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. 

For the most part, the next generation of wearable technology development has been focused around your wrist, arm, ears, and even your face. Hair, however, remains a unique and much less explored material… until now, at least.

That’s because the team of Sarah Sterman, Molly Nicholas, Christine Dierk, and Professor Eric Paulos at UC Berkeley’s Hybrid Ecologies Lab have created interactive hair extensions capable of changing shape and color, sensing touch, and communicating over Bluetooth. The aptly named “HairIO” conceals a skeleton of nitinol wire, a shape memory alloy (SMA) that morphs into different forms when exposed to heat. An Arduino Nano handles control, enabling it to respond to stimulus such as messages from your phone using an Adafruit Bluefruit board.

That’s not the only trick of these fibers, as they can use thermochromic pigments to change color along with the SMA action, and respond to touch via capacitive sensing.

Human hair is a cultural material, with a rich history displaying individuality, cultural expression and group identity. It is malleable in length, color and style, highly visible, and embedded in a range of personal and group interactions. As wearable technologies move ever closer to the body, and embodied interactions become more common and desirable, hair presents a unique and little-explored site for novel interactions. In this paper, we present an exploration and working prototype of hair as a site for novel interaction, leveraging its position as something both public and private, social and personal, malleable and permanent. We develop applications and interactions around this new material in HairIO: a novel integration of hair-based technologies and braids that combine capacitive touch input and dynamic output through color and shape change. Finally, we evaluate this hair-based interactive technology with users, including the integration of HairIO within the landscape of existing wearable and mobile technologies.

Halloween is a great holiday for hacks, bringing out the creativity in even the most curmudgeonly wielder of a soldering iron. [tdragger] was looking to have some good old fashioned Halloween fun, and got to thinking – putting together this great Spooky Eyes build in their attic window.

The effect itself is simple – just two glowing orange LEDs spaced the right distance apart, placed in the highest window in the house. As every young child knows, the attic is almost the spookiest room in the house, second only to the basement.

Various effects were programmed in to the Arduino running the show, like breathing and blinking effects, to give that frightful character. For maintenance and programming purposes, [tdragger] wanted to have the Arduino remotely mounted, and searched for a solution. Rather than leaning on a wireless setup or something modern and off-the-shelf, instead some old RJ11 telephone extension cables were pressed into service. These allowed the eyes to be placed in the window, allowing the Arduino to be placed in a more accessible location.

It’s a basic project, but one that has a good fun factor. Sometimes it’s good to use what you’ve got to hand, so that the buzz of enjoyment isn’t dampened by the long wait for shipping. For something bigger, check out this giant staring eyeball.

Performing an instrument well is hard enough, but flipping through sheet music while playing can slightly delay things in the best case, or can cause you to lose your concentration altogether. Music displayed on a computer is a similar story; however, Maxime Boudreau has a great solution using an Arduino Nano inside of a 3D-printed pedal assembly.

When set up with software found here, Boudreau’s DIY device allows you to control PDF sheet music on your laptop with the tap of a foot. While designed to work with a macOS app, there’s no reason something similar couldn’t be worked out under Windows or Linux as needed.

Check it out in action below!

There are plenty of ways to use relays, and each method can achieve several different results. Check out this step by step guide to figure out what you need.

Read more on MAKE

The post 4 Ways to Control Electronic Relays appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

If you need to get creative with something useful, clocks are always great objects to hack together. One idea, in particular, is this Pong Clock from Brett Oliver.

Oliver’s Arduino-powered device is based off of a similar project by Nick Hall, and plays itself in Pong, winning and losing to show the correct time as the score. This version adds a temperature display, countdown timer, and an excellent enclosure made out of what was once a cheap jewelry box.

The results are excellent enough to place in a stylish kitchen or living room, and looks like an approachable build. You can check out the project in the video below and find more details Oliver’s write-up here.

Playing the bagpipes is an art that takes a significant effort to master, both in keeping a constant air supply through balancing blowstick and bag and in learning the finger positions on the chanter. This last task we are told requires constant finger practice, and a favorite place for this is on the steering wheel as a would-be piper drives. [DZL] therefore took this to the next level, placing touch sensors round a car steering wheel that could be interpreted by an Arduino Pro Mini to produce a passable facsimile of a set of bagpipes via an in-car FM transmitter. It lacks the drone pipes of the real thing, but how many other Škodas feature inbuilt piping?

We’ve covered an unexpected number of bagpipe projects over the years, but never had a close look at this rather fascinating musical instrument. If you are curious, the US Coast Guard pipe band has a short guide to its parts, and we’ve brought you a set of homemade pipes built from duct tape and PVC pipe. They may once have been claimed as an instrument of war, but they seem to also be a favorite instrument of hardware hackers.

Thanks [Sophi] for the tip.

Ever wanted to feel like one of those movie hackers from the late 90s? Yes, your basement’s full of overclocked Linux rigs and you’ve made sure all your terminal windows are set to green text on a black background, but that’s not always enough. What you need is an RFID tag that unlocks your PC when you touch the reader with your RFID card. Only then may you resume blasting away at your many keyboards in your valiant attempts to hack the mainframe.

[Luke] brings us this build, having wanted an easier way to log in quickly without foregoing basic security. Seeing as an RC522 RFID reader was already on hand, this became the basis for the project. The reader is laced up with a Sparkfun Pro Micro Arduino clone, with both devices serendipitously running on 3.3V, obviating the need for any level shifters. Code is simple, based on the existing Arduino RC522 library. Upon a successful scan of the correct tag, the Arduino acts as a HID keyboard and types the user’s password into the computer along with a carriage return, unlocking the machine. Simple!

Overall, it’s a tidy build that achieves what [Luke] set out to do. It’s something that could be readily replicated with a handful of parts and a day’s work. If you’re interested in the underlying specifics, we’ve discussed turning Arduinos into USB keyboards before.