Thursday last week wasn't shaping up to be that spectacular day. I was tired, frustrated and just wanted to sleep the entire evening when I got home from work. I checked the mail and found a package that redeemed the evening - my freeday order had arrived.

Earlier in January the electronics retailer Sparkfun had an event named freeday in which they gave away $100,000 dollars of electronics. The first 1000 people to order got a $100 discount on their order and all they had to pay was shipping.

On freeday I managed to order an Arduino, a GPS receiver and a board to interface the Arduino and GPS reciever together. Needless to say, after checking the mail I immediately ran downstairs to my workbench and started work on connecting everything together.

My goal right now is to make a simple electronic compass and navigator as a build up to the slightly more ambitious GPS enabled hat project. This weekend I finished the compass and I am currently working on the navigator.

Anyone up for a city-wide game of GPS hide and go seek?

I've had several people ask for a schematic for the weather clock so I've created a rough one showing how it is wired. (Click images to enlarge)

As I've said before, this really isn't anything difficult or complicated from the wiring point of view. The Ethernet Shield requires no additional wiring, it just needs to be plugged in. The servos and capacitor are easy to assemble. I choose to solder the capacitors and servo terminals together on a prototyping board, but if you were creative you could probably just build everything right off of the headers.

Over the past few days I have completed the weather clock and put the finishing touches on it. Earlier I had finished the assembly of the clock, but it still lacked some functionality.

The problem with a project like this is unless I mount some buttons on the back of the clock, there is no way to change the settings of the clock without recompiling the code. Since the clock already has a network connection it made sense to put a website on the device where you can both check the weather and change the settings.

Currently the two settings that can be changed online are the hours that the clock will update between (so I don't hear the motors working late at night) and whether the temperature hand shows the ambient temperature or a windchill adjusted temperature.

You can visit the weather clock online and view its website, but you won't be able to change any settings.

Below is a video showing the clock updating itself and a demonstration of the clocks website.

In order to make it easier for other people to create projects like this one, I have placed all the code for the clock online. The code can be found at weather clock code. All the non-standard libraries are included and I will update the code if further changes are made.

Here is an update on my latest project, the antique weather clock.

I took an old clock, removed the mechanism and replaced it with an Arduino (micro-controller) that checks the weather on the Environment Canada website every fifteen minutes and update the hands accordingly. It also has a web server so I can check the weather and update the settings from a web browser.

It's nearly finished at this point and I hope to upload a video of it running sometime in the next week.

Lately I've been giving some thought as to what micro-controller tinkering I should do next.

The first thing I need to do is to finish what I have started and complete the 'weather clock' project. I tracked down an old mantle clock which I might purchase tonight, so all I need to do is get some servos and print the new clock face. Hopefully I can complete this by Christmas.

I have also been playing around with the idea of a GPS enabled hat with an Arduino doing all the processing work. The various ideas I have had are;

- A hat that notifies the wearer when they are close to certain drinking establishments
- A hat that uses multiple vibrating motors to always indicate true north
- A hat that will guide the user to a disclosed (or undisclosed) destination by merely providing the direction to travel in
- Some combination of the above

I also thought that the hat could be used for some form of perverse orienteering competition. Individuals could be timed on how long they took to complete a set course of unknown checkpoints using only the hat for guidance. The hat could also lead someone to a party or another secret event.

This will take a while to implement since the hardware required is rather costly, but I think it will be a really cool project once it is completed.

A while back I mentioned that I received an Arduino for my birthday, I would like to continue on that topic and show what you can throw together with one.

Currently in the morning I check the weather just before I leave for work to see if I need to pack a (rain)jacket. This is annoying since I am often in a hurry and just want to get out the door, not open a browser and hunt around for the weather online. I decided that I could find a good nerdy solution to my problem using the Arduino.

The first thing I did was order an Ethernet module for the Arduino. This is a block you can stack on top of the Arduino and gives it network connectivity. On top of that, I stacked a prototyping board so I wouldn't need to do any soldering. I plugged a few LEDs into the prototyping board and the hardware bit was done.

For the software I coded a small program that checks the Environment Canada website and downloads the current weather. After checking the weather the Arduino will turn on a red light if it is above 15 degrees outside (meaning I don't need a jacket), a green light if it is sunny (always a good sign), and blink a blue light if there is a chance of rain during the day (something I don't want to see).

While this is overly complicated and nerdy, it is a easy way for me to get todays weather forecast at a glance. I'd have to say that the one problem with this is that it looks like some form of improvised bomb timer. For the next steps in this project; I hope to gut an old clock, replace the mechanism with a motor, and the face with some weather symbols so I have something that looks a bit more elegant (and less dangerous).

Edit: I have also added a simple web server to the Arduino so I can check the weather and, in the future, update settings on the Arduino. You can see the current weather via my Arduino here.

This year my sister bought me an Arduino as a birthday present and I have had great joy playing with it the last few days. An Arduino is a microprocessor, or in essence, a tiny computer that you can program. It has thirteen pins of digital input/output and six pins of analogue input, meaning that it can turn on thirteen different circuits (let's say, light bulbs) and read six sensors (let's say, light levels).

As a bit of a nerd, this is so cool. I find it so interesting since the possibilities are endless. I can buy a gps module for it and create my own home made gps unit. I could program it with the location of every seven eleven in the city and make it beep whenever you got within one hundred yards of one. I could buy an ethernet jack for it and turn it into a server. You could go to a web page to see the temperature of my apartment and if the lights are on. It could monitor the moisture of a (or up to six) potted plant and send me an email when the plant needs watering.

I am going to have lots of fun experimenting with this. Since I have an ethernet jack on order for it, prepare to see some links to strange projects on my Arduino in the near future.