Ever wish you could synchronize your brainwaves with an otherworldly luminescent plant from the comfort of your own room?
The post This Trippy Arduino-Powered “Plant” Trains Your Brain appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
What would you pay for a 1.2Ghz dual-core ARM computer with 1GB RAM, 4GB onboard flash, 800×600 display, and 5 megapixel camera? Did we mention it also has WiFi, Bluetooth, and is a low power design, including a lithium battery which will run it for hours? Does $15 sound low enough? That’s what you can pay these days for an Android cell phone. The relentless march of economies of scale has finally given us cheap phones with great specs. These are prepaid “burner” phones, sold by carriers as a loss leader. Costs are recouped in the cellular plan, but that only happens if the buyer activates said plan. Unlike regular cell phones, you aren’t bound by a contract to activate the phone. That means you get all those features for $15-$20, depending on where you buy it.
The specs I’m quoting come from the LG Optimus Exceed 2, which is currently available from Amazon in the USA for $20. The same package has been available for as little as $10 from retail stores in recent weeks. The Exceed 2 is just one of several low-cost Android prepaid phones on the market now, and undoubtedly the list will change. How to keep up with the current deals? We found an unlikely place. Perk farmers. Perk is one of those “We pay you to watch advertisements” companies. We’re sure some people actually watch the ads, but most set up “farms” of drone phones which churn through the videos. The drones earn the farmer points which can be converted to cash. How does this all help us? In order to handle streaming video, Perk farmers want the most powerful phones they can get for the lowest investment. Subreddits like /r/perktv have weekly “best deals” posts covering prepaid phones. There are also tutorials on rooting and debloating current popular phones like the Whirl 2 and the Exceed 2.
Once you have your phone, the first order of business is to boot it up. Many prepaid phones try to force the user to go through an activation process. There is always a back door for installers to exit the process though. In the case of the Exceed 2, simply pressing volume up, volume down, back, and home quits out of the activation process.
Some applications require root permissions. To achieve this, your best bet is to do a bit of Googling for your particular phone model. The XDA developers forums are a great resource for this. While prepaid phones don’t usually have communities behind them like flagship phones, you can often find at least some information on what it takes to root your particular device. The most well-known “root every device” application to date is towelroot, created by GeoHot. You might remember [George Hotz] aka GeoHot as the first person to jailbreak an iPhone. He also made the news by getting into a bit of hot water with Sony over some PlayStation 3 security holes. Towelroot uses a Linux kernel exploit (futex) to gain root permissions. Released in June of 2014, the futex exploit has been patched on most new phones. However, it hasn’t been patched on phones that receive relatively few updates – like prepaid phones. On the Exceed 2, Towelroot works perfectly, giving the user root without even requiring a reboot. Once the phone is rooted, a root privilege manager like SuperSU is needed to keep track of which applications should have root permissions. Once that is done, anything goes! We’ve found packages like BusyBox to be huge helps – especially when working at the console through Android Debug Bridge (ADB).
Between these low-cost phones and the used phones every family seems to have floating around now, there are a heck of a lot of devices out there waiting to be used. What can you do with a spare Android phone? Quite a lot. There has never been a better time to learn to code for the Android Platform. Android Studio is the current official development environment. If you know a bit of Java, it’s easy to jump in and start making apps. If you’re not a Java head but want to learn, there are tutorials all over the web to help get into the swing of things.
Not a coder? The swiss army knife of automating android devices has long been Tasker. Tasker allows you to set off simple scripts (called tasks) with triggers which can be anything from plugging in headphones to connecting to a particular WiFi access point, to pressing a button on the screen. Want your smart phone to announce your arrival home with your own theme music? Just set up a Tasker profile to play a song when it connects to your home WiFi router. Tasker supports plenty of actions natively, and can be extended with plugins. Scripting Layer For Android SL4A) even allows it to extended with Python scripts.
Moving into the hardware world, there are plenty of ways to get GPIOs from an Android phone. The Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK) is getting a bit long in the tooth, but it’s still a great way to interface an Arduino board like the Arduino Mega ADK with your device. Another option for getting into the hardware realm is the IOIO OTG board. As the name implies, this new version of the IOIO board supports the USB OTG standard. This allows it to connect a phone either as a host or as an accessory. Need a simple wireless terminal for your project? Grab a terminal app and a Serial Port Profile (SPP) compatible Bluetooth module, and Bob’s your uncle. Interested in hacking with the ESP8266? There is an entire page of apps on the Google Play store dedicated to interfacing with everyone’s favorite low-cost WiFi module.
We’ve just covered the tip of the iceberg here. What kind of hacking would you do with a spare Android phone, or one of these low-cost prepaid devices. Let us know in the comments!
Learn how a team of students created the first Google Android-based autonomous R/C car, able to detect lanes, avoid obstacles, self-park, and more.
The post Build Your Own Android-Powered Self Driving R/C Car appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Anyone who has a Raspberry Pi and an old Nintendo has had the same thought. “Maybe I could shove the Pi in here?” This ran through [Adam’s] head, but instead of doing the same old Raspberry Pi build he decided to put a Nexus Player inside of this old video game console, with great success. Not only does it bring the power of a modern media player, it still works as an NES.
If you haven’t seen the Nexus Player yet, it’s Google’s venture into the low-cost home media center craze. It has some of the same features of the original Chromecast, but runs Android and is generally much more powerful. Knowing this, [Adam] realized it would surpass the capabilities of the Pi and would even be able to run NES emulators.
[Adam] went a little beyond a simple case mod. He used a custom PCB and an Arduino Pro Micro to interface the original controllers to the Nexus Player. 3D printed brackets make sure everything fits inside the NES case perfectly, rather than using zip ties and hot glue. He then details how to install all of the peripherals and how to set up the Player to run your favorite game ROMs. The end result is exceptionally professional, and brings to mind some other classic case mods we’ve seen before.
Using a combination of Lego bricks and other electronics, Danny built a robot that is controlled wirelessly by a wearable Lego "exosuit."
The post Controlling a Robot with a Wearable Lego Exosuit appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Dimitri Platis is a software engineer who’s been working with his team on an Android-based self-driving vehicle which uses machine vision algorithms and techniques as well as data from the on-board sensors, in order to follow street lanes, perform parking manoeuvres and overtake obstacles blocking its path:
The innovational aspect of this project, is first and foremost the use of an Android phone as the unit which realizes the image processing and decision making. It is responsible for wirelessly transmitting instructions to an Arduino Mega, that controls the physical aspects of the vehicle. Secondly, the various hardware components (i.e. sensors, motors etc) are programmatically handled in an object oriented way, using a custom made Arduino library, which enables developers without background in embedded systems to trivially accomplish their tasks, not caring about lower level implementation details.
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On the software dimension of the physical layer, an Arduino library was created (based on a previous work of mine [1], [2]) which encapsulated the usage of the various sensors and permits us to handle them in an object oriented manner. The API, sports a high abstraction level, targeting primarily novice users who “just want to get the job done”. The components exposed, should however also be enough for more intricate user goals. The library is not yet 100% ready to be deployed out of the box in different hardware platforms, as it was built for an in house system after all, however with minor modifications that should not be a difficult task. This library was developed to be used with the following components in mind: an ESC, a servo motor for steering, HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensors, SHARP GP2D120 infrared distance sensors, an L3G4200D gyroscope, a speed encoder, a Razor IMU. Finally, you can find the sketch running on the actual vehicle here. Keep in mind that all decision making is done in the mobile device, therefore the microcontroller’s responsibility is just to fetch commands, encoded as Netstrings and execute them, while fetching sensor data and transmitting them.
Check the Arduino library on Github, explore the circuit below and enjoy the car in the video:
Here’s the essential bill of materials:
Self-driving cars are in the news almost daily, but they are not exactly in my automotive budget for this decade. Today, that has changed. While this car might be smaller and not capable of giving me a ride, it’s still autonomous and, best of all, it is a project that I […]
The post Self-Driving R/C Car Parks Itself Just Like a Lexus appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Blynk is a new platform that allows you to build interfaces for controlling and monitoring your projects from your iOS and Android device.
The post Control an Arduino with Your Smartphone via Blynk appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Skateboards are fun, but you have to do all that pesky kicking in order to get anywhere. That’s why [Nick] decided to build his own electric skateboard. Not only is the skateboard powered with an electric motor, but the whole thing can be controlled from a smart phone.
[Nick] started out with a long board deck that he had made years ago. After cleaning it up and re-finishing it, the board was ready for some wheels. [Nick] used a kit he found online that came with the trucks, wheels, and a belt. The trucks have a motor mount welded in place already. [Nick] used a Turnigy SK3 192KV electric motor to drive the wheels. He also used a Turnigy electronic speed controller to make sure he could vary the speed of the board while riding.
Next [Nick] needed some interface between a smart phone and the motor controller. He chose to use an Arduino Nano hooked up to a Bluetooth module. The Nano was able to directly drive the motor controller, and the Bluetooth module made it easy to sync up to a mobile phone. The Android app was written using MIT’s App Inventor software. It allows for basic control over the motor speed so you can cruise in style. Check out the video below for a slide show and some demonstration clips.
It’s a popular project, and eerily similar to the one we saw a couple months back.
There are a myriad of modern ways to lock and unlock doors. Keypads, Fingerprint scanners, smart card readers, to name just a few. Quite often, adding any of these methods to an old door may require replacing the existing locking mechanism. Donning his Bollé sunglasses allowed [Dheera] to come up with a slightly novel idea to unlock doors without having to change his door latch. Using simple, off the shelf hardware, a Smartwatch, some code crunching and a Google Now app, he was able to yell “OK Google, Open Sesame” at his Android Wear smartwatch to get his apartment door to open up.
The hardware, in his own words, is trivial. An Arduino, an HC-05 bluetooth module and a servo. The servo is attached to his door latch using simple hardware that looks sourced from the closest hardware store. The code is split in to two parts. The HC-05 listens for a trigger signal, and informs the Arduino over serial. The Arduino in turn activates the servo to open the door. The other part is the Google Now app. Do note that the code, as he clearly points out, is “barebones”. If you really want to implement this technique, it would be wise to add in authentication to prevent all and sundry from opening up your apartment door and stealing your precious funky Sunglasses. Watch a video of how he put it all together after the break. And if you’re interested, here are a few other door lock hacks we’ve featured in the past.
