Over several posts Daniel Min Hyuk Jang has described how to build your own capacitance meter with an Arduino. Although it is a work in progress, the theory behind using RC time constants to determine the C value and Daniel's take on the project is quite interesting. Furthermore there are some other interesting related posts on his website. In the meanwhile, here's an example of the C-meter:
To get started, visit here for the project main page, here for the code. And we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When making your own Arduino projects with a character LCD - save time and move forward with the Freetronics LCD & Keypad shield which contains a bright 16x2 character LCD and five buttons that can be read from only one analog input pin:
