Electronics and Programming Guides

September 01, 2022 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: About 1 minute

Discover helpful and inciteful tips that you can use in your electronics and programming projects. We are focused on home-brew electronics, specifically for home automation. We like to use MQTT, Home Assistant, Node-RED, and Zigbee along with Node MCU and Arduino. With this combination of electronics and programming, you can automate anything.

We share some information about electronics fundamentals as well as knowledge about more advanced topics in electronics. It is very helpful to learn fundamentals such as Ohm's Law and resister networks when you are building home automation circuits.

Here you can find guides and articles with creative ideas, tips, and advice about programming, electronics, and home automation.

When you mix programming and electronics together you get fun.

EFUNDIES.com currently provides articles and guides related to electronics and programming. When our site update is complete, we plan to offer source code collaboration. We will also be adding guides and articles about home automation, so check in often to see our new projects.

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Command line interface

Command Line Interface

Command line interface (CLI) is a text-based interface that is used to operate computer systems.

Home automation can be fun with Node-RED and Home Assistant

Node-RED Makes Automation With Home Assistant Fun

Node-RED adds a lot of fun to Home Assistant.

How to Implement AVR Timer Interrupts in C for Atmel Microcontrollers

Timer interrupts are an excellent way of having your AVR do something at a given interval.

Some common components include capacitors and resistors, as well as transistors, LED displays, and chips.

Electronics Fundamentals

Learn all about resistors, capacitors, and transistors in our collection of Electronics Fundamentals articles.

Convert an Image to Gray Scale in C# - A Quick and Easy Guide

Sometimes you need to take a color image and remove all of the color from it leaving just shades of gray. There are 3 common ways of performing this calculation, each yielding slightly different results.

Resistors in Parallel

Learn how to calculate the equivalent resistance of two resistors when they are wired in parallel.

Node-RED makes writing home automations fast and easy.

Node-RED

Node-RED is the easiest way to manage your home automation rules. It couples well with Home Assistant and is much easier to program.

C# Switch

A switch statement in C# is a great way to switch between options.

How to Understand Electronics Signals and Flow for Beginners

Signals and Systems is a common term that is used to refer to system design.

Getting Started with AVR

The beauty of AVR is that once you know how to deal with one of them, you know how to deal with all of them.

C# Color Object

Once you have a Color object you can easily get the RGB and HSB values out of it.

AVR USART Serial

If you've been following along in these guides, then your STK500 should be setup like this. .

AVR Port Input in C

### Connect PortB To Switches Remember how we connected **PORTA** to the **LEDS**. Now we are going to connect **PORTB** to the **SWITCHES**.

The newest addition to the Windows command prompt experience, Windows Terminal, is the best choice for most people.

Windows Command Prompt vs PowerShell

When it comes to comparing Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell, there are a few key differences.

How To Read Schematics

Those pictures are called a schematic. A schematic is a picture representation of what we are talking about in electronics.

What are Transistors and How do They Work?

With the transistor we introduce the first 3 legged device. Transistors come in many varieties, shapes and sizes.

If you want to conIf you want to connect to your MQTT broker from the internet, then you need to forward a port in your router.

Connect to Your MQTT Broker from the Internet: Port Forwarding MQTT

If you want to connect to your MQTT broker from the internet, then you need to forward a port in your router

How to Read a Schematic - Common Schematic Symbols

There are about 10 that you should memorize, and the rest you can look up. Here we will show you some common schematic symbols and give a brief description of them.

Personal binary executable directory

Make a Personal Binary Directory on Your Computer

If you want to keep your computer organized, it's a good idea to create a personal binary directory.

MQTT is the backbone of many home automation systems.

MQTT

MQTT is the backbone of many home automation systems. We consider MQTT to be the most important part of your home automation system.

This modern LED lightbulb consumes 1/10th the energy of old-school incandescent bulbs.

Electricity

Follow our electricity guides to learn how to read your power meter, save energy, and measure the power usage of various devices in your home.

Electronics topics include chips, capacitors, resistors, transistors, and building circuit boards.

Electronics

Our collection of electronics articles helps you get started in home automation and circuit building.

Resistors in Series

When you wire resistors in series, you can simply add their values together to get the new equivalent reistance.

Begining Circuit Analysis and Ohms Law

For simple circuits this is pretty easy. For complex circuits it can be amazingly hard, even for pros.

Here’s a closeup of how we wired our IRF520 modules. You can see that the power to the modules is in parallel.

MIDI Controlled Solenoids with Arduino and Ableton Live - Part 1

At the end of the series you will have a setup that is capable doing this. This is a pretty complex topic so it is split into 3 parts to make it easier to follow.

Analog power meter reading

How to Read Your Power Meter

Learn how to read your power meter and measure the energy consumption of various devices in your home.

AVR microcontroler with printf function

AVR and printf

You should leave your STK500 setup exactly the same as it was setup for a previous guide.

Mosquitto is one of the most popular open source MQTT brokers.

How To Set Up An MQTT Broker with Mosquitto

There are a few options to get your MQTT broker up and running, including Dockers and bare-metal installations. Let's talk about some of the most common ways to get your MQTT broker ready to go.

433 Mhz hardware can extend your home automation.

433 Mhz Radio Transmitters

433 Mhz radio transmitters are available everywhere and they are usually very inexpensive. With a little bit of programming we can make them do anything we want.

5 Reasons You Should be Using Docker for Home Automation

If you are not using Docker on your home automation server, then it's time to start thinking about it.

Introduction to the Command Line Interface: A Beginners Guide to Using the CLI

Introduction to the Command-Line Interface for Beginners

The command-line interface is a text-based interface that allows you to interact with your computer.

This MIDI controller can be used to play music, write tracks in a DAW, or just about any home automation you can think of.

MIDI

You can use MIDI to write songs, play music, control games, or even control your home automations.

How to Set Up STK500 Jumper Settings for AVR Programming

Make sure that you have the STK500 user guide on hand, you are going to need it.

Load an Image in C#

- Perhaps you want to create an image processing program. - You may need to resize or rescale an image.

You can see that the MIDI data generated in Ableton Live flows into the USB port of an Arduino, where it is used to control solenoids.

MIDI Controlled Solenoids with Arduino and Ableton Live - Part 3

This is the 3rd and final part in a 3 part series about how to control solenoids using Ableton Live and an Arduino.

Learning Linux will help you with many different home automation projects.

Linux

When you get interested in home automation, you are eventually going to want to learn Linux.

There are many different Arduinos to choose from, such as this Uno variety.

Arduino

Many home automation projects can be solved by simply "throwing an Arduino at it". Our Arduino articles show you how.

What is a binary program file

What is a Binary Program File

We cover what binary program files are and where you should put them on your computer

How to Darken an Image in C#

In order to darken an image in C# you need to look at each pixel one at a time and decrease it's red, green, and blue values.

AVR Port Input Logic

In this guide we will write a program in C that makes some decisions based on the state of input pins.