CTC, a project from the 2015 edition

CTC stands for Creative Technologies in the Classroom, an initiative from Arduino Education aimed at helping teachers get up to speed with 21st century skills in the context of STEAM. We have been working with CTC since 2013, with our first experience in Castilla La Mancha, Spain. During a varying period of time, teachers are introduced to project-based learning as they run a full course with their students. At the end, teachers and students meet with their partners at a technology faire to show the result of an open-ended innovation process.

In this article series, I present projects made by students and exhibited at CTC faires. At those events, students come and pitch their experiments in front of hundreds of thousands of their peers from schools spanning all across their region. I select some of these projects and reinterpret them as a way to inspire other groups of students and their teachers in making new, interesting, user-centric, and thrilling projects.

What is CTC Catalunya and what makes it different?

CTC Catalunya is the longest of Arduino’s CTC projects, having had faires since 2015. Thanks to the generosity of the EduCaixa Foundation and the help from Cesire, Catalunya’s government department, we have reached out to as many as 200 public schools at the time of writing.

In order to achieve this, we designed a plan where the educators of different regions of Catalunya were trained in becoming trainers themselves, so that they could constitute their own regional support teams as a way to make the project sustainable over time. You can imagine that, after four years, there are many familiar faces. People have grown to like this project, and the CTC faire has become part of the educational landscape to the point that many teachers plan for it within their annual agendas.

What about the project I chose for this blog post 

One of my favorite projects of all-time is a system that enables you to look for books on the shelf by means of a laser pointer. Imagine you want to find that one novel; how many times have you had to browse through hundreds of your books and were unable to locate it for a while? Even if you have a database of all of your books, you would still have to make sure you place them in a certain location and need to go looking for it.

Two students at the CTC Catalunya Faire 2015 conceived the idea of a database of books that connected to an Arduino-controlled laser, which would point to a particular book on the shelf.

Schematic diagram: lasers, servo motors, and some code

As many years have passed since the project was presented, I don’t have documentation on how it was built. This is going to be a bit of the topic in this series. I am not looking at being super precise in replicating these projects; rather, my aim is provide some guidelines on how this could be made and inspire others to get the idea and improve it. If you want to see how I make things for real, I invite you to follow my livecast sessions every Thursday at 7pm CET. I’ll be implementing one project from scratch each month.

When it comes to my understanding on how this project was built, it is clear that the students used an Arduino Uno board, a Processing sketch, two standard servo motors, and a laser pointer. I have prepared a schematic for you to see how it could work, as well as a diagram that explains the basic interactions between the Processing code and the Arduino one.

(Here is where I have to apologize because of the diagram. I didn’t have a lot of time to enhance its appearance, but CC0 clipart images are your friend and let me make things quickly.)

An idea of how it works

Take a look at the flow chart above, which explains more about the project. The user will interact with the Processing sketch whenever he or she wants to search for a book. It is very likely the project that the students made had everything hardcoded in the program. In other words, the system was not letting you easily add new books to the database, but were stored in a text file that the Processing sketch would load upon boot.

The books were presented in the form of a dropdown list for you to choose from. Once you selected one of the items in the list, the Processing sketch would send the coordinates to the servo motors. Those coordinates also had to be stored in the same text file as the names of the books. With the coordinates, that had to be the angles for each one of the servos, the pointer would be directed towards the shelves, highlighting the location of the book.

Since this had to be shown at a faire where thousands of people would come by over a four-hour period, the students couldn’t prepare a much more complex presentation. This is why I have to make some assumptions about how far they went in their building. I also assume that they had to think through the ways to calibrate everything, since they didn’t have a lot of time to set up. The project worked flawlessly for the entire faire.

This is why I like it so much

At home we like books, we always have. When I was a kid, my parents had books in the living room, the dining room, mine and my brother’s room. As an adult, I have bought thousands of books and read every week. We own a 7m long bookshelf where books are sorted by color. When we discuss a project or think about possible ideas for what to build next, we look through our books. After a while, finding books is a time-consuming activity. I need one of these book-finding robots in my home!

Other projects with lasers?

You’ve likely seen at least one of the servo-controlled laser pointer projects for entertaining your cats here, here, or even here. Those are just one example of the fun things you can do with Arduino and lasers. In the context of CTC, there is actually a whole series of projects using laser diodes for creating music instruments. But that is an entirely different story, If you want to read about it, stay tuned for more adventures in CTC at the Arduino blog!

The CTC Caire was supported by Cesire at the Generalitat de Catalunya and the EduCaixa foundation.

Improving your shots with a motorized camera slider doesn't have to be complicated! Follow Jeremy Cook's lead and cobble something custom together.

Read more on MAKE

The post Motorizing a Simple Camera Slider appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

If you want to create new guitar sounds without having to redo your pedal wiring every single time, the pedalSHIELD MEGA from ElectroSmash could be just what you’re looking for.

The pedalSHIELD MEGA takes input from a guitar via a standard ¼-inch cable, and uses an Arduino Mega to process the sounds to your liking. This new sound is then output using two PWM pins for a 16-bit resolution.

The device, which is available in kit form or as a PCB, sits on top of the Mega as an amazing looking shield. In addition to a 3PDT true bypass footswitch, a toggle switch, and two pushbuttons, the pedalSHIELD MEGA features an OLED display for visual feedback. Once assembled, all you need to do for an entirely unique sound is program your own effects in the Arduino IDE!

This shield that is placed on top of an Arduino Mega has three parts:

• Analog Input Stage: The weak guitar signal is amplified and filtered, making it ready for the Arduino Mega ADC (Analog to Digital Converter).

• Arduino Mega Board: It takes the digitalized waveform from the ADC and does all the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) creating effects (distortion, fuzz, volume, delay, etc).

• Output Stage: Once the new effected waveform is created inside the Arduino Mega board, this last stage takes it and using two combined PWMs generates the analog output signal.

You can find more details on the pedalSHIELD MEGA here, and see it in action below!

If you thought plot clocks that write on a tiny whiteboard were cool, this project takes things to the next level, jotting down the time not with a dry-erase marker, but with a UV LED on a glow-in-the-dark sticker.

The device itself uses an Arduino Uno for control, along with a RTC module for timekeeping, and a pair of servos that move the LED with custom linkages.

In addition to an awesome looking glow-surface, the clock has been upgraded with a full 3D-printed enclosure. For a quick overview of the project, you can check it out on Imgur. If you’d like to build your own, all the Arduino code and print files are available on Thingiverse.

Who would have thought you could make a game out of an optical bench? [Chris Mitchell] did, and while we were skeptical at first, his laser Light Bender game has some potential. Just watch your eyes.

The premise is simple: direct the beam of a colored laser to the correct target before time runs out. [Chris] used laser-cut acrylic for his playfield, which has nine square cutouts arranged in a grid. Red, green, and blue laser pointers line the bottom of the grid, with photosensors and RGB LEDs lining the grid on the other three sides. Play starts with a random LED lighting up in one of the three colors, acting as a target. The corresponding color laser comes on, and the player has to insert mirrors or pass-through blocks in the grid to create a path to the target. The faster you hit the CdS cell, the higher your score. It’s simple, but it looks really engaging. We can imagine all sorts of upgrades, like lighting up two different targets at once, or adding a beamsplitter block to hit two targets with the same color. Filters and polarizers could add to the optical fun too.

We like builds that are just for fun, especially when they’re well-crafted and have a slight air of danger. The balloon-busting killbots project we featured recently comes to mind.

As an electrical engineering student, [Brandon Rice] had the full suite of electronics tools you’d expect. Cramming them all into a dorm room was doable — but cramped — a labour to square everything away from his desk’s top when he had to work on something else. To make it easier on himself, he built himself a portable electronics workstation inside the dimensions of a briefcase.

Built from scratch, the workstation includes a list of features that should have you salivating by the end. Instead of messing with a bunch of cables, on-board power is supplied by a dismantled 24V, 6A power brick, using a buck converter and ATmega to regulate and display the voltage, with power running directly to  12V and 5V lines of a breadboard in the middle of the workstation. A wealth of components are stored in two dozen 3d printed 1″ capsules setting them in loops pinned to the lid.

If all this was not already enough, there’s more!

Since he’ll be soldering a lot, there’s obviously an included soldering station, but were you expecting a helping hand and a carbon-filtered fume extractor? How about a folding overhead light to boot? Spools of wire are off to the rear to be tugged on when needed, and a drawer tucked into the side keeps circuit boards and jumper wires organized. There’s also a power strip along the other side — [Rice] notes that it was handier than he realized — for any other devices you might need. There’s even a built-in Arduino.

Hungry for more? How about a second serving, or even desert?

Self-described “Inventor Dad” [pepelepoisson]’s project is called Stecchino (English translation link here) and it’s an Arduino-based physical balancing game that aims to be intuitive to use and play for all ages. Using the Stecchino (‘toothpick’ in Italian) consists of balancing the device on your hand and trying to keep it upright for as long as possible. The LED strip fills up as time passes, and it keeps records of high scores. It was specifically designed to be instantly understood and simple to use by people of all ages, and we think it has succeeded in this brilliantly.

To sense orientation and movement, Stecchino uses an MPU-6050 gyro and accelerometer board. An RGB LED strip gives feedback, and it includes a small li-po cell and charger board for easy recharging via USB. The enclosure is made from a few layers of laser-cut and laser-engraved material that also holds the components in place. The WS2828B LED strip used is technically a 5 V unit, but [pepelepoisson] found that feeding them direct from the 3.7 V cell works just fine; it’s not until the cell drops to about three volts that things start to glitch out. All source code and design files are on GitHub.

Games are great, and the wonderful options available to people today allow for all kinds of interesting experimentation like a blind version of tag, or putting new twists on old classics like testing speed instead of strength.

We’re big fans of the impractical around here at Hackaday. Sure there’s a certain appeal to coming up with the most efficient method to accomplish your goal, the method that does exactly what it needs to do without any superfluous elements. But it’s just not as much fun. If at least one person doesn’t ask “But why?”, then you probably left something on the table, design wise.

So when we saw this delightfully complex clock designed by [Tucker Shannon], we instantly fell in love. Powered by an Arduino, the clock uses an articulated arm with a UV LED to write out the current time on a piece of glow-in-the-dark material. The time doesn’t stay up for long depending on the lighting in the room, but at least it only takes a second or two to write out once you press the button.

Things are pretty straightforward inside the 3D printed case. There’s an Arduino coupled with an RTC module to keep the time, which is connected to the two standard hobby servos mounted in the front panel. A UV LED and simple push button round out the rest of the Bill of Materials. The source code is provided, so you won’t have to figure out the kinematics involved in getting the two servos to play nicely together if you want to try this one at home.

We’ve seen many clocks powered by Arduinos over the years, occasionally they even have hands. But few can boast their own robotic arm.

Jay and Jamie wanted a temperature and humidity sensor for their workshop. Instead of buying something off the shelf or hooking up an Arduino with the proper sensor and breadboard, they went the extra mile.

The duo crafted a beautiful walnut enclosure—compete with a 3D-printed logo and a clever opening for the temperature display using an LCD screen. Humidity is indicated by the color of a NeoPixel ring, which shines through the artwork via a frosted plastic as a diffuser.

It’s immaculate on the outside, while hot glue is used extensively inside to hold everything in place. An Arduino Uno powers the build, attached by a handy plastic case.

We live in Central Texas where we get massive swings in humidity and temperature in the spring, which can be disastrous for certain woodworking projects. This cool project helps alert us when the humidity is changing or starts to get high so we can take precautions like moving our wood projects into the house, or not doing any milling during the high humidity weather. It also looks awesome and has our sweet logo.

Be sure to check out their entertaining video for lots of tips and tricks to make your project look excellent!

Telefónica Educación Digital, the education branch of Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica, arranged a contest for students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) for the second year. While the 2016/17 edition of the contest was launched only in Spain, 2017/18’s took place in Latin America as well. Just a week ago, the jury came to the final result for the current Spanish edition.

In the first edition, we in Arduino Education created an educational kit and content to assist a team of mentors that would in turn work with teachers all across Spain in helping them building projects within the limits of the contest. In the 2017/18 edition, we collaborated on a series of webinars for teachers hosted last fall. In both editions, I have acted as one of the jury members. The level of projects is pretty high in average. Considering that many of the participants come from secondary schools, it is quite impressive to see how they embrace the latest technological developments like IoT or VR and make meaningful projects out of those.

The winners of the Spanish version of the contest are invited to a trip to CERN to visit the place where things happen in science: the particle accelerator. Over 1,500 innovations were presented by seven-member teams within the categories established by TED: IoT, Industry 4.0, e-health, digital education, cybersecurity, and other technological projects. From those 1,500, the jury had to work really hard to come up with the final results. If you are among the non-chosen ones, you should know that the gap between the top 50-or-so projects was incredibly tight.

The following list highlights the four teams that were awarded by the jury. I have translated the information about the teams, but the videos from the students are only in Spanish. I hope you will find them as thrilling as I do!

Project 1

• Title: AGROTECH
• Topic: Livestock automation system
• Level: Advance (junior high and vocational education)
• Theme: Industry 4.0
• School: Instituto de Educación Secundaria LOS OLMOS
• City: Albacete
• Description: AGROTECH implements a prototype to automate the systems to manage livestock. Using Arduino and a series of sensors, it is possible to monitor and refill the livestock’s food and water, control the light and ventilation of the stables, report alarms like fire or intrusions and eliminate leftovers. All information is captured in real-time and displayed on a website.

Project 2

• Title: Virtual Detective (Detective Virtual)
• Topic: Virtual reality spaces
• Level: High (upper secondary)
• Theme: Digital education
• School: Colegio María Virgen
• City: Madrid
• Description: Virtual Detective is a virtual, guided tour to the school. The students have hidden a series of challenges along the way that are related to different school subjects. The virtual space is a gamified version of the class that helps the kids learn in an alternative way.

Project 3

• Title: Recycling Is for Everyone (REPT, Reciclar Es Para Todos)
• Topic: Other technological projects
• Level: Junior (lower secondary)
• Theme: Digital education
• School: Colegio Santo Domingo
• City: Santa Cruz de Tenerife
• Description: REPT is a trash bin prototype that can classify the leftovers and will run a lottery among those recycling once the bin has been sent to the recycling station.

Project 4

• Title: ALPHAPSI
• Topic: VR platform for the diagnosis and treatment of students with special educational needs
• Level: Advance
• Theme: Digital education
• School: Colegio Calasancio Hispalense
• City: Sevilla
• Description: ALPHAPSI consists of an application made in Processing that connects to a VR head-mounted display capable of detecting the wearer’s head movements. Thanks to a series of tests consisting of tracking an object moving in the VR space, the system can follow the movements and will help generating a diagnosis and treating students with attention disorders.

The Desafío STEM project is an initiative of Telefonica Educacion Digital and their project STEMbyme.