Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Cheapest Data Logger Yet

I always come up with ideas that have absolutely no commercial value. I came up with an idea to link arduino, to firmata, to python, to google spreadsheet, to google gadgets. The end result is a data logger that you can monitor from your homepage. All its going to take is a relatively small python script. The uses are pretty much any beginning arduino user, or perhaps someone who wants a really cheap sensor network.

I'm going to:
  1. Get up and running on googles data api and just try to do some simple data manipulation.
  2. Get arduino programmed with firmata, and get my hands on an lm-35 sensor.
  3. Write a tkinter script to upload readings.
  4. Create a dumb web page to show temperature readings from my apartment.
I have yet to talk about http://foodator.appspot.com, the new web app I wrote using google's app engine. It collects recipies, and generates menu's randomly so you don't have to think about what to make. It was sort of medium difficulty to make, but not too hard. I'm worried that few people will use it, but I know that I will use it. Its alot easier to use the web than run a script from a dos box. So whenever I need a small useful program, I'm just going to upload it to google app engine. That way I can share it with my friends.

Dvorak:
The best way to practice your dvorak typing is to blog.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

came across this via Hackzine... you might be interested in pachube, which does something a little similar (graphing, etc. and also shares your realtime data as a kind of proxy) and also has tutorials specificially about using arduino and firmata with pachube... www.pachube.com and http://community.pachube.com/?q=node/12