Interactive Matter proudly present the first Interactive Matter SMT Kit
The Blinken Button! Head over to the shop to grab yours!
The Blinken Button is a kit for a 8×8 LED Matrix button (the jacket one). It is based on the Space Invaders Button you may already know. Get all the information on the product page.
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Blinken Button – The LED Matrix Button Kit
Palo Altona – Hamburg Tinker Drinkup
Die deutsche Version gibt es nach dem Klick (und dann weiter unten).
This time it is all non-technical (technically not – but that starts to get complicated). To further encourage tinkering in Hamburg, Alex and I have established a regularly tinker drinkup every Thursday (nearly) at Saal II.
Currently it is a very cosy drinkup, just a few guests. Hopefully this will change. We post announcements with very short notice on Twitter via #palo_altona. If you want to join to discuss some tinker stuff or present your Arduino or tinker projects, just tell Alex or me and we will tell when the next #palo_altona takes place.
Und nun zur deutschen Version:
Seasonal Greetings
This is definitively the last post for this year. So I wish everybody Merry Christmas or whatever you want to celebrate and a pleasant & successful new year!
Even I stopped tinkering and went on to hacking cookies. Have fun & take care!
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Filtering Sensor Data with a Kalman Filter
Some days ago I wrote about noise with a LIS302DL accelerometer. There is obviously something wrong with my hardware. But before I get a new version out I need to implement some software filtering.
After some unsuccessful results with low pass filters I choose the Kalman Filter. The Kalman Filter involves an awful lot of complicated mathematics. But fortunately I just needed a simple one dimensional Kalman Filter without any driving information, which makes the filter much easier.
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Posted in Tinkering Tagged Accelerometer, Arduino, Filter, Kalman Filter, LIS302DL, Noise 8 Comments
Decoupling LIS302DL – There I fixed it!
As you probably know, I really like I2C sensors and especially the LIS302DL. But adding this accelerometer to your circuit is not as straight forward as I thought. But in the end I got it quite right.
It all started out with a 0.1µF ceramic capacitor. For good measure I put a ferrite bead in front. But this lead to terrible readouts. So I threw in a 10µF 0805 ceramic capacitor and a 4.7µF tantalum capacitor. It does not look nice, nor does it look terribly solid, but it works fine.
So read on, what my analysis of the situation is.
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Arduino & Barometric Pressure Sensor BMP085
In lack of any new projects (which are currently all in an very intermediate state) Interactive Matter presents yet another ‘how to connect a cool I2C sensor to Arduino’ post.
This time it is all about pressure. The BMP085 pressure sensor combines a absolute barometric pressure sensor (aka barometer) with an temperature sensor. It is build by Bosch Sensortec and intended to help GPS navigation units to detect their height above sea level. It combines the advantage of being quite cheap (~5$) and precise.
But of course there are myriads of other applications as well, like using it in a digital weather station, detecting the force of slammed doors or …
Driving Circuits from a CR2032 Lithium Coin Cell
Just another good example of ‘lesson learned’. I often use the very common CR2032 coin cell batteries to drive my circuits. Small, cheap, easy to get and there is a quite a range of good and cheap battery holders.
But recently I have tested an complete over the top design which pushed the poor little CR2032 far beyond its limits. Time to grab a few facts from the datasheet for further reference.
Interactive Matter: The first year!
Unbelievable that this is just the first year of Interactive Matter. But still there happened a lot of things.
Lets have a look on what Interactive Matter has managed to achieve.
Arduino & AD7746
In my ongoing series about cool sensors Interactive Matter presents the AD7746 capacity sensor:
What is a capacity sensor good for? You can of course make a device to identify small capacitance (up to 4pF) but that’s boring. Much more interesting is how it reacts to touching.
Read on how to connect it to the Arduino and how to use it to sense touching
Posted in Sensors, Tinkering Tagged AD7746, Arduino, Capacity Sensor, I2C, Prototype, Sparkfun, Touch Sensor 2 Comments
Interactive Matter goes Kit
The questions for kits grow stronger and stronger in the comments. Therefore I am happy and proud to announce that Interactive Matter starts selling kits. The first will be the Space Invaders Button. The first round of prototypes has been packaged and already shipped:
Soon we will add order forms and how to descriptions for all the kits we will offer – so stay tuned.
