Arduino!

So after just a few years of procrastination I finally picked up an Arduino microcontroller to play with. This one is their latest design, the Duemilanove (2009):

Fast forward a couple weeks of tinkering with LEDs and buzzers and I picked up an awesome shield to work with, a GPRS module from Libelium:

This baby allows the Arduino to communicate with our mediocre GPS network up here. Not only can I send and recieve SMS messages, but once I hook up a speaker and microphone (and perhaps a wee keypad?) I’ll have my very own custom cell phone

Took a bit to get the shield going.. apparantly the GSM transceiver sucks up to about 2A (!) to run properly. The only A/C adapter I had handy was 1.5Amp but it was still intermittently dropping out on me. Adding a 220uF capacitor between the +5v and GND on the shield got er running perfectly.

I ended up signing up the Arduino on Rogers for a $10/mo Pay as you Go plan (what IEMI number??).. figure this should be plenty for testing at 15 cents per SMS message. I haven’t had the chance to try data communication but the GSM module on this shield does sport it’s own little TCP/IP stack so who knows where we can go with this!

My aim with this setup is to eventually become a computer for the People’s Car. I figure I can do some nifty things with it with SMS messaging capabilities…

• Realtime GPS tracking system
• Emergency voice calling
• Vehicle monitoring via ODB-II interface
• Remote Start and Kill

So far I’ve had the shield setup as a USB gateway (allows me to communicate with the GSM module directly through a serial terminal). Once I get some actual Arduino code put together I’ll do up a little writeup soon about sending and recieving SMS and interfacing a keypad for those obligatory prank calls

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BBS Files Added

I’ve added a section for all the old Generik Productions files I still have kicking around here. For those of you like me that still poke around the BBS scene, you may find some of the utilities handy (especially the newer ones that will run on telnet boards with no modification).

I recently added the Renegade upgrade utility I wrote in 2005 to move just about every major RG release (from 10-05 to the latest at the time, 5-19.04). I may update that utility still to support the more recent versions, but for now you can use the standard upgrade packages to go from there.

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And away we go

Well, this marks the first post on the new Viscera in the Vicodin. After a few brief years on hiatus, I’ve found something else to say

Here you’ll find stuff that didn’t make it to other sites, or my tech blog, Web Surfs You! along with thoughts, ideas and personal projects. If you really think you need to follow this hilarity, then go ahead and subscribe to the RSS feed, I ain’t stopping ya!

So here we go, round two!

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