My Own Chumby

So the other day, I was thinking of projects I could do with my Arduino. I was thinking, and suddenly, I thought of making something like a Chumby- a gadget that uses widgets from the Internet to display information like weather, videos, news and other things. So I thought I could do the same thing using an Arduino Mega with an ethernet shield on the Arduino and an LCD screen.

The ethernet shield would grab information from websites, and then display it on the LCD screen. The Arduino would be in a project box with a power button on the back, and powered by a wall power converter, so it wouldn't have to run on batteries. So far, I haven't started on the project, I'm still just getting the schematics down and finding the parts. But, I know that this is going to be a really interesting project.

When it is all done, I'm going to have it on my desk so I can look over and see the weather, e-mail and other things on the screen. I'll keep posting on the project as it progresses.

Got my first Arduino

The other day, I received my Arduino Duemilanove and a solderless bread board (which had been needing badly) after waiting weeks for it to get hear. The Arduino program had already been loaded on to my Mac, so I was ready to get started. First, I did the LED test to see if the board worked properly, which it did. I played around with the code a little bit and made it blink like a strobe.

Still just starting out on it, have to get used to the hardware and the code, but in time, I plan to make some really cool projects with like. Hears a link to the Arduino website: www.arduino.cc/.
I you haven't heard about an Arduino, it is a really cool and cheap microcontroller made in Italy. Check out their website if you haven't, has a great forum.