Crowtail IR Reflective Sensor and Analog Gyro

To make making easier and user can be more easier to bring their innovation into products, Elecrow aims at providing high quality products and services with lower price. what's more, elecrow keeps on creating a series of crowtail modules that are plug and play and very easy to use especially for the Arduino starters. Here you can have a look at the following three crowtail modules with good features.

IR Reflective Sensor

This IR reflective module emits the infrared light and then detects if the echo received, to estimates if there is a obstacle or not. It utilizes a RPR-220 reflective photo sensor modules, When no infrared light echo received, that is, there is no obstacle in front of the sensor, this module output logic HIGH, and vice versa.

There is also an on-board potentiality to adjust the sensitivity. This sensor is a basic and widely used part in applications such as line-following cars, rotary speed detection, auto data logging on utility meters. It can be used to compact disk players, copiers, game machines,Obstacle Detection, Office automation equipment and watt-hour meter pulse data sampling.

Crowtail- Analog Gyro

The Crowtail- Analog Gyro is based on an angular velocity sensor(Murata-ENC-03R) that uses the phenomenon of Coriolis force, which is generated when a rotational angular velocity is applied to.It provides 1-axis velocity with analog output. with precision and quick-response measurements, the modules suitable for applications with position& posture controlling.

if you are interested in these two, you can visit elecrow online store and you will see more crowtail sensors available for your project and may be some of them can be of great help for your project.

Crowtail- Sound Sensor and Touch Sensor

Crowtail- Sound Sensor can detect the sound loudness of the environment. The main component of the module is a simple microphone to receive the sound signal, with band pass filter and a LMV358 amplifier to make the output signal easy to be received by microprocessor. 
    
This module outputs analog signal that shows the relative loudness. Besides, an on-board potentiometer can be used to adjust output voltage.

Crowtail touch sensor can detect the human touch by sensing the change of capacitance. Based on the touch IC TTP223-B, this module can detect human finger in 0~3mm, that is, you can place this sensor under a non metallic surface such as the glass or paper, with thickness less than 3MM, this would be useful for applications that waterproof is needed, or you want to make the buttons secret. 
    
With the panel mount design, that is, the side of touch pad is smooth. Elecrow Crowtail- Touch Sensor is easy to install in projects, users can easily install it onto cases or other internal materials.

Useful information about VS1053 MP3 Shield you can't skip

For the starters who are running with the Arduino world, knowing more about Arduino products can be essential. Now allow me to introduce the VS1053 MP3 shield for you. It is a great MP3 decoder, it is capable of decoding Ogg Vorbis/MP3/AAC/WMA/MIDI audio and encoding IMA ADPCM and user-loadable Ogg Vorbis, can drive 30 ohm headphones with no additional power supply. This VS1053 MP3 Shield is designed based on VS1053B from VLSI.

For the best headphone listening experience, the VS1053 includes EarSpeaker spatial processing which accurately simulates how a room with stereo loudspeakers would sound. In addition to being able to decode all major formats, VS1053 is capable of recording in Ogg Vobis files. With the SD card slot on the other side of the board, you can play mp3 files from SD card using this shield. It is easily to drop it in your project or make a mp3 player using your Arduino.

Besides this, you can also know more features about the VS1053 MP3 shield:

1. Can play a variety of music formats, support for OGG encoding real-time recording
2. SPI interface, the control signal lines are led out
3. A headphone and stereo output. A microphone for recording. A line_in input interface.
4. Power indicator. 3.3V and 2.8V of LDO chip AMS-1117 on board, provides up to 800mA current
5. A single power supply: +5 VDC
6. 12.288 Mhz crystal, SD card slot

With the SD card slot on the other side of the board, you can play mp3 files from SD card using this shield. It is easily to drop it in your project or make a mp3 player using your Arduino.To read more info, you can also visit the Wiki link for the detail such as usage, code and so on.

Crowtail modules needed in the plant automatically caring system

Creative can make life more convenient. This is a project mainly about making an Arduino smart house to take care of the plant automatically when the people are out for days.  In this project, there are many modules you may need, you can choose the crowtail modules cause they are plug and play, very easy to use even you are a beginner sunning with Arduino world. 

Before the project, you need to prepare the following materials:

1.Crowduino

The Crowduino is 100% Arduino compatible board. It is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328 ( datasheet). It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, a reset button, and a XBee socket. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller. Simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.

2. Crowtail - Base Shield

It has stranded interfaces for convenient connection. The Crowtail- Base Shield plugs into Arduino and is the foundation of the Crowtail system. ALL I/O ports of the Arduino are exposed and adapted into Crowtail connectors which include digital I/O,analog I/O,and specialized ports(I2C,UART).

3. Crowtail Buzzer  The buzzer module is for making sound in your project. It sounds when activated by a logic HIGH signal. Connect the buzzer to any of the D(digital) ports of Crowtail- Base Shiled, you can easily make it sounds with setting the related ports to logic HIHG.

4. Crowtail - Moisture Sensor It is used to test the soil moisture of environment tree. This sensor uses the two probes to pass current through the soil, and then it reads then resistance to get the moisture level. More water makes the soil conduct electricity more easily (less resistance), while dry soil conducts electricity poorly (more resistance). Compares to the other moisture sensor using the same moisture test method, this module has a super long legs, making it suitable for actually applications.  

5. Crowtail - Light Sensor  It’s used to test the light strength of environment tree.The Light sensor module uses the GL5516 photoresistor to detect the light intensity of the environment. The resistance of the sensor decreases when the light intensity of the environment increases. The chip LMV358 is used as a voltage follower to enable you get a accurate data. 

6. Crowtail - Temperature & Humidiy Sensor  It’s used to test the temperature & humidity of the office.The module contains a DHT11 temperature & humidity senorthat is a complex sensor with a calibrated digital signal out.It use digital module acquisition technology and the temperature&humidity sensor technology.Sensor consists of a resistance type moisture element and a NTC temperature measuring element. Because of single wire serial interface, it is easy to use the module.

7. Crowtail - OLED  It’s used to test the soil moisture, temperature & humidity and light strength of living environment.

8. Crowtail - Serial Wifi x1 it’s the LAN server of company and can know the environmental state of plant when visit.

All these modules you can get in high quality and low price from Elecrow and the steps you can refer to http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-smart-home-Environment-tree/