Andres Leon and His Ramblings...

What a great way to express freedom through technology, and helping people as a side product! :)

A great tool for Arduino developers. This sheet has just about everything you need when working with your Arduino board. Find more info about the sheet at  http://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/arduinocheatsheet

This is a basic of exploration of how I can now  monitor my home's electricity consumption cost in real-time. There are many solutions to this problem. Some are more complicated than others. I needed to create a solution that did not involve any manipulation of my electric panel simply because I know very little about electrical work and did not want to mess around with high power. Ultimately I found  Avatar-X's electric meter reader project . This is, in my opinion, the most elegant and  unobtrusive way of obtaining the information I needed. He was gracious enough to share his wonderful code that converts the data received from the Arduino into real-time costs. In fact, most of my code comes directly from him. I just tweaked it for my own needs. Thanks again Av! Like Av's setup, my electric meter has an infrared LED that blinks each time a KW of electricity is used. I placed an  infrared photoresisitor  directly in front of this LED ready to ...

Just finished building a medium scale solar cell array panel to power some small electronics outdoors. Here're some pictures of the construction and the end result: This is a closeup of a solar panel. These are polycarbonate panels that generate about 1.75 watts of power. I got them from this eBay seller http://myworld.ebay.com/rebeccayi0904 A closeup of a 6 panels connected in serial. The multimeter reads 3.20 volts. I was getting an average of 3.1 volts on a sunny day. When it's cloudy the voltage did not drop very noticeably, but the amps did fall quite rapidly. A closer look at how the panels are connected. These are the "buses" that transmit the electricity from one panel to the next. The front side of the panel is the negative and the back side is the positive. The final product. Sorry for the lousy lighting. I will try to take a better picture later. Total output on a sunny day: about 30 watts and 2.2 amps with 12.2 volts. These results will be dramatically dif...

He pasado las últimas semanas diseñando un aparato que pueda dispensar comida a mis gatos en una forma sistemática y predecible. El resultado es esta máquina. El cilindro descansa en dos barras metálicas para darle fuerte soporte y también una forma de girar sin restricción. La rotación viene de un motor servo cuyo cual es controlado directamente por el Arduino. El cilindro tiene una apertura en su lado. Cuando este gira, la apertura permite que la comida dentro de el salga y caiga por tubos de PVC a los dos contenedores donde los gatos pueden comer. Un rayo laser es usado para calcular la posición del contenedor. El laser está apuntando a un sensor de luz. En uno de los extremos del contenedor cilíndrico hay un pedazo de madera que actúa como indicador de la posición de la apertura de la comida en el cilindro. Este trozo de madera está alineado con la apertura de comida. Este también está en el mismo plano que el rayo de laser iluminando el sensor de luz. Cuando la apertura de la comi...

I have spent the last several weeks building a device to automatically dispense dry food to our two adorable cats. The cats need to be ona diet due to weight issues. So a certain amount of food must be given to them throughout the day. i learned about the Arduino board soon before starting this project. So this little hobby has given me the perfect opportunity to learn more about this amazing device and its ever-expanding capabilities. The cat feeder is basically a cylindrical container that has an opening on its side. The cylinder rests on its side and is supported by wooden dowles and rollerblade ballbearings which allow it to rotate with ease. The rotation is provided by a wheel attached to a small motor. the signal and power is provided by an Arduino Duemilanove. When the cylinder spins, the opening allows food to fall off when the opening faces down. A funnel system then drives the food to a Y type PVD junction which distributes the food evenly to two bowls. Since the food is dis...