Sensors In Arduino Platform – Wireless Sensor Networks Magazine

This is another article on Sensors using Arduion platform. The first one ‘WSN Made Easy With Arduino Platform? can be found here. This will help you to understand some of the easiest methods to start implementing your sensor nodes.

1 Everything You Need To Know About Arduino

Ben teaches you everything you need to know to start using Arduino microcontrollers in your projects. It is important to note the limitation of Arduino platform and areas of improvement if you intend to use the platform for a first project run without spending too much money on new devices.

You can also Ask Ben anything here

2. Interfacing an optical mouse sensor to your Arduino by Martijn

Martijn describe how you can connect the optical sensor inside a cheap mouse to your Arduino and have it read out the x- and y-movements. This will enable your Arduino to handle mouse input, detect surface movements, measure surface speed, etc

Materials

This is what you need:

Arduino board (any *duino will do) and the Arduino IDE.
Optical mouse containing the PAN3101, ADNS-2610, ADNS-2083 or ADNS-2051 optical sensor. These sensors come in many mice sold today. If yours has a different sensor, don’t worry too much; they are all much alike. With a bit of luck, the library I wrote will work with other sensors as well.
OptiMouse library for Arduino
Some wires and soldering gear.

Step 1 – Open up your mouse. The optical sensor and LED were covered with the black protective cap. Take it off carefully

Step 2 –Take a look at the datasheets. Check out the datasheet of the sensor you’re dealing with (Google).We only need to connect 4 pins of the sensor to the Arduino, of which two are used for data and two for the power supply. The sensor uses bi-directional serial communication over one data line (SDIO, pin 3). The second data pin (SCLK, pin 4) is used to time the bits. In case of a different type of sensor, the pin numbers might be different

Step 3 – Cutting the controller wires (optional). To make sure the mouse’s own controller does not interfere with the Arduino, I had cut the SDIO and SCLK wires running to the chip in the mouse. I’m not sure whether this is really necessary, so you might try first without cutting them

Step 4 – Connecting wires

Step 5 – Example sketch

Follow the process here

3. The Extremely Simple Stickytape Sensor

You can create an extremely simple Stickytape sensor in less than 5 minutes? Well, it might hard to believe, but you can easily do it, if you’re following the steps accordingly.

Those components that needed for this project are:

Stickytape;
Velostat;
Conductive fabric;
Conductive thread,
Scissors;
Knife.

According to CircuitGeek First thing first, you must cut two identical pieces of stickytape. Normally, every sensor has its own pressure sensitive and you can bend it easily.

Secondly, you have to place a piece of conductive thread on top of the stickytape. It main purpose is to cover the area that you want to be sensitive to pressure.

Then, you should place two small tabs of conductive fabric on top of the protruding end of the conductive thread. Make sure that the tabs are half stick to the stickytape and half stick out.

Lastly, you need to cut three pieces of Velostat. Stick one to either piece of stickytape, stick another Velostat to both pieces of stickytape and the third piece of Velostat in between.

Follow the process here

4. Color Light Sensor – Avago ADJD-S371-Q999

Posted at http://www.sparkfun.com/

The ADJD-S371-QR999 is a 4 channel digital sensor with a mere size of 3.9 x 4.5 x 1.8 mm. 10-bit per channel resolution means the ADJD can discern the smallest differences between visible colors. This is an IC module with combination of white LED and CMOS IC with integrated RGB filters + Clear channel and analog-to-digital converter front end. It is ideal for applications like color detection, measurement, and illumination sensing. The 2-wire serial interface allows direct connection to a microcontroller or other logic control for further signal processing without additional component such as analog to digital converter. With the wide sensing range of 100 lux to 100,000 lux, the sensor can be used for many applications with different light levels by adjusting the gain setting.

Features:

10 bit per channel resolution
Independent gain selection for each channel
Wide sensitivity: 0.1k – 100k lux
Two wire serial communication
Built in oscillator/selectable external clock
Low power mode (sleep mode)

Integrated solution with sensor, LED and separator in module for ease of design

Follow the process here

5 Hydrogel used to create precise new Biochemical Sensor

Scientists have used gelatinous hydrogel to create an inexpensive new type of biochemical sensor that is highly sensitive, sturdy, long-lasting, and has few moving parts. The gel expands or contracts according to the acidity of its environment, a quality that allows the sensor to measure changes in pH down to one one-thousandth on the pH scale. This amount of accuracy, along with its robustness, could make it ideal for chemical and biological applications such as environmental monitoring in waterways and glucose monitoring in blood.

Developed at Indiana’s Purdue University,

Follow the process here

6. DS18B20 Temperature Sensors and Arduino

The DS18B20 is a small 3 pin temperature sensor that closely resembles a transistor. Each one has a “unique” 64bit serial code and can communicate over a “1 Wire” protocol. With a bit of code, we can have multiple temperature sensors all communicating and sending data over just one pin! According to Morgellon