Things Kellen Likes

Similar to the IOIO board covered a few posts ago, I’ve been seeing several projects lately utilizing USB host mode on Android to communicate with an Arduino.  This is a neat one which is able to send text messages to an LED matrix. It’s got a fail amount of detail and contains both the Android code and the Arduino sketch needed to get it up and running quickly. Here is a more general guide on using your Android device as a USB host, again with an Arduino.

As a bonus, the second link will get you to some how-to’s on USB communication with an Arduino. I’ll include the links here as well:

• Programming the Arduino Uno with Eclipse on Linux
• Arduino USB transfers

Here‘s a great example on how to use the IOIO board I covered in my previous post.  The user managed to stream video from his phone’s camera to a RGB LED matrix using some open source computer vision software for Android, very cool!  Check out the video of the display in action.

This is a really neat little board available from SparkFun.  It allows you to interface an android phone to an array of microcontroller-like outputs and inputs (PWN, SPI, ADC, etc).  The project has many ready-made Android code examples to get you running and I’m thinking about trying this out!  The page linked shows some projects that others have done, and it’s easy to start thinking about all the cool things you could do with this (especially on a dual core Android like mine!)

Lifehacker posted a great starter article on using an Arduino, with a specific focus on recreating cool projects you see out on the web. This is a great way to start teaching yourself some of the slightly more complex things you can do with a uC, as doing is the best way to learn.

Here’s another project I’ve wanted to try out for a long time: An update-able RFID key card.  I always thought it would be fun to build one of these along with an RFID reader so you could try to reproduce the functionality of a RFID card you have on a new device.  It would also be an excellent learning tool on how RFID works and the vulnerabilities it possesses.