Los Angeles-based interactive agency Friendly Vengeance is putting up its dukes to “Knock Out Injustice” with the five-day social media fundraising campaign “KO Bots” to benefit L.A. Kitchen.

A pair of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots are ingeniously employed for this charity boxing match, in which the action is entirely decided by Twitter. Participants tweet @KO_Bots with the hashtags #RedBot or #BlueBot to prompt the robot of that color to take a symbolic swing at issues including ageism, food waste and recidivism, then watch the impact of their post by following along in real-time online.

Punches are thrown using a set of servo motors connected to an Arduino Mega capable of reading simple inputs (such as a tweet) and generating an output (in this case, a punch). Friendly Vengeance CEO Steve Tiseo tell us:

To detect a popped up head, we attached a photoresistor below the chin and set a threshold for determining when the bot is “knocked out.” A Python script searches for #RedBot and #BlueBot, and then sends integers to the Arduino to randomize punches via USB serial communication. If a bot’s knocked out, it sends a number back to the Python script to tally a KO on the site.

After playing, users receive a thank you tweet and a link to make a donation. To learn more about the project and its cause, head over to the KO Bots page. The fight will be streaming from December 19 to December 23, though tweets can be sent to the robots at any time during the event.

If you’d like to observe certain celestial elements, you could do research and search the sky manually. Or just create a system to do it for you!

This is exactly what Subham Paul has done using an Arduino Mega, a GPS module, and 3.5-turn-pan and 180-degree-tilt servos. The real-time tracking device can predict the position of planets, calculated using Kepler’s Laws.

Data about the celestial body is input into his setup and then precisely pointed it out in the sky with a laser. All of this, of course, is dependent on where the user currently resides, which is taken care of via the GPS module as well as an optional MPU-9250.

As you could imagine, this is naturally an involved project in concept and implementation. You can find an introduction and links to further build steps here.

We’ve seen plenty of Arduino-equipped holiday sweaters over the years, but none as teched-out as this one. Last Christmas, UK-based Makerspace fizzPOP and electronics retailer Maplin teamed up to create quite the fun and festive jumper.

The aptly named “Ultimate Christmas Jumper” features an Uno, a Mega, an Adafruit FLORA, four 8×8 LED panels, some NeoPixels, a portable 10,000mAh power bank, as well as a pair of electret microphone amplifiers that enable it to react to sounds.

A sewn-on, 3D-printed fireplace holds the display, which as you can see in the video below, flashes a series of holiday images ranging from Santa, to Rudolph, to season’s greetings.

Want to wear one to your next party? Lucky for you, fizzPOP and Maplin have put together a video tutorial to help get you started!

If you simply want to have a drink now and then, building your own automated distillery probably isn’t the easiest way to obtain alcohol. As shown in this Instructables post, however, it can be done. On the other hand, if you create your own “NanoStillery,” you’ll have to contend with possible legal and safety issues while running the process… and of course, the risks of actually using the product.

Though the writeup appears quite good, with three control panels, custom mechanical components and a nicely-welded frame, it’s likely not a good project to attempt without a bit of engineering experience!

There are three panel boxes in the NanoStillery™, the main panel is driven by an Arduino Mega and the secondary one houses an Adafruit Feather GPRS board for transmitting data to the interweb. The third box has a large 12V power supply and a bank of relays in it.

The main control panel receives information from the various sensors in the system—temperatures, pressure and alcohol vapor levels and controls various valves, pump and the boiler heater via the relays. It then communicates with the Adafruit Feather via the I2C bus which then sends the data to a database where it is accessed from this webpage.

The GPRS module could very well have been bolted into the main control panel, but, for one, I had run out of room and secondly, I wanted the module to be removable so that it could be used for other projects in the future. Getting the two ‘machines’ to communicate with each other effectively was quite challenging. It was OK if the numbers were just simple small integers, but as soon as more complex ‘floats’ were involved, some serious number crunching code had to be developed.

Want to learn more? You can find all the necessary information on NanoStillery, including its code, over on Instructables.

The Rex800 looks like a dinosaur Terminator, a terrifying proposition, and perhaps a great merchandising opportunity!

YouTuber “RobitFactory” is in the process of creating a 1/10 replica of the “Sue” dinosaur skeleton, now featured at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. What he has at the moment is a rough frame made out of tubing, as well as a metallic gray head with glowing red eyes.

The video takes us through the build process, along with some of RobitFactory’s future plans which include voice-activation. It’s an ambitious project, and in preparation for upgrades, he’s switched out the Arduino Uno used originally for a Mega board, and installed a Molex connector on the head so it can be easily disconnected. It will be exciting to see where this build goes!

Intrigued? Be sure to check out the RobitFactory’s YouTube page.

If you grew up in the ’90s and would love to play some of your favorite hit songs through something a bit more nostalgic than your smartphone, perhaps you can do what “digital alchemist” Fuzzy Wobble has done and transform an old-school payphone into a fully-functional boombox.

Fuzzy Wobble was able to get his hands on an inexpensive payphone and hacked it using an Arduino Mega, an Adafruit MP3 Maker Shield, a 20W amplifier, a 20W speaker, and some other components. The unique boombox is also equipped with a rangefinder that detects whenever someone walks by, triggering the phone to ring and enticing someone to answer the call.

The phone is programmed with a recorded menu along with instructions on how to select one of several pre-loaded song. Hitting the star key sends the device into broadcast mode.

What’s neat is that there’s a tiny booklet filled with images of ’90s tunes, from Coolio to Sugar Ray to Semisonic, each with a four-digit number on the back. Simply punch in the code and the payphone begins to play music.

Pretty awesome, right? You can build one yourself by following Fuzzy Wobble’s step-by-step Instructable here, and check out his demo video below.

In order to convince his kids to stay in bed just a little longer, Maker Ralph Crutzen has created a “wakeup light” using an Arduino Mega and an RGB LED strip.

Those of us that have toddlers know that they can wake up very early. If you’d like to get some more sleep without leaving them unsupervised to dangerously play with your electronics and power tools, then a “wakeup light” could be a good solution.

Crutzen’s system uses an Arduino Mega with a real-time clock to control a strip of LEDs, along with an LCD display to change settings. Besides a reminder to kids to “please stay in bed a few minutes longer,” perhaps a similar setup could be used as alternative alarm clock for adults as well.

You can find instructions for this build on Instructables, or check out the project’s code on GitHub. Finally, if you’d like to print an enclosure to protect humans and electronics, Crutzen used this design.

If you’ve got a cartridge-based gaming system, this EPROM burner will let you load whatever game you want!

Robson Couto recently acquired an old SNES. A great console for its time, but it only came with one cartridge, a bootleg copy of Mortal Kombat. Legalities aside, he decided that he would experiment with his own bootleg cartridge creator via an EPROM burner made as an Arduino Mega shield.

His process involves finding an unwanted game cartridge (he prefers sports, though your results may vary), burn the ROM, then exchange the cartridge ROM for the newly-burned ROM.

According to Couto, EPROM is “easier to program than flash.” and you can see how he did it on his blog post here. Code for the project is also available on GitHub.

“Tony the Pinball Wizard” has successfully 3D-printed a fully-functional pinball machine.

The retired software engineer provides a detailed writeup, beginning with pinball’s roots in the 1700s to its eventual fall from popularity in the 1990s and 2000s. If you find this interesting, you could likely pick one up on Craigslist, but Tony instead decided to build his own.

This process isn’t for the feint of heart though, as it took him over 200 hours to design the game, and another 1,200 or more hours to 3D print everything. Materials included 8.5 kilometers of filament, of which 85 types were used. The whole thing is powered by a pair of Arduino Mega boards, needed to accommodate the massive number of inputs and outputs required.

The machine was brought to life and displayed inside 3D FilaPrint’s stand at recent industry trade show. You can see Tony’s excellent project in action below and read all about it here.

Using a Kinect sensor with MATLAB/Simulink and an Arduino, B.Avinash and J.Karthikeyan made a robotic arm to mimic their every move.

If you need a robotic arm to follow your movements, the Kinect sensor is a great place to start. On the other hand, it’s a long leap programming-wise to go from sensor input to coordinated movement of servo motors. Through a toolchain stretching from the sensor itself, to a computer, and finally to an Arduino Mega controlling the servos directly, Avinash and Karthikeyan did just that.

For their process, the computer takes data from the Kinect sensor, then translates it into servo angles using the MATLAB and Simulink computer programs. Resulting data is then fed into the Arduino via a serial connection, which controls the robot’s movements appropriately with a slight delay.

Be sure to check out the project’s Instructables page to learn more about this awesome build!