What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction – Our First Project, explains how to practice our soldering and de-soldering skills by building an infrared flash light and head lamp.

Chapter 2, Infrared Beacon, continues with our infrared light project—that is, building an invisible infrared flashing beacon.

Chapter 3, Motion Alarm, explains how to build a simple but effective intruder alarm with the always popular LM555 timer.

Chapter 4, Sound Card-based Oscilloscope, covers the beginning of the combined hardware and software projects. We will be building some hardware. It will allow you to use a USB sound card as a simple but useful oscilloscope.

Chapter 5, Calibrated RF Source, introduces you to the wonderful world of RF when you build a 50 MHz calibrated reference. Useful on its own, it will also be used in the next chapter.

Chapter 6, RF Power Meter – Hardware, shows us how to build ourselves a meter capable of measuring RF power at various frequencies. We will avoid most of the layout headaches by using a demo board provided by the manufacturer of the power detector.

Chapter 7, RF Power Meter – Software, explains how to build a BeagleBone Black-based software development system. Then, we will go on to write the software which will not only measure RF power but will also control an external RF attenuator.

Chapter 8, Creating a ZigBee Network of Sensors, covers how to build a wireless security system for your home or office based on the ZigBee RF module.