Nacho Morató

Arduino Super Starter Kit Elegoo UNO R3 Project

Elegoo Arduino Uno R3 Starter Kit

A few days ago I bought an Arduino Starter Kit clone, from the Elegoo brand, an offer of $30. I have enough sensors and components that I have been buying, but I lacked many of those offered in the Kit and I thought it was a good idea to buy it and see if this type of products is worth it. They have 4 starter kits, the basic one, it’s the Super Starter that is the one I bought and then they have two more with more components. But the truth is that I took this one for the offer. I have been wanting to take the one that brings radiofrequency.

Reading some review of the Elegoo boards I see that they speak well of them, although there are people who complain about the compatibility of the board, which is an Arduino UNO R3 clone. My experience has been very positive the board has worked perfectly, compatible with the Arduino IDE without doing anything, just connect and go. I have loaded the blink, I have made some modification. I’ve tried some components quickly and everything works fine (Tested with Ubuntu 16.10, 18.04 and kubuntu 17.04)

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PCL or polycaprolactone (Plastimake, InstaMorph, Friendly Plastic)

If this is the first time you hear this name, you are in luck because today you will be surprised. The PCL is a thermoplastic plastic that we can mold with our hands when heated around 60 ° C and that hardens in the cold and we can repeat the process again and again, hundreds of times.

Plastimake, instamorph and friendly plastic

When it cools it becomes hard and tough, it does not conduct electricity or heat, it is not toxic and it is biodegradable. It seems the perfect solution for our inventions does not?

It reminds me of Sugru, but being able to reuse it and it seems to be more difficult to manipulate. Although of course being able to reuse it again and again is a very important point.

Look how the magic happens …

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DIY beehive

how to make a homemade diy beehive
Danika Perkinson Photo

Oscar Perone, sent us this tutorial about how to built homemade beehives some years ago, to publish it in the spanish web. I reproduce it literally. Enjoy it!

The beehive I propose

It is possible to do beekeeping without knowing anything about it, manufacturing our own material with waste wood and populating our cheap hives with swarms that we will capture for free. The result will be an automatic beehive that will only open to harvest.

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Sea Glass: Collector’s Guide

sea glass, beach glass
Imagen de Heather (CC BY 2.0)

For those who do not know, we call Sea Glass, Seaglass, Beach glass, or mermaid tears to the pieces of glass that we find eroded and polished in the sea, rivers, lakes, etc., because of the currents, waves, rock sand, pebbles and other agents.

In addition to the abrasive agents that we have listed, the saline solution of the ocean also helps the crystal dissolve over the years and gives it that glazed, frosty or sugary hue.

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How to make sea glass

fake or man made sea glass

Well, many of you have ever found pieces of glass completely eroded by the sea on the beach. They are called Sea Glass, seaglass, beach glass or Mermaid Tears, and I left you a complete guide about Sea Glass.

In this article I am going to show you how to make a Sea Glass imitation at home. It is called Fake Sea Glass.

There are thousands of collectors of these sea glass and it is increasingly difficult to find them. People use industrial tumblers to produce and sell them.

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How to build a homemade Rubik’s cube to help a mathematical school project

Some years ago, David, an elementary School teacher wrote me asking if I can help them designing a 2×2 Rubik’s cube for children.

Rubik cube project 2x2 for kids

They want a mathematical project for kids based on Rubik cube. Fastly I answered with some links to learn to build 2×2 and 3×3 Rubik’s cube with dices and magnets. The are really cool hacks. But David needs something easier and cheaper. They came with simple premises.

  • Children of 10 years must be able to build it, so we forget about elaborate and dangerous tools and processes
  • and it has to be cheap, very cheap

although everything must be said they just wanted a minimally manipulable cube.

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Arduino multitasking and time management

Multitasking in Arduino

I am not an expert in Arduino, although I have not used the plate for a long time. And the times I have done it has been as a tool, copying and pasting code already created but without much interest to really learn how it works but simply with the intention of making it work and find it useful. This Christmas I tuned the Nativity scene a bit with some LEDs and an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor. And I stopped to observe what had to be done.

I just wanted to do different things with two LEDs from the same signal. Oops I quickly stumbled upon what I think will be one of the first limitations you encounter when you start to mess with Arduino. And it is not necessary to complicate it much. I speak only of some LEDs, you realize that you cannot do what you want correctly.

Let’s make it clear from the beginning in Arduino multitasking does not exist, you cannot process two tasks in parallel. But there are techniques to make calls so fast that they seem to work at the same time.

I tell you the case in more detail. At Christmas I rode a Nativity scene and I wanted certain birth lights to come on when my daughters approached. Nothing complicated I just wanted two branches of LED lights to work differently depending on the values of a proximity sensor.

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