Planet Arduino

There’s a school of thought that says that to fully understand something, you need to build it yourself. OK, we’re not sure it’s really a school of thought, but that describes a heck of a lot of projects around these parts.

[Tim] aka [mitxela] wrote kiloboot partly because he wanted an Ethernet-capable Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) bootloader for an ATMega-powered project, and partly because he wanted to understand the Internet. See, if you’re writing a bootloader, you’ve got a limited amount of space and no device drivers or libraries of any kind to fall back on, so you’re going to learn your topic of choice the hard way.

[Tim]’s writeup of the odyssey of cramming so much into 1,000 bytes of code is fantastic. While explaining the Internet takes significantly more space than the Ethernet-capable bootloader itself, we’d wager that you’ll enjoy the compressed overview of UDP, IP, TFTP, and AVR bootloader wizardry as much as we did. And yes, at the end of the day, you’ve also got an Internet-flashable Arduino, which is just what the doctor ordered if you’re building a simple wired IoT device and you get tired of running down to the basement to upload new firmware.

Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, cramming an Ethernet bootloader into 1 kB is amazing. If doing big things in small codespaces floats your boat, check out the winners from our own 1kB challenge.

Speaking of bootloaders, if you’re building an I2C slave device out of an ATtiny85¸ you’ll want to check out this bootloader that runs on the tiny chip.

An engineering student at the University of Western Macedonia has just added another appliance to the ever-growing list of Internet enabled things. [Panagiotis] decided to modify an off-the-shelf bread maker to enable remote control via the Internet.

[Panagiotis] had to remove pretty much all of the original control circuitry for this device. The original controller was replaced with an Arduino Uno R3 and an Ethernet shield. The temperature sensor also needed to be replaced, since [Panagiotis] could not find any official documentation describing the specifications of the original. Luckily, the heating element and mixer motor were able to be re-used.

A few holes were drilled into the case to make room for the Ethernet connector as well as a USB connector. Two relays were used to allow the Arduino to switch the heating element and mixer motor on and off. The front panel of the bread maker came with a simple LCD screen and a few control buttons. Rather than let those go to waste, they were also wired into the Arduino.

The Arduino bread maker can be controlled via a web site that runs on a separate server. The website is coded with PHP and runs on Apache. It has a simple interface that allows the user to specify several settings including how much bread is being cooked as well as the desired darkness of the bread. The user can then schedule the bread maker to start. Bread Online also comes with an “offline” mode so that it can be used locally without the need for a computer or web browser. Be sure to check out the video demonstration below.

[Thanks Minas]

[Bayres’] dad setup a webcam as a surveillance camera for a remote property. The only problem was that the only stable Internet connection they could get at this property was DSL. This meant that the external IP address of the webcam would change somewhat often; the needed a way to keep track of the external IP address whenever it changed. That’s when [Bayres] built a solution using Arduino and an Ethernet shield.

The main function of this device is to monitor the public IP address and report any changes. This is accomplished by first making a request to checkip.dyndns.org. This website simply reports your current public IP address. [Bayres] uses an Arduino library called Textfinder in order to search through the returned string and identify the IP address.

From there, the program compares this current value to the previous one. If there is any change, the program uses the Sendmail() function to reach out to an SMTP server and send an e-mail alert to [Beyres’] dad. The system also includes a small LCD. The Arduino outputs the current IP address to this display, making it easy to check up on the connection. The LCD is driven by 74HC595 shift register in order to conserve pins on the Arduino.

The system is also designed with a pretty slick setup interface. When it is booted, the user can enter a configuration menu via a Serial terminal. This setup menu allows the user to configure options such as SMTP server, email address, etc. These variables are then edited and can be committed to EEPROM as a more permanent storage solution. Whenever the system is booted, these values are read back out of the EEPROM and returned to their appropriate variables. This means you can reconfigure the device on the fly without having to edit the source code and re-upload.

When [William’s] thermostat died, he wanted an upgrade. He found a few off-the-shelf Internet enabled thermostats, but they were all very expensive. He knew he could build his own for a fraction of the cost.

The primary unit synchronizes it’s time using NTP. This automatically keeps things up to date and in sync with daylight savings time. There is also a backup real-time clock chip in case the Internet connection is lost. The unit can be controlled via the physical control panel, or via a web interface. The system includes a nifty “vacation mode” that will set the temperature to a cool 60 degrees Fahrenheit while you are away. It will then automatically adjust the temperature to something more comfortable before you return home.

[William’s] home is split into three heat zones. Each zone has its own control panel including an LCD display and simple controls. The zones can be individually configured from either their own control panel or from the central panel. The panels include a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, an LCD display, a keypad, and support electronics. This project was clearly well thought out, and includes a host of other small features to make it easy to use.

Introduction

Recently a new method of interacting with an ethernet-enabled Arduino board and the Internet was brought to my attention – a new system called Teleduino. In this article we test a few of the basic features and see what is possible. Please note that these are my own experiments and that Teleduino is a work in progress. So follow along and see for yourself.

Getting Started

1. You will need an Arduino Uno (or compatible) board and Ethernet shield with the Wiznet chip – or a Freetronics EtherTen (a much neater solution). At this stage Teleduino doesn’t support other boards such as the Mega.
2. Download and install the Teleduino Arduino library. This is available from the resources section of the home page. You will also need to be running Arduino IDE v1.0 or greater.
3. Request an API key. This identified your particular Arduino from the rest.
4. Get together some basic electronics components for testing, such as some LEDs and 560R resistors; sources of analog input such as an LDR or TMP36 temperature sensor; and a solderless breadboard.
5. Don’t forget the ethernet cable from your Arduino stack to the router!
6. Finally, some rudimentary knowledge about networking will be useful. (IP address, DHCP, etc.)

Controlling digital outputs

TeleduinoEthernetClientProxy.ino

which is included with the library examples. Before uploading, you need to make some modifications. The first of these is to add your API key. Go back to the email you received from Teleduino, and click on the link provided. It will take you to a website that shows a byte array variable named byte key[]. You will copy this into the sketch, replacing the same array full of hexadecimal zeros in the sketch – as shown below – with your own:

Next, scroll down to

byte mac[] = { 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED };

… and change one of the hexadecimal numbers to 0×00… just in case there is a clash with other addresses on your network. You never know. Finally – depending on your network router, you may need to manually allocate the IP address for your Ethernet shield and/or set the DNS server to use. To do this, scroll down to

// User configurable variables

where you can change the useDHCP and/or useDNS variables to false, and update those values below. However if you’re not sure, just leave them be unless you need to change them. Finally – upload the sketch to your Arduino, get the hardware together and plug it into the network.

Watch your status LED – it will blink a number of times, depending on the status of things. The blink levels are:

• 1 blink – initialising
• 2 blinks – starting network connection
• 3 blinks – connecting to the Teleduino server
• 4 blinks – authentication successful
• 5 blinks – session already exists for supplied key (sometimes happens after a quick restart – will work on next auto-restart)
• 6 blinks – Invalid or unauthorised key – check your API key is correctly entered in the sketch as described earlier
• 10 blinks – connection dropped

If all is well, after a minute yours should be on blink level 4, then it will idle back to blink level 1. Now to test the connection with our first command.

You send commands to the Arduino using a set of URLs that will contain various parameters. You will need your API key again for these URLs which is then inserted into the URL. The first will report the version of software on the Arduino. Send

http://us01.proxy.teleduino.org/api/1.0/328.php?k=999999&r=getVersion

however replace 999999 with your API key (and in all examples shown here). If successful, you should see something similar to the following in the web browser:

However if something is wrong, or there are connection difficulties you will see something like:

Before using digital outputs, and after every reset of the Arduino) you need to set the pin mode for the digital output to control. In our example, we use:

http://us01.proxy.teleduino.org/api/1.0/328.php?k=999999&r=definePinMode&pin=6&mode=1

Note that the pin number and mode are set with single digits, as you can see above this is for pin 6, and we use mode=1 for output. You should save this as a bookmark to make life easer later on. When the command has been successfully sent, a message will be shown in the webpage, for example:

Moving forward – you turn the digital output on with the following:

http://us01.proxy.teleduino.org/api/1.0/328.php?k=999999&r=setDigitalOutput&pin=6&output=1

and to turn it off, set the final part of the URL to

output=0

Easy. How did you go? It really is amazing to see it work. Now you can control your Arduino from almost anywhere in the world. Again, saving these as bookmarks to make things easier, or a URL shortening service.

At this point you should now have the gist of the Teleduino service and how it is operated.

There is so much more you can do, and currently the list includes (From the author):

• Reset, ping, get version, get uptime, get free memory.
• Define pin modes, set digital outputs, set analog outputs, read digital inputs, read analog inputs, or read all inputs with a single API call.
• Define up to 2 ‘banks’ of shift registers. Each ‘bank’ can contain up to 32 cascaded shift registers, giving a total of 512 digital outputs.
• Shift register outputs can be set, or merged, and expire times can be set on merges (you could set an output(s) high for X number of milliseconds).
• Define, and read and write from serial port.
• Read and write from EEPROM.
• Define and position up to 6 servos.
• Set preset values for the above functions, which get set during boot. Preset values are stored in the first 160ish bytes of the EEPROM.

[22/09/2012] New! You can also control the I2C bus – check out this tutorial for more information.

For more information check the Teleduino web site, and further tutorials can be found here. Here is a simple example of Teleduino at work – controlling a light switch:

Conclusion

At this moment Teleduino is simple, works and makes a lot of ideas possible. We look forward to making more use of it in future projects, and hope you can as well. Kudos to Nathan Kennedy, and we look forward to seeing Teleduino advance and develop over the future. If all this Arduino is new to you, check out the tutorials.  Thanks to Freetronics for the use of their Ethernet-enabled hardware.

Introduction

Recently a new method of interacting with an ethernet-enabled Arduino board and the Internet was brought to my attention – a new system called Teleduino. In this article we test a few of the basic features and see what is possible. Please note that these are my own experiments and that Teleduino is a work in progress. So follow along and see for yourself.

Getting Started

1. You will need an Arduino Uno (or compatible) board and Ethernet shield with the Wiznet chip – or a Freetronics EtherTen (a much neater solution). Teleduino now supports Arduino Mega and the awesome EtherMega.
2. Download and install the Teleduino Arduino library. This is available from the resources section of the home page. You will also need to be running Arduino IDE v1.0 or greater.
3. Request an API key. This identified your particular Arduino from the rest.
4. Get together some basic electronics components for testing, such as some LEDs and 560R resistors; sources of analog input such as an LDR or TMP36 temperature sensor; and a solderless breadboard.
5. Don’t forget the ethernet cable from your Arduino stack to the router!
6. Finally, some rudimentary knowledge about networking will be useful. (IP address, DHCP, etc.)

Controlling digital outputs

which is included with the library examples. Before uploading, you need to make some modifications. The first of these is to add your API key. Go back to the email you received from Teleduino, and click on the link provided. It will take you to a website that shows a byte array variable named byte key[]. You will copy this into the sketch, replacing the same array full of hexadecimal zeros in the sketch – as shown below – with your own:

Next, scroll down to

… and change one of the hexadecimal numbers to 0×00… just in case there is a clash with other addresses on your network. You never know. Finally – depending on your network router, you may need to manually allocate the IP address for your Ethernet shield and/or set the DNS server to use. To do this, scroll down to

where you can change the useDHCP and/or useDNS variables to false, and update those values below. However if you’re not sure, just leave them be unless you need to change them. Finally – upload the sketch to your Arduino, get the hardware together and plug it into the network.

Watch your status LED – it will blink a number of times, depending on the status of things. The blink levels are:

• 1 blink – initialising
• 2 blinks – starting network connection
• 3 blinks – connecting to the Teleduino server
• 4 blinks – authentication successful
• 5 blinks – session already exists for supplied key (sometimes happens after a quick restart – will work on next auto-restart)
• 6 blinks – Invalid or unauthorised key – check your API key is correctly entered in the sketch as described earlier
• 10 blinks – connection dropped

If all is well, after a minute yours should be on blink level 4, then it will idle back to blink level 1. Now to test the connection with our first command.

You send commands to the Arduino using a set of URLs that will contain various parameters. You will need your API key again for these URLs which is then inserted into the URL. The first will report the version of software on the Arduino. Send

however replace 999999 with your API key (and in all examples shown here). If successful, you should see something similar to the following in the web browser:

However if something is wrong, or there are connection difficulties you will see something like:

Before using digital outputs, and after every reset of the Arduino) you need to set the pin mode for the digital output to control. In our example, we use:

Note that the pin number and mode are set with single digits, as you can see above this is for pin 6, and we use mode=1 for output. You should save this as a bookmark to make life easer later on. When the command has been successfully sent, a message will be shown in the webpage, for example:

Moving forward – you turn the digital output on with the following:

and to turn it off, set the final part of the URL to

Easy. How did you go? It really is amazing to see it work. Now you can control your Arduino from almost anywhere in the world. Again, saving these as bookmarks to make things easier, or a URL shortening service.

At this point you should now have the gist of the Teleduino service and how it is operated.

There is so much more you can do, and currently the list includes (From the author):

• Reset, ping, get version, get uptime, get free memory.
• Define pin modes, set digital outputs, set analog outputs, read digital inputs, read analog inputs, or read all inputs with a single API call.
• Define up to 2 ‘banks’ of shift registers. Each ‘bank’ can contain up to 32 cascaded shift registers, giving a total of 512 digital outputs.
• Shift register outputs can be set, or merged, and expire times can be set on merges (you could set an output(s) high for X number of milliseconds).
• Define, and read and write from serial port.
• Read and write from EEPROM.
• Define and position up to 6 servos.
• Set preset values for the above functions, which get set during boot. Preset values are stored in the first 160ish bytes of the EEPROM.

[22/09/2012] New! You can also control the I2C bus – check out this tutorial for more information. For more information check the Teleduino web site, and further tutorials can be found here. Here is a simple example of Teleduino at work – controlling a light switch:

Conclusion

At this moment Teleduino is simple, works and makes a lot of ideas possible. We look forward to making more use of it in future projects, and hope you can as well. Kudos to Nathan Kennedy, and we look forward to seeing Teleduino advance and develop over the future. If all this Arduino is new to you, check out the tutorials.  Thanks to Freetronics for the use of their Ethernet-enabled hardware.

The post Interact with Arduino over the Internet with Teleduino appeared first on tronixstuff.