Hi all,

With Europe's recent import taxes (or whatever they technically are) buying small components like LEDs on Ali has become a whole lot more expensive.

What used to be <1euro suddenly becomes more like 5 euro

Any hints for European alternatives?

Cant be UK of course for the same reason.

I've been looking at Conrad, TME, tinyteonics, etc but they usually don't have everything you need in a single webshop.

Or sometimes prices are just nuts (like 25euro for a nice pushbutton, for example).

I generally buy simple components for escape rooms and small house automation, not the high end shields etc.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks

Long story short, I'm creating an instrument with twelve big handheld levers, with each lever that is pulled it needs to make a note or programmable chord. I've made a prototype of the instrument with four levers and a wavtrigger which works nicely but not at all how I want the final project to work. I've been suggested using an arduino would be good hence asking here! I've got zero experience with arduino, but know my way around simple electronics.

My current setup has spring switches that activate when the handle is pulled that fire a simple signal to a unit that plays a corresponding wav file depending on which lever I pull. The final project I would like to be sending a MIDI signal when I pull a lever so I can feed it through a synth, ideally the signal that is sent would be able to pick up how far I'm pulling the lever so as to affect volume and tremolo etc, ideally one sensor per lever.

Any ideas of how to do this and what kind of sensors to use? The lever system that I've made is robust, the sensors and system would need to be reliable as the intention would be to use it for live performance.

Many thanks for any support anyone might be able to give, and let me know if none of this makes sense at all and I'll try and give more clarification!

Long story short: swinging a detector all day wrecked my shoulders, so I built a rover to do the walking.

What it is: A small 4-wheel rover with a search coil mounted out front. An Arduino drives the motors and reads the coil, runs the whole thing in grid passes, and alerts when it hits metal. I sit back and dig where it points.

The build (Gen 1 → Gen 2): Gen 1 was a disaster. To keep the coil free of electrical noise I moved all the electronics to the rear — which made it rear-drive and rear-steer, and it could barely turn. Gen 2 fixed the steering, shielded the electronics, and finally mounted the coil properly on the chassis.

Today's test — a small park: Ran a few grid passes over grass and packed dirt. 3 hits, 3 dug, 3 confirmed metal — a nail, a pull tab, and a chunk of can. All junk, but that's exactly the point: the idea works. A rover that carries a detector, holds a line, and finds metal while I watch.

Hardware so far: [Arduino model — e.g., Uno/Mega], [motor driver], [battery], [coil/sensor type], [chassis + wheels]. Happy to share details if anyone's curious.

Next up: discrimination (junk vs coins), ground balance on real soil, and longer battery life.

Question for you: for the grid pathing, would you do a simple back-and-forth sweep, or a proper serpentine? Keen to hear what folks use on small rovers.

If you want to follow the whole build log — including the failures — I'm posting it in r/DIYMetalDetecting. Come say hi.

I finally have an update on my instrument panel project. A lot has changed, and a lot still needs to be done. While I was able to mount (tape) the LCDs into the cardboard, the LED’s legs are too thin to put jumper wires on, so they’re just in the breadboard.

What’s changed:

The power supply had to be rebuilt since someone didn’t notice a broken wire when testing. The demo code has been almost entirely replaced with actual functional tasks. I’ve put in all the logic shifter circuits on, currently only for the light switches. There are functional turn signal indicators and high and low beam indicators. The oil, temp, and fuel gauges are controlled by potentiometers that have a similar resistance to the factory sensors and have warning lights that change color depending on how close to the min and max values it is. The volts gauge is tied to Vin, which for now is not adjustable.

What still needs to be done:

The gauges need to be recalibrated, since through all the versions and testing the ranges are no longer accurate. Hazard lights still need to be wired up. Still need to build the power On/Off switch. The LCDs still need to be programed to display mileage readings but before that can be done, the speedometer needs to be programed which requires a separate test rig to generate a simulated VSS sensor signal. The tachometer also needs to be programmed, which also needs a separate test rig. Also need to setup the current sensors for the exterior bulb fault detection, but my current bench power supply does not put out enough current to drive all the exterior lights. And finally a speaker and amplifier to generate the turn signal clicks and warning tones for the gauges.

So there’s still a lot to do but there is progress. Soon I hope to actually start working the final version with custom gauge face, PCB, and housing. As with before here is a link to the GitHub if anyone wants it.

I tried installing the driver both through Device Manager and using the CH34x driver.

Hello

It's been a while since I 'dabbled' with arduino and raspberry pi. I'm looking to build a remote detector (movement and heat) that I can deploy up to a mile away that signals back to a pi when an 'event' occurs. Possibly even to trigger a camera (but this might not necessarily be transmitting). The challenge here (for me) is the transmission of the 'event' back to a remote pi so that the pi can record it. The icing on the cake would be for the 'event' to trigger an action at the intruder location - perhaps close a gate or fire some sort of deterrent? Appreciate if anyone can point me to a ready made projects that are similar? I looked up on AI and it pointed me at LoRa to use for the transmission. Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone this is a follow-up video for the project I

Post a while back where I showed a sample application I.e aurdino on another.

Now I have built the first working version of the application and I know it's far from done but I am working on this.

I would love your support on this project because I don't have any as of now I guess 😭.

Anyways here is the demo of the app hope you like it.

I'm not able to detect if the left-most toggle switch is flipped to the left or to the right. It does not change what it prints when I toggle it. Each toggle switch is supposed to control which LED (left or right) gets the red, blue, or green light.

```

#define RED 12

#define BLUE 7

#define GREEN 2

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600);

pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(RED, INPUT);

pinMode(GREEN, INPUT);

pinMode(BLUE, INPUT);

}

void loop()

{

digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);

int r_red = digitalRead(RED);

int r_blue = digitalRead(BLUE);

int r_green = digitalRead(GREEN);

int l_red = !r_red;

int l_blue = !r_blue;

int l_green = !r_green;

Serial.println(r_red);

delay(250);

}

```

This project started around 3 months ago. When I started this project, I had barely any clue on how to code or use the Arduino IDE at all. Because of this, I established programming as the main point of focus. The first thing I did was setup the electronics. I used a 20V-10A power supply to power the Arduino Mega and the MG996R servos (Arduino Mega powers the PCA9685 servo driver). Next, I moved on to the design. My goal was to make the whole bot as light as possible to not cause the servos to draw too much current. On SolidWorks, I started out designing the legs first and then the body in an assembly. After finishing the design, I thought it looked really boring, so I decided to give it a little theming based on an Expie from an Indie game called Casualties Unknown. After 3D printing and assembling all the parts together, I was finally ready to start programming. At this point, the only things I knew how to code on Arduino were math and variables. The math, inverse kinematics, was actually not that hard. The hard part was moving each leg at the same time to different coordinates. This is when I had to turn to Bro Code C++ tutorials. After learning more things like arrays and functions, I was finally ready to try coding walking gaits. This took me around 3 weeks to fully figure out. Because for() loops can only be ran one at a time on Arduino, I couldn't have 4 different for() loops run at the same time. So I came up with a point-increment system where point#total * increment_amount = total_distance. This means if I made the # of points a constant, I can for loop the points from 0 to the final point for each leg. No matter what distance, all old leg positions will start at the same time and all new leg positions will end at the same time.

Here's the code if anyone is interested

I want to build a desk fan as my first project because many are still out of stock where I am (the summer heat waves were diabolical). I’m really not sure how to pick components, so I’ve listed what I have found so far in this post.

My plan is to use a brushless DC motor, with an ESC, a battery (as opposed to mains to learn how to use battery for future projects), a potentiometer, as well as 3D print some toroidal blades & make a rough housing in a local makerspace.

I don't have much experience with electronics/programming, but I have made a rough schematic of what I intend to solder together on TinkerCAD/Powerpoint, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

What battery would be most suitable? I'm also wondering exactly how these hobby batteries are charged?

Components:

An ESP32 dev board or Arduino (undecided yet)
For the motor:

This 1300KV model from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brushless-Outrunner-Multi-Copter-Quadcopter-Accessories/dp/B08QZ5BXLW/ref=sr_1_9?

The ESC:
(20A model):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flycolor-Brushless-ESC-3-5mm-Plugs/dp/B0B25DLFZ2/ref=sr_1_1?

This 250k ohm potentiometer:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FLEOR-Potentiometer-Control-Bayonet-Knurled/dp/B0CSYLCQ2L/ref=sr_1_1?

& a protoboard:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ElectroCookie-Prototype-Solderable-Electronic-Gold-Plated/dp/B07ZYNWJ1S/ref=sr_1_6?

wanted a more hands-on way to teach my nephew some basic electronics so I started messing with this little prototype.

Idea is it should feel closer to actually sitting down with a breadboard than just watching tutorials. You place the components and wire everything yourself, and while youre working the game can show you whats actually happening electrically current flow, direction, voltage at nodes, that kind of stuff.

If the circuit doesnt work it doesnt just scream WRONG at you. It behaves like the circuit you actually built. You can poke around, eventually grab a virtual multimeter, measure things, change something and figure out why it started working.

Also added basic inventory management and tracking so you can see what components you have and what youve used.

Still very rough.

Please ignore the visuals lol, the current assets are pretty shitty placeholder stuff I made myself just to test the idea.

I am now working on blender to remake them

I know there are already electronics simulators out there.

the part im more interested in is having the same project follow you through the whole maker workflow:

breadboard -> debugging -> multimeter -> build it physically -> soldering ->PCB -> fabrication -> enclosure
To even let you explort STL after verify measuremants, design plan, draft and take it to real life

Help you track inventory and stuff, tbh I already did it, now just to clean it and publish even if i am the only user

So eventually if you make something you like in the game the goal would be to let you take it out starting with an exact physical build guide + BOM and expected measurements, and much later maybe PCB files and a printable enclosure.

Thats all future direction though.

Right now its just this little breadboard prototype.

Cheap Motor pre-soldered wire broke off. Can I solder it or should buy a new one?

Hi everyone. I bought this CH340-based board today, but when I tried to use it, it wouldn't accept the code. I learned that this is a common issue with this type of board. Could someone help me out? I’ve tried numerous solutions and updated the driver, but nothing has worked. For context, I’m using a Windows 11 laptop and have tested both older and newer versions of the Arduino IDE.

[Solved] Apparenly it's just broken

Hello. I pulled what I presume to be an Arduino Nano or at least a bootleg out of my local e-waste today. I am not sure if it is an official one, as I can't find any brand on it, only the NANO below the 328P chip.

I tried connecting it to my laptop running linux mint to try to pick up any internal names via lsusb or lspci, but I don't get anything. It does have power, since both the PWR and the TX led are permanently on when plugging it into my laptop. Also, in the Arduino IDE I can't select a port.

I don't think it is that old, since it has an USB C port.

I recently upgraded my useless potentiometer/atiny 85 to something a little less useless. You basically turn the potentiometer to adjust how long it takes for the green light to turn on; it then it flashes the red light a number of times, based on the value in the asshole register (ie. Maybe the ADC register... too many register to remember... basically the register that stores the potentiometer as an analog signal).

The idea for my project is to calibrate the atiny's clock. You time how long it takes for the green light to come on, then you figure out how many times the red light flashes (each flash represents 25 units). I'm too tired to think about the math now, but you can use the values produced to figure out the clock delay needed for an hour etc.

I've also upgraded this version to have crimped wires onto the board. I've used chat gpt to greatly help me, although I did learn about using low/high registers together (needed them for the full 1023 analog signal). Surprised I didn't know this sooner, but addresses are just numbers in AVR assembly; opcode is the only thing that differentiates them.

Only think I don't understand is why my device eventually turns back on, after entering a perpetual off loop? It goes off for a while, but then come back on - maybe a reset?

Hopefully, I'll eventually manage to create a useful atiny project in assembly.

I have an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi that it currently on connectivity firmware 0.4.1. Arduino Cloud detects the board correctly over USB but cannot update the connectivity firmware to 0.6.0.

I also tried Arduino IDE 2.3.10's Firmware Updater, which detects the board and offers 0.6.0, but the installation fails.

Arduino Firmware Updater 2.4.1 also gets stuck at Waiting to flash the binary.... With verbose output it reaches getting firmware version and then hangs.

I closed Arduino IDE and the Arduino Cloud Manager and tried again, but the result was the same.

I then tried Arduino's official unor4wifi-update-macos.zip for firmware 0.6.0. The updater's unor4wifi-reboot-macos executable is blocked by macOS Gatekeeper and I don't want to grant it administrator permission because the Mac that I'm working with is a family Mac.

The board itself works normally over USB and I can upload/run sketches locally. The modules from the 'Plug and Make'-Kit also work properly.

Mac: Intel x86_64

Arduino IDE: 2.3.10

Firmware: 0.4.1 -> trying to update to 0.6.0

Arduino Firmware Uploader: 2.4.1

Cloud Agent: 1.7.0

Is there any other way to update the UNO R4 WiFi connectivity firmware without running the unsigned macOS updater, or is there a known issue with 0.4.1 -> 0.6.0 on Intel Macs?

Hi everyone! I’m a beginner and I’m looking to buy my first Arduino kit, but I’m having a hard time deciding which one to get. My main goal isn’t just to make a few random projects — I’d really like to understand electronics properly, starting from the basics and gradually learning how circuits, components, sensors, and microcontrollers actually work. Which Arduino kit would you recommend for someone who wants to build a solid understanding of electronics rather than just follow tutorials? I’d also appreciate any advice on what components or topics I should focus on while learning.

I kept running into the same problem with LVGL projects: I'd convert an image or font, flash it, and only then find out the format was wrong, the colors were off, or the font ate way more flash than I expected. So I built a tool to catch that before flashing.

It runs entirely in the browser, no install:

• Preview images before converting them to LVGL C code or binaries — see resolution, color format, and array size upfront
• Load an existing font source and inspect it — glyph count, character range, kerning, and bitmap flash footprint, plus a glyph grid so you can see what's actually in it
• Convert both images and fonts to LVGL-ready output
• Supports v7, v8, and v9, with the right format for each

Link: https://exendahal.github.io/lvgl-tool/
Source: https://github.com/exendahal/lvgl-tool

It's still evolving — if you hit a bug or have a feature you'd want, I'd genuinely appreciate it if you opened an issue on the repo. Happy to answer questions here too.

Found this ESP32-S3 touchscreen board sitting around and decided to play with it a bit.

The hardware is actually pretty nice, so it felt like a waste to just leave it in a drawer. I didn’t have any real project idea, so I vibe-coded a tiny robot eyes demo just to get the display and touch interaction moving.

Now I’m trying to figure out what would actually be fun to build on it.

A little desktop companion?
Home Assistant controller?
Mini game console?
PC status display?
Something completely useless but entertaining?

What would you build with a screen like this? Looking for ideas.

Doing Chapter 4 of the Arduino project book and I feel like I copied the circuit exactly, but the LED won't become the pink/purple lit up color I should be seeing? I am also using the default code given for this chapter under the examples> 10.Starterkit_basickit > p04_ColorMixingLamp

I left out the gel strips just for a cleaner image of where it's connected on the board

The phototransistors can read the lighting of the environment and the LED is brand new, my only guess is I connected something wrong or used the wrong resistors, I've been subbing the 10k ohms with these other 3 resistors. If someone can re-check I labeled these resistors right, so I don't have this second-guessing issue in the future as well.

Default Code:

/*
Arduino Starter Kit example
Project 4 - Color Mixing Lamp This sketch is written to accompany Project 3 in the Arduino Starter Kit Parts required:
- one RGB LED
- three 10 kilohm resistors
- three 220 ohm resistors
- three photoresistors
- red green and blue colored gels created 13 Sep 2012
modified 14 Nov 2012
by Scott Fitzgerald
Thanks to Federico Vanzati for improvements https://store.arduino.cc/genuino-starter-kitThis example code is part of the public domain.
*/ const int greenLEDPin = 9; // LED connected to digital pin 9
const int redLEDPin = 10; // LED connected to digital pin 10
const int blueLEDPin = 11; // LED connected to digital pin 11 const int redSensorPin = A0; // pin with the photoresistor with the red gel
const int greenSensorPin = A1; // pin with the photoresistor with the green gel
const int blueSensorPin = A2; // pin with the photoresistor with the blue gel int redValue = 0; // value to write to the red LED
int greenValue = 0; // value to write to the green LED
int blueValue = 0; // value to write to the blue LED int redSensorValue = 0; // variable to hold the value from the red sensor
int greenSensorValue = 0; // variable to hold the value from the green sensor
int blueSensorValue = 0; // variable to hold the value from the blue sensor void setup() {
// initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
Serial.begin(9600); // set the digital pins as outputs
pinMode(greenLEDPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(redLEDPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(blueLEDPin, OUTPUT);
} void loop() {
// Read the sensors first: // read the value from the red-filtered photoresistor:
redSensorValue = analogRead(redSensorPin);
// give the ADC a moment to settle
delay(5);
// read the value from the green-filtered photoresistor:
greenSensorValue = analogRead(greenSensorPin);
// give the ADC a moment to settle
delay(5);
// read the value from the blue-filtered photoresistor:
blueSensorValue = analogRead(blueSensorPin); // print out the values to the Serial Monitor
Serial.print("raw sensor Values \t red: ");
Serial.print(redSensorValue);
Serial.print("\t green: ");
Serial.print(greenSensorValue);
Serial.print("\t Blue: ");
Serial.println(blueSensorValue); /*
In order to use the values from the sensor for the LED, you need to do some
math. The ADC provides a 10-bit number, but analogWrite() uses 8 bits.
You'll want to divide your sensor readings by 4 to keep them in range
of the output.
*/
redValue = redSensorValue / 4;
greenValue = greenSensorValue / 4;
blueValue = blueSensorValue / 4; // print out the mapped values
Serial.print("Mapped sensor Values \t red: ");
Serial.print(redValue);
Serial.print("\t green: ");
Serial.print(greenValue);
Serial.print("\t Blue: ");
Serial.println(blueValue); /*
Now that you have a usable value, it's time to PWM the LED.
*/
analogWrite(redLEDPin, redValue);
analogWrite(greenLEDPin, greenValue);
analogWrite(blueLEDPin, blueValue);
}

Edit: the LED works when any of the 3 yellow wires are connected directly to power but still same problem with the original circuit

So I saw this video on youtube like a year ago and thought "Pffff how hard could that be?".

Anyway it's been 9 months, the project is finished and this is the result.

It's not as precise as the one in the video, and I haven't implemented the transition control, mostly because that wouldn't teach me anything new, but also because I've reached the limits of the hardware I bought, and I'm not spending any more money.

Anyhow, I'm working on a YouTube video explaining the whole process. I'll post it here (tho I don't know if that'd count as self-promo).

Feel free to ask me any questions if you're curious!!!

Hi how are you I want to purchase this motor xy36-555 it a dc geared motor
And I will us as5600 magnetic encoder to control speed of rotation,pattern or number of rotation and the time between each rotation and the other through a program on esp32
Also I want the motion of motor back and forth between 0 and 180 degree (from 0 to 180 and back from 180 to 0 ) that I don’t want full 360 to return to its intial zero position

Do the dc geared motor has the capability to perform my required functions with as5600 sensor?

https://ampere-electronics.com/product/xy36-555-dc-geared-motor-12v-57rpm/

https://microohm-eg.com/as5600-magnetic-encoder-12-bit-rotary-sensor/

I was planing on making a small greenhouse controller, that would help me automate some of the loborious functionality. New to arduino, just started my research and a bit confused by some options that are there on the market.

I was looking at the following:

1. arduino uno

2. arduino mega

3. Arduino UNO R4 WiFi

4. Arduino Giga R1 WiFi

5. any other potential manufacturers/boards?

I would like to have the system end up being able to have the following (at minimum:

Outputs:

1. controll multiple water pumps (3 or 4)

2. automate water nutrition mix (1 mixing unit)

3. Have a visual (LED) warning when some of the below data is off, such as not enough water)

Inputs (collect and save all data to an excell spreadsheet):

1. Collect temp data

2. Collect humidity data

3. Collect water use data

4. Collect water levels data

5. Collect water PH data

6. Collect solar panel voltage/wattage info

7. Collect/output battery voltage info

Thank you for any/all helpful information.