jenfoxbot

Hmm this was awhile ago, so a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B probably? A Pi 4 would be way faster/more powerful, but also the code might have changed? Unsure -- worth a try!

Ahh foo no I don't think so.. but I do still have them :) happy to answer any questions or clarify things if you need, tho!

Yayy that is so exciting you want to tackle the project! If you're just getting started, I would recommend the Elegoo Starter Kit (https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Project-Starter-Tutorial-Arduino/dp/B01D8KOZF4/?platform=hootsuite) -- it's $36 and comes with an Arduino board, programming/power cable, and an assortment of goodies, including all of the sensors used in this project. It's by far the fastest and cheapest option.The elegoo knock-off boards (legal since Arduino is open source) are the best ones I've used -- other knock-offs might be cheaper but have lower quality or are more likely to break. If you have a budget of about $20, you can also get a single board (https://amzn.to/2yUVNJB) and source the individual parts, or try this kit which also almost all of the parts you'd need and w…

Yayy that is so exciting you want to tackle the project! If you're just getting started, I would recommend the Elegoo Starter Kit (https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Project-Starter-Tutorial-Arduino/dp/B01D8KOZF4/?platform=hootsuite) -- it's $36 and comes with an Arduino board, programming/power cable, and an assortment of goodies, including all of the sensors used in this project. It's by far the fastest and cheapest option.The elegoo knock-off boards (legal since Arduino is open source) are the best ones I've used -- other knock-offs might be cheaper but have lower quality or are more likely to break. If you have a budget of about $20, you can also get a single board (https://amzn.to/2yUVNJB) and source the individual parts, or try this kit which also almost all of the parts you'd need and would be a good place to get started (https://amzn.to/3eDISeb).Hope that helps!! LMK if you have any other questions.

hah! that's such an adorable lil' scale! I love it :) Thanks for the info, that actually makes me super happy that someone was able to build a small business off this idea! My goal isn't to manufacture things but rather to show folks what's possible, hence why my projects are open source :) but i really appreciate the heads up! i suppose i would have appreciated a shout-out but eh, glad to have helped someone do something they love, solve a problem, and make new types of jobs. <3

Hah! Thanks for the info -- I hadn't seen that project, but always glad these tutorials are useful for folks :) Out of curiosity, how do you know he was inspired by my build?

Good question! Tinfoil should work, really any conductive material works. The key is to make sure there are no air gaps which might be challenging w/ foil -- with creasing and breakage, you might have to re-do the case after each usage. Alternatively, you could use an all-metal box, or a metal box and make a lid out of foil. Microwaves also work, although they are less portable :) (also DEF do not turn on while your phone is in there as it will totes fry.) Hope that helps!

Snagged 'em from a thrift store, but pretty sure they are hefty snowboarding boots! They were about $30. Snowboarding boots in should generally work since they are designed to keep your feet in :)

Thanks Becky!! Very glad you enjoyed it :) It was super fun to make! I also love the idea of being able to use a micro:bit to improve accessibility in general!

Check the rating of your multimeter -- they can vary wildly. But yes, you absolutely MUST stay below the multimeter current rating -- otherwise you risk blowing a fuse or electrocution. Neither of which are fun and one of which could be very, very painful and/or deadly.I would also highly recommend Fluke multimeters for high current use because of the very real danger of high current electricity.And be sure to always have a second person with you who knows electrical safety. Hope that helps! Have fun and be safe!

Thank you! And holy moly that video is hilarious!! Rather on point about woodworking and building projects, too, lol.Thank you for sharing, I am totes going to show my student!

Thanks! It's not exactly scratch, but it's very similar! If you are comfy w/ Scratch you can totes figure out MakeCode! Website here: www.MakeCode.orgLMK if you have any follow-up Qs!

Hello! Good question -- what setting are you using? For that, I'd recommend measuring resistance and/or continuity. Unless you are applying a source of electrical energy, you will likely not see any differences w/ the voltage or current measurements. Hope that helps!

heck yes!! :D Thanks very much!!

yayy thank you!! :D

I'm assuming you want to control the toy wirelessly, yea? One of my students built a robotic table w/ a drone radio controller and receiver and we connected 2 continuous servo motors to the receiver. Works great! That would be a quick and fairly easy approach, and radio controllers/receivers aren't super expensive (the one we used was about $35). Hope that helps!

Well, dang! That's too bad re: BLE being unreliable -- is the signal giving out? I do <3<3<3 the Pi so I definitely support your return to those super cool boards. I'd also recommend checking out some of the edge boards, like the sparkfun edge board (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15170, it has Google tensorflow on it, is voice-activated, and it can be powered with a COIN CELL!! So cool.

Thank you!! Apologies for the delay, just seeing your comment. yes, this project should be sufficient for your hobbyist/small business application. Definitely a much cheaper alternative, which is why I wanted to build it! I used it to estimate impact force of a jump (also for small-business applications), and it was good enough for me to get actual in-situ data to which I could compare my calculations and determine if they were reasonable. it will be a lot easier to use as an actual scale :) hope that helps! lmk if you have any other Qs.

lol, i didn't "forget", i purposefully did not include it. as indicated in the guide description and title, it is a beginners guide to microcontrollers. like the pi, beagle boards are computers, not microcontrollers. they are more expensive than the pi and i would not recommend them for beginners w/out any experience in electronics or coding.

Well that's new! Looks like Debian and/or DHCP has been updated. Probably a good thing :)Looking at the file and doing some quick research, looks like we want to use v4. We can identify which one by looking at the top of the file you screenshot -- it shows that the dhcp config file we are using lives under "DHCPDv4" (lines 3 and 4). So, do exactly what you did in the screenshot and leave v6 blank. Pretty sure INTERFACESv6="" does not need to be commented out although not positive on this so if you get an error down the line try revisiting and commenting out.LMK if you run into any other issues, always happy to help!

That's awesome you're building this! Thanks for sending a screenshot -- there's a minor typo in the filename. Instead of opening the existing file (called "dhcpd.conf"), you created a new file titled "dhcp.conf" -- missing a "d" at the end. Rerun the same command w/ the proper file name and the actual dhcp config file should show up! (You can leave your new file there or delete it if you're comfy w/ removing programs)

Aww, thanks! Glad you found the tutorial when you needed it :D

That's so awesome!! Very happy to hear that you found this tutorial useful along your maker journey :D

That's awesome you took apart a multimeter, even if it's a bit tricky to get back together, ha. Is it likely that the dial was not in the "off" position? Can you adjust the rotary inside to move it to the off position? If you have another multimeter handy, you can use the continuity setting to determine what the rotary positions correspond to w/out providing power to the pulled-apart multimeter. Hope that helps!

Yes, you can definitely loop the sound! You can use a for loop to play the song as many times as you want or a while loop that ends after a certain time -- here's a starting guide on those: https://www.pythonforbeginners.com/control-flow-2/...The for loop might be easier, this would repeat the song 10 times:for(i in range(10)): playMusic(goodStuffHere); i++Hope that helps! Happy making :D

That's awesome!! Heck yessss, great job!! :D

Yup, that should work just fine! I think the Pi 2 has onboard WiFi, if not you can get a WiFi dongle.

That's awesome! Stoked to hear that you are incorporating this into the classroom! And yes, I'll post the hex file on my GitHub account tomorrow (https://github.com/jenfoxbot). Looking at the file quickly, I'm unsure if you need the break, I think I wrote it in Javascript and forgot to delete it. Try testing the code w/out the break to see if it works.

Good suggestions! I wanted to keep the writing to a minimum, on this tutorial, but I will add in the programming languages.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. IMO, Picaxe are too advanced for complete beginners, but they are a good board for folks to transition into. Perhaps you can write up a tutorial on them!

All good info, although not necessarily appropriate for beginners. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks! Arduino Uno boards are fairly reliable overall, but yes, one wouldn't use it for commercial applications. Lots of folks are using the ESP8266 microcontrollers for home automation, if you haven't already found a better solution try that one.

Very glad to hear this will be helpful for your teachers! That was exactly what inspired me to write the tutorial .Full algebra isn't necessary, but folks do need to understand what variables are and how to use them when working with the Arduino programming language (Wiring -- combo of C++ and processing) or other object-oriented languages. I've run into this with 9 and 10 years olds before -- if they don't understand variables it makes it very difficult (although not impossible). I'd say working one-on-one or in a very small group with students it's possible to teach younger kiddos Arduino, but in a large class it would be challenging. Hope that helps!

That's an awesome alternative approach, thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Sadly I do not have easy access to a cat but that is an excellent idea for an experiment! Please do chat with your kitty about being a test subject :)The Pi should be able to record data that fast.. I forget what the data transfer rate is but I remember it being sufficient to see that sharp peak of impact force.If you end up doing the kitty experiment, please share! I'd love to see what you find :D

well foo! there are a lot of factors that could be causing this. are there any shorts? did you coat the electrical connections in epoxy? where did you connect the GPIO pin? Also, use a multimeter to check the capacitance of the soil moisture sensor directly in water and in air to be sure that you're getting different values. if that is working, then it's not the sensor and the issue is somewhere in the hardware or software. best of luck!

Good question! Yes, you can use an Arduino Uno, but you'll need a different method of hooking up speakers (there's no audio jack input). There might be a shield or you can connect them directly to the digital (analog?) pins. There should be a tutorial somewhere on how to do that..

Good question! Yes, I think that should work. You can calculate the size of the hovercraft using the following: Pressure = Force / Area. The force is your weight + the weight of the hovercraft (F = (120 lbs+ 10 lbs) * 9.8 m/s^2 ). The pressure is given by the speed of the wind coming out of the leaf blower -- here's a good overview of that equation: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wind-load-d_177...Hope that helps :D(TLDR:// yes, 150 mph should be sufficient for a 120 lb human with a hovercraft surface area of about 1 m^2)

Happy to help! And hey, we're all beginners at some point! This was my first project so I totally know how it goes. Yes, you can use the same 3.3V pin for both the sensor and the relay. The relay won't pull too much current since it is mostly just looking for a change in voltage on the DC side -- that's why relays are super useful, you can use a small current and voltage to control a much larger current and voltage. Also, you can use the same ground pins for both. Related aside: all ground points need to be connected to the same place, or you might get funny readings (since voltage is a potential difference it is measured between two points, like dropping a ball at arm's length while standing on the ground vs. on top of a building, the ball will bounce the same distance even though you're…

Happy to help! And hey, we're all beginners at some point! This was my first project so I totally know how it goes. Yes, you can use the same 3.3V pin for both the sensor and the relay. The relay won't pull too much current since it is mostly just looking for a change in voltage on the DC side -- that's why relays are super useful, you can use a small current and voltage to control a much larger current and voltage. Also, you can use the same ground pins for both. Related aside: all ground points need to be connected to the same place, or you might get funny readings (since voltage is a potential difference it is measured between two points, like dropping a ball at arm's length while standing on the ground vs. on top of a building, the ball will bounce the same distance even though you're technically higher up in the second scenario).

Just one Pi, like you guessed it's both projects combined (soil moisture sensor and irrigation controller) -- it was all one big project but I separated them in write-up to make it easier to follow. I split the soil moisture sensor PCB from the irrigation controller and Pi because I wanted to be able to install the sensor far from the spigot. In retrospect, I could have just added longer wires to the sensor and combined all the PCBs in one box. Hope that helps!

Thanks! And hey, when I first started I wasn't super good, either! We are all beginners at some point :)All of the code is open-source so you don't need to worry about figuring out anything for yourself -- follow the build instructions and snag the code and you're good to go!

Heck yes, I agree! Thank you :)You should totally design your own! There are a ton of possible routes -- Step 1 covers how facial recognition software works and mentions key elements for tricking it, so check out that step for some ideas on where to get started. Float some ideas in your head and when you come up with one you really like, write it down and come back to it when you have time :)I'm slowly still working on this, or at least I'll post another one at some point.. If you beat me to and write it up, it I'd be happy to feature yours in this tutorial!

Whoa, missed this comment, thanks for responding, MukulB8!

Hmm I think I ran into a similar issue at one point.. can't remember what the specific problem was but I ended up redoing that part and then it magically worked. It could be a spelling error or a lack of internet connectivity.. or if you are using the same SD card and just redoing it, there is likely some configuration setting that is blocking it. if you haven't done it yet, try wiping the SD card and starting completely from scratch.Hope that helps! LMK if you continue running into errors and I'll do my best to help ya troubleshoot.

Thanks! And happy to help :D

Hmm it seems like iptables isn't installed? Were you able to get the command below to run successfully?sudo apt-get install iptables-persistentAlso, wiping the SD card and starting over is a good way to test it. It took me a couple of times to get this all to work correctly, ha. I'm about to head out on vacation but leave a comment if you are unable to get it to work and I'll see if I can do some digging when I'm back early Jan. Best of luck!

Yup! Once you set it up as an access point, you can use WinSCP or another file transfer protocol to wirelessly transfer files to your Pi. If you do a lil' research I"m sure you could find a python or linux code to do this automatically :)Also yes to the external hard drive! You might need to look up how to transfer files to USB via linux but it's definitely possible.

Foo!! Hmmm some debugging questions:1. You're connected to the Interwebs? 2. Did you run update and dist-upgrade? 3. Are you using Jessie Lite? 4. Did you run the commands in order they are listed

Thank you! A friend mentioned piratebox, will have to check that out when I have the time. I'll take a look at Docker too -- definitely a newbie when it comes to networking but it's easier when other folks have already figured out the hard stuff!And thank you for the super helpful technical points!! Your comment re: WPA2 is on the last page w/ a link to your profile. This is why open-source is awesome :D

Thank you! :D (& I'll pass along the compliment to the pooch!)

Thanks! Yes, you can definitely use the Pi Zero. As long as you are using the Jessie Lite OS, the process *should* be the same.

hah! Grab your keyboard of justice and show 'em the light of Linux! The Pi might be the perfect intro for your friends, since you can use it w/ a Desktop OS which makes it less intimidating. If you want to show 'em something easier before diving into this, here's a tutorial that is like the "part one" for beginners: https://www.instructables.com/Intro-to-the-Headless-Raspberry-Pi/

Yayy, thank you!! Very happy to hear that you enjoyed it (and the photos of my pup lol) :D