Weekly Content Journal: 2nd Week of July 2019

There's always a lot going on in the community and its not always easy to keep track of what's going on.  With that in mind,  I'm going to try an experiment and try to maintain a weekly content journal to communicate directly with the members to let them know what I'm working on.  I'll also, let you know about cool things the rest of the content team is working on.  As well as,  highlight some of the great content related to Arduino and Project14 , as well as, any other area of the community.

Here's what's happening this week:

element14 10 Year Celebration

To celebrate the 10th birthday of element14 we have some pretty cool things going on.

You can win a free Raspberry Pi 4 (up to 25 boards) for posting what you'll do with its upgraded capabilities in Win a Raspberry Pi 4 in Celebration of Our 10th Birthday!

You can win a free ESP8266, Arduino Uno, or Arduino Nano (running low on ESP8266 but there are plenty of Unos and Nanos) swag bag for letting us know what you can't live without in 10 Year Challenge | Tell Us What You Can't Live Without for an ESP8266, Arduino Uno, or Arduino Nano!

Take a nostalgic look at what the community looked like in Happy 10th Anniversary! - A Decade of element14 Community

All you roadtest fanatics can let us know your favorite roadtest bundle in In Honor of element14's 10th Birthday: What is Your Favorite RoadTest Bundle?

Use the Boards You Win to Do a Remote Monitoring & Control Project!

You can use your free Raspberry Pi 4 or your ESP8266, Arduino Uno, or Arduino Nano to enter the Remote Monitoring & Control competition for a chance to win up to a $200 shopping cart.

Contest Details:

Project14 | Build Projects That Involve Remote Monitoring and Control Devices That May Not Be Accessible!

Here what other members are working on:

phoenixcomm is working on a Smarthab Remote Sensing and Control project:

• Smarthab: Remote Sensing and Control .I
• Smarthab: Remote Sensing and Control .ii   Environmental Controls
• Smarthab: Remote Sensing and Control .iii  Sensors
• Smarthab: Remote Sensing and Control .iv  Software Design

lawsonkeith did a really cool Combined Homebrew & Irrigation System:

• Combined homebrew and irrigation controller using Node Red
  • Raspberry Pi Homebrew controller with Node Red UI
  • Raspberry Pi Home Irrigation system using Node Red

ruchir1674 provided some much needed content using Particle boards:

• Solar Panel Monitoring Using Particle Photon
• Air Quality Monitoring Using Particle Photon

dubbie decided to find out how often wandering cats and the occasional fox visit his back garden:

• CatDogFoxBot #1 : My Initial Idea
• CatDogFoxBot #2 : System Design and Gathering the Components
• CatDogFoxBot #3 : The Step Motor Scanner is Working

It's the Last Week to Submit Your Programmable Logic Project!

This week will be the last week to submit your Programmable Logic  project.   The competition closes on July 15th.    Check out the projects that have been submitted so far here: 

• Project14 | Meet the Projects that Use a Programmable Logic Device!

This was a particularly challenging Project14.   Thankfully,  we'll have some much needed levity with the Electronic Toys competition.    In the meantime,  come check out the round up above to see some of the great work you did in support of this competition.

Electronic Toys Launching Next Week!

The next project competition will be Electronic Toys so now is a good time to be thinking about what projects you will be doing.  The challenge will be to build an electronic toy such as an executive toy, puzzle toy, educational toy, or cuddly toy.  Or create a techno toy from an existing toy by adding electronic innards.

Energy Harvesting Has a Commanding Lead in the Monthly Poll!

Really good participation in the monthly poll.  Voting closes on July 15th but Energy Harvesting seems to have this in the bag:

• Project14 | Poll to Decide the August 19' Competition

If you're hoping for some other competition let us know and be sure to keep submitting your ideas!

Upcoming Getting Started with EAGLE Webinar Series!

I love stuff like this.   One of the goals of the community is to make it inclusive for anyone.   Join me for the Getting Started with Autodesk EAGLE: Webinar Series

The first one will be July 17th and you can sign up here:  Getting Started with Autodesk EAGLE

If you're new to this I would also suggest going through the excellent Autodesk EAGLE series by rachaelp :

• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 1 - Creating Packages
• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 2 - Creating Symbols
• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 3 - Creating Devices
• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 4 - Advanced Packages and Package Variants
  • EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 4b - Supplemental worked example
• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 5 - Multiple Symbol Devices
• EAGLE Tutorial: Library Part Creation Part 6 - Adding Attributes and Technologies

Arduino Update

Check out Jan Cumps two part review of the Arduino MKR CAN Shield:

• Arduino MKR CAN Shield Review - part 1: Log BUS Traffic
• Arduino MKR CAN Shield Review - part 2: Interrupt and Filter

He was a trophy winner for the IoT: In the Cloud competition with his Manage Arduino MKR Battery in the Cloud Project:

• Manage Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 Battery Life in the Cloud - How Long until the Next Recharge?
• Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 and Amazon Web Services: Safe MQTT with SSL and Certificate
• Keithley DMM6500: Measure Amp-Hours of an Arduino MKR WIFI 1010
• Manage Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 Battery Life in the Cloud - AWS, Graphs and Alerts

BigG was a trophy winner for NFC/RFID competition for:

• NFC-based Office Visitor Sign-In System for the non-iNDEF’ed** – PART 1 (Introduction & Installation)
• NOVSIS: the NFC-based Office Visitor Sign-In System  – PART 2 (Unpacking the POC demo)

He's written a great content piece on Decoding different NDEF message types via NXP's NTAG I2C Plus and an Arduino MKR !    So be sure to check that out!

DaveDarko Does a MATRIX Voice Enabled Robot 

Shout out to samreen.islam and alfredgg from MATRIX Labs,  our good friend davedarko did a Episode 401: Matrix Voice Controlled Robot in the latest episode of element14 presents.   davedarko was also the winner of the Robot Builder's Fifth Edition by Gordon McComb during our Project14 | Recorded Live Stream: Robotics: Tribute to Gordon McComb: Community Presenters with Special Guest MATRIX Labs!   He was awarded the book because he asked questions.  Themz the rulez!

davedarko was also featured in Matrix VOICE Dev Board promo video in support of RoadTests & Reviews:

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Speaking of MATRIX Voice, MATRIX Labs also produced a couple of good blogs featuring the board exclusively for Project14:

• MATRIX Voice and MATRIX Creator Running Snips.ai
• Direction of Arrival for MATRIX Voice/Creator Using ODAS

Also, check out Home Automation Using Raspberry Pi Matrix Voice and Snips from ruchir1674 in support of the IoT: In the Cloud competition.

What Else Is Happening

Raspberry Pi 4 Mania has invaded the community:

• Getting Started with the Raspberry Pi 4 Computer
• Benchmarking the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
• Do You Know Your Pi from Pie? Raspberry Pi Quiz!

Check out The EIectronics Inside 04: Retro Computerized Sewing Machine Teardown by David Edwards!

The Dream SensorBoard is pretty huge!  You can win free stuff every week, plus a really sweet Oculus Plus grand prize for making your own Dream SensorBoard!

If you haven't done one yet, or would like to make more than one, what's stopping you?

That's all for this week.  I'll try and keep this a weekly thing.