Installing Whatsapp on Intel Galileo

Whatsapp on an Intel GalileoIn this tutorial I will show you how to install Whatsapp on your Intel Galileo. I’ll also show you how to read sensor data easily from your mobile phone through Whatsapp.

You can easily extend this into whatever you want, so that you can control your DIY electronics with your smart phone.

I used a Grove Soil sensor together with an Intel Galileo for this project. But you can use whatever sensor you want, as long as it connects to the ADC of your Intel Galileo.

DIY Weather Station with Intel Galileo

dht11-sensorYour own DIY weather station is very useful if you for example want to optimize the growing process of your plants.

It gives you the possibility of getting real-time data or statistics about things the soil moistness, or the temperature around your plants.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to build your own DIY weather station using the Intel Galileo and a few sensors.

Intel Galileo Board for Measuring Rain and Moist

intel galileo boardIn this Intel Galileo board sensors tutorial you’ll learn how to use analog sensors. I’ll show you how to use a simple rain sensor and a soil moisture sensor.

This project could be used on a farm: To make better decision about when to water the crops, it’s very helpful to have information about how much it has rained, and the moisture level in the soil.

Even though I used an Intel Galileo here, you could just as well use the same code and connections with an Arduino.

The components I used:

How To Boot Intel Galileo From an SD-card

SD card on an Intel GalileoTo get access to more interesting functionality, you need to boot Intel Galileo from an SD-card.

The on-board Linux version running on the Galileo is very limited. So to get access to things like WiFi communication (through Mini-PCIe), you need to install a proper Linux version on an SD-card.

This will also give you access to lots of other libraries, so that you can create programs for example in Python or Node.js.

Another advantage is that if you boot from an SD-card, the sketch you upload to the board does not get erased when you power off the board (as it does if you are using the on-board Linux).

I wanted to try this, because I wanted to build a more advanced weather station than my simple weather station. When booting from an SD-card, I can easily create a web server that runs in the background. Then give easy access to sensor values from an external computer.

This Mono Amplifier Circuit is Super Easy To Build

PCB Layout of the mono amplifier circuitThis is the easiest mono amplifier circuit to build, as far as I know.

I love it because it is powerful enough to play pretty loud. And it doesn’t need a pre-amp, heat-sink or any weird transistors.

All it requires, is a few standard capacitors, a couple of resistors and a potentiometer.

It will give you 4.7 Watts of power. This should be enough to play music in the park with some friends and a couple of brewskies.

I’ve added the schematics, PCB design and Gerber files a little further down the page.

Ho, ho ho! 5 Christmas Circuit Ideas

Every Christmas I turn into a child again.

I have a hard time falling asleep. I wake up early in the morning to watch cartoons. And I am probably even more curious about the gifts under the tree than my two-year-old nephew.

I often get emails asking for project ideas.

So I thought I’d share a few Christmas circuit ideas today.

Christmas tree

Sound Card Oscilloscope

A sound card oscilloscope might be exactly what you need if you are stuck in the frustrating “I don’t know what’s wrong with my circuit!” state.

Oscilloscopes have helped me countless times when debugging both analog and digital circuits. But they tend to be expensive. So what to do?

DIY Sous Vide Cooker

This DIY sous vide cooker was made by my friend Markus. He built it for about 1/10 of the price of the commercial cookers. And it made some really good chicken =)

A sous vide cooker is a machine for cooking food using a temperature-controlled bath.

You can take whatever you want to cook – chicken, fish, steak, etc. – and put it in a vacuum-sealed bag. Next, set the temperature on the DIY Sous Vide to the temperature you want for your food. Then put the vacuum-sealed bag into the water and let it cook slowly for a long time (several hours).

When the chicken (or whatever you are cooking) is done, fry it quickly in a frying pan with high temperature to get a crispy finish.

Digital Stopwatch Circuit

This digital stopwatch circuit is a circuit I built for testing some 7-segment displays. It consists of four displays that I control using a microcontroller. The microcontroller counts and makes sure the correct LED segments on each display is lit up.

Check out the video below to see how I built it.

LDR Circuit Diagram

This LDR circuit diagram shows how you can make a light detector. An LDR or “Light Dependent Resistor” is a resistor where the resistance decreases with the strength of the light.

Here is the schematic for the circuit:


LDR Circuit Diagram

Timer Project with Gong

This is a timer project I recently made.

Timer project with gong

I am really into productivity techniques and I think using the Pomodoro technique is a nice way of working when you need to be productive.

You work hard for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break.

Also, I have found that the sound of a gong makes me really relaxed and focused. So I decided to build a timer project with a gong.

I wanted the gong to “gong” at the start to make me focus, then “gong” at the end to make me relax during the break.

Electronics Project: 1937 radio hacked into an iPhone dock

This is an electronics project of mine. It’s a 1937 Philips radio modified into a docking station.

The reason I did it was because I had this old Philips radio laying around. And I couldn’t use it because it only had an AM receiver. So, I thought it would be cool to make it into an iPhone dock =D

How I did it

The first thing I did was to remove old the old parts from it.

 

The Simplest Amplifier Circuit Diagram

I have been looking for a good stereo amplifier circuit diagram for a long time. I am not a HiFi geek, I just wanted to build a simple stereo amplifier that could drive some speakers for my desktop computer.

stereo-amplifier-board-layout

All the schematic diagrams that I could find seemed to involve lots of hard-to-find components or you had to use it together with a pre-amplifier or some other amplifier stage. It was always something that made me hesitate.

But recently I found this awesome little chip called TEA2025! You only need a few capacitors to make a decent stereo amplifier out of it. It is so simple to build that I put it together on a stripboard in just a few hours.

Recyclomat – the Rube Goldberg Recycling Machine

Here is a really cool and huuuge recycling machine we built for a music festival in 2010. It is an interactive recycling station. The idea was to make recycling fun.

When you put garbage in it, the machine detects it and moves the ball on the left side one step up. When the ball has made its way all the way to the top, it is released down a pinball-ish slope while a “Tivoli” kind of tune is playing with lots of blinking lights.

The machine was on display for the first time at Øyafestivalen 2010 in Oslo. It was a real hit! Lots of people came by and recycled their garbage to get the ball to the top. People even picked up trash from the ground to put in it =)

In the following video, you can see it in action at Øyafestivalen. Elias (from thing-printer.com) is pretending he doesn’t know what it is and asks one of the girls who work there how to use it.