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Arduino Cell Phone Controller

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Hon1nbo

Wed Sept 23 2009, 12:30PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

Hi ya'll,

I am building an Arduino based light controller: it has adjustable duration and delay between turn ons of the lights, and I am interfacing it with a prepaid phone to activate the on cycle manually (some of the things it controls are likely to overheat easily, so they are on little and my friends and myself don't want to wait for them... like the Jacob's ladder)

the timing programming and the LCD interface work great, problem is that the cell phone keeps setting the pin on the arduino as HIGH even when not called

I tried a resistance to ground and a resistance between the pin and the cell phone, to no avail

I could use an ADC pin but I want to keep those open for use, and one is already taken

any ideas?

Bjørn

Wed Sept 23 2009, 12:54PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

Exactly where have you connected the pin on the cell phone? If you can tell us the waveforms and voltages then we can tell you 100 ways to get your signal.

Conundrum

Wed Sept 23 2009, 06:51PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

optoisolator with an inline R/C filter?

klugesmith

Wed Sept 23 2009, 07:28PM

Registered Member #2099 Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716

Al Qaeda has a training program that teaches remote control by cell phone.

Hon1nbo

Wed Sept 23 2009, 10:11PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

sorry, it is from the vibrate motor - I cannot quite say what the waveform is, I don't have a storage Oscilloscope - but the main issue is that when the phone is not sending a signal it is still read as High... I used to just connect the wires of the vibrate motor directly to the Solid State Relay, but since the vibe motor is on for about a second, then off, I hope a microcontroller will just hear the first vibe, turn on the relay, and ignore the rest until a timer on the microcontroller goes off

Bjørn

Thu Sept 24 2009, 12:23AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

If you use an optocoupler in parallel with the motor it will work. Then you will get a signal only when the motor is running, no matter what common-mode voltages might be on the wires.

GeordieBoy

Thu Sept 24 2009, 02:50PM

Registered Member #1232 Joined: Wed Jan 16 2008, 10:53PM
Location: Doon tha Toon!
Posts: 881

If you are using the vibrate on a mobile to fire up something hazardous please think about the safety implications.

You wouldn't want an incoming wrong number to the handset to make something go live at an inconvenient moment! All sorts of things like incomming SMS, cell broadcast messages, voicemail, and incoming calls can all make that little motor spin for a few seconds!

-Richie,

Hon1nbo

Thu Sept 24 2009, 11:54PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

GeordieBoy wrote ...

If you are using the vibrate on a mobile to fire up something hazardous please think about the safety implications.

You wouldn't want an incoming wrong number to the handset to make something go live at an inconvenient moment! All sorts of things like incomming SMS, cell broadcast messages, voicemail, and incoming calls can all make that little motor spin for a few seconds!

-Richie,

nothing hazardous is being controlled except the jacob's ladder, but it is far out from where anyone can touch it and there is a master switch for setting up and tearing doen the assembly, and the whole point is that anyone at our school Homecoming can call it

it is for the Superman Baby Rocket area, because the scientist can save one baby from exploding krypton, I figured some sciency looking things ere in order as well as some timed black lights on some green fluorescent items...

Plasmaarc452

Tue Oct 06 2009, 06:31PM

Registered Member #1394 Joined: Sun Mar 16 2008, 06:18PM
Location:
Posts: 111

Just don't use a cell phone unless you need ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS range I am talking about activating it from the other side of the globe. Instead get a second arduino and hook a push button switch to it, then buy a radio transmitter/receiver pair from sparkfun for $9 and follow the arduino tutorial on setting it up. After this just make a "remote" that sends an "A" to the 2nd arduino and program that to turn a relay on if it receives an "A" You will have around a 300ft range and it will be near instantaneous not a 5 second delay that a cell phone provides.

EDIT - sry I didn't read that it was for your homecoming dance. You could also buy a celluar module from sparkfun if you can remove the phones sim card. 2nd edit - I had to leave school then so I had to make it quick but if you can remove the sim card then the sparkfun cell module is a good idea.

That is a simple module now its $160 which is a lot but there is a cheaper one for $99 however this one has buit in usb, a sim card socket, and power regulatation! I believe that there is a pin on the module and when you dial the sim card (the prepaid phone number) it will toggle that pin high or low. This is in the documentation but I do know that it spits out some sort of serial data when a call is received so you could run it off serial data as well.

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