bookmark_borderBuilding a Breathalyzer with MQ-3 and Arduino

During the First Meeting of Electronic Arts in Florianópolis, we built a Breathalyzer using the Alcohol Gas Sensor MQ-3 and an Arduino Board to use in the last day of the meeting, in which we gave a party. You can see a quick video two posts below. Last days I received many emails asking for the code or how to make one, so I decided to build the sensor again, take pictures/videos and make a tutorial showing how you can make one, so here it is.

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bookmark_borderCampus Party Brazil

Hi everyone, I am blogging live from the CampusParty Brazil 2k10 in São Paulo – Brazil, it’s something like a Lan Party but full of presentations, concerts and of course downloading… We have here a 10GB BandWidth internet, and there’s a TV screen showing the bandwidth consumption, and we haven’t used more then 3GB at the same time. (I’m trying my best to beat the record). Another thing that I found cool is that someone started a DC++ Servers, and there’s around 400 people connected to it sharing stuff fullspeed, soon my 500Gb Lacie Drive, that I brought with me empty will be full.

In case you are somewhere around the world and would like to download stuff from us, connect to the DC++ Hub cp2010.no-ip.org and download at a great speed.

Today morning there was some people doing Arduino projects, DIY stuff, Open Sorce presentations and much more. You can check LiveStreaming from the Campus Party Here.

Yesterday Kevin Mitnick was here giving a presentation about the art of deception, what a presentation, really good! If you would like to watch it, I am uploading it too, it’s worth it!

Take care all, I will check my downloads now! 😉

bookmark_borderI Meeting of Electronic Arts

It happened last week, starting on Monday 11th January and finishing on Friday the 15th, the I Meeting of Electronic Arts, where people from many differet places of Brazil came to see what was going on. Our first idea was a meeting (de)constructive, build, hack, modify, learn, teach, freedom of knowledge. Several workshops were presented, Basic Electronics, Processing, PureData, and others (the videos of the presentations will be distributed when people finish editing).

On Tuesday night we made a walking trip crossing the dunes till we find Joaquina’s beach. After swiming in the cold waters, we walked back on a thick rain, amazing, it was long ago since the last time I walked on the rain wanting it!

We learned/teched a lot in this event, one thing that we’ve noticed is that creative minds work much better after midnight. There was no point planning anything for the morning because no one could wake up before 11h.

On Thursday night a party was organized, where we put in for a test some projects developed during the event, for example a Breathalyzer using a Alcohol Gas Sensor MQ-3 sensor, LEDs and an Arduino. By the way, never seen so many arduinos in one place, in different sizes and colors, beautiful!

Here is also a Video from the Breathalyzer (I will make a post on how you can make one after the Campus Party next week)

Some more videos can be found on my Vimeo.

bookmark_borderUltrasonic Range Finder with Arduino

I recently got a Maxbotix LV-EZ4 Ultrasonic Range Finder to try understand how to use it with my little Arduino. Having a ultrasonic range finder can be very useful in many different projects, as it can detect objects, I can use it to make alarm systems (cars usually use this kind of sensor), Obstacle-Avoiding Robot and many other things that you may have in mind. It works better outdoors then the IR sensor, but the only thing I could notice is that it doen’t detects very well some thick carpets. Besides that, it’s a great sensor. From the datasheet we can read that it sonar range information from 6-inches out to 254-inches (15.24 cm – 6.452m).

ultrasonic range finder
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bookmark_borderMAKE presents: The LED

As you might already know, I am big of a LED fan, love all its light power and low power needed for that. While viewing the RSS from
HackZine I saw a great short video about the history of LEDs and a little about how to use them. I liked, and decided to share with you, hope you like as much as I.

In case you would like to learn more about leds, you can visit HowStuffWorks and on Wikipedia.

Some projects I’ve used with leds: