This tutorial explains how to make your own power supply unit for all your electronics and embedded system experiments. It also has a backup battery which will be used in case of power cuts and a display. 

ESP 8266 is the latest buzz on internet. It is a WiFi module which is just a bit larger than a 1 Re coin. Well that’s not what it is famous for though. What made it very popular among electronic hobbyist is its unbelievable low cost. I got it just for $5 (~300 Rs.) An arduino along with a WiFi shield would cost 10 times of what this module costs.vvvvvIt can be interfaced with any microcontroller through USART communication, meaning it just need the RX and TX pins. Another feather to its hat was added recently. The developer released the SDK files of the module and hence even the module can be re-programmed and its GPIO pins can be used independently without any additional microcontroller. But that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. We would be using the module along with Arduino UNO.

Do you find it annoying when the cake you set in the freezer doesn’t set itself on time? Maybe someone is opening the fridge frequently when you aren’t noticing. Or you may be having a personal cupboard from where your things just vanish or gets misplaced when you are away. So, how to know when your fridge/ cupboard’s door get opened?Well, we have a simple solution for that. Using this you can check at what time and also how many times it was opened, and you can check it from anywhere on internet.

This tutorial shows you how to make a phone charger which uses any DC source (AAA/AA/SLA battery) as input and is efficient in terms of power utilization. We’ve been holding onto 7805 regulator IC from a very long time and hence a question may arise as to why we are not using the same this time. Well all these days we didn’t care about the efficiency since it was either a low current application or ones which didn’t run completely on battery but this time it is different. This time our aim is to create a device which runs on battery and needs to be utilizing the battery’s energy efficiently.

This tutorial shows you how to make an IR receiver for Canon camera with minimum parts. The receiver will let us control the shutter button of any canon camera with any IR remote control.Well before we proceed into making the receiver, we need to first install the Canon Hack Development Kit into the camera. There are many methods to install this in your camera and various tutorials online showing those methods.  

You may have come across many tutorials about accelerometer controlled wireless robot (also known as gesture controlled or glove controlled) but all of them would have a microcontroller. This tutorial teaches you how to make them without using any microcontroller.  

This tutorial will show you how to make a Laser based Intruder alerter which captures image of the intruder automatically without any microcontroller or programming.You may have seen few movies where there is a security system containing multiple laser rays flashing across the room which when interrupted triggers an alarm. We are going to try replicating that kind of arrangement using a single laser pointer and a couple of mirrors.  

During power outages, and all the batteries around your home drain away, the only option left for you would be this. This tutorial shows you how to charge a phone using a 12V DC motor and a couple of other parts.A DC motor can also work as a DC generator and vice-versa since their construction and operating principle are similar. So I would be using a 12V DC geared motor as a generator since we need a power source to charge our device. 

This tutorial will teach you how to make the simplest motion detecting staircase light without any need of any additional microcontroller and programming using PIR based Sensor. Passive Infrared (PIR) Sensors basically measure the Infrared light radiated by an object present in its field. All living creatures (and objects) with a temperature above absolute zero (which is 0 Kelvin or -273oC) emit heat energy in form of radiation. The PIR sensors are tuned in such a way that they detect only the radiation emitted by human beings. 

This a simple tutorial on how to setup your Arduino board with Ethernet shield to control your home appliances like Lights or Fans using any device (Mobile/Tablet/Laptop/Desktop) connected to your WiFi network. To get going you just need Arduino Ethernet Shield, Arduino UNO. Infact you can make use of any other Arduino board which is compatible with the Arduino Ethernet Shield. Besides this a Relay Board and a Wi FiRouter is required. So why wait pick up your kit and follow this step by step tutorial to contol your home appliances. Are you ready?   

Are you an electronic hobbyist? Then an adjustable power supply is a must for your various needs. This project explains how to make a LM317 based adjustable power supply unit with a digital display 

Ever wanted to make your own table lamp? If yes then you have come to the right tutorial! This project shows you how to make table lamp using a bunch of LEDs and 555 Timer circuit. Our first problem is that we can’t give 12V directly to an LED which would simply burn it. Well you may say that adding a series resistor would solve that problem but let’s see what happens when we do that. 

This project would show you how to control an AC appliance remotely from anywhere using your mobile phone. This kind of project is useful in various applications. Say for example a farmer can switch ON or OFF the motor pump present near his field remotely. In this way he need not travel all the way to the field to control it, especially at night times. 

Did you know that most of the thefts at home happen when it is empty? But not everyone is rich enough to hire a security for their house and at the same time they themselves cannot be at home 24 by7. Now what if there is a system which alerts you about an intruder through a text message?The following tutorial teaches how to make you own intruder alerting system 

Ever played with magic slates in your childhood? Well this project will show you how to make a digital magic slate using a PC, a touch screen and few other components. Basically the project converts the analog voltage coming from the resistive touch screen into a two co-ordinate integer value and sends it to the PC through the microcontroller. The processing code takes these co-ordinates as inputs and draws a white dot for each co-ordinate, on the output screen.So when you write continuously on the touch screen, the dots would be plotted close enough to make it look like a line or curve. The circuit is based around a Atmega 16 micro controller, Serial to USB converter or (Serial to RS-232 + RS-232 to USB converter) along with a personal computer or a laptop. 

This tutorial will give you a brief introduction to the concept of colors and how different colors can be produced using RGB LED. The color would be controlled using an ATMega16 microcontroller.RGB LEDs are basically the combination of the 3 LEDs (Red, Green and Blue) fused into a single package. It consists of four pins totally out of which three of them for the three different colors. The 4th pin is common for all three colors and it’s either Cathode or Anode. 

Digital equipments have rapidly replaced Analog equipments in the long run. Well that is because the former has lot of advantages over the latter. But do you miss those retro style analog measuring instruments? Those pointy indicators and graduated scales? Well I do and so have decided to build one with the “modern” parts. This article will show you how to make a Retro Style D.C. Voltmeter which can measure in range of 0-30V. 

Processing is a Java based open source programming language and IDE (Integrated development environment) used for writing and running programs on a computer. The main advantage of Processing is that it allows people with less or no knowledge on programming also to learn programming easily and become experts. Processing accomplishes this by providing numerous examples and tutorials pre-loaded in the software itself. What we will use Processing is for letting our development board (Arduino/ ATmega8 Dev. Board/ ATmega16 dev. board) to communicate with the PC/ Laptop running Processing. Well basically it starts a serial communication with the device connected at the COM port mentioned by us. Then it continuously sends the character “H” (if the mouse pointer is on the rectangle) or “L” (if the mouse pointer is moved away from the rectangle) to the device. The software and hardware requirements of this project are: PC/ Laptop running Windows 7/XP, Java Development Kit 7, Processing 2.0 or above.

Well as the Halloween is coming close I thought why not show you how to make an interactive electronic Halloween prop. All we need is a PIR sensor, an Arduino/ ATMega8 board and couple of other electronic components to make this Haunted Post box. In this project, a scary element pops out of the post box as soon as the PIR sensor senses a human nearby the door step. It stays out for a while and again goes back into the post-box and stays there till the next victim comes close. The scary element is of your choice. It can be a plastic skull or a monster mask or a toy hand or anything which scares people when they see it suddenly. Be creative! And use your own imagination. Continue reading to find out how the project is assembled and how it works.  

Monitoring temperature of a particular place directly is difficult and sometimes impossible (ex: places where humans cannot be). So there is a necessity for wireless monitoring system which enables the user to track the temperature from a remote location. In this article we’ll learn how to build a wireless temperature indicator which sends the temperature value to a PC/Laptop through Bluetooth. The Temperature sensor LM35 produces an output voltage which is directly proportional to its surrounding temperature. For every 1°C of rise/fall in temperature, the output voltage of the sensor varies by 10mV. The output of this sensor is analog in nature which needs to be converted into a digital value using an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) so it is fed into 37th pin of PORT A of the ATmega16 microcontroller. ATmega16 consists of 8 channels ADC (PA0-PA7) with a maximum resolution of 10 bits.