Last year, both Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black released mini versions of their popular microcomputers: the Raspberry Pi Zero and PocketBeagle. I happened to own both and had a chance to compare. Which small-size single board computer (SBC) is better? It’s Raspberry Pi Zero vs. PocketBeagle after the jump.

You can in fact build your own motion sensor without spending too much. Motion sensors can be set up using ultrasonic transceivers, video cameras, or microwave signals. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use the PIR motion sensor with a microcontroller. PIR is short for passive infrared which …

The moment I got my hands on the MAX30100 breakout board, I was ready to create my own Arduino heart rate sensor. But building one wasn’t as easy as I thought.

Microcontrollers usually don’t have enough memory to store data like images, databases, or even large text files. EEPROMs are tasked with this, but the portability of a memory card gives it a big advantage. This tutorial shows how easy to use a microSD card with the Arduino microcontroller.

An ultrasonic sensor like the HC-SR04 finds a lot of applications because of its low cost and ease of use.

The SIM900A is another module from SIMCOM popularly used as a GSM shield for sending and receiving SMS. I’ve already covered the SIM800L, now let’s look at the SIM900A breakout board.

The MQ-3 alcohol sensor is useful for projects that tests levels of alcohol, benzine, hexane or LPG in the air but it is most popularly used as a breathalyzer (breath analyzer) for someone who drank beer, wine or other liquor. Learn how to use this gas sensor in this tutorial.

You can drive an LED on or off using a microcontroller like Arduino or PIC. There’s no problem there because the 20 mA or so current from the pins is enough. You can’t drive loads that require much more current like a motor. This is where the L298N motor controller …

Debugging through the serial port is one of the ways to find errors in your code. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to add serial communication function to your STM32 Nucleo board.

We managed to blink an LED in the previous tutorial. This time, still featuring the STM32F1 Nucleo, we will add a button that will control the attached LED and a simple clap switch.