Planet Arduino

The northern part of Spain, which is full of villages, vegetation and wildlife, is prone to wildfires. In fact, nearly 40% of the land was burnt back in 2015. Unfortunately, whenever a fire breaks out in a remote area, it often goes unnoticed or reached before damage occurs. With these instances becoming more common, insurance company Generali decided to find a better solution for early detection.

Their answer to the problem? Birdhouse Alarms. Each wooden (recycled, of course) birdhouse features an Arduino, a solar panel, a rechargeable battery, a smoke sensor and a 3G network connection, enabling it to send a geolocated signal to local authorities in the event of a fire.

The prototypes, which were designed by Ogilvy & Mather, are currently being tested.

We’ve seen Arduino-powered Twitter machines, and even some that can send text messages, but how about one that’s a video phone? That’s what the guys over at Cooking Hacks put together with their very impressive 3G Arduino shield.

On board the shield is an internal GPS receiver, microphone, speaker, 3G module, and a camera sensor with VGA resolution. The 3G module is able to act as a 3G modem via a USB connection, allowing any computer to take advantage of wireless Internet with a SIM card.

While in their tutorial the guys use a terminal running on their computer to send AT commands to place a call, it’s possible to simply put all that info in a sketch making for a small, battery-powered video link straight to your cell phone. Seems like the perfect piece of hardware for a wireless, 3G-enabled video feed for a robot. You can check out the video from their tutorial after the break.