Friday, February 12, 2016

Course On Arduino and Android

I have made many tutorials for creating apps using MIT app inventor and connected the app with arduino to make things work, I often get email stating something went missing when they follow my tutorial, Here's a step by step tutorial on getting started with creating MIT app inventor and control things with arduino. To complete this tutorial you need a Bluetooth module HC-05 or HC-06 to connect with arduino and send or receive data to and from other Bluetooth device.



Lets Make our first app to control an LED

1.Getting Started with Arduino and Android 


This video gives insight into MIT app inventor and what are the requirements need to get started with this video series, anyone watching this video can make their own app and control a LED connected to arduino without any prior experience, if they have components with that's more enough to make this tutorial. Blinking an LED is the first thing we do when we getting started with electronics in this tutorial you will TURN ON and TURN OFF the LED, this is the Hello world example in this tutorial, you don't need any prior coding experience to make this application work. To test the app that created during this tutorial, you need an Android mobile or android supported devices to test your app. creating an app with MIT app inventor is very simple, you won't be doing any coding process during creating your app, you will be assembling blocks together to make your app. if you don't have any prior experience with Arduino control, make sure you follow some basics like connecting Arduino to your computer and upload example code to Arduino from Arduino IDE, this would be more sufficient to follow this tutorial.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
String state;// string to store incoming message from bluetooth
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600); // serial communication started
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT); // LED connected to 13th pin


}
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------//  
void loop() {
  while (Serial.available()){  //Check if there is an available byte to read
  delay(10); //Delay added to make thing stable 
  char c = Serial.read(); //Conduct a serial read
  state += c; //build the string- either "On" or "off"
  }  
  if (state.length() > 0) {
    
  if(state == "on") 
  {
    digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
    
      } 
  
  else if(state == "off") 
  {
    digitalWrite(13, LOW);
     }

state ="";} //Reset the variable
}





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Android Arduino Speech recognition app. 





In this tutorial you will know how to create a speech recognition app that will convert your speech to text and send command to your arduino and do certain task that matches your command, you don't have any control over the speech to text conversion process, it is entirely depend on the google speech to text conversion engine, we will be making use of the speech to conversion process in this app, when the process of getting converting the text is over we will be sending the converted command to Arduino. You also need internet connectivity to do this process because google speech to conversion engine depends on Internet connectivity to do this you cannot do this process offline, you need to be connected with internet when following and working this tutorial. once you complete this app you can use this for many applications including Home Automation, Controlling a Bluetooth robot, sending voice command to do a process there are many possibilities with this application. The same hardware what you have created previous tutorial is enough for this tutorial you don't need to change your hardware connection to make this work. keep your hardware same connect this app to your arduino and start to send your command.

3. Servo Motor control using Arduino and Android 



In this tutorial you will be creating an app for controlling a servo motor, you will be using slider in your app to move your servo from 0-180,

You need a servo motor to be connected on arduino side, make sure you also connecting external powersupply so that your Arduino will not restart during this process,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#include <SoftwareSerial.h> // TX RX software library for bluetooth

#include <Servo.h> // servo library 
Servo myservo; // servo name

int bluetoothTx = 10; // bluetooth tx to 10 pin
int bluetoothRx = 11; // bluetooth rx to 11 pin

SoftwareSerial bluetooth(bluetoothTx, bluetoothRx);

void setup()
{
  myservo.attach(9); // attach servo signal wire to pin 9
  //Setup usb serial connection to computer
  Serial.begin(9600);

  //Setup Bluetooth serial connection to android
  bluetooth.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
  //Read from bluetooth and write to usb serial
  if(bluetooth.available()> 0 ) // receive number from bluetooth
  {
    int servopos = bluetooth.read(); // save the received number to servopos
    Serial.println(servopos); // serial print servopos current number received from bluetooth
    myservo.write(servopos); // roate the servo the angle received from the android app
  }


}




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Make a Android Arduino Robot 




In this tutorial you will be learning on how to make an app for controlling an robot by android app, you will be using android phone as remote controller to control the robot.

You need 2 gear motor with wheels

A motor driver, you can use any of the motor driver you want, I used L293D motor driver for this project.

You also need a battery and connecting wires, apart from that as usual a Bluetooth and Arduino board is needed to complete this tutorial.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial BT(10, 11); //TX, RX respetively
String readdata;

void setup() {
 BT.begin(9600);
 Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT); // connect to input 1 of l293d
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT); // connect to input 4 of l293d
  pinMode(5, OUTPUT); // connect to input 3 of l293d
  pinMode(6, OUTPUT); // connect to input 2 of l293d

}
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------// 
void loop() {
  while (BT.available()){  //Check if there is an available byte to read
  delay(10); //Delay added to make thing stable
  char c = BT.read(); //Conduct a serial read
  readdata += c; //build the string- "forward", "reverse", "left" and "right"
  } 
  if (readdata.length() > 0) {
    Serial.println(readdata); // print data to serial monitor
// if data received as forward move robot forward
  if(readdata == "forward") 
  {
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
    digitalWrite (4, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(5,LOW);
    digitalWrite(6,LOW);
    delay(100);
  }
  // if data received as reverse move robot reverse

  else if(readdata == "reverse")
  {
    digitalWrite(3, LOW);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(6,HIGH);
    delay(100);
  }
// if data received as right turn robot to right direction.
  else if (readdata == "right")
  {
    digitalWrite (3,HIGH);
    digitalWrite (4,LOW);
    digitalWrite (5,LOW);
    digitalWrite (6,LOW);
    delay (100);
   
  }
// if data received as left turn robot to left direction
 else if ( readdata == "left")
 {
   digitalWrite (3, LOW);
   digitalWrite (4, HIGH);
   digitalWrite (5, LOW);
   digitalWrite (6, LOW);
   delay (100);
 }
 // if data received as stop, halt the robot

 else if (readdata == "stop")
 {
   digitalWrite (3, LOW);
   digitalWrite (4, LOW);
   digitalWrite (5, LOW);
   digitalWrite (6, LOW);
   delay (100);
 }

  


readdata="";}} //Reset the variable







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Know your Home Temperature and Humidity creating an Android app 

There are many app and widget floating market for knowing outside temperature and humidity, but there are no app that can provide your Temperature and Humidity inside your home, by creating this app you can retrieve temperature and humidity data from arduino.


By following the above tutorial you can make your own app that display temperature and humidity data as well as this app will make you hear what is the current temperature and humidity at your home. for this project I used DHT11 sensor with arduino to export temperature data to my android app, similarly you can use any Temperature sensor like DHT22 or DHT23 or DHT33 or one wire ds180b20 type of sensor can be used to replicate the same project. 

6. Android Arduino Speech recognition bot.



This app combines tutorial 2 and 4 to make a new project, as we discussed earlier that speech to text conversion app can be used for many projects, this is one of the application of that app, we using the same for the robot we created during our 4th lesson. This follows same hardware and all the codes are same make the robot and have fun. 


if you had so much during all your learning and want to explore additional things you can check the book here

please leave your suggestion and queries to this mail id jayakumarmagesh@gmail.com

Thanks for stopping by. 

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Course on MATLAB Simulink and Arduino.

Have you ever thought of programming arduino from a powerful tool like Matlab Simulink, do you know why Simulink so powerful, many big industries and corporates are using Matlab Simulink for testing and implementing their projects, aeronautical industry to defence using for testing their prototypes isn't fun to use the same tool for our daily use hardware?



Matlab introduced support package for low cost hardware like arduino, Raspberry pi, beaglebone black and many more to include in this list, anyone from students licence holder to the professional licence holder can download this software make use for their projects. 

You may think what's so much with Simulink, as it may be like next other software tool to program an arduino, just think of a moment, have you ever played with MIT scratch??? have you felt the fun of programming just drag and dropping buttons makes arduino to run without going doing much process, If your answer is yes to the question then think for a moment!! What about combining the fun of MIT scratch and powerful programming language, yeah that's the fun you can get when you combine and make it running with Simulink. 

In this blog you will get to know from how to install required software to complete the whole bunch of tutorial, this is more sufficient to take next step using this hardware, I have created all the videos with much in depth detail on how to get started to finish up things, This video tutorial covers most of day to day life hardware stuffs we interface with Arduino. If you own an Arduino starter kit that is more sufficient to get work with this project, and your intention is to get started you own arduino Matlab projects, I can vouch that after completing this entire video course you can get your hands on the project you would like to build using Arduino and Matlab simulink. 

Lets start the course with Introduction and what are the things you need to get the things work that shows in the videos going to follow.

1. Introduction to Matlab 

You should have latest Matlab to be installed on your System, Matlab also offers a 30 day trail for anyone download the software and install it on your PC, hope you are not running an rs232 support system, we not any  more find an arduino with RS232 port too :), download Matlab R2015b which is the latest version from the Mathworks guys, they are just putting their best out to make the software more perfect every new version, I am not a Matlab affiliate market or a Marketing manager for them, their software speak for them, they don't need a 3rd person opinion for their software to do well on the market. Follow the video below to know all the things to get started. 





1.1 How to Install Arduino Support for Simulink.

In the following tutorial you will get to know on how to install the Arduino support package for Matlab and all the necessary steps have been discussed in the video, if you have any trouble downloading the software make sure you have good internet connectivity , I failed 12 times before I get the installation done due to my poor Internet connectivity which often fails, if still the problem persist turn of your Antivirus software which usually suspect application trying to connect to server mark it as risk and make problem when downloading the software. If everything goes file you are ready to go with interfacing Arduino to Matlab and uploading program to Arduino hardware.



2. How to blink an LED using Arduino and Simulink.

If you reached this stage, congratulation on installing Arduino support for Matlab and Simulink, Here the stage where we going to connect Arduino to Matlab and program it directly using Simulink, you might have used some Software before which are not capable of Programming the Hardware directly , you can't upload your Matlab code to Arduino EEPROM, you need Simulink to program it. Let's do the hello world of electronics, in case of software program we always test it with "hello world" program in this case we going to test hardware that is arduino connected to Matalb software and going to upload program from simulink. once you start to program you may find it more easier than using Arduino IDE. Just a few blocks connect together and your program is ready to upload, not only upload your code and leave you can actually verify the data on the screen, it is more useful when you are using this for project which involves many more functions, say you want to test this hardware with PID function, yes you can do it and fine tune it by getting feedback from the Arduino this allows you to do perfect programming by getting the result from the hardware.


2.1 More ways to blink it. 

You have just learnt about blinking an LED, lets focus on different methods on blink an LED, you will know what are the other ways to make things works. There are many blocks that are available in Simulink, we will try all the blocks and get to know what are different ways in achieving a task, you are not just blinking an LED with these tutorials we are using LED as verifier for our program, you can use these function to implement on any other devices, think of a device which requires these functions in realtime and make use of it. 




2.2 Control Brightness of an LED using Slider 

Back with another tutorial with LED :P, I am not crazy to use LED for all the tutorial, that's the easiest output device I can find to verify my program, as I said the previous section, we are using LED only to verify if you can replace LED with other tool , yeah go ahead and try it. This time we going to use Slider that is available in Simulink to control the brightness of an LED, 




Hey there so you have completed this tutorial too with LED :D, don't you think about something that we used a slider that is available inside the software, but the guy who did this tutorial said in the beginning that simulink can be used for permanently program this chip, what will happen if I deployed the program to Arduino Hardware? how am I gonna apply PWM function to it?? so many questions, yeah go ahead and try learn from it , and comment or send me a reply on what's happening with it, I am waiting for your reply :).

3. How to read analog signal in Matlab,

You heard it right, we going to acquire analog signal from Arduino and display the data in arduino and check how much voltage we are reeving, so what we are actually doing here, we have connected an Potentiometer to analog pin of Arduino, and when you rotate the potentiometer knob applied voltage to the potentiometer changes?, learn on how this damn potentiometer or variable resistor works if you google it by opening a tab next to this blog you can get to know about this funny POT, these are devices which can be comes in handy when you are controlling something, send a friend request by knowing him he will surely help you in the process of learning.

Hey I forgot say one thing, This tutorial too  have an LED :P, yeah we gonna control the brightness of an LED by varying this Potentiometer , so you will get to know how to use POT to acquire the analog signal and use this signal to do some useful work (yeah controlling LED again ).


after completing this tutorial you would have understand the importance of Simulink programming with Matlab, you can verify your code in realtime with Simulink support, you can fine tune your program till you achieve your results. as we seen earlier about PID ,, Now you would have understand how you can tune your PID functions, it is exactly like the one we did it here, where we can use PID blocks get the data to run, check on the monitor for error and fine tune our program it, how easily I said, I know the feel :P

4. Automatic Light Control 

In the previous tutorial you have learned how to acquire analog sensor and control an LED , we going to follow the same set of rules, the blocks are going to be same for this tutorial but , instead of Potentiometer we going to use LDR ( light dependent resistor) from name you can identify the function of this sensor, it resistance depend upon light, what happen if the resistance increase or decrease?? it will affect the output of the resistance, in the previous case we have control over the knob of the potentiometer we made to turn and turn and had control over it, the same thing this LDR is depend on LIGHT to control it , but we can allow and block the light to the sensor :P, so you need a potentiometer to make this tutorial work for you , other than potentiometer you would have know what I usually use :D, yeah that's the device you need. 




Now you know how to do that magic light, continue this tutorial and develop a real circuit to turn On and Off AC circuit, learn more about this stuff, you can easily adapt this same code to control on the hardware side instead of this lazy LED use a rugged relay he can do the rest of job for you. A relay is a electromechanical switch that's all I can say here, Google it learn learn never stop it. 

5. Temperature Monitor using LM35  Temperature sensor

In this chapter we are not using anything like LED's, happy now, yeah I know you guys would have happy after a 4 long tutorials we have eliminated the LED's from our way. what is this LM35 sensor, It is a temperature sensor , the only reason I am using this guy , He's very cheap I bought this sensor just under 50 cent. when compare to other sensor in the market this little guy is cheap and reliable, This sensor is exactly uses the same blocks we used for previous tutorials, what's the deal in it how can we use it as Temperature sensor then?? acquire analog data do some math , yeah you got it right there you will get a Temperature data more or less accurate if it's above 0 degree, this sensor can calculate from 0 to 100 degree in centigrade. it has some simple math which you can find in the data sheet, if you never know about data sheet as I always said please google it and find about this guy, you should have a data sheet for all the product you buy, which has all the details about the product and what the product are capable. connect LM35 sensor to Analog pin, drag and drop blocks in simulink, see the results on Matlab window, you can actually use filters to make the temperature sensor to work perfect, try to get hands on it. don't stop with the point that guy says in the video tutorial. 



6. Sound Sensor with Simulink 

So Here comes a tutorial with different name but going to do the same operation, as you would have noticed at this point we have been repeating the same function again and again for different sensor, the point is if the sensor works in same way as the other , we can use it same function, understand we can connect a device like analog or digital to Arduino all the device going to work as same, if you crossed this level, yeah that's the point of this tutorial just want to take you step by step by making clear on what is all about this programming? , if you understand about sensor programming will be fun, and if you understand the grammar of programming, you would know how to speak with boards. 




if you watched this tutorial , yeah I used LED again for making it clear on how to use a sound sensor and how to what is the maximum db level we are getting and how to use this to make a LED to go mad when sound goes high and low. 

7. Let's Go Digital 

Until now we have used analog function and learnt how to acquire data into Matlab from arduino, we have used different sensor like analog, sound sensor, potentiometer and a LDR, as these functions gives analog as output and we have seen how easy it is to work with analog sensor. Now we see how to interface a digital signal to arduino and read it in Matlab simulink. what output we will get when reading a Digital pin , Either a Hight or Low, this what the output of digital devices. 

Lets use a button that is connected to the digital pin of Arduino and program for it in Matlab Simulink and pick and place some blocks to the simulink environment and make the program to work, it is simple as you think, follow the video tutorial to know how to do it. In this video you will find how to acquire digital data and look up on the graph how the signal responds when we click a button, you see how the signal rises and falls, I have also connected a touch button where it's so fun to use it instead of traditional button in this tutorial, you will also learn how to Turn on and off an LED by controlling the push button. 




In the later on tutorials you will know how to use this example and convert it as real time project by replacing the button with sensors. as we have seen we can get only two state from a digital devices if we use a digital sensor it can produce only two possible conditions as output, using this we can make many applications lets check this one after another.

Project 1: Gas leakage Alarm Detector: 

In the last lesson we have seen how to work with digital pin and at the end of the tutorial we have seen how to turn on and off an led with arduino and Matlab simulink, we going to use the same function and same set of process just by changing the sensors. you will know how to interface a gas sensor to Arduino and read its input using Matlab simulink and based upon the sensor output you will process the data and do perform some conditional based decision on the program.

if  the sensor detects gas ( I used mq-07 sensor) you can use any of the LPG gas detector which can work well with this project.when the sensor detects gas it will give high or low as output signal based on your sensor model and manufacturer. when we detect output from a sensor as positive we need to turn on a buzzer. the process is very simple , check the video and witness the output and learn to do a project with this tutorial.



Project 2: Theft alarm

In this project we going to repeat the same thing, you can even skip this video and try to complete this project and later on check whether your program and the guy in the video doing the program are matches. In this project I have used a PIR sensor and a buzzer , you need a PIR sensor to complete this project.



8: How to make a DC motor to work

Motors are always fun to work with, In this tutorial we will see how to control a toy DC motor using an L293D Motor driver, if you want to know more about this, firstly learn about H-bridge and how we can control a motor using H-bridge, if you complete this tutorial then you ready to do a automatic program for a toy car with arduino, understand the function of L293D motor and apply control logic to the Motor driver from Matlab simulink and control a DC toy motor with the help of Arduino.


9. S function 

Until now we have used all the functions that is available in the simulink library, what if you want to create a new function that is not existing in the simulink, many times you may download a library for Arduino to work with new devices the same applies here for the Matlab we cannot expect library for all the functions, we need to create our own libraries, Matlab simulink has the function called S-function to create user defined library and by creating this you can use any device you want to use with Matlab simulink and arduino. you can follow this tutorial to know about all this new thing and how easy it is to do it. 




10. creating S function for 16x2 LCD to work with Arduino in Matlab Simulink. 

In this tutorial you will know how to create a S function to use 16x2 lcd with Matlab and arduino, you going to use the previous tutorial and create a function for LCD and display temperature data to the LCD screen. you going to combine the tutorials you have learnt in the previous chapters for this tutorial.



If you have reached this place, thanks for watching all the tutorials with patience, please leave your feedback for this course, have you enjoyed this course or the guy is not delivering what you expected to finish at this level, if you have any comments about this please leave your comment to the blog or you can leave the comments on YouTube videos, if you sitll want to personally bash me or want to trash me you can email me @ jayakumarmagesh@gmail.com. all the suggestionns and critics are welcome.



Blink an LED using Arduino and Matlab Simulink

If you are looking to make your arduino talk wiith Matlab, usually this is done by serial communication between Matlab and arduino, where we separately write program for Matlab and arduino, we pass data from and process in Matlab, but you don't need to do such things any more, Matlab developed a software for interfacing low cost hardware like arduino, Beaglebone black, Raspberry pi etc.,   You can use any of the arduino hardware with Matlab, try to use Arduino Mega or Due, the most popular Arduino boards lack of memory and process will slow down when program from simulink. to follow this tutorial you need to install arduino support package to continue this tutorial, you can check my other blog post on how to install support for arduino in Matalb. you can do many interactive project using matlab and arduino. 


here is a tutorial to show you how to program Arduino from Matlab simulink, a powerful graphical programming language which is used in industries. In this tutorial you will learn about how to blink an LED using Arduino and programming from Matlab Simulink. before starting this tutorial check out the introduction section to know about what are the needs to get started with this tutorial and how to install the software and hardware requirements.






Check the video below to know how to control an LED by using Matlab, if you are not sure about how to install the Hardware support for arduino in Matlab check the tutorial here


Steps to make the LED blink

Connect your LED to the 3rd Pin or any other pin you would like and connect your Arduino to your Laptop or PC

Start your Matlab
Click on the Simulink Library.

Once the library browser opened click on the New model from the simulink library.


after the new model window open save your new model by giving any name you like and click on the Simulink support Package for Arduino Hardware from the Simulink library Browser



Open the Common box in the library and choose Digital Output block , drag and drop the digital output block in the model window.



Double click on the Digital Output block and change the pin number to whatever pin number the LED has connected in this case I have connected my LED to the 3rd pin of Arduino Mega



after completing the above steps, got the library browser and select sources from the browser, after opening the sources blocks click the signal generator block and drag it to model window and connect the signal generator to the digital output block by pointing the arrow towards the digital output from signal generator.



Double click on the Pulse generator change the Time(t) to pulse type to sample based.



and also change the sample time to 0.01 and click OK to close the pulse generator parameters.



Change it to external connector and also the simulation time to infinite.





click the tools and select run on target and choose prepare to run. once the window opens click on the Enable hardware specification and from the Hardware board select Arduino Mega



choose the board and click ok, once you pressed ok it will move to the device details don't change any parameters leave everything as same and click ok.


click the run button to temporarily run your code on Arduino which allow us to verify the program if you are not satisfied with the result you can go and change the code until get the desired results and if the program is perfect you can permanently deploy the code by just pressing the deploy to hardware button available in the Model window.



Course on Interfacing Arduino and LabVIEW

Its been a long time I have made a video course on How to use arduino with LabVIEW , This video tutorial is more sufficient for anyone to get started with arduino and LabVIEW and start building their own projects using Arduino with LabVIEW, few years ago if anyone want's to make project using LabVIEW it's really hard for them using a low cost hardware like arduino, and also there is no plenty of resource or dedicated toolkit to work with arduino, but now the situation is different anyone can make their own projects in no time using arduino and LabVIEW, using arduino you can acquire physical world data to your LabVIEW and process all the functions with that, where you can use arduino as a data acquisition tool.



Arduino LabVIEW Linx,

To use Arduino with LabVIEW you need to have installed the toolkit called Linx in with your existing LabVIEW software to get your arduino speak with LabVIEW, you can find all the tutorial on how to install linx toolkit and what are the other requirements that you need to carry out to complete this video course on interfacing labview with arduino. LabVIEW uses serial communication to talk with arduino, you need to have Ni-Visa software to be installed with your LabVIEW, Ni-visa is responsible for connecting all the hardware to talk with LabVIEW. 

I have used a kit called Seeedstudio lotus for making this video, which is very easy to use for a new user getting started with arduino, Lotus is a arduino clone, you can use any type of arduino which supports by Linx, I recommend to anyone to start with Arduino Uno as it is more popular hardware in the Arduino family. 

You can also follow the book which also have all the tutorials given below as a step by step instruction and all the codes and necessary files that have done in this video tutorial are also given in the book, if you wish to buy it just give it a shot, but you don't need to have this book to complete this video tutorial, when you buy this book, it gives me a $1.8 which helps me to buy more hardware and experiment on new things. you can use Arduino Mega or Arduino Nano with this tutorial and start playing with LabVIEW, you can use your own custom hardware too, don't stop your experience learn always something new, add this one course to you that you something now.

click here to move to amazon to by this book

Introduction to the course in here you will get to know about what are things you needed to get started with this course, all the necessary things , in the introduction video you can find how to run your first example "LED blinking with labview and arduino" , it is really awesome to create a Graphical User Interface and play with arduino using LabVIEW, you don't need any prior experience to get yourself start for this tutorial,

For the below tutorial you need to have a Arduino board with Led to blink and a usb cable to connect to your computer, make sure you installing necessary software to make this thing happen in reality. don't stop with theory or video, get your hands on practice and learn something out of it. even if you fail to do, it is a experience that we gaining from instead of without practising.

Chapter 1: How to interface Arduino with LabVIEW and to blink an LED short and sweet video get you through start to finish and at the end you would have understand how easy is to do it, LabVIEW uses G-programming which is a drag and drop boxes and connecting it together and programming, you will become familiar with these things once get started, 



Chapter 2 How to acquire analog signal into LabVIEW from Arduino

As you might be aware that LabVIEW is mostly used for acquiring signals from external devices and process on it, there are many hardware that are available with NI , but the thing is, it is so costly and cannot afford by many people, Arduino can be replace those devices in acquiring and performing on signals in low level, we cannot compare Arduino to NI hardware those hardware are beast and workhorse.
In this video you will learn how to acquire analog signal and process on it using LabVIEW, analog signals are more useful and easy to read than digital , Sensors which gives different output based on its acting environment give analog output, when we read the signal into LabVIEW it varies from 0 to 5v based upon this level we can know the strength of the OUTPUT and we can do many things with this type of signal.

You need a Potentiometer or variable resistor to complete this tutorial, if possible check out google on how this potentiometer works and how it can vary the applied voltage when we rotating it, what is the principle behind it.



Chapter 3, How to control a PWM of an LED using Arduino and LabVIEW

In the previous video you would have learned about how to work with an LED and how to work with analog devices, in this tutorial you will know how to use the last tutorial and combined these tutorial together to work on this tutorial. PWM is the pulse width modulation , it will entire post if we start to talk about this PWM, in simple words lets control the brightness of an LED by controlling the voltage applied to the digital pin, you can use PWM to work with many realtime application most often in electronics to work with PWM we all will be introduced to control brightness of an LED at the initial stage.. 

You need the components that you used in the previous chapter to complete this tutorial 


Chapter 4, Automatic Light Controller using LDR

back in the days, you might be wonder how a light automatically turn off or on based upon the light intensity, later on you would have understand how it works and what basically makes this thing to get work, you still could see a wall clock which strike every hour and stops in the night time or its volume getting decreased based upon the intensity of lights. The reason behind all this work is a tiny little component known as LDR (light dependent resistor) in the last lessons we have controlled the LED brightness by manually turning the knob of the potentiometer, we have a force on those potentiometer to set its value, just like that this LDR being controlled by the external light, its resistance will shoot up if the light intensity is low or it may go up based on the type of resistor material and manufacturing process.

you need a LDR and LED's to make this tutorial work for you, meanwhile if you how to work with relay you can interface relay to it and control your AC lights and fans to automatically turn on and off with light as an factor..



Chapter 5, How to read digital Input

until now in all these tutorials we have only used digital pins as an output to turn on and off or control some LED's , what if you want to read a digital pin, this is a simple task in LabVIEW, we can easily know the state of a pin just by calling a block to read digital pin and selecting the pin to read.

What's the deal in it and why we should read a digital pin, we usually use this feature to know the input from other devices, we use button as a input device and attach with arduino can be useful to know how this function works, we can use these digital input to understand interrupt and also many feature can be done using this digital input button.

You need a button and a LED to complete this tutorial.

Chapter 6 How to work with accelerometer 

In this video tutorial you will know how to acquire accelerometer data and plot a graph upon it, it is really a piece of cake when you using I2C devices with linx and labview they have all the functions to make it work. Try to learn more about i2c protocol how this devices works, you can connect upto 128 i2c devices arduino., what allows this possible? who made this protocol? how fast as this device respond? what is the difference between i2c and spi? if you are getting questions like this then you are learning, google and get your feet under it to check answer for all the stupid questions that came to my mind when started with i2c.

what you need ? an adxl accelerometer and an arduino to make this work


Chapter 7, Servo motor with LabVIEW and Arduino 

it is always fun to work this little guys as they respond quickly and also eats lot of power these tiny guys have more muscle power than the ordinary motors, if you are more curious please try to make a toy car out of a tower pro 9g servo and a toy motor (plane motor without gear), you toy motor never move the car an inch, just find the reason for it? if you learn about it, things will become quite interesting later on. give it a try.

you need a servo motor and Arduino and you should connected your arduino with external power, power supplied from your computer through USB will not be sufficient enough to drive this crazy power hungry fellows.



Chapter 8, working with AC appliances 

In the earlier chapter we have already talked about relay and what you can do about it? are we? not at all but there is a hint on relay given in the previous chapter , hope you learn about it?

if you completed learning about relay and more important if you know more about AC circuit and its operation go ahead on this project. arduino and labVIEW don't have direct control over your AC appliance , this video is just like turn on and off an LED but what make possible to control a AC light or fan is the relay , he is the hero for this tutorial, make sure you learnt all that and take necessary precaution before trying this tutorial.


Check my YouTube channel for more video tutorial like this , pass on your comments and suggestions and where we can improve it, @ jayakumarmagesh@gmail.com , don't foreget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and if you like or hate this video go and bash in YouTube comment section and leave your comments. Thank you reaching this point as I am happy to help someone out there

Limitation of this video tutorial: as this tutorial is more focussed on beginners many concepts were not explored in the future you can expect videos on how to add custom command and how to add more sensor supports to these videos, and also learn about more frequency interfaced devices like DHT11, DHT22, DHT23, DHT33, with arduino and labview, there is also a support will be added to one wire and other features, if you want to use an LCD screen with Arduino and Labview you can use an I2C LCD which is supported well. 

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Introduction to Matlab Simulink and Arduino

We can use MATLAB to communicate with an Arduino board using installing the support package for Arduino in MATLAB. If you want to program an Arduino that can  be possible by using Simulink and support package for Arduino should be installed in order to use MATLAB Simulink to program our Arduino boards. The support package wills automatically generate the code from Simulink model that then runs on the arduino board. 



check the above video to know about what is video is series is about , what all you can learn from this video series. 



check the above Video know how to install the support package for Arduino for Matlab where you will be given a details about how to start and where to start, all the information need to get install the package successful has been shown in the above video. 


Set up MATLAB and Simulink support package for Arduino

Start MATLAB
Open MATLAB and click the Add-Ons drop down menu on the top right


Start Support Package Installer
Click on Get Hardware Support Packages in the drop down menu to start the installer. Select
'Install from Internet' as the source for installing the support package





Select Arduino from a list of support packages
Click Next to see a list of support packages and select Arduino from the list for MATLAB Support
Package and Arduino Due for the Simulink Support Package.




MathWorks Account
Click next and log in to your MathWorks account. If you don't have a MathWorks account, you can
create one during the install process



Continue and Complete the Installation
Accept the license agreement on the next screen and click Next through the following screens to
finish the installation for both MATLAB and Simulink Support Package for Arduino.







Sunday, May 31, 2015

Export Temperature data to Thingspeak using ESP8266 and DHT11

Hi all , If you want to make a simple and less cost IOT (Internet Of Things)  which transfer temperature and humidity data to a website and stores your real time data for monitoring , then this post will full fill all your requirement.

All you need for this project is a esp8266 esp-12 WiFi module and a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, no need for arduino or any other microcontroller to support this WiFi module for this project , esp8266 esp-12 can work standalone without using a microcontroller to support it.


Step by Step instruction to make this work is explained in the video below:







How to upload nodemcu firmware and other details can be find in the link here

1) Register in Thingspeak.com and create a new channel with 2 fields namely, Temperature and humidity.

2) download the lua program here

3) connect dht11 to the gpio2 of the esp8266 WiFi module.

4) connect esp8266 to your PC

5) extract dht11.rar file that downloaded

6) Open the downloaded file in the Esplorer window

7) Copy the Write key provided from the thingspeak and paste into the dht11.lua program (refer to the video if you are not sure about this)

8) Edit your Wifi SSID and password in the Init.lua Program.

9) Firslty save the dht11.lua to the esp8266 , Secondly save the Init.lua file to the WiFi module.

10) you can check the program successfully uploaded in the esplorer window, once it connected to your Home WiFi network, you can see the IP address assigned to the WiFi module, and you can also see the current temperature and humidity in the Esplorer window.

11) check your channel in the thingspeak.com, you can see the real-time data from your WiFi moudle.