 3.3V up to 12V

Dimensions:
2" X 1.6"
6 grams

Here are some images:





View from my zoom microscope



I will bring 5 of these along on Wednesday. All were hand made in our lab, by our master electronics artist (name withheld due to fear of instant celebrityhood). Giving them away at cost price minus the labor. A crisp $10 bill, is all it takes. Once we become famous ....hehehe...we will probably be selling these for bout $29.


Asim

I'm not an electronics guy (yet), but those look wicked cool!

-Jim Hart

Those do look fantastic, glad to see they came out of the lab without a hitch. I'd gladly buy one Wednesday.

Pete

Asim, Michael bought your last one, the money is in the jar.

Make sure the green end of your FTDI connector is closer to the ATmega. We are going to rotate the connector 180 in the next design, so you could actually see the RX/TX LED's on the FTDI board when uploading sketches.



Asim

Some pictures of the challenges of using the Arduino Mini Pro and the standalone versions.

Here's Arduino Pro Mini. I love its compact design. Its a work of art, to say the least, but unfortunately it suffers from "form before functionality". Its hard to use in actual projects, as there's no easy way to place components.

Here I am modifying an $8 door chime. I get an SMS text message if the garage door entrance to the home is used between 8am-6pm (Wink: I know when my wife gets home)



This is a standalone arduino I made a few months ago. Works nice, but look at the mess in the back. Pain to debug, if a wire comes loose. This one was used in a plant moisture sensor. I would get notified by a blinking LED and an SMS Text if the big plant in my foyer needed water.



Here's it in action. Its big and conspicuous to say the least....hahaha...but my plants call me when they are thirsty!




Asim

Haven't played with my Arduino in months, but would love some info on how you're able to send a SMS text.
Would you mind enlightening me?

Here's how it works from a high level viewpoint. I can post specific details in a subsequent or separate thread.

Transmitter
There are two Arduino's involved. I took a standard off the shelf door chime and gutted it out. There's enough space in it to fit a an Arduino Pro Mini along with a 433 MHz transmitter unit ($4) from Digikey. The door chimes have a reed switch that opens/closes when a magnet is in proximity. The arduino inside senses the open/close on of its digital inputs and transmits a message (0/1) based on the state of the reed switch, to the base unit.

Receiver
The base unit has a 433MHz receiver connected to an Arduino which in turn is connected to a Linux box (could be a mac or windows) via USB. When an ON/OFF signal is received from the door chime, the Arduino simply spits it out on the USB serial port.

Controller
The controller software is a simple command line python (could be a bash script too) script that is monitoring the USB port (/dev/ttyUSB0). When it sees, new data such as 0 or 1 string, it looks up the time and then based on that an SMS text is sent using a "curl" type library. I use a company called http://www.eztexting.com/index.php.

You can use all sorts of programming languages to use their service to send text messages. They have sample code on their website. You can even the command line to send a text message like this:

Here I am using the commonly available wget command to send a text message from the unix command line.





I hope this helps. I know its fairly high level, but I could dig deeper. Please feel free to ask and I will elaborate.
Asim

Would you feel like documenting this on the Wiki and createing a blog post? It looks cool!

romaali was granted access to the blog, I thought he was going to post something, maybe he is working on it.