Chapter 1, Internet-Controlled PowerSwitch, briefly introduces Arduino UNO and Arduino Ethernet shield basics while focusing on building an Internet-controlled PowerSwitch using Arduino UNO, the Arduino Ethernet shield, and PowerSwitch Tail to turn electrical appliances on/off through the Internet via a web-based user interface. Also, you will learn how to increase the complexity of PowerSwitch by adding a circuit to track the mains electricity.

Chapter 2, Wi-Fi Signal Strength Reader and Haptic Feedback, briefly introduces Arduino Wi-Fi shield basics, vibration motors, and haptic feedback. You will learn how to make advanced vibration patterns using vibration motors with a haptic motor controller and the Adafruit haptic library according to the Wi-Fi signal strength received by the Arduino Wi-Fi shield.

Chapter 3, Internet-Connected Smart Water Meter, focuses on building a flow sensor-based water meter in conjunction with the Arduino Ethernet shield to measure water flow rate and volume, and then display them on an LCD screen. In addition, you will learn how to convert this water meter to a web server and request readings through the Internet of Ethernet.

Chapter 4, Arduino Security Camera with Motion Detection, explains how to incrementally develop a Arduino Ethernet shield-based security camera with the Adafruit TTL Serial JPEG camera and the VC0706 camera library. In addition, you will learn how to add motion detection functionality and upload the captured images to Flickr.

Chapter 5, Solar Panel Voltage Logging with NearBus Cloud Connector and Xively, briefly introduces the NearBus cloud connector and Xively, while focusing on building a solar panel voltage logger with the Arduino Ethernet shield with a few electronic components. Also, you will learn how to log the output voltage of a solar panel in combination with NearBus and Xively, and then display real-time data that can be viewed through a web browser.

Chapter 6, GPS Location Tracker with Temboo, Twilio, and Google Maps, briefly introduces the GPS shield and how to use the TinyGPSPlus library and the Google JavaScript API library to build a real-time location tracker to display the current location of the GPS shield on Google Maps. You will also learn the basics of Temboo and Twilio cloud services.

Chapter 7, Tweet-a-Light – Twitter-Enabled Electric Light, introduces Python, a more powerful programming language that can be used to read Twitter tweets and write data to a computer's serial port accordingly. Finally, you will learn to build an electric light switch that can be controlled using Twitter tweets to turn the switch on and off.

Chapter 8, Controlling Infrared Devices Using IR Remote, focuses on building an infrared remote control with the Arduino Ethernet shield and a few electronic components that can be controlled through the Ethernet or Internet to control IR-enabled devices remotely. You will learn how to record and reproduce IR commands using the Arduino IR remote library. In addition, you will learn how to add IR functionality to non-IR enabled devices.

This book has been written and tested on the Windows environment and uses various software components with Arduino. It would be great if you could prepare your development environment before proceeding with the sample code provided along with each chapter. The following list briefly gives you the details about the software requirements that you should have to set up your PC for each chapter:

This book is intended for those who want to learn more about Arduino and make Internet-based interactive projects with Arduino. If you are an experienced software developer who understands the basics of electronics, then you can quickly learn how to build the Arduino projects explained in this book.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Copy the following index.html file from the code folder of Chapter 5 to your computer's hard drive."

A block of code is set as follows:

// Set the picture size - you can choose one of 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 
 // Remember that bigger pictures take longer to transmit!
 cam.setImageSize(VC0706_640x480);  // biggest
 //cam.setImageSize(VC0706_320x240);  // medium
 //cam.setImageSize(VC0706_160x120);   // small

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

int32_t WiFiDrv::getCurrentRSSI()
{
  startScanNetworks();
  WAIT_FOR_SLAVE_SELECT();
  // Send Command
  SpiDrv::sendCmd(GET_CURR_RSSI_CMD, PARAM_NUMS_1);

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

>python your_python_script.py

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Create an App link if it is not selected by default."

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

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