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Category: Hardware

Hardware projects

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Liquid Filler at 20Kg

Liquid filler will be our first complete project here at hw2sw! 😎
We have made a series of articles that we will use in order to reach our goal.
Liquid filler is exactly as its name says, an really cheap but accurate liquid  filling machine.
We need to auto-fill bottles with a certain capacity (50 up to 8500gr).
This arduino based project will permit to fill all containers with a certain, user defined, weight limit.
So the machine works on weight base and not on volume, flow or pressure base like other fillers.
Other than the  machine you see in the photo, you need a weighting board that the bottle will sit on and a gravity feed valve that is piloted by liquid filler.
The present solution will weight containers up to 8,5 Kg.

...continue reading "Liquid Filling Machine – Liquid Filler Part 1"

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Published on 2 Comments on Weight sensors and arduino
Analog to digital converter

A sensor is usually an analog device. Analog devices are connected at the analog ports of arduino.
Arduino  with the use of AnalogRead function can read the analog sensor value from the specified analog pin.
The Arduino board contains a 6 channel 10-bit analog to digital converter. A 10 bit analog to digital converter as we have seen in the "Binary Decimal and Hexadecimal numeral systems" equals to a 210 – 1 = 102410  (0-1023 => 1024 steps).
If the resolution of arduino (1024 steps) does not cover your project you should use an external ADC converter with more that 10 bits.
For example you can connect the LTC2400 ADC which happens to be a 24 bit analog to digital converter.

...continue reading "Weight sensors and arduino"

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Published on
Relay 5V

In this article we will talk about relays.
The relay is a device that permits with a small voltage to pilot a reed switch.
How this device should be applied on the circuit ?
How can we place it on an arduino ?
All these answers will be cleared in a while.
Let's start with some theory to see what happens in detail.
At the top of the relay we can see the 5V as input pilot voltage.
And we can see the 10A limitation at the 250VAC of the reed switch.
So with a 5 Voltage we can "switch" a 250VAC device that can consume up to 10A (P=V*I=2,5KW).
If you need to pilot a device that consumes more you should use a "bigger" relay that fit at your needs.

...continue reading "Relay and arduino"

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LCD16x2

A liquid crystal display (LCD) is an attractive way for easy communication between the user and hardware.
In this tutorial we will see how to connect a 16x2 LCD display on our arduino using only 6 pins.
As you may noticed always we start from the documentation offered for free of the various hardware manufacturers.
Here is the data-sheet of the LCD Module 1602 A1 .

...continue reading "Connecting a LCD to an Arduino"

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Published on
Voltage Divider

The voltage divider is a circuit that produces an Vout that is a fraction of an Vin.

The two resistors in series can be seen as a single potentiometer.

This circuit will be heavily used in our website so we have decided to do a standalone article for this circuit.

From the Ohms law we know that V=I*R

From the Kirchhoff's current law (first rule) we know  ΣI=0 So we have I1=I2+I3

From the Kirchhoff's voltage law (second rule) we know that ΣV=0 So we have Vin=V1+V2

Observe that V2=Vout

Let's now do some considerations about this circuit.

...continue reading "Voltage dividers explained"

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