We have a solar system and I wanted to keep an eye on our relative energy consumption and generation during the day. The SolarEdge inverter that we use has an app (iOS and Android) available plus a web dashboard (Figure 1). The problem with all of these monitoring applications is…

This article covers the Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS), IMU Filters and Sensor Fusion. We have released the open source Nexgen AHRS Arduino library to demonstrate these techniques on the Nano 33 BLE. It is available for download using the Arduino Library Manager. In Part 5 of this series…

LiPo Battery Monitoring using a scheduler. Overview Both the Nexgen Rover and the Nexgen Drone uses LiPo batteries to provide power. These are a good choice in terms of current delivery, size, weight and capacity. However, you don’t want to over discharge them or you can impact battery life. …

There are a number of libraries that make working with the LSM9DS1 IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) easy. In Part 5 of our series on writing your own flight controller software we will focus on the IMU and in particular explain the best ways to convert the gyro rate and accelerometer…

Our L293 based motor shield has some problems! How do we diagnose what the problem is and create a better design? Our first article in this series described how we designed our prototype UNO motor shield (Figure 1). Designing your own Arduino UNO Motor Shield The Nexgen Roverlink.medium.com The second article explained how we wrote an Arduino library to use…

At some stage you are going to write some code that you want to package up as a library. This makes it easy for you and others to use the software, hides complexity and is a way to participate in the global maker community. There are a few exisiting guides…

The Nexgen Rover The Nexgen Rover is an Arduino based robot designed wholly by Nexgen Codecamp Pty Ltd. It is used in our technology related STEM courses aimed at high schools. The robot is based on Arduino technology and runs an Arduino UNO with a motor controller shield on top. …

The evolution of open-source flight control firmware is fascinating and involves everything from years of committed development with no reward, to convoluted betrayal from previous partners and friends. In this article, we will review the most popular open-source projects, explain their antecedents and highlight the survivors. The Flight Control Ecosystem …

Why is it so hard to upgrade a sticker app that has literally no code? In December 2019 I wrote an article about Unnecessary Forced “App” Updates. …