Modify HC-SR501 PIR sensor to work with 3.3V

Using a PIR sensor, motion of persons or pets can be detected. The inexpensive HC-SR501 (and clones) is worth the price, but without modification a 5V signal is required. To make it work with ESP8266 / ESP32 3.3V would be much better. With a slight modification 3.3V can be used as input voltage and the…

Curated list of Windows 10 software packages

Some of you are wondering how to use Windows successfully while knowing about the advantages of a Linux workstation. To clarify a bit I created a plain, curated list. You are welcome to comment and recommend useful (free or open source) tools. First I’d like to have an apt-like application installer. This is where chocolatey…

Display Arduino sensor data using Grafana

Collecting and display sensor data can be fun and helpful. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know the average temperature of last month based on sensor data collected using Arduino, MQTT and a time series database? Ever wanted to know the postman’s show-up times for making future predictions? At Maker Faire Hannover 2017 I presented a demo…

Control Arduino grbl CNC with cncjs

As followup to my previous posting about how to control a grbl controlled CNC machine there is an easy and working open source solution based on nodejs. A raspberry pi for example is capable to operate the CNC shield running grbl as it is used on Gearbest T8 CNC. Smoothieware or TinyG is working aswell. You…

Assemble DIY T8 Arduino CNC running GRBL

After Anet A8 Prusa I3 Clone and other gadgets, I bought an Arduino Uno controlled “T8 CNC” machine that will be used for PCB milling and learning GCODE. Hope my link pool and photos will help you building up your Arduino CNC since there is no official assembly instruction available. This instructions will give a slight overview how…

ESP8266 mesh network

As first day owner of several Philips Living Colors / Hue products, I am very sad not to have such Zigbee like protocol in the world of Arduino and ESP. As regular task I am researching for the latest possibilites to run a mesh network using Arduino and/or Espressif’s ESP8266. Actually there are these chances: ESP8266WifiMesh https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/tree/master/libraries/ESP8266WiFiMesh…