This is part of my Arduino Controlled PC Liquid Cooling Information Center I have been working on and I thought I would share it here since there have been a few threads on arduino.cc and seeedstudio.com on how to read water flow rate in liters per hour using the Water Flow Sensor found in the Seeed Studio Depo. It uses a simple rotating wheel that pulses a hall effect sensor. By reading these pulses and implementing a little math, we can read the liquids flow rate accurate to within 3%. The threads are simple G1/2 so finding barbed ends will not be that hard. I found some at Lowes for $1.89 each.
LaunchPad: Q&A session with MSP430 product marketing manager, Adrian Fernandez.
cgantt — Fri, 07/02/2010 - 10:56
Texas Instruments rockets into the hobbiest community with LaunchPad.
cgantt — Wed, 06/30/2010 - 22:19
TI LaunchPad
Last week Texas Instruments debuted its hobbiest level Micro Conroller dev board named LaunchPad. Hack A Day posted a very thurough introduction but we wanted a little more information. Texas Instruments is selling the full kit including 2 micro controllers for just $4.30 and is shipping them for free. So what exactaly is Launchpad and what can it do? We cover that after the jump.
Protostack clues us in on using I/O Registers on AVR Micro Controllers.
cgantt — Wed, 06/30/2010 - 08:20
Protostack has posted a very nice tutorial on using I/O registers on AVR micro controllers. Just like all of Protostacks tutorials, this one is detailed, easy to understand, and beginner friendly. They include lots of photos, diagrams and sample code to explain everything. While you are there you might consider picking up one of their ATMEGA 128 protoboard kits.
Seeed Studio now carrying Leaf Labs Maple.
cgantt — Tue, 06/29/2010 - 11:38
Does your project need more power than your Arduino has? Seeed Studio is now carrying Leaf Labs Maple which is a dev platform built around the 72 MHz ARM Cortex M3. In the past, ARM processors were notoriously unfriendly in non-professional environments due to proprietary tool chains and unfamiliar instruction sets. Because of this, they were conspicuously absent from classrooms and hobbyists’ workbenches. Leaf aims to change this by providing an ARM tool-chain built from open source components and a programming environment that is intuitively easy to use. For those of us who love and are familiar with Arduino, Maple is offered in an Arduino-compatible format, complete with Arduino pin layouts and programming environment…More after the jump…
Need a flexable Arduino? Seeed Studio has that!
cgantt — Tue, 06/29/2010 - 11:20
For a couple of months now we have been reading snippets of information on Seeed Studio's newest Arduino variant. It promised to be the smallest ever and be flexible. How could it be flexible you ask? That’s quite simple. Seeed Studio designed the board on a flexible film similar to ribbon cable found in electronic devices that use it to connect a display to the PCB. Seeed Studio says that it is “cutable, scaleable, and chainable.” They are in the process of creating a few prototypes and if you leave a detailed comment on their blog post, on how you would use it, they might send you one to test with. More photos after the jump...
Arduino Controlled Water Cooling Information Display: ***UPDATE*** + Development Setup Pics.
cgantt — Sat, 06/19/2010 - 12:47
Update + Development Setup Pics
Over the last few weeks I have had several emails asking what my development setup looks like for this project. Today I am going post a small update and a few photos of my development setup. First I would like to give a big shout out to all the guys over at Seeed Studio. Their Seeeduino has played a big role in this project and now we will be using their Seeeduino Mega along with 2 of their Water Flow Sensors to complete the project. Stop by their online store and check them out for all of your open source project needs. Keep reading after the jump for more ACLCIC excitement.
Part 2: Reading Fan / Water Pump RPM
In part one I covered how to connect two temperature sensors and the LCD to our Aruino. In this installment I am going to show you how to read the RPM of the water pump. The Arduino Controlled PC Watercooling Information Display will display the water pumps RPM on one screen so I had to figure out how to read the RPM from the data output by a Hall effect sensor...more after the jump...
We would like to welcome Protostack as one of our site sponsors!
cgantt — Fri, 06/04/2010 - 22:19
Not long ago we blogged about Protostack releasing Version 1.4 of their Atmega 8 dev board. Well today I would like to announce protostack as one of our new site sponsors. Protostack offers a nice selection of electronic gear including innovative stackable prototyping boards. They have sent us a nice care package for us to play with including an Atmega 8 dev board kit complete with a USBASP programmer. We will have full write ups and tutorials on the kits as well as a special article on their stackable protoboards in the comming weeks. We are also working on creating a tutorial series on using the USBASP programmer to program your Atmega Micro Controllers. So head over to Protostack's website and check out what they have to offer and when you are done check out the other cool features they offer on the site such as: Tutorials, Discussion forum, and even a place to showcase your project's photos. We have some photos of the gear they sent us after the jump...
Part 1: Reading and Displaying Temperature
This is a side project for my COD MW2 case mod found here. The plan is to build a water pump cover that has a 16x2 or 20x4 LCD that will display several parameters about the water cooling loop including: 2 temperature locations, Pump RPM liquid flow rate and possibly even an audio alarm in the event of pump / flow failure. In this installment I will show you how to read the temperature from 2 10k thermsistor based temperature probes and display them on a 16x2 parallel LCD display... More after the Jump...
