PIR sensor + Arduino + Processing + Skype…

This post is about a simple and interesting combination of software and hardware.

Last week, I picked up a couple of PIR sensors from Ebay.

pir2_w500

PIR sensors are (usually) easy to interface with an arduino board.
Red: 5V, Black: Ground, Yellow: Analog In. Could it be easier than this?

PIR_w500

After a bit of experimentation, I found that the board sends a pulse as soon as it detects some sort of movement. Also, it sends a pulse at the very beginning, when it sort of “boots”.

My ultimate aim was to start Skype as soon as movement was detected.

I loaded the standard firmata sketch on my arduino, see: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Firmata. Basically, the arduino simply sends all the analog port readings to Processing.

The following Processing code is simply a proof of concept. The sketch starts, looks for an arduino at the second serial port of my PC, waits for 5 secs for the PIR to send its first pulse and then, if movement is detected calls a number, using Skype.

At any moment, in the middle of the screen, you see the value of the PIR sensor.

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import cc.arduino.*;
import java.io.*;
import processing.serial.*;
 
int analogPin = 5;
int myV; // PIR sensor value
 
PFont font;
Arduino arduino;
 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
void setup(){
  size(400, 300);
  font = createFont("ArialUnicodeMS-12.vlw",22, false); 
 
  //my board is the 2nd serial device, hence Arduino.list()[1]
  println(arduino.list());
  arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[1], 57600);
}
 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
void draw(){
    background(0);
    fill(255);
 
  // the PIR sensor is sending out HIGH signal in the first 5 secs
  // so we will ignore all the early signals
  if(millis() < 5000){
 
  }
 
  else{
    // myV is the scaled value of the PIR sensor
    myV = arduino.analogRead(analogPin);
 
    textFont(font, 22); 
    textAlign(CENTER,CENTER);
    text("PIR sensor value: " + myV,width/2,height/2);
    text("Active for " + round(millis()/1000) + " seconds",width/2,height*3/4);
 
    callme();
  }
}
 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
void callme(){
 
  // you should be logged in on Skype and have some credit
  // if your are dialling an external line
  String mySkype = "C:\\Program Files\\Skype\\Phone\\skype.exe /nosplash /callto:+44798000000";
 
  if(myV>100){
 
    print(" MyV: " + myV + " ");
 
    try {
      String line;
      Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(mySkype);
      p.waitFor();
      System.out.println("EXIT: " + p.exitValue());
    }
 
    catch (Exception err) {
      err.printStackTrace();
    }
 
      delay(3000); 
  }
 
 
 
}
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Here is a very short video of this test in action:

PIR Sensor – Test from Arkadian.Eu on Vimeo.