This next article series is about setting up a practical project for use around the house. It’s small enough to be covered in a few articles, and simple enough to be constructed entirely on a breadboard with no soldering involved. It’s time to start making things!
I’ll take you through the problem definition, the way to pick a solution, and the many trade-offs involved in getting everything working as intended. As you will see, getting this thing to run off batteries poses some challenges, but is nevertheless feasible.
Here are this week’s articles, as planned for the coming days at 0:00 CET:
- Let’s create a GPA– Now
- Hardware design choices– Thu
- Measuring distances– Fri
- Reducing power consumption– Sat
- Squeezing a bit more– Sun
- In-System Programming– Mon
The GPA has all the properties you’d expect in a physical computing project: a sensor, a readout, a microcontroller, and a power source. You may not have a garage (or a car), or you may have a car with this functionality built-in, but there’s probably something to glean from this design process for your own use – and maybe some parts will be useful in other ways. It’s all “loosely coupled” after all, with a breadboard to build any variations you like:
Speaking of parts – Martyn & Co have produced a kit for the JeeLabs shop if you’d like to get going fast, with everything needed to create this little parking aid gimmick.
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