Monthly Archives: July 2013

Solar power for your arduino – basics

pv-arduino-1You can power your arduino from the grid, from a battery and also with solar energy. Building a standalone photovoltaic (PV) system for your application is just about choosing the right components and connecting them with a few wires. What you need is a PV module, a battery and a charge regulator to get your arduino project running offgrid. The system basically is the same as if you would build offgrid PV for e. g. a caravan, a weekend home or a small house. Here we will scale this down for our arduino needs. Continue reading

Make your own winding machine

coilOften coils have to be custom made for your application. I started making my first coil by simply taking a bobbin and wire and winding the coil by hand (see left). This can be a very boring job. So it was time for a simple winder that is cheap and easy to build. I didn’t want to wind by hand and count the windings in my head any more. So the winder had to have a motor, a rotary encoder and an arduino to do the counting job. Continue reading