Jeff Epler's blog

Towards my GPS LED Light Clock

A few years ago, I made a CCFL light clock using an Arduino with a custom shield containing a transformer (to get a reliable 60Hz timebase) and a triac (for solid-state switching of the lamp). By having a simple 7-day alarm calendar (set at compile time), the clock seldom requires interaction except for the reading lamp function.

However, the design has two main problems:

Red Alert Box

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Oh no, vmware crashed again

Every morning I get up too late, and then I think to myself "I'll just check real quick to see that everything on my home network is running". 45 minutes later I've browsed all the new lolcats and read a few personal trainwreck posts on askme, and now I'm running really late.

This is the kind of problem we can solve with technology!

Improved Analog & Digital Interface with Arduino

(M)(L)

Arduino Virtual Control Panel

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Arduino Diecimila board

Building on my earlier work, I've now improved the interface between HAL and the Arduino board to have:

6 10-bit analog inputs

6 8-bit PWM "analog" outputs

6 digital inputs/outputs (partition chosen when component is loaded)

GPL license statement in source files

As before, the driver consists of an Arduino Sketch (halintf.pde) and a HAL Userspace Component written in Python (arduino.py).