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I am completley new to the arduino, dont even have one yet, but eager to start soon. one question that i have, and it's mostly software related. Using the arduino uno with a ethershield, can data from a weather station be uploaded to wunderground.com as personal weather station data? Here is the pws upload protocol...

http://wiki.wunderground.com/index.php/PWS_-_Upload_Protocol

Like i said, i am really new to the arduino, but have been working with the propeller for quite awhile, so i think my transition will be fairly painless. is there code examples that would show me how to do this? Thanks in advance!

That should be fairly straightforward.  Grab the arduino ethernet library here: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Ethernet

You'll need to have the IP of the weatherunderground server, you can find that with an http://who.is lookup.  Then connect to that server as a client:

byte mac[] = { 0xAA, 0xAA, 0xAA, 0xAA, 0xAA, 0xAA }; //put your mac here
byte ip[] = { 00, 0, 0, 000 }; //put your IP here

byte server[] = { 00, 00, 00, 00 }; // Put the IP of weather underground here.

Client client(server, 80); // create a client object

in the setup function:

Ethernet.begin(mac, ip);

Then you can send an update in the loop using the info on the weather underground wiki:

client.println("GET /weatherstation/updateweatherstation.php?action=something&id=something&PASSWORD=something&....");

Hope that helps!  PS.  I also used the propeller before the arduino!

Jeremy, thanks for your intro videos.  I am just getting started myself in Arduino though I have done some simple electronics projects using Atmel chips.  Here is an example using ATTiny13 chips.

My current project is a 4x4x4 LED cube using a matrix similar to what can be found on Instructables. http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Cube-4x4x4/  Though I plan on using shift registers and an Arduino instead of what the author used.  My question is what is the best way to make this cube a more 'permanent' project?  I have a few ATMega168 chips that I have setup on perfboard with a 16Mhz crystal FTDI header and 5V regulator.  I got the idea to build these from this site. http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/ArduinoBreadboard  Am I heading down the right path?

Michael

Hi Jeremy

I've built a device (see picture) with an Arduino and Ethernet shield that connects to our Network Monitor (Nagios) and moves an arrow to indicate if any of the computers we monitor are not responding. It all works fine, and I'd like to re-build it as a more finished product. I can build an Arduino on stripboard, but I can't find anywhere that describes how to make build an ethernet shield. Do you now I can build one which I can put on the same stripboard as the Arduino?

Thanks

Here is a link to design files for a good ethernet shield

http://github.com/freetronics/EthernetShield.

Looks great to me! Putting atmega chips onto a perfboard should work fine.  Just don't forget to include an ISP programming header so you can load the arduino firmware.

The link from tronixstuff looks good to me!  Though if it were me, I'd probably use an existing ethernet board and just keep with your perfboard arduino in a project box.  One less thing to worry about - though I image building your own is cheaper.

Hello,

I`m new to arduino, but I`m willing to use it (love open-source). I already used Microship PIC thought. I wanted to know about the feasability of a solar tracker with an arduino.

-What kind of motor can I control with (with which additionnal board?) I`m thinking about a single stepper motor, do I need additional board?

-I`m thinking of putting a form of communication as an "extra", ex. : can I communicate through the USB port inside my program? Is there a library? Or should I better use an ethernet shield? Then would it be easy to get the hour from the internet with this?

-To follow the sun, should I better follow it with some photodiodes, or a GPS+compass, or get hour from internet and calculate with the latitude+longitude?

-Will I have enough I/O for all this, enough "room" for my code... or should I go for something bigger like the arduino mega?

This solar tracker wil be something small, more as a demo project than something big and generating lots of power. I`m quite new to solar things, and don`t know where to start. Any clue appreciated. Thanks!

Hey there!

This certainly sounds possible with an arduino, and I don't even think you would need the mega.  You should be able to control a standard stepper motor with the arduino using only a darlington transistor array.  An entire stepper control board shouldn't be necessary for just one stepper.  Serial communication over USB with the arduino is easy.  In Tutorial 06 for Arduino: Serial Communication and Processing I explained how you can use it to send data from the arduino to a display on your computer.  Using an ethernet shield would work equally well.  The advantage of using an ethernet shield would be that bi-directional communication from the web would be easier.  This can also be achieved using a USB Serial connection and a helper program running on the computer (See a video where I did that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7vSyxLAtxI). I think the most accurate way to follow the sun would be to use latitude/longitude data plus information from the web.  Photodiodes wouldn't be accurate enough, and GPS modules are expensive and unecessary if you don't plan to move this around too much.

Let me know if that helps, and if you need any further advice.  Good luck!

Thank you for all these good advices! I`ll look at it, and see if I feel confident enough to start it. I`ll look at your suggestions, but this seems to make sense. Thank you!