Advice for starter products. Bluetooth + accelerometer + multicolor LEDs

Hi All,

I am completely new to Adruino, but a skilled programmer in various languages.

I am hoping for some advice on which boards to purchase for a hobby project.

These are the features I need for the project:

  • Battery powered
  • Bluetooth connectivity
  • Programmable (I guess this goes without saying...)
  • Accelerometer
  • Multicolor bright LED lights
  • Small size (doesn't have to be tiny, but small is good).

All the above seems to be readily available, and I could just dive in and buy some boards, but there are so many different boards I thought it would be an idea to get some advice first.

Of course, lower cost is always good too : )

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Tom

  • Battery powered : You can buy one of those 5V emergency batteries used for cell phones
  • Bluetooth connectivity : This is tricky, what do you plan on using? PC, Android, IPhone?
  • Programmable (I guess this goes without saying...)
  • Accelerometer : Plenty of small (about the size of a nickel) accels on ebay (cheap too, about $3)
  • Multicolor bright LED lights : How many, power will be a limiting factor
  • Small size (doesn't have to be tiny, but small is good). : You have Arduino Nano, Mini, Pro Mini, Micro and many ATtiny chips to play around with

Thanks very much for your advice.

If the other parts are fairly small, the battery doesn't have to be tiny. 2 or even 4 AAs should be OK. Or anything else of similar size. Hopefully that would be enough to drive a few bright LEDs for several hours.

The number of LEDs can be limited according to the power constraints.

Bluetooth needs to connect to both Android and iPhone, ideally Mac/PC as well. I wasn't expecting this question. I thought it was all standardised. Are there different issues with the different platforms?

I need the accel for 3D position tracking. I guess I need a gyroscope as well for this? (I am aware there are cumulative errors - there is a simple way to regularly recalibrate with my application).

Bluetooth needs to connect to both Android and iPhone, ideally Mac/PC as well. I wasn't expecting this question. I thought it was all standardised. Are there different issues with the different platforms?

Yes, not all bluetooth modules work with everything. The usual BT modules people get are the HC-05 and 6, these tend to only work with PC and Android. However there are some that are advertised to work all around, such as this one here Abbleshield BLE 4.0

I need the accel for 3D position tracking. I guess I need a gyroscope as well for this? (I am aware there are cumulative errors - there is a simple way to regularly recalibrate with my application).

When you say position tracking, do you mean the angle of it relative to ground or the actual GPS position?

I am also new to this topic but i have a solution maybe not that cheap...

I connected:

a adafruit FLORA main board with
a FLORA Accelerometer/Compass Sensor - LSM303 - v1.0
and a Adafruit Flora Bluefruit LE .

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6395139/FLORA.jpg

I wanna send the accel-data from the sensor via bluetooth to read it with MAX msp.

I don't know yet how to read the data with MAX but i could manage to send the data via bluetooth and read it with the Bluefruit Buddy. It is then connectet via UART and i get date like this:
x-892 y-448 z-100
x-924 y-440 z-128
x-628 y-256 z-736
x-144 y-48 z-1032
x172 y-544 z-1008
x260 y-492 z-656
x348 y-536 z-740
x424 y-776 z-912
x372 y-536 z-860
x256 y-384 z-788
x420 y-604 z-800

To the FLORA you can connect NeonPixel and it already got one on the main board.
The wiring is a bit weird but mabye you get along well with it.