All of us have daily tasks we need to perform, but what if you often forget whether you’ve done something, or simply need to give your child a little extra motivation? One great way would be Simon Prickett’s Arduino Task Tracker, inspired by Simone Giertz’s Every Day Calendar. 

Prickett’s clean-looking device is built into an electrical junction box, which holds the guts, including an Arduino Uno inside. It also exposes eight arcade-style LED buttons on top.

After you, or in this case Prickett’s son, complete a chore, press one of the seven green buttons. Once they are all lit, the Arduino Task Tracker produces a “victory roll” sequence. The eighth red button is then used to start the week over again. 

Sound like something you’d like to recreate? Code and more info for the project can be found GitHub.

When asking the question “Do humans dream of machines?”, it’s natural to think of the feverish excitement ahead of an iPhone or Playstation launch, followed by lines around the block of enthusiastic campers, eager to get their hands on the latest hardware as soon as is humanly possible. However, it’s also the title of an art piece by [Jonghong Park], and is deserving of further contemplation. (Video after the break.)

The art piece consists of a series of eight tiny harmonicas, which are in turn, played by eight fans, which appear to have been cribbed from a low-power graphics card design. Each harmonica in turn has a microphone fitted, which, when it picks up a loud enough signal, causes an Arduino Nano to actuate a mechanical finger which slows the fan down until the noise stops. It’s the mechanical equivalent of a stern look from a parent to a noisy child. Then, the cycle begins again.

The build is very much of the type we see in the art world – put together as simply as possible, with eight Arduinos running the eight harmonicas, whereas an engineering approach may focus more on efficiency and cost. Between the squeaks from the toy harmonicas and the noise from the servos entrusted to quiet them, the machine makes quite the mechanical racket. [Jonghong] indicates that the piece speaks to the interaction of machine (robot harmonica) and humanity (the finger which quells the noise).

It’s a tidily executed build which would be at home in any modern art gallery. It recalls memories of another such installation, which combines fans and lasers into a musical machine.

Six-legged robots are nothing new, but if you’d like inspiration for your own, it would be hard to beat this 22 servo-driven, 3D-printed hexapod from Dejan at How To Mechatronics. 

The ant-inspired device features three metal geared servos per leg, as well as a pair to move the heat, another for the tail, and a micro servo to activate the mandibles.

To control this large number of servos, Dejan turned to the Arduino Mega, along with a custom Android app and Bluetooth link for the user interface. While most movements are activated by the user, it does have a single ultrasonic sensor buried in its head as “eyes.” This allows it to lean backwards when approached by an unknown object or hand, then strike with its mandibles if the aggressor continues its advance. 

As the name suggests, the hexapod has six legs but in addition to that, it also has a tail or abdomen, a head, antennas, mandibles and even functional eyes. All of this, makes the hexapod look like an ant, so therefore we can also call it an Arduino Ant Robot.

For controlling the robot I made a custom-built Android application. The app has four buttons through which we can command the robot to move forward or backwards, as well as turn left or right. Along with these main functions, the robot can also move its head and tail, as well as it can bite, grab and drop things and even attack.

You can see it in action and being assembled in the video below, and build files are available here.

LED strips reacting to sound is nothing new; however, Paul Shulman’s setup does things a bit differently. Instead of responding to the tune’s overall volume, one musical frequency is analyzed and averaged; if the intensity changes sufficiently on that particular frequency, the corresponding lighting effect is also changed. This avoids the problem of analyzing a music source that doesn’t necessarily change with the final output volume.

A SparkFun Spectrum Shield is used for frequency separation. An Arduino handles signal analysis, which sends a change effect command to the lighting controller when needed. There’s also a wireless remote available to adjust the lighting manually. 

This system was designed with the goal of having color-chasing LED effects that automatically sync with a hard music line. The color-chasing effects observed in the video are actually not synchronized to the music, but the changing of effects is. The system works well across many genres of music. This system is unique in that music volume does not matter. Many commercial implementations control lighting effects based off of overall volume intensity. This is problematic, as many people do not control final music volume with the source of the music (i.e. leaving your PC volume constant and controlling speaker volume instead.

An additional feature of this system is that it contains a wireless remote and the ability to control the lights independent of the music. This allows for rapid light patterns at parties, and soothing ambient lighting at all other times.

Code for the project is available in Shulman’s write-up, and the results can be seen in the demo video below. 

What do you do when you need to attach 400-500 screws for an upcoming project? If you’re “Progress Thailand” you simply create one yourself using a 9g micro servo modded for continuous rotation, an Arduino Nano, and some 3D printing!

The build uses a small thumb joystick for proportional control, and can accommodate a small hand driver in addition to a bit by itself. Impressively, a functional prototype of the tool was produced in a single day, with the final(?) version appearing a couple of days later. 

Hand and power tools are cheap, reliable, and easily accessible. But their production is still done in large centralized factories. 3D printing technology and cheap, open source electronics continue to improve bringing the decentralization of manufacturing one step closer.

We are experimenting with different designs to see how close current 3D printing technology can bring us to production-quality tools you can buy in the store. We’re also experimenting to see what modifications we can make to store-bought tools to enhance and customize their use.

While they note that the project isn’t meant to replace commercial screwdrivers at this point, it looks like a fun project with all the needed files available here to modify and improve things to your specifications!

I talk to my plants. Maybe I’m crazy, but I suspect that many of you do this too. In this project, you may be able to give your plants the ability to emote back just a little bit. A.P.E.X. is basically just a moisture sensor with some emojis as a […]

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Bigger isn’t always better, as illustrated nicely by this device from YouTuber “Volos Projects.” It’s not only physically quite small, squeezing an Arduino into a 40x25x25mm aluminum enclosure, but uses an interface consisting of a single button (plus a power switch). Data output is handled via a similarly tiny 64×48 pixel OLED display.

Regardless of its minuscule size and binary input method, it can still be utilized for a variety of functions, including as a stopwatch or counter, or even to play Flappy Bird. 

Demonstration and build footage can be seen in the clip below, while a parts list, code, and electrical diagram can be found in the video’s description.

It’s said that beauty and art can be found anywhere, as long as you look for it. The latest art project from [dmitry] both looks in unassuming places for that beauty, and projects what it sees for everyone to view. Like most of his projects, it’s able to produce its artwork in a very unconventional way. This particular project uses water as a lens, and by heating and cooling the water it produces a changing image.

The art installation uses a Peltier cooler to periodically freeze the water that’s being used as a lens. When light is projected through the frozen water onto a screen, the heat from the light melts the water and changes the projected image. The machine uses an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi in order to control the Peliter cooler and move the lens on top of the cooler to be frozen. Once frozen, it’s moved again into the path of the light in order to show an image through the lens.

[dmitry] intended the project to be a take on the cyclical nature of a substance from one state to another, and this is a very creative and interesting way of going about it. Of course, [dmitry]’s work always exhibits the same high build quality and interesting perspective, like his recent project which created music from the core samples of the deepest hole ever drilled.

When building projects with a simple goal in mind, it’s not unheard of for us to add more and more switches, buttons, and complexity as the project goes through its initial prototyping stages. Feature creep like this tends to result in a tangled mess rather than a usable project. With enough focus, though, it’s possible to recognize when it’s happening and keep to the original plans. On the other hand, this single-button project with more than one use seems to be the opposite of feature creep. (YouTube, embedded below.)

[Danko]’s project has one goal: be as useful as possible while only using a single button and a tiny screen. Right now the small handheld device can be used as a stopwatch, a counter, and can even play a rudimentary version of flappy bird. It uses an Arduino Pro Mini, a 64×48 OLED screen running on I2C, and has a miniscule 100 mAh 3.7V battery to power everything. The video is worth watching if you’ve never worked with this small of a screen before, too.

Getting three functions out of a device with only one button is a pretty impressive feat, and if you can think of any other ways of getting more usefulness out of something like this be sure to leave it in the comments below. [Danko] is no stranger to simple projects with tiny screens, either. We recently featured his homebrew Arduino calculator that uses an even smaller screen.

In the build shown below, Evan McMahon dares to ask the question, “Have you ever been disappointed by a mood ring?” While that might seem a bit random, the answer is a likely “yes” if you’ve ever worn one with the expectation of any sort of accuracy. Fortunately, he didn’t just pose the question, but also came up with a clever solution, using an array of lights under Arduino control.

For the setup, McMahon uses the camera on his iPhone to take video of his smiling or frowning mug, then analyzes it with the help of Unity running on a computer to translate this into his apparent state of mind.

This info is then sent to an Arduino Uno, which puts the programmable LED lights into dance mode if he’s happy, and makes them shine blue if he’s a bit blue himself!