While looking at my RSS feed today, I recognized an Instructables post! BalearicDynamics is a Tindie seller who has created products like the Digital Potentiometer Arduino Shield and 7-Segments LED Display Arduino Kit.
They’ve posted an Instructable for their Digital Potentiometer Arduino Shield which can be used to provide a variable resistance controlled by another event. For example, changing the volume of a music player to compensate for increases in room noise. Check it out!
On the Internet we can find some very basic applications of the component, reviewed in many blogs and sites, including the arduino.cc website “Controlling a digital potentiometer using SPI“. Unfortunately these tutorials focus on the way you can control this chip: the SPI (= Serial Peripheral Interface) protocol. Also the sample Sketches we find – limited to very few lines of code – are very simple but also almost useless.
Also the usage suggestions are very poor: how to control digitally the audio levels of some devices. But then? It’s up to you. Nothing else.
So the reason I have decided to create this shield project is to have a full working digital potentiometer lab reliable and ready for real-world applications. Also the sketches are a bit more complex but includes, hopefully, useful features explained.
Do you have an Instructable for one of your products on Tindie? Let us know and we will feature you next!
