Smart Irrigation System

During the summer, gardens abound — so many people are keeping an eye out for their sun-ripened, home-grown tomatoes or for that lovely hydrangea that’s just the right shade of blue. But summers are also a very hectic time. So how do you maintain that garden and make sure it receives the care it needs? One of the projects created for the Digilent Design Contest 2015 is a smart irrigation system intended to work with an Android device to see to it your garden gets the moisture it craves.

Soda Can Theremin Video

We recently published a video about a simple Theremin built using the Analog Discovery and the Analog Parts Kit. A Theremin is an electronic musical instrument which essentially turns the user into a variable capacitor. The user can then adjust the frequency of the sound produced by the instrument by moving their hand in relation to an antenna. As the distance to the antenna changes, the capacitance also changes, thus changing the signal frequency. In the Theremin showcased in this video, a recycled soda can is used as the antenna.

Solar Powered Robot — UV Index vs. Solar Energy

If you’ve been around the Digilent Blog, you’ve probably seen a lot of robots. Remember Susan the Line-Following Pig? Well, I recently found a small, portable solar panel in the MakerSpace at Digilent and I was inspired to build a solar-powered robot. Similar to Susan, I will be using the chipKIT Pro MX4 and the Digilent Motor Robot Kit (MRK) for my solar-powered design. However, when I first came up with this idea, it was the middle of winter. That being said, sunlight was quite a bit more scarce, especially up here in Pullman, WA. I first had to ask an important question: will I have enough sun?