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Make Every Week: Audible Water Sensor - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Audible Water Sensor. Download Video Aug 05 9 45 24 PM.mov. In just a few weeks, a class of journalism students. Will be wading into West Virginia streams to deploy water sensors. They’ll be sensing water conductivity over several weeks using a cool, Arduino-like board called Riffle. But the crux of the system is a simple circuit I tried for the first time tonight. And the heart of the parts is a tiny chip called a 555. MakeEveryWeek is a...
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Make Every Week: Low-Power Temperature Texter - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Low-Power Temperature Texter. I got the temperature sensor working. And I got the Arduino texter working. But I had trouble getting them to work. After jumping several hurdles, I now have a portable temperature-texter, which has been sensing and texting to Twitter. For two days now. The trick, I knew, was getting the Fona and the Arduino to sleep between texts, saving the battery. By crazy coincidence, Don Blair. The actual sleep functions.
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Make Every Week: JavaScript + Arduino - johnkeefe.net
http://johnkeefe.net/make-every-week-javascript-plus-arduino
Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: JavaScript Arduino. Download Video Aug 07 9 38 55 PM.mov. JavaScript is the code that drives bells and whistles you see on almost any web page. This week I used it to drive lights and motors on a table. And it was surprisingly easy. The key ingredient is a bushel of code called Johnny-Five. Which pairs Arduino with the node.js flavor of JavaScript. Johnny-Five was built by Rick Waldron. At the great coding/design shop Bocoup. Into set mod...
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Make Every Week: People Sniffer - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: People Sniffer. I can sniff the air and know if you are near. Your phone’s wifi system transmits periodic pings in search of connection points. Those pings contain a set of numbers unique to your phone its MAC address. Or media access control address. And I can see them. Normally they look like. But I’ve blocked out most of these, which are the unique IDs of my neighbors’ and my devices. The ones ending in 9, though, are from my phone.
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The Monthly Mood Cube - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. The Monthly Mood Cube. When Kristin is about to get her period, everyone in the house knows it. A light on her nightstand tells us so. What we now call the "Mood Cube" tracks my wife's cycles and has helped foster household harmony. It also makes Kristin smile every day. It was easy to build. You can make one, too. The Mood Cube story really starts with Louise Ma, a great interaction designer and my colleague on the WNYC Data News Team. I had another idea.
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Make Every Week: Sewing-Machine Circuits - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Sewing-Machine Circuits. Sewing by hand can be tedious. Sewing by hand with conductive thread is frustrating. The thread I use. Is almost woolly, so if you use too much at once, it twists and tangles in itself. Ugh. For a project I have in mind, there would be much sewing with conductive thread. But we recently got a sewing machine, and this weekend I thought heeeeey! It has been pointed out to me that Mr. Singer. But I got it to work.
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Make Every Week: Heartbeat LEDs - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Heartbeat LEDs. Visualizing one’s heartbeat is just cool. I’ve been into the idea since I learned that signals sent by the Polar heart monitor straps. Joggers use can be detected with a cheap device. I’ve made a heartbeat hoodie. We Got the Beat. For the hoodie, I used this Adafruit kit. Which comes with one of the Polar strap transmitters. Every beat sent a pulse to the Arduino. But this board from Sparkfun. The instructions suggest usin...
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Make Every Week: Arduino Texting - johnkeefe.net
http://johnkeefe.net/make-every-week-arduino-texting
Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Arduino Texting. Texting is something I love playing with, and I’ve always wanted to make a sensor-bot that skipped the hassle of wifi by texting me its data. So this week, I tried to make some progress on that by making a texting bot. Texting with an Arduino requires two key parts: a cell phone board. Which I got from Adafruit, and a SIM card. Which I got pre-loaded with 6 months of unlimited data from Sparkfun. And the running list of p...
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Make Every Week: Circuit Boards, For Reals - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: Circuit Boards, For Reals. I always considered circuit boards like this something you. I actually helped to. The board in the picture above. And it was awesome fun. The board is designed to monitor the conductivity (and, possibly, contamination) of water in lakes and streams, with the wonderful feature that it fits through the mouth of a regular water bottle. It’s called Riffle. And it is the brainchild of Don Blair. I reached out to Don,...
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Make Every Week: A Bendy Mangnifier - johnkeefe.net
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Data journalism diy hackery. Laquo; Back to blog. Make Every Week: A Bendy Mangnifier. Making makes me happy. Whether it's a map. Or a Twitter bot. I get a thrill from making things. Yet I don't partake this euphoric drug often enough. Which is ridiculous. So every week this year, I'm going to make something. Could be small, could be simple, could be silly. Some should be tricky and/or blinky. And best if I learn something new in the process. But at least one thing. And I'll blog about each one here.
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