Schemer (or What Arduino Uno Punto Zero needs!)

Really! I mean Really! Free us from the tyranny of 40 dollar connector cables while giving us a 10 dollar physical computing platform!


I'm sick of having to tie up a 40 dollar FTDI cable with a 10 dollar "home-duino" that I put together using bare minimum parts (see that little beauty below).

From one.less.travelled

Sometimes we need El-Duino to stay in contact with the mother-pc and update a display based on new data recieved.

Usually the FTDI cable is about 20 dollars, but in our fair city, there is only one supplier and he likes to charge twice as much (for whatever reason). So, do I want to have my preciousssss tied up with one of the physical computing projects I've got in mind (server monitoring) ... I think not.

So, what I thought up was a processing sketch which would basically send out the new data over a "virtual serial" link by turning on off an area of the screen that I would point a photo-resistor or photo-sensor at (breaatheee!!! )

The idea being that I could just have the thing pointed at the screen and get new data instead of using a serial cable.

As it turns out, this is EXACTLY how "schemer" does it.



I guess I need to now do a proof of concept with my super duper bread-boarduino that I put together last weekend.

P.S. And the bonus is that it uses scheme to prgram the button. How cool is that? :)