This is only a preview of the April 2018 issue of Silicon Chip. You can view 47 of the 96 pages in the full issue, including the advertisments. For full access, purchase the issue for $10.00 or subscribe for access to the latest issues. Items relevant to "230VAC Thermopile-based Heater Controller":
Items relevant to "Low cost, Arduino-based 3-Axis Seismograph":
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SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
www.siliconchip.com.au
Publisher
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
Editor
Nicholas Vinen
Technical Editor
John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.)
Technical Staff
Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc
Bao Smith, B.Sc
Tim Blythman, B.E., B.Sc
Technical Contributor
Duraid Madina, B.Sc, M.Sc, PhD
Art Director & Production Manager
Ross Tester
Reader Services
Ann Morris
Advertising Enquiries
Glyn Smith
Phone (02) 9939 3295
Mobile 0431 792 293
glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au
Regular Contributors
Dave Thompson
David Maddison B.App.Sc. (Hons 1),
PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov.
Geoff Graham
Associate Professor Graham Parslow
Ian Batty
Cartoonist
Brendan Akhurst
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Editorial Viewpoint
New blood at Silicon Chip
This month I am delighted to welcome two new
members to the Silicon Chip editorial team, Tim Blythman and Duraid Madina. Tim has hit the ground running as he is responsible for two projects in this issue.
Duraid is a part-time technical contributor who is
already busy beavering away on a couple of state-ofthe-art projects which should come to fruition later
this year. We are really looking forward to presenting
them for your enjoyment.
Both these new team members should greatly expand our expertise and
“project generating” capacity and we look forward to a whole range of interesting new possibilities.
Just one of these new possibilities involves more projects based on the
ESP8266 (and related) chips. That’s because these offer an ease-of-use that’s
similar to the Arduino Uno but with inbuilt WiFi, a lot more flash memory
and a much faster CPU.
In effect, you get an Arduino-compatible processor with WiFi but in a smaller, more powerful package – all for a similar or, in some cases, lower price.
The fact that the same chip is available in a range of form factors, from the
Uno-compatible D1 R2, to the smaller but equally capable D1 Mini, and even
the tiny ESP-01, means they are especially flexible.
But it’s the inbuilt WiFi, with easy-to-use libraries, that’s really the “killer”
feature. It makes it so easy and cheap to design projects that fetch data from
or upload data to internet servers and that opens up a huge range of possibilities. It can also allow us to control our designs from a smartphone.
The WiFi Water Tank Level Meter presented in the February issue has
turned out to be very popular. The prototype is in use on my rainwater tank at
home. In this current prolonged dry period in Sydney it has been an important
reference for me to determine how much to water the garden. I can easily check
the water level from the office using my phone.
Still on these WiFi modules, one of the great things about using the Arduino
IDE to program many of the ESP8266 boards is that all you need to re-program
it is a PC (Windows, Linux or macOS) and a USB cable.
And given that many of our designs can be expanded for uses other than
those they were intended for, I hope that readers take advantage of this
capability to extend our concepts. After all, we make the source code available
and there’s nothing stopping you from modifying the code to add new features.
If you do manage to enhance or adapt one of our designs to another application, please write in and let us know. It could even be the subject of a new
project article or an item in Silicon Chip. Consider that we do pay for article
contributions.
If you don’t have any programming experience, Arduino is a good place to
start. While it may seem more daunting than learning a language like BASIC,
the C family of languages it is based on are probably the most widely-used
programming language in existence; your time learning it will be well spent.
And there are a huge number of pre-written libraries available for a range of
tasks, so you don’t have to waste your time “re-inventing the wheel”.
Finally, I hope that our Australian and New Zealand readers will enjoy combing
through the latest Jaycar catalog included with this issue. We always enjoy
such catalogs included in the magazine, since even in these days of internet
searching, nothing can match the convenience of a printed catalog that you
can refer to at any time. You never know when you will come across a nifty
little gadget or component which will be of great use.
ISSN 1030-2662
Recommended & maximum price only.
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Silicon Chip
Nicholas Vinen
Celebrating 30 Years
siliconchip.com.au
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