You may think that visually sensing colors is a complicated operation, requiring a camera or other advanced sensors. This isn’t always the case, as engineer “Tech Martian” illustrates in the video below, using a photoresistor and RGB LED along with an Arduino 101 board.

His setup uses the LED to shine on a piece of paper in three colors, measuring the reflected light intensity. These reflections are first calibrated by reflecting light off of white and black paper, which can then be combined to show the colors presented in front of the emitter/sensor pair.

Be sure to check out the project write-up for more information, including the Arduino code!

This looks like the end of the road for Intel’s brief foray into the “maker market”. Reader [Chris] sent us in a tip that eventually leads to the discontinuation notice (PCN115582-00, PDF) for the Arduino 101 board. According to Intel forum post, Intel is looking for an alternative manufacturer. We’re not holding our breath.

We previously reported that Intel was discontinuing its Joule, Galileo, and Edison lines, leaving only the Arduino 101 with its Curie chip still standing. At the time, we speculated that the first wave of discontinuations were due to the chips being too fast, too power-hungry, and too expensive for hobbyists. Now that Intel is pulling the plug on the more manageable Arduino 101, the fat lady has sung: they’re giving up on hardware hackers entirely after just a two-year effort.

According to the notice, you’ve got until September 17 to stock up on Arduino 101s. Intel is freezing its Curie community, but will keep it online until 2020, and they’re not cancelling their GitHub account. Arduino software support, being free and open, will continue as long as someone’s willing to port to the platform.

Who will mourn the Arduino 101? Documentation was sub-par, but a tiny bit better than their other hacker efforts, and it wasn’t overpriced. We’re a little misty-eyed, but we’re not crying.  You?

[via Golem.de]

Using the Arduino 101’s built-in Bluetooth capability, Bob from the I Like to Make Stuff YouTube channel has crafted a beautiful, smartphone-controlled scoreboard.

If you’re into competitive sports, or perhaps want to settle who takes the trash out the most once and for all, an RGB scoreboard is a great solution. Perhaps it’s overkill in some cases, but Bob’s creation, which he expertly makes in the video here out of MDF looks amazing, and is large enough to be seen from a distance. It’s also small enough to be nominally portable.

His setup employs an RGB LED unit for each of the pixels that make up the score display, and uses an Arduino 101 as the brains of the device. Control is accomplished via a mobile app.

You can find Bob’s blurb on this project here, and the code for it on the project’s GitHub page. BLE 101, the app used for phone control, can be downloaded on iTunes.

Just days after celebrating the Arduino 101‘s first birthday at Maker Faire Rome, we’ve partnered with Hackster, Intel, and Seeed Studio to launch an exciting new contest. We’re challenging you to unleash the powers of the Intel® Curie™ Module-based board and “Invent Your Future.”

Perhaps you want to build an autonomous boat for collecting ocean pollution data, or a pair of shoes that play different sounds for different exercises, or maybe even a wireless gesture-based home automation controller? Whatever you choose, we want to see how you use the Arduino 101 as the brains behind your next creation.

For those who may not be familiar with the 101, the board combines the performance and low-power consumption of the Intel® Curie™ Module with the simplicity of Arduino. It keeps the same robust form factor and peripheral list as the Uno with the addition of Bluetooth LE capabilities and a six-axis accelerometer/gyro to help you easily expand your creativity into the connected world.

The Arduino 101 is designed with two tiny 32MHz cores: an x86 (Curie™, a Quark™ module) and a 32-bit ARC architecture core. Even with this added power, the Arduino 101 is still programmable using sketches from the Arduino IDE.

And now back to the contest… To kick off things, Hackster is giving away 150 Arduino 101 and Seeed Studio Grove Starter Kits to the best ideas submitted by November 20, 2016. But that’s not all, top entries in each category?—?smart home, environment, and healthcare—will receive a Microsoft Surface Pro 4! You have until February 26, 2017 to submit your projects!

Want to learn more? Head over to the contest’s official page on Hackster.io.

Just days after celebrating the Arduino 101‘s first birthday at Maker Faire Rome, we’ve partnered with Hackster, Intel, and Seeed Studio to launch an exciting new contest. We’re challenging you to unleash the powers of the Intel® Curie™ Module-based board and “Invent Your Future.”

Perhaps you want to build an autonomous boat for collecting ocean pollution data, or a pair of shoes that play different sounds for different exercises, or maybe even a wireless gesture-based home automation controller? Whatever you choose, we want to see how you use the Arduino 101 as the brains behind your next creation.

For those who may not be familiar with the 101, the board combines the performance and low-power consumption of the Intel® Curie™ Module with the simplicity of Arduino. It keeps the same robust form factor and peripheral list as the Uno with the addition of Bluetooth LE capabilities and a six-axis accelerometer/gyro to help you easily expand your creativity into the connected world.

The Arduino 101 is designed with two tiny 32MHz cores: an x86 (Curie™, a Quark™ module) and a 32-bit ARC architecture core. Even with this added power, the Arduino 101 is still programmable using sketches from the Arduino IDE.

And now back to the contest… To kick off things, Hackster is giving away 150 Arduino 101 and Seeed Studio Grove Starter Kits to the best ideas submitted by November 20, 2016. But that’s not all, top entries in each category?—?smart home, environment, and healthcare—will receive a Microsoft Surface Pro 4! You have until February 26, 2017 to submit your projects!

Want to learn more? Head over to the contest’s official page on Hackster.io.

Like the rest of humanity, Arduino Sweden’s interaction designer Marcus Johansson has been glued to the Pokémon GO app. However, as fun as flicking a digital ball with your finger to catch ‘em all may be, he wanted something a bit more realistic. Enter the Arduino Pokéball.

Based off an Arduino CTC project, an Arduino 101 housed inside some protective casing allows him to physically throw the ball, which is then mimicked within the game. It uses the 101’s IMU and Bluetooth track the toss and then send it to the phone.

See it in action below!

The brainchild of Tomás de Camino Beck, Polymath Boxes are experimental sound boxes. Using a Genuino Uno and 101 along with some 3D printing, these units enable young Makers and adults to experiment with programming and math to produce noises and tunes, from square and triangular waves to sample players and interactive sound generators.

The boxes were originally conceived by Camino Beck as part of an open-source experimental art project with the goal of stimulating STEAM in education, from high school to college, and to allow artists, engineers and computer scientists, or pretty much anyone interested, to explore programming and digital fabrication. They were developed and fabricated in “Inventoria”–Costa Rica’s own idea of a Makerspace.

More than just a finished project, these boxes are designed to be hacked and to help move away from more conventional ways of thinking when it comes to sound.

These boxes use coding as a way to “write music,” and to take advantage of the diversity of physical low cost sensors to trigger sound. Some of the boxes play with basic waves, just creating basic  PWM, and others go from there to create arpeggiator and interactive. They will be used in several workshops and experimental music concerts in Costa Rica.

A few weeks ago, an announcement was posted on the Arduino Forum mentioning new improvements on the software side of the Arduino/Genuino 101. With this release, the board–which was developed in collaboration with Intel–is reaching its full potential, with not only better code generation but unlocking useful features to make your sketches even more interactive as well.

You can easily upgrade the core using the Arduino IDE’s Board Manager (pictured below), while Arduino Create users will be automatically updated, so no action is required–the cool thing about the cloud!

In more detail:

• The GCC compiler has been updated to support hardware extensions to the ARC EM core in the Intel® Curie™ module. This provides significant improvements in floating point operations, bit shifting, and other operations to enhance Sketch performance.

• The Arduino/Genuino 101 platform offers 2MB Flash storage onboard, which is now enabled for user sketches.

• An experimental driver has been implemented to enable the I2S interface via the CurieI2S library. Connecting the I2S bus to an external DAC (digital to analog converter) allows users to play high-quality music (HiFi).

Other improvements and bug fixes:

• Motion Sensor: Several sample sketches, like MotionDetection, have been implemented to demonstrate the application of the IMU data
• Bluetooth LE: Several new examples for BLE peripheral library added
• IMU: Correct motion detection setting implemented
• Library CurieTimerOne APIs are now compatible with the TimerOne library

For comprehensive release notes refer to the Intel Open Source Technology Center on GitHub.

Did you know that if you take a head of romaine lettuce and eat all but the bottom, then place it in a bowl of water, it will regrow? This fun fact actually inspired Instructables user Evandromiami to develop a deep water culture hydroponic system that would optimize the process for him.

The lettuce is grown on top of a five-gallon plastic bucket filled with water under full spectrum lights, while an Arduino 101 monitors the light, humidity, temperature, water, and pH levels measured by a set of sensors. The system is controlled over Bluetooth, which enables the Maker to adjust settings and receive notifications on an LCD screen. All the electronics, including the Curie-based board, are tucked away inside a power strip and the entire hydroponic farm lives inside an A/C closet. 

The Arduino 101-driven project continues to be a work in progress, but Evandromiami has already begun to expand into other veggies like tomatoes. Ready to get into the world of hydroponics? Check out the Maker’s entire write-up here.

In support of the TBS show “America’s Greatest Makers,” YouTuber/plumber/stuntman/inventor Colin Furze recently took on the challenge of turning a bass guitar into a flamethrower with the help of a Genuino 101. Because after all, there’s nothing more metal than fire bursting as a rockstar shreds on-stage.

To bring this project life, Fruze added a pair of modified blow torches to the neck of the guitar and sawed off part of the instrument’s base to fit in the firing mechanisms. As you can see in his tutorial video below, the body is equipped with a gas reservoir on top, solenoid valves, a few switches, a gas supply to the blow torches, an inlet pipe, and some other components.

He even converted his amp to house a gas tank, along with a speaker, the Genuino board and a relay shield that enables the Maker to synchronize flames to certain musical patterns and sequences.

It goes without saying that you may not want to try this at home…