Had the privilege last month of adding LCD support to duino, a friendly library for controlling an Arduino from node.js — should be pretty easy to port to the node.js firmata library too. Thanks to &yet for sponsoring that development!

The work came up while I was on holiday, so with some help from Sparkfun I got outfitted with a good little mobile setup. (Embroidered tablecloth sold separately.)

Now that I'm home, with a "real" Arduino left over, I'm hoping to continue prototyping a few useful projects. These should also help me explore some "Internet of Things" problems that have been bothering me for a while:

• Yogurt maker / sous vide apparatus [more on this soon?]
• Household current sensor [since my Kill-a-Watt only measures boring things]
• Chicken coop monitoring [meh? the chickens do their thing without it…]
• Hoop house monitoring/control [if I…uh…build a hoop house first]

Since I'm mostly focusing on software (wiring together off-the-shelf components instead of designing custom circuits) the main trick seems to be getting the interface right. Which is the fun part!