Ben Konosky's Little Piece of the Web

CheerLights update.

Ben — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:58:03 +0000

I’ve put it into a cheap tin and drilled some holes in it for the light to shine though.

Looks like crap at the moment, but it was a quick hack.

Cheerlights!

Ben — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:13:34 +0000

I found Cheerlights, and I had to make one for myself. I don’t have the cool GE lights, so I took what I had, which was some ShiftBrites. Most of my issues was making everything fit in RAM. I had to take the code for the GE lights and change most of the Strings to [...]

Arduino 1.0 has been released.

Ben — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:17:59 +0000

They’ve released 1.0, and now I have to update my LCD library. Give me a couple of days to take care of it.

http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/11/30/arduino-1-0-now-available/

Update: I’ve patched up my library to work under Arduino 1.0, it’s the v1.0 branch. I’ll merge it into the master when I feel it’s completely done.

Weather Station update #4

Ben — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:03:39 +0000

Two things: #1 I went and showed off the project on Ladyada’s Show and Tell on 10-8-2001. It was fun but I had to go on before two other awesome projects, so I felt mine wasn’t anywhere near as cool.

#2: I overhauled both the remote station and the base unit to look much nicer. I [...]

My first Arduino Library.

Ben — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:45:36 +0000

The display I’m using on my weather station is controlled via i2c calls. I got tried of doing all of the Wire.* calls throughout my code. I decided to write a library do all that work for me, and I just have to call it like I would the stock LCD library.

I’ve posted the code [...]

Weather station update

Ben — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 02:58:33 +0000

On the base station side, I’ve added in a DS18S20 One Wire temperature sensor, and a HIH-4030 humidity sensor from Sparkfun. Code is now even uglier, and quite frankly, embarrassing. I need to clean it up before I post it publicly.

Next step after code cleaning is getting the Ethernet module I’ve got here wired in so I can have [...]

Weather Station Update

Ben — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:11:58 +0000

I’ve finally gotten some time to work on the project again. I’ve gotten the remote station close to a final prototype state, and I’ve gotten the code stable on there as well.

The base part I was starting and stopping on trying to figure out the best way to read in the data over the XBee [...]

Update on Smart Thermostat/Weather Station

Ben — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 05:44:57 +0000

I’ve made some updates on the project. I’ve setup the XBees to be used as a serial link, and it’s working. I’m now planning on rebuilding it with the Pro Mini I picked up. So far I have the base spitting out the temp, pressure, humidity, rough light level and the VCC voltage.

I’m going to [...]

Weather station / Smart Thermostat projects

Ben — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:08:49 +0000

I’ve been working on these two project together for a bit now, and I’ve decided that I should start documenting what I’ve been doing.

Right now I’m using an Arduino to start building it out, I’ve got a Sensiron temp/humidity sensor from Adafruit, and the BMP085 on a breakout board from Sparkfun. I also have some [...]

Current projects.

Ben — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:53:21 +0000

I’m going to try to start posting on the blog again. What I’m going to be posting is the projects I’m working on.

Here’s the list of projects I’m currently tinkering with.

Home Automation Home Security Setup Weather Station Power usage Smart Thermostat

Yes, I’m a geek.

I’ve been toying with these ideas for quite some time now, but I’ve not put too [...]