SCIENCE DIY

SCIENCE

FETCH THE WEATHER WITH

THE MAKE CONTROLLER

This easy starter project displays your local forecast. By Brian Jepson

In the expanding universe of microcontroller boards, the MAKE Controller Kit fills the space between the easy, cheap Arduino and the more complex, powerful Gumstix devices. The low-power Arduino runs 8-bit machine code and can only do one thing at a time. The Linux-based Gumstix can do what a Linux-powered PC can do.

The MAKE Controller has the advantages of both, thanks to its FreeRTOS operating system; it can run multiple tasks simultaneously but also lets you allocate processor time more explicitly than you could under Linux. Because you need to know C, it’s a little more complicated to program than Arduino, but still easier to use than the Linux-based Gumstix.

138 Make: Volume 11

Making the Physical Connections

Once I got my hands on a MAKE Controller, I saw that it can talk to things in my house with its serial port, and talk to things on the internet with its Ethernet port. My first project was simple: download the Weather Underground’s RSS feed for my hometown, yank out the forecast, and display it on a little LCD.

You need to solder your own headers or jack to the MAKE Controller’s serial port contacts, a group of 6 holes, marked 3.3V, 0V, TX, TRX, RTS, and CTS. To be able to talk to my Serial LCD, I only had to make 3 connections: power ( 3.3V), ground (0V), and serial transmit (TX).

Photograph by Corbis