While you may not have a graduate degree in nuclear physics, you likely have some inkling that large amounts of radiation should be avoided. In order to monitor local levels, AdNovea has come up with a DIY Geiger-Müller counter, which displays radiation stats on a 20×4 LCD display.

The device uses an SBM-20 or STS-5 tube to measure radioactivity, with an Arduino Nano to process this input. It can be employed as a standalone unit, or transmit readings wirelessly via an Ethernet interface. Readings can then be tracked over time with a web app, or even shared with the wider world over the Internet.

This DIY low-cost ($50$/€43) C-GM Counter project provides hardware and firmware for building a Geiger-Müller counter device aka G.M. Counter for continuous measurement of the radioactivity level. It is based on an Arduino Nano, a 20 chars x 4 lines LCD display, a W5100 Ethernet card, a 400V power supply and very few components around. The number of components has been kept to minimum for easy assembling and reducing the cost.

The C-GM Counter is able to run as a standalone radioactivity counter or for ensuring long term radioactivity monitoring, the C-GM counter can be used in association with A-GM Manager (in the sequel) that is an open-source web application running on a SOHO server (e.g. QNAP sells Small Office Home Office servers). A-GM Manager is also able to publish the C-GM Counter measures on the worldwide shared map managed by GMC MAP. Finally, there is also a Node-RED version for integration of the C-GM Counter with Node-RED such as the QNAP IoT framework.

South Korean LEGO Certified Professional Wani Kim, with the help of Olive Seon, has created an incredible replica of the Death Star Trench Run scene from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

The LEGO diorama—which measures 2,680mm (8.79 feet) long, 1,370 mm (4.49 feet) deep, and stands 1,100 mm (3.60 feet) tall— features defensive turrets, along with Luke’s X-Wing, the wreckage of another Rebel ship, and Vader and two TIE Fighters in pursuit.

The build required 80,000 LEGO bricks to complete and even includes a cutaway of the back, revealing the insides of this astronomical object. If that wasn’t enough, an Arduino was used to coordinate flashing effects to further enhance this iconic recreation. 

Additional images of this impressive project, plus some of Kim’s other work, can be found on his Instagram page.

After going through what not to do when building an electric longboard, Electronoobs is now ready to show us how to control one of these devices. For his project, the YouTuber used a 6S battery pack, an ESC, a brushless motor, and an Arduino Nano, along with a handheld RC transmitter and receiver.

Underneath the deck, he’s broken up the hardware mounting into two parts—a front compartment contains the unit’s ample battery, while a rear enclosure houses the rest of the components.

The Arduino Nano receives PWM signals directly from the receiver, then translates them to ESC inputs, allowing for better handling of how the board starts and stops.

You can find more details on Electronoobs’ page here and in his video below! 

When you pick up a book, the text inside is normally the point, but what if the book itself was the story? That’s the idea behind Alistair Aichison’s Alt.Ctrl.GDC exhibition called “The Book Ritual.”

Aichison’s work is told through an interactive computer installation, where an onscreen book talks about loss and change, but also encourages you to add your story by creatively modifying a real book.

The process involves cutting and marking the book, and even requires the user to tear out pages to put it through an actual shredder—this is meant to evoke feelings of loss and regret, ultimately leading to the formation of new memories.  

Control is accomplished using infrared sensors that verify page destruction, along with an Arduino that interfaces with the computer running this Unity-based game.

The Book Ritual is a narrative game played using a real book and a real shredder. Your book becomes a character talking to you through the screen. It has a story to tell, but it wants you know your own story too. It asks you to write in its pages and deface it in creative ways to reflect your feelings. The book also needs you to tear out its pages and put them through a shredder.

This is where the custom hardware comes in: the shredder is attached to the computer by a USB cable and detects when paper’s going through it. So, you actually need to shred pages in order to progress.

The shredder itself is dressed up as a character, with big cartoon eyes and teeth. Because the subject matter is quite melancholic, I want the player to feel welcomed in by something innocent, childlike and friendly.

More details on the project can be found in Gamasutra’s recent article and on Aichison’s website here.

The Arduino Mega is a useful tool for the maker. Generally, once one has come up with plans for blinking LEDs that require more IO than is available on the Arduino Uno, one graduates to the Mega and goes for broke. However, it’s not typically what we’d consider as our first choice for video work. [Stephane] begs to differ, and coded this Bad Apple!! demo for the Arduino Mega 2560.

For those unfamiliar, video on the Arduino is actually somewhat of a solved problem – merely requiring a pair of resistors and some nifty code. The real meat of this hack is the video storage itself. It’s been done before, but by streaming data off an SD card or serial link. [Stephane] was determined to store everything on the Arduino itself, and thus the hack begun. Video data is stored as 1 bit per pixel, as it’s a simple black and white video as per the original inspiration. LZ77 compression was used to cram the data down without requiring too much RAM, which is a limited resource on the Mega. It’s video only, as the Mega is tapped out handling 3 minutes and 39 seconds of video storage, but future work may include syncing with a second Arduino to deliver the soundtrack.

It’s a hack that shows off [Stephane]’s ability to get impressive performance out of limited platforms. We’ve seen this before, with his excellent Star Fox port to the Arduboy. Video after the break.

Back in June 2017, Sam Battle (aka LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER) released the Synth Bike 3.0, a stationary bike with handlebars adorned with a functional synthesizer. This was promptly put on display at the Science Gallery Dublin, where it was ridden by approximately 130,000 people over six to eight months. 

In his latest video, Battle decides to open up the control panel to revive it for an upcoming tour. The good news is that the system is still mostly functional, though a couple of the device’s Arduino—it’s run by a dozen Nanos along with four frequency central boards, a SparkFun WAV trigger, and a bunch of stripboard circuits—are missing. 

After deciphering what he was thinking well over a year ago, considering what he might do differently today, reattaching wires, and tinkering, he’s able to get things functional. This is, of course, followed by the requisite solo synth-bike performance.

More details on how Battle’s beat-banging bike can be found here. 

We don’t think we’d want to trust our fire safety to a robot carrying a few ounces of water, but as a demonstration or science project, [Tinker Guru’s] firefighting robot was an entertaining answer to the question: “What do I do with that flame sensor that came in the big box of Arduino sensors I bought from China?” You can see a video of the device below.

You can see, it is a pretty standard two-wheel robot with the drive wheels to the rear and a skid plate up front. There are a flame sensor and a water pump up forward, as well. You can probably guess, the device notices a flame and rushes to squirt water on it.

That got us thinking, though. What would it take to build a real robot fireman? Turns out you don’t have to look hard to find out there are several out there already. The Thermite robot seems to have a lot of traction — in the market, that is, although its oversized treads probably give it good traction in that way, too. Most of the robots don’t carry their own water, and there’s even one — THOR — that looks like a human. Well, as much as a pie looks like a cake, anyway.

Interestingly, none seem to carry any sort of chemical fire extinguisher. Of course, we’ve seen cases where water was the best, anyway. If you want a slightly more practical home build — but only slightly — check out [Ivan’s] robot that holds a liter of water.

The original Star Fox for the SNES was a landmark game. With the Super FX chip built into the cartridge, it presented the first 3D accelerated home console experience. The series has spanned several consoles and over two decades. Now, it’s getting an (albeit unofficial) port to the Arduboy, thanks to [Stephane Hockenhull].

Impressively, the game fits in under 28KB, and [Stephane] hasn’t skimped on the development details. The process begun with setting up a basic 3D engine on the Arduboy, followed by some tests of various gameplay ideas. The final implementation bears a strong similarity to the original SNES gameplay. At this point, work moved out of the Arduino IDE into [Stephane]’s custom development environment to speed things along. A PC port was used to save time programming the flash every iteration.

The tricks used to pull this off are many and varied. There are neat hacks used to optimise the storage of the 3D model data, implement lightweight collision detection, and generate random levels. Everything was done in order to make the game fit into the smallest space possible.

Running smooth 3D graphics on a 16MHz 8-bit microcontroller is an impressive feat, and a testament to [Stephane]’s coding abilities. We can’t wait to see more 3D development on the platform. Meanwhile, if the Arduboy doesn’t quite have the look you want, there’s a solution for that too. Video after the break.

Good science fiction has sound scientific fact behind it and when Tony Stark first made his debut on the big screen with design tools that worked at the wave of a hand, makers and hackers were not far behind with DIY solutions. Over the years the ideas have become much more polished, as we can see with this Gesture Recognition with PIR sensors project.

The project uses the TPA81 8-pixel thermopile array which detects the change in heat levels from 8 adjacent points. An Arduino reads these temperature points over I2C and then a simple thresholding function is used to detect the movement of the fingers. These movements are then used to do a number of things including turn the volume up or down as shown in the image alongside.

The brilliant part is that the TPA81 8-Pixel sensor has been around for a number of years. It is a bit expensive though it has the ability to detect small thermal variations such as candle flames at up to 2 Meters. More recent parts such as the Panasonic AMG8834 that contain a grid of 8×8 such sensors are much more capable for your hacking/making pleasure, but come with an increased price tag.

This technique is not just limited to gestures, and can be used in Heat-Seeking Robots that can very well be trained to follow the cat around just to annoy it.

For busy people with unpredictable schedules, keeping one’s feline friend fed in a timely manner can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are automatic cat food dispensers available, or you can even build one yourself.

Open Electronics’ 3D-printed device, called “FelixMatic,” claims to be more complex and complete than average off-the-shelf solutions. Not only can it be programmed to supply up to nine meals a day using a spiral-action rotary feeder, but it also measures food levels with a load cell for dispensing feedback. 

Control is via an Arduino Uno along with an RTC shield for meal timing, while the user interface consists of an LCD display and five buttons.

Having a pet involves big responsibilities, first of all granting them food; unfortunately, a hectic lifestyle and imposed work hours do not go hand-in-hand with the needs of our four-legged friends, and surely anyone living on their own will have a hard time providing the pets meals on schedule. In order to solve a problem that is surely dear to any pet owner, and especially cat and dog owners, we have designed a device we called FelixMatic: it is a practical automatic dispenser of dry food for cats (or small dogs) equipped with a high-capacity container that can easily be opened from the top and a bowl to collect the kibble when it is supplied. We know we can already find automatic dispensers on the market, however, our example is unique because it can be programmed with 9 meals a day in order to supply very precise quantities of dry food.

The way the dispenser works is more complex and complete than the average available product on the market, in fact, it does not only supply food but it also gives exact doses as decided by us; basically, at a preset time, a cochlea at the base of the container will turn, and drop a certain amount of kibble in the bowl, regulated by a dedicated weight sensor.