Kategorie: Allgemein

Arduino serial connection speed

Did you know that the arduino can use arbitary serial speeds? I have connected my UNO to my pc and uploaded the following sketch:

void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:
Serial.begin(500000);
Serial.write("hello");}

void loop() {
}

This works fine when I connect my pc to the arduino via putty and set the speed to 500,000

I wonder what the maximum speed is.
My tests showed that it is 4,000,000. This is 4 megabit/s. About 16 times the memory of an arduino UNO. I am not sure how this could be useful, but it is good to know.

Project: Minecraft Cube part I: Introduction and Parts needed

Idea

The idea is to have a cube which looks like minecraft ore http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Ore To make it more fancy it is illuminated from the inside. The main purpose of it is to use it as a nightlight. In Minecraft there are 8 different ores. Without coal (black) and nehter quartz (which has a differnt texture) there are 6 different ores which can be distinguished by their color. This fits to the 6 sides of a cube. The idea is to use an arduino board and an acceleration sensor to detect the orientation of the cube and light up the whole cube with one of the colors according to the orientation of the cube. This could look like this:

Youtube Video

DiamondCube

 

What is it good for? Fun, learning to build an computerized object and as a birthday present for my son.

What do I need

A transparent cube as the hull and main structure. I used a foto cube of acrylic glass which is made of two parts which can be fitted together.

2015-06-16 Transparent Cube

The texture of the minecraft block to use as outside texture. This is just a word document which needs to be printed on both sides. Since the cube has two parts, two copies are needed.

Minecraft Texture

The electronics needed as follows:

Li-Ion battery IMR 18350

Li-Ion charging board with mini usb socket (not seen on photo) based on TP4056

Pin connector as programming interface

Arduino Pro Mini controlling everything

Acceleration sensor based on MPU 6050 (Photo shows ADXL345), but MPU6050 looks almost identical

LED Strip WS2812B. These can be bought as a reel from 1 to 5 meters. Only 6 are needed…

On/Off switch. To switch off when there is no recharging possible and the battery goes down

2015-06-16 Parts needed

Some kind of mechanical frame to hold all this stuff especially the battery. The following is important:

  • There should’nt be any shadows on any of the sides of the cube
  • The center of mass should be in the center of the cube
  •  Outside access to recharge the battery and to reprogram the arduino without the need to disassemble

Therefore I 3D printed a frame which should hold all these parts.

2015-06-16 3D Print

Next Part: Project: Minecraft Cube part II: Internals and Software

English or German (Deutsch oder Englisch)

Obwohl das eine deutsche Webseite ist und ich aus Deutschland komme werde ich ab sofort englische Beiträge schreiben, aber vielleicht auch mal den einen oder anderen deutschen Beitrag schreiben wenn es besser passt.

Although this is a german webpage and I am from germany I am not sure if I should write in german or english. Therefore I will start doing posts in english, but may also write some in german if it fits better.