Anyone doing money with Arduino?

HI!
I'd be interested to know if anyone is earning money with something they built using Arduino..?

Yes. I built all the scoring machines for my club using hardware built up around promini's.

Cool...
as I am a student I have one lesson about making Business Plan and we have a chance to make a small student company... it lasts 1 year and we don't have to pay any taxes. So I was thinking to do something with Arduino, maybe some custom led clocks or someting... also we have an alternative - laptop tables.. but im not so into woodwork

it lasts 1 year

That's longer than most small businesses.

we don't have to pay any taxes

Oh, now I see why :slight_smile:


Rob

I make a small living writing books about it :wink:

Perhaps look at a business to make some nice kind of Shield - RGB high intensity LED or something. Get the boards made and try selling them on eBay. If that works approach the likes of Sparkfun and see if they want to stock them.

Just a thought.

Just yesterday, I won second place in senior design. There were 2 Arduinos in the project along with a PIC16, a dsPIC33F, a MSP430, 2 OMAPs, and a BCM4716. The prize is an unknown, except it would probably be worth $60 or so and the details would be revealed on Friday.

What was your design?

There are several parts to it. Overall, the idea is to use fat as alternative energy, putting the energy into the grid. Only the PIC16 and MSP430 actually controlled power conversion circuits. The rest were all part of instrumentation hardware. One Arduino measured the low voltage DC bus current and voltage and sent it to the other over an optoisolated serial link. That other Arduino interfaced to an ENC28J60 for Ethernet and a dsPIC33FJ128GP802 for AC power measurement. An Asus RT-N12 router (with the BCM4716) running Tomato Linux took care of interfacing the Arduino to two Android tablets that were used as displays (only one was actually needed but having two let me have them facing different directions for the demo). It used a lot more parts than were strictly required but it was supposed to be a modular and scalable system capable of accommodating other alternative energy devices.

Right next to my project was a "competitor's" project that used natural gas. They had a decent off-grid CHP system, but next to no instrumentation and nowhere as much green appeal.

What did the actual fat conversion?

A good way is surgical removal and incineration coupled to a sterling engine. ]:smiley:

My approach was a stationary bicycle with an alternator. Output power was limited to about 100W or so, which is a big limitation. A fuel cell that converts fat directly into electricity would be nice, but it's just not a practical technology yet. (On an interesting note, I once read a story about a fat powered car, which was obviously disliked by the oil companies. I have no idea if it's real or not but it's theoretically possible.)