Jeroen Steeman - Micro computer projects

Micro computer - Software Defined Radio

Raspberry PI configured as portable Software Defined Radio system.

Interfacing micro computers with real world applications. Using the PI as UHF remote digital radio receiver.

Microcontroller - Morse code generator

Also check out the ATTiny Morse Code callsign generator. It uses an eight pin Amitel low power AVR. It is so small it can be built into a microphone if required.

Microprocessor - Smart falconry telemetry

Going down to the core, the falconry telemetry transceiver. This is a full stack project, from hardware design, through firmware and software development. A very compact SMD smart falconry transmitter is about as small as I can go soldering these small components.

Microprocessor - Smart LED lighting for the home.

Using an Arduino Nano with a passive infrared sensor to powerLED strips via a pulse width modulated field effect transistor. Slow fade in and automatically power off after 60 seconds. Also works great for staircases and ambient room lighting. The added benefit of PWM is that the LED strips consume a lot less power with nearly unnoticeable drop in light intensity. Adding a Light dependent resistor as sensor ensures it only activates at low light levels, like at night.

How the smart PWM LED lighting works

NOTE: During testing using variable pulse width modulation to turn the LEd strips on and off at frequency of 100Hz I noticed that at 80 percent duty cycle the power consumption dropped by 33% while the light intensity dropped by 5%. That is a major power saving! Tip for anyone running LEDs on DC, place a PWM running at a ratio of 80% on and 20% off and you will save a load on current used. An additional gain is that there is no heat generated, again a saving of waisted energy.

• Two sensors are used: a PIR (passive infrared sensor) to sense human heat movement and a LDR (light dependent resistor) to sense ambient surrounding light
• An Arduino Nano uses the sensors to determine low light levels, and if this is the case it enables the PIR as trigger for the microprocessor the manage the LEDs.
• If the PIR detects a moving heat signature it triggers the microprocessor, it then looks at the current state of current operation.
• If it is dormant it starts a slow fade in loop to bring the LEDs on. It also looks at the level of the LDR to determine what the maximum light level should be.
• If it is already on and at max light level, it keeps the LEDs on and resets the timer to fade out the LEDs.
• If it is on and the (90 second) sleep timer triggers, it will gradually fade out the LEDs until they are off and wait for the PIR to trigger if the ambient light levels are low.

Convenient smart lighting that saves energy in more ways than one.