Measure motion with the PiicoDev 3-Axis Accelerometer!
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At the heart of every Adafruit Circuit Playground Express lies a three-axis accelerometer. This allows us to write programs that take the orientation of the board into account. We can detect orientation and acceleration on any axis. With Ci...
At the heart of every Adafruit Circuit Playground Express lies a three-axis accelerometer. This allows us to write programs that take the orientation of the board into account. We can detect orientation and acceleration on any axis. With Ma...
This guide will help you get started with a PiicoDev 3-Axis Accelerometer. We'll walk through some examples to read acceleration, infer tilt angle (from gravity), and detect tapping and shaking. An accelerometer is a device that mea...
In this guide, we'll be learning about sensors that measure inertial movement, how they work, how to choose the right sensor type, and how to get the most out of their readings. Hardware mentioned in this guide: PiicoDev Accelerometer ...
The Micro:bit is a feature-packed development board that’s perfect for the classroom or the beginner programmer. Each Micro:bit has a built-in radio that can transmit and receive signals sent from other Micro:bits. The radio has a ran...
Introduction This guide will help you read motion data from your PiicoDev® Motion Sensor and a Micro:bit. To follow along, it's best to have: A Micro:bit v2 A PiicoDev Motion Sensor MPU-6050 A PiicoDev adapter for Micro:bit ...
Now that we've investigated and explained how How GPS Receivers work we can apply that understanding to some real-world applications of of the ideas. To start, we can use any GPS receiver, an Arduino Uno and some male-to-female Jumper ...
The Pysense expansion board from Pycom has many sensors. In Pycom Pytrack Getting Started, I showed how with some Processing code we can see the real-time position of the board in 3D. That project works with the Pysense too. How about we sh...
Introduction This guide will help you read motion data from your PiicoDev® Motion Sensor and a Raspberry Pi Pico To follow along, it's best to have: A Raspberry Pi Pico with pins soldered (pointing down) A PiicoDev Motion Sensor M...
Have you heard about the Circuit Playground? It's the new all-in-one electronics platform from Adafruit. It was created to bring all the fun features of electronics and physical computing to makers, but It's dead-simple to use, solde...
Introduction This guide will help you read motion data from your PiicoDev® Motion Sensor with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer. To follow along, it's best to have: A Raspberry Pi (model 3, 4, Zero or Zero W) This tutorial ...
In this getting started guide we’ll use the Pytrack from Pycom to detect our location on Earth using the onboard GPS module and use the accelerometer to control a 3D model on the PC. I put a WiPy onto my Pytrack, connected it to ...
There are three levels of firmware upgrades that are required on Pycom gear. First, performing an upgrade on the firmware of any of the Pycom microcontrollers is a simple affair. Download the Pycom Firmware Update application as linked in t...
What do we mean when we talk about the "Internet of Things"? Mostly we're talking about tiny computers that have access to the internet and do some useful work. Unlike the computers we're used to holding in our hands, they don't have a touc...
There is some wild weather approaching! We need a way to give ourselves an early warning when a disaster strikes! In this project, we will use the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express to make an all in one Disaster Detection Station that wil...
In August of 2014 Shanghai-based chip manufacturer, Espressif, released a ultra-cheap Serial to Wi-Fi chip called the ESP-01. At the heart of the ESP01 was an ESP8266 chip broken out into the 8 pins needed to program it via a microcontrolle...
You’ve been working on that project for days, even weeks, and you’ve gone through all the steps of the process; meticulously ensuring everything is above board. And yet, for some unexplainable reason, your circuit is acting out....
On and Off. It’s the basis for all electronics, from the most sophisticated computer network to a simple circuit. Electronics is all about using one thing, to control another, input and output, on and off. Even the transistors inside ...
In the Plant_io Basic Setup Guide we assembled the Plant_io platform to automatically irrigate plants, and sprouted some seeds. As the project runs, a log file is updated with data captured at each interval. This simple log allows us ...
Let's get started with the PiicoDev® Magnetometer. In this guide, we'll connect the Magnetometer to our micro:bit, get it working as a compass, and read the magnetic field strength of a nearby magnet. To follow along, it's best to...
Laser cutting is a very fast production and manufacturing method that has one limitation. You can only cut flat surfaces! Well don’t let that stop you from creating 3D objects and sculptures with a laser cutter, Fusion360 has a great ...
Now that we are all on track with our Slicer software, having just installed Cura 2 and upgraded our printer firmware, let's work on turning some 3D Model files into G-Code for our 3D Printer to create. We're going to be using our LulzBot M...
The table below makes comparison of Pycom expansion boards easy. Pysense gets its name from having a good array of sensors. They are: 3-axis accelerometer with 12-bit precision ambient light temperature and humidity barometric pressur...
Yes! The Pytrack is the Pycom board to get if you’re after a GNSS! A what? Yeah, we're used to calling them GPSes too. But global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) belong to different countries, GPS is just the US one. GLONASS is th...
Speed or Perfection? That choice is what an understanding of Layer Heights whenever Resin 3D printing is going to provide you. Any Traditional Resin 3D Printer worth its salt will let you print with Layer Heights between 10 Micron to 100 Mi...
The Micro:bit by BBC is a great data collection tool, it just needs a little help remembering what it has measured! This tutorial is made for those Micro:bit projects where transmitting your sensor data over radio or Bluetooth to a computer...
Let's get started with the PiicoDev® Magnetometer. In this guide we'll connect the Magnetometer to our Raspberry Pi, get it working as a compass, and read the magnetic field strength of a nearby magnet. Finally, we'll remix the code to ...
The PiicoDev Magnetometer unlocks a lot of sensing abilities for your project. In this guide we'll walk through how to sense an angle with a small magnet and print the angle on a PiicoDev OLED. This guide covers what the sensor is r...
Today, we’re looking at the 8Bitdo NES30 Pro. It’s a newer controller from 8Bitdo and one that I’m really excited about. It’s an interesting gamepad, with the styling and form factor taking cues from both the classic...
Let's get started with the PiicoDev® Magnetometer. In this guide, we'll connect the Magnetometer to our Raspberry Pi Pico, get it working as a compass, and read the magnetic field strength of a nearby magnet. Finally, we'll remix the c...
Lulzbot is constantly building upon their printer's design, incorporating the best modifications and add-ons from the community into their newer models. In May 2016, their newest addition to the TAZ line of printers, the TAZ 6 wa...
Once you receive and unbox your Lulzbot machine you might be so eager to print things, you skip a few steps in the setup process and all of a sudden you are having all sorts of difficulties that you can’t understand. It happens, what ...
RetroPie is a fantastic system, and once you map your input device, it will take those mappings and apply them to all of the emulators on RetroPie. If you’re new to RetroPie and want to find out a bit more, take a read of our Gaming ...
If you've picked yourself up a 3D printer, you've no doubt printed yourself a heap of models from Thingiverse by now. It's great fun and the best way to learn how to control the options you have available through Cura; scaling, rotating and...
The aptly named Ultimate Kit 2.0 is the final kit in the line-up of educational robots from Makeblock. With over 160 independent mechanical parts and modules, the Ultimate Kit 2.0 answers the call for almost limitless creative freedom. Matc...
Thanks to huge advancements in technology over the last decade, the maker community that we know and love has thrived. It’s now easier than ever before to get started with programming and tinkering due to the innovation from brands su...
The Raspberry Pi 5 is here and one of the biggest questions is, how does it stack up against the previous Pi 4? Well, we already have one to take a look at so let’s run some benchmarks and compare the two.(We also have another articl...
With the newest update to Raspberry Pi OS (Debian Version 11 - nicknamed ‘Bullseye’) there have been some changes to the terminal commands which control attached cameras. This is one of the biggest changes with the new up...
Raspberry Pi Compute Modules have developed in tandem with the many generations of Raspberry Pi single-board computers. These boards are in every right a microprocessor just like their bigger cousins however they are a very different form f...
Alright, so we know that Bluetooth is awesome, and if you don’t, take a read of our Introduction to Bluetooth tutorial. But how exactly do we go about implementing Bluetooth communication in our projects? Well, fortunately for us, th...
warning: Pycom has updated their libraries and the code listed below may not work. If you discover this and find a fix, please post it on our forum and we'll send you a $25 store credit along with a huge thank you. Go to Forum Thread. ...
Hello and welcome to our tutorial on using rotary encoders. Today we’re going to be taking a look at what is a rotary encoder, how does it work, why we would use it over other sensory inputs and creating code to use them. Rotary encod...
We're going to pick up where the LiPo Battery tutorial left off and look closer at the Adafruit Powerboost modules for charging your LiPos. We talked about the rules of using these batteries and how to make sure you don't set your project a...
This guide is all about mounting PiicoDev® Modules. It covers how to mount modules to PiicoDev Platforms (or any other material up to 3mm thick), and shows the common dimensions and mounting-hole patterns for PiicoDev hardware...
It would be good to have some understanding of Pycom microcontroller boards before reading this article. We won’t go into what capabilities each microcontroller board has. If you’d like an introduction, try our Pycom WiPy Overvi...
Welcome to the Circuit Playground Express Workshop! This workshop is geared toward educators and coding beginners, who want to get started programming with this easy to use platform. We will go over everything you need to know to get you st...
Welcome to the MicroPython for micro:bit workshop! This workshop is aimed at makers who want to start programming with MicroPython, we will be using the micro:bit as it is very easy to use so we can cover the important concepts that will ap...
Hello makers, if you love to prototype circuits and create electronic designs, then you’ll be familiar with the humble solderless breadboard. It’s where most electronic projects begin and is a familiar sight for tinkerers and in...
Adafruit has done it again with the new and improved Circuit Playground Express. This new version of the Circuit Playground is packed with even more sensors, and capacitive touch ready connection pads. This is a great board for makers ...
Introduction We’re going from zero to hero. Starting from nothing we’ll get a WiPy communicating with Adafruit IO, an IoT service out on the Internet. We’ll be able to send data from the device to the cloud and control th...
PiicoDev is the open-source and best-documented platform specifically designed with rapid prototyping and maker education in mind. As fellow community educators, we have infused PiicoDev with ideas to ensure that every home project, school...
Every good E-Textiles or Wearables project needs to start somewhere, and the natural starting point for any project is choosing the right microcontroller. There are many good choices out there, and we will compare a few of the best and brig...
Once you setup your printer and finish printing your first rocktopus, you will inevitably want to move onto more ambitious prints right away. It’s understandable, all the possibilities all at once, I get it. We are going to step you ...
Recently, we've talked a lot about Slicing software, settings, materials and the like. It's time to take a deeper dive into the actual design of model files. We've got a basics guide for Computer Aided Design available here. We're going to ...
Cameras in combination with artificial intelligence create arguably the most powerful sensor you can ever put on a microcontroller. So that’s exactly what we will do here with an ESP32-CAM Development Board that sports an inbuilt 2MB...
Out of the box, a LulzBot 3D Printer comes tuned to perform exactly as you need it to. But over time we flash new firmwares, take our printers cross country, swap tool heads, perform cold pulls and a whole swathe of other things that could ...
GPS is accurate and handy to use, so much so that we rely on it more and more every day. It's not often we take the time to learn how it works. The idea of GPS refers to a Global Positioning System; a collection of satellites in orbit above...
So you’ve got your Raspberry Pi. You’ve gotten NOOBS setup on it, explored Raspbian a bit, and you’re feeling like a bit of a pro. Awesome! Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty side of things, what it’s ...
If you’ve ever built a robot with wheels, or any motorised parts really, you’ll have come across the issue of needing to drive it from your microcontroller. Because a standard chip is only able to output a small amount of curren...
Flawless high-quality audio output on a Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer! All is achieved by the IQaudio DAC+ HAT. This dedicated DAC lets you enjoy high-quality, distortion-free, artifact-free, low noise, and high-bitrate audio playback...
Geophones are devices that generate electric signals proportional to the particle velocity in a sound/compression wave. More simply a Geophone is a super low frequency microphone for the ground. Geophones are used around the world to measu...
When it comes to assembling a prototype Printed Circuit Board (PCB), there are a couple of options for applying solder-paste: Paste each individual pad by hand with a syringe, or; Use a stencil to paste all pads in one pass. The firs...
We're going to compare each of the Arduino Boards available to Maker's and Electronics Enthusiats. We'll discuss the features of each board, provide an informative pinout diagram with tonnes of detail, and toward the end of the article, pro...
If you hang around 3D printers, X-Y plotters, CNC machines, drawing machines, or people who use any of them G-code is a term that will universally come up no matter where you find yourself in the world. But what is it? And how is it being u...
In this article we'll show you how to connect your PiicoDev® modules to your favourite development platforms. Connection Guides Other Connection Methods Pinouts Connecting Many Modules PiicoDev Smart Modules Custom I2C Addres...
This guide will demonstrate exactly how to control any large DC Motors that we stock with a Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer, through code or through a Bluetooth Controller. To clarify (in my mind) a large DC Motors runs at 12+ Volt...
Welcome to the next step on this Python voyage. Today we will be creating graphical user interfaces using the powerful Tkinter library. Graphical user interfaces are referred to as GUI and can be pronounced as Gooey. GUI is a visual way of ...
Ultimaker Cura is an excellent slicing software to get the best out of your 3D printers and make the greatest models it possibly can, but it can do so much more! Cura is a brilliant means to inspire and expand your own creativity particular...
Resin 3D printers are an immensely powerful tool in the hands of a maker and they have never been more accessible. This will be a rundown on this technology, contrasting it to filament 3D printing and an explanation of tools whilst tea...
In this guide, we'll learn what a Rotary Encoder is, when and why we might use a Rotary Encoder, and how to use a Rotary Encoder with a Raspberry Pi Pico. To follow along all you'll need is: A Rotary Encoder - we recommend using our br...
Feel restricted by your connectivity? Want to send data from a remote node 10km away from civilization? Or ~3km when you are in a built-up civilization. Feel the urge for Liberation? Then I have the solution for you! Using only hardware bu...
If you ever needed a performance boost when running Machine Learnt AI Systems (like facial recognition) with a Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer then I have a solution for you. The OAK-D Lite. The Oak-D Lite is the Leatherman Multi-tool o...
In this guide, we’ll learn how to harness the power of MOSFET transistors to easily control higher-powered components like solenoids, motors, and Peltiers with a microcontroller. First, we will cover an easy-to-follow example using s...
In this guide, we go over some common ways of adding motion to your project with actuators such as stepper motors, servos and linear actuators, to help you choose which one is most appropriate for your situation. The start of this guide c...
This project incorporates two Arduino boards, in a Master/Slave setup. The master is one with an accelerometer (ADLX345) and the slave has a Servo attached (SG90). When tilting the accelerometer, the master Arduino tells the Slave Arduino t...
Here is a project I just could not help myself but build. A 3D printable Ukulele with a body as large as I could fit standing upright on the printers here. The intention was to make it as large as possible, using no supports, and without th...
The purpose of this project is to design a system that will automatically track stars or satellites. The first version, described here, is specifically to track stars and operate a Raspberry Pi HQ camera to take a series of long-exposure im...
This project uses an Accelerometer to detect when you are leaning left or right. Depending on if/where you are leaning, it will flash LEDs on the right or left of the bike's rear. Powered by an Arduino and a 12v battery pack (my case 8 AA B...
After purchasing an Anycubic Photon resin printer, I wanted an easy and reliable method for post-curing the prints. This allows the printed resin to achieve maximum material strength and eliminate tackiness in...
After purchasing an Anycubic Photon resin printer, I wanted an easy and reliable method for post-curing the prints. This allows the printed resin to achieve maximum material strength and eliminate tackiness in...
This project uses a US100 ultrasonic distance sensor to detect instances of a garage tilt door being left open and sends an alert via the IFTTT mobile app. Additionally, the device logs temperature and pressure to a Thingspeak channel using...
The PiicoDev Sketcher is a fun, interactive toy reminiscent of sketching toys from my childhood. The user draws an image using the two knobs - one for X-control and the other for Y. Turning one knob at a time produces horizontal or vertica...
This project logs temperature and pressure observations to a ThingSpeak channel using an ESP8266 WiFi module.
For this project, I designed my circuit and ordered a PCB using easyEDA. The project gets power from a USB port and uses a...
For this project, I designed my circuit and ordered a PCB using easyEDA. The project gets power from a USB port and uses a...
I wanted to build a weather station. After some googling I found a great ‘how to’ guide using a raspberry pi.
I was also interested in learning Python, so I decided to dive right in...
I wanted to build a weather station. After some googling I found a great ‘how to’ guide using a raspberry pi.
I was also interested in learning Python, so I decided to dive right in...
I was wanting to know what the water temperature was without having to physically go and check and I was curious about how warm the water would get during a sunny day and how much heat was lost overnight. I am interested in the idea of home...
Introduction: Hi everybody. Over the past few weeks, I have been working on an intuitive system that makes working and tinkering with the Piicodev ecosystem even easier! Everybody interested in electronics knows about the universal circui...
I'm an amateur musician but a pretty serious classical & jazz pianist, and this project arose out of my interest in exploring the difference between writing music for synthesisers and music for piano. I work as a mathematician, so...
Ever wanted to record a video and be included in it? My children did. One does parkour, and the other loves to dance, both want to perfect their art by watching their moves during practice. They asked their inventor/tinkerer dad, "can you ...
This project started due to the smoke haze that enveloped our area during the 2019 and 2020 bushfires. I wanted something to check the air quality of my home and maybe find areas where it needed better sealing. In addition, the BMP280 senso...
Making a dumb coffee grinder slightly less dumb. This is a programmable timer tethered to a Rancilio Rocky coffee grinder. The Rocky is a "dumb" grinder and electrically very simple. Basically it's an ac motor with an on/off switch and a m...
Chances are if you are anything like me, being a maker is often an excuse to create as big of a mess as possible during the duration of a project. And after the project is finished? You are left with an enormous mess to clean up, taking awa...
Being punctual is important. Hence accurate time is required. Clocks tend to miss out when it comes to accuracy especially when they are set by the user. So, why not get accurate time from the internet and use tried and tested hardware to ...
If you have chickens and find you're not always available to close the gate at night or check the water levels each day, then why not use an ESP8266 to automate your chicken door and receive alerts door status and low water level, as well a...
Our recycle bin is collected fortnightly, but I can never remember which week, and the printed calendar changes every year! So I made a Raspberry Pi Pico W and GlowBit Matrix powered model wheelie bin which shows when the bins are due at a...
This project started life as an alarm clock for my son made to look like the time circuit from the Back to the Future movies. The display can show the time in various formats, including the one from the movies of course. It's configurable v...
The objective of this project was to create an Internet of Things (IoT) device that could give pet access to a food bowl when a text message command was sent from a remote location. I had never done an IoT project before, so I wanted to ke...
This project will measure atmospheric conditions (Temperature, Humidity, Air Pressure) and log them to an SD card over a long period (months!) while running off a few AA or AAA cells. Usually, projects powered by an Arduino Uno are quite p...
After experimenting with automatic blue light filters on my electronic devices I wanted to replicate the idea with the lighting around the house so that it would gradually transition to warmer colours as the night progresses. I believe this...
Have you ever wanted to make a Weatherproof Weather and Air Quality System that transmits its edge-collected data long-range through LoRa (up to a 10Km range) and then have that data automatically uploaded to the Internet to be gorgeously ...
I like to take on projects that give me an opportunity to learn new things. For this project, my two goals were to learn more about face detection algorithms and PID controllers but of course, there were so many more skills learned along th...
IntroductionI wanted to bring ageing, and failing, Home Automation infrastructure into the modern age whilst retaining hardware investments already made. Our house had Universal Power Bus (UPB) dimmers and switches installed at build time...
I had been captivated by the sound levels of trains I could hear passing by Metford throughout the day/night. I wondered if a sound level sensor reporting data back over LoRa would help me understand when a train was noisy. I also like the ...
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