Rekult

Rekultivating electronics

Inputs

Analog

• Thermistor
• Flex Sensors
• Accelerometor
• Solar Panel
• Dynamo
• Hall Effect Sensor
• Max Sonar (Schall Sensor)

Digital

• Infrared Sensor
• PIR
• Switch
• Ball Switch

Miscellaneous

• Microphone
• Camera
• Tone Generator
• GSM Card
• GSM Phones

Outputs

• Audio
• Piezo Beeper
• TFT Screen
• LCD Display
• LED's
• Dual 7-Segment
• Internet (Twitter et al.)

CPU's

• ANYduino (Mega, Mini, Pro etc...)
• VIA Based i386 Ubuntu Machine
• Old IBM Laptop, headless

Schools of Handling

• Threads
• Events

Dirty Jobs

Arduino vs. CPU

One decision we had to take was: Who does the job(s)?

With well over 16 inputs that have to be dealt with 'quasi' simultaneously it worth the thought.

You could either let the Arduino grab ALL the inputs in it's loop and dump it on the Serial interface OR let the CPU ask for a very Specific input.

We chose the latter for the obvious speed reason.

Language

We decided to use Python for the sensor interface part and some of the graphing. Interfacing the Arduino via Python is "easy" - http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Interfacing/Python - and with 115200 baud over the USBtoSerial is fast enough too.