I have a G-scale train made by LGB that we get out at Christmas to run around the tree. A few years ago the controller stopped working, and it turns out they are pretty expensive to replace (here is an affiliate link for the control, there was also a power supply.) This post shows how I made my own controller. No programming required!
Internet of Coffee!
Monitoring the morning brew with the internet of things.

Do you want to know when your coffee is done brewing but are too lazy to walk over to see for yourself? Do you need to monitor your coffee pot when you are out of town? Probably not, but here is one solution to the non-problem. CLICK HERE to see if the coffee is hot, or keep reading to see how to make your own.
Dumbo the Autonomous Boat
Dumbo is an autonomous research vessel constructed by students at Cal Maritime. Dumbo carries temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen sensors and makes oceanographic observations in the waters off of the Cal Maritime Campus. This work has been supported by the CSU Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology (COAST).
NMEA 0183 Speedometer
I had an email request to find this project from 2010… I updated the code too!

This project takes the pulse from a paddlewheel boat speed sensor and makes an NMEA output on the serial port. It should work with most through-hull speed transducers, and also with windspeed transducers too. The NMEA stream comes from the arduino serial port, so if you have a USB arduino you can hook it up to a laptop easily. If you want to hook it up to another NMEA instrument you’ll need something like a MAX232 chip to take the TTL logic from the serial port pins and convert them to RS-232 (or convert to RS-422 to meet the NMEA specification).
Start timer
This is an update of an old project. Click the link to navigate to the Richmond Yacht Club’s Wednesday night beercan starting line. It uses your phone’s GPS info and system clock.

n3m0 the autonomous boat

I have been documenting the build of n3m0, my latest autonomous boat over at hackaday.io. It has been pretty successful so far, here are some links:
I won $1000 in the hackaday prize! Actually $2000!
Someone else is already building another one
Hello world!
If you’re looking for my old site, sorry it got hacked and had to be put down.
You can email me (mholden at csum dot edu) if you are trying to find something specific.