We recently sponsored one of the labs at Lulea University in Sweden, the INSPIRE (INstrumentation for Space and Planetary Investigation, Resources and Exploration) Lab. It is not just any lab, it is the lab from Prof. Mari Paz Zorzano and Prof. Javier Martín, both known for their work in the possibility of discovering water on Mars’ surface, this extent was published in this Nature magazine article in 2015, among other places.

What I learned rather quickly, thanks to my interactions with both professors over the last couple of years, is that Arduino has been a basic component in the countless projects made in their lab–the Mega and Due are their students’ favorites due to the amount of available pins as well as robustness of the earlier; but also because of the floating comma, analog to digital converter, and general relevance for instrumentation of the latter.

This article is going to be the first of a series where we will highlight the way the Lulea lab is using Arduino for instruments, real life experiences, zero gravity tests, low orbit missions, and general teaching. We hope they will inspire many to follow in their steps and look at the stars with a renewed interest in science and technology.

Meet the players

Mari Paz and Javier were known to me before I actually got to meet up with them in person. As a researcher, I had heard of the article in Nature, who hadn’t? Plus, since both of them come from Spain (as I do), you can imagine that the national press was covering their finding pretty well when it was published. Funny enough, they knew about Arduino because they, as many researchers, needed to figure out methods to better finance their experiments, and Arduino is a tool known for being affordable, as well as technically competent to command many of their tests. I should confess that, by the time we all got in touch, I was already trying to figure out how to talk to them.

In November 2016, Mari Paz and Javier had just opened their lab in Kiruna, their discovery had given them new positions at a new university (Lulea University, owner of the Kiruna campus, closer to the launching station), a new team, and access to a lot more resources. And so they got back to work. I was invited to give a speech as part of their seminar series and later host a short workshop mainly for master and PhD students. The Kiruna campus in November is completely surrounded by snow. You can make it there skiing several months in the year, something I got told people do sometimes. However, the city of Kiruna is going to go through a bunch of transformations (the city center will be moved 30km due to the mine that is literally under it), and the professors decided to move their lab to Lulea’s main campus for the time being. Follow the descriptions of some of the projects developed there.

Project 1: PVT-Gamers

One of the biggest challenges for spacecrafts is how to weigh the remaining propellant (fuel) in the absence of gravity. With contemporary space vehicles in mind, which can be reused, this has become one of the most economically critical limitations to be taken into account. PVT-Gamers is the acronym for ‘Improved Pressure-Volume-Temperature Gauging Method for Electric-Propulsion Systems’ experiment designed at the INSPIRE Lab. It is exploring the use of pressurized propellants, like Xenon, and monitoring how it is used and how much is left to keep the spacecraft moving.

PVT-Gamers has been chosen by the European Space Agency (ESA) to fly on-board the Airbus A310 ZERO-G airplane. For those of you not familiar with it, it is a flying vehicle that reaches a state similar to zero gravity, and therefore is used for simulating space conditions. The PVT-Gamers has been selected within the ESA program “Fly Your Thesis! 2018,” which will give the research team behind it the ability to test their assumptions in a real world scenario. A new method will be applied to small pressurized Xenon gas containers under hyper/micro-gravity cycles at a stationary cooling. Arduino boards, specifically 6 Arduino Mega 2560, are instrumental in recovering all the data, such as temperature, pressure, deformation, or acceleration. Subsequently, it will be possible to reproduce on-orbit, thrust phase, external accelerations, and fuel transfer conditions over a propellant tank at its End Of Life (EOL) stage, where there is almost no propellant left.

The potential applications from this scientific experiment may provide the upcoming spacecraft generation with a fuel measuring and control method that could constitute a turning point for long-term space missions. This can be applied to CubeSats or telecommunication satellites, and also to large future projects using electric propulsion such as the lunar space station “Deep Space Gateway” or the Mercury mission BepiColombo.

Current design of the PVT-Gamers experiment rack configuration to be attached to the A310 ZERO-G cabin. Photo credit: PVT-Gamers

Simulation of the velocity distribution in magnitude within a spacecraft propellant tank as consequence of external heating. Photo credit: PVT-Gamers

A310 ZERO-G cabin during a micro-gravity stage. Photo credit: ESA

Closing with a reflection: Why is this so important?

You might wonder… Why should Arduino be so interested in the creation of machines aimed at the exploration of space? The answer is three-fold. First, space is the ultimate frontier, the conditions are very tough, shipping electronics out of the atmosphere is expensive and forces engineers to become very creative, reusability is key (a part has to be used for more than one thing, even the hardware components). For Arduino, proving that our boards and choice of materials, while still cheap, are good enough to be part of the space career, is of course of vital importance. If it works in space, it works on Earth, also for the industry.

Second, the limitations are such, that many of the designs become very useful in everyday situations. If we made a greenhouse for Mars, it would work for the Arctic, or for poor villagers on the mountains anywhere in the world as well. Isn’t an excuse good enough to make a machine that will help improve people’s lives?

Third, in education we need icons to follow, and we need experiences to replicate. The ones from Mari Paz, Javier, and their team will for sure awaken the scientific vocation in many of our younger ones. Helping science is helping education!

As part of a physical interaction and realization course at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, a team of students decided to build an interactive installation called “Alone Together”

Their setup consists of sensor-equipped, networking artificial plants. The leafy plant model, dubbed “Thorulf,” uses flex sensors to detect leaf movement, while “Svamp” mushrooms employ circular force sensors for interaction.

Arduino Uno boards, along with Bluetooth modules and a computer running an openFrameworks server, allow the plants to communicate. When one plant is bent, it signals its partner to light up with a fun LED pattern as seen in the video below.

We imagine a series of plants all around the Library, assigned to one another to communicate. Our concept could even be applied over the web, so that the plants could be long distances apart, and used to communicate from one country to another, similar to the “friendship lamp” concept. In this case, the light interaction could be changed, so that the plant stays lit up when touched.

More details on the project can be found here.

“ChrisN219” is the proud owner of an antique Coke machine that he uses to store his favorite beverages. While a very cool decoration, it doesn’t have a way to reveal how many cans are left.

To add this functionality, he turned to an Arduino Nano along with an ultrasonic sensor that he embedded inside the machine to sense how high the cans are stacked. This allows the user to know when it’s time to stock up again, and after inserting another ultrasonic sensor to the display unit on top, an OLED screen automatically shows the sodas (or beers) available as someone approaches it.

If you’d like to build your own, you can find more details, code, and 3D printing files in ChrisN219’s write-up.

On March 10th, I was a guest speaker at Maker Faire Cairo 2018 as a representative of Arduino. I took the opportunity as I had never been to Egypt and was really curious about the maker culture there. You can imagine that different cultures are always going to adopt ideas in various ways and Maker Faire is a great example for this. If you’ve ever been to Maker Faire Bay Area, where the event is arranged inside some old hangars and known for its steampunk character, then you would realize how very different it is from Maker Faires throughout Europe.

Take for example, Rome, which we help organize every year (and that my partner, Massimo Banzi, curates) whose location changed for several years in a row until finding its place at the Fiumicino exhibition center and features a number of Italian universities and institutions that come and exhibit (in fact, there was a full CSI lab from the Carabinieri, the national police force, at last year’s event); but also from smaller ones like the one in Bilbao, Spain, held at an old cookie factory and that has the compromise to remain small as a way to allow makers to meet and talk to each other.

You’ll ask yourself: what kind of Faire was Cairo then? The truth of the matter is that Maker Faire Cairo is still a small event that gathers about 10,000 people at the gardens of Smart Village, a complex inhabited by tech companies ranging from multinationals to local startups. Thanks to the support of both local and international institutions (namely the U.S. embassy), the crew behind the event put together a remarkable show that is clearly going to grow over the next couple of years.

To start, the two days before the Faire, all the international guests and makers were invited to a tour to see the FabLabs, the city, the pyramids, the national museum with the national mummies (hundreds of them), and to get to know one another a little better. Even if I could only join for the second day, I could value the importance of this trip. It also happened in parallel with the Egyptian Maker Week, which was arranged prior to the event in an effort to raise awareness around the Maker Movement and its importance for STEAM education.

But back to the Faire. The whole event happened outdoors; in Cairo it barely rains, so they were running no risk when they decided to book a garden to bring in some open tents and build the booths. Not to mention, the gardens were located by a fountain that kept the air fresh, despite the heat of over 30 degrees Celsius during the day. People are used to the temperature, because nobody seemed to be concerned about it. Besides, it’s all about wearing a cap, sunglasses, and drinking plenty of water.

Engineering could be considered the main theme of the Faire. Most of the projects on display, from older and younger makers alike, were exploring different topics within the field of engineering: robots looking for mines, robots making cotton candy, fighting robots, drones, a “formula student” car, a wheelchair that could go up and down stairs, the FabLab Egypt experience, underwater robots, and so on. During my talk, when I asked to the audience about their field of interest, 99% of the people were or wanted to be engineers.

While engineering seemed to be the signature of the Faire, something that should–in my opinion– make the organizers proud about such an achievement is that there were other things going on. There was a decent amount of cosplayers that came to celebrate their geekness. I had the chance to listen to some of the international cosplay guests about how much work goes into creating certain elements of the costumes, particularly the gadgets are the problem, and specially if they have any kind of interactive technology. Yet again, cosplayers weren’t afraid of the heat either, even if their hours-long make-up work could easily be washed away by it.

The FabLab network in Egypt had a great presence with both separate booths for some of the most permanent labs, as well as with their collective booths to show the work they do in promoting the Maker Movement. Some of their initiatives are remarkable, like the “FabLab on wheels:” a van with a mini fabrication laboratory that has been traveling across the country for an entire year and that will continue to do so in the forthcoming future.

Small independent designers presented their work in the field of upcycling; I liked the work from a group that looked at glass, car tires, and wood as basic construction pieces. But I was also nicely surprised by a painter that created his own version of  “projection mapping” using cardboard boxes as a canvas.

The presence of Arduino at the Faire was simply astonishing. Most robots had something Arduino inside. The aforementioned electric wheelchair was controlled by Arduino Uno boards. There was even a vending machine that accepts cryptocurrency payments thanks to its arducrypto library! I was seriously impressed by the quality of some of the projects I saw.

The Faire closed with a concert with hip-hop artists MTM, an Egyptian band that made their comeback at the Maker Faire Cairo. The stage was equipped with the latest LED technologies, huge DMX lights, fireworks… That’s what I call ending in style! The party took place directly on-site, at the main stage. All the makers, cosplayers, and visitors came together to dance and celebrate an outstanding event.

But one cannot talk about something like a Maker Faire and not talk about the people behind it. The speakers, who came from all across the Middle East and beyond–had the best hosts possible: Omar, Ahmed, Madonna (sorry for not mentioning everyone, there were so many volunteers)… To all of you: thanks for a great time and for showing us around!

Back in the olden days, when the Wire library still sucked, the Arduino was just a microcontroller. Now, we have single board computers and cheap microcontrollers with WiFi built in. As always, there’s a need to make programming and embedded development more accessible and more widely supported among the hundreds of devices available today.

At the Embedded Linux Conference this week, [Massimo Banzi] announced the beginning of what will be Arduino’s answer to the cloud, online IDEs, and a vast ecosystem of connected devices. It’s Arduino Create, an online IDE that allows anyone to develop embedded projects and manage them remotely.

As demonstrated in [Massimo]’s keynote, the core idea of Arduino Create is to put a connected device on the Internet and allow over-the-air updates and development. As this is Arduino, the volumes of libraries available for hundreds of different platforms are leveraged to make this possible. Right now, a wide variety of boards are supported, including the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and several Intel IoT boards.

The focus of this development is platform-agnostic and focuses nearly entirely on ease of use and interoperability. This is a marked change from the Arduino of five years ago; there was a time when the Arduino was an ATmega328p, and that’s about it. A few years later, you could put Arduino sketches on an ATtiny85. A lot has changed since then. We got the Raspberry Pi, we got Intel stepping into the waters of IoT devices, we got a million boards based on smartphone SoCs, and Intel got out of the IoT market.

While others companies and organizations have already made inroads into an online IDE for Raspberry Pis and other single board computers, namely the Adafruit webIDE and Codebender, this is a welcome change that already has the support of the Arduino organization.

You can check out [Massimo]’s keynote below.

If you’ve spent any serious time in libraries, you’ve probably noticed that they attract people who want or need to be alone without being isolated. In this space, a kind of silent community is formed. This phenomenon was the inspiration [MoonAnchor23] needed to build a network of connected house plants for a course on physical interaction and realization. But you won’t find these plants unleashing their dry wit on twitter. They only talk to each other and to nearby humans.

No living plants were harmed during this project—the leaves likely wouldn’t let much light through, anyway. The plants are each equipped with a strip of addressable RGB LEDs and a flex sensor controlled by an Arduino Uno. Both are hot glued to the undersides of the leaves and hidden with green tape. By default, the plants are set to give ambient light. But if someone strokes the leaf with the flex sensor, it sends a secret message to the other plant that induces light patterns.

Right now, the plants communicate over Bluetooth using an OpenFrameworks server on a local PC. Eventually, the plan is use a master-slave configuration so the plants can be farther apart. Stroke that mouse button to see a brief demo video after the break. [MoonAnchor23] also built LED mushroom clusters out of silicone and cling wrap using a structural soldering method by [DIY Perks] that’s also after the break. These work similarly but use force-sensing resistors instead of flex-sensing.

Networking several plants together could get expensive pretty quickly, but DIY flex sensors would help keep the BOM costs down.

Today, at Embedded Linux Conference 2018, Arduino announced the expansion of the number of architectures supported by its Arduino Create platform for the development of IoT applications. With this new release, Arduino Create users can manage and program a wide range of popular Linux® single-board computers like the AAEON® UP² board, Raspberry Pi® and BeagleBone® as if they were regular Arduino boards. Multiple Arduino programs can run simultaneously on a Linux-based board and interact and communicate with each other, leveraging the capabilities provided by the new Arduino Connector. Moreover, IoT devices can be managed and updated remotely, independently from where they are located.

To further simplify the user journey, Arduino has also developed a novel out-of-the-box experience for Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone boards, in addition to Intel®  SBCs, which enables anyone to set up a new device from scratch via the cloud without any previous knowledge by following an intuitive web-based wizard. Arduino plans to continue enriching and expanding the set of features of Arduino Create in the coming months.

“With this release, Arduino extends its reach into edge computing, enabling anybody with Arduino programming experience to manage and develop complex multi-architecture IoT applications on gateways,” said Massimo Banzi, Arduino CTO. “This is an important step forward in democratizing access to the professional Internet of Things.”

“At Arduino we want to empower anyone to be an active player in the digital world. Being able to run Arduino code and manage connected Linux devices is an important step in this direction, especially for IoT applications that need more computing power, like AI and computer vision,” added Fabio Violante, Arduino CEO.

When you swipe a card through a reader, you expect it to read a magnetic stripe on one end. In other circumstances cards might contain an RFID chip, but what if the card only had a pattern of colors on it?

That’s the idea behind the Color Lock system by Rudec Technologies. The cards have a pattern of four colors printed on one side, which are read by an array of LEDs and a TCS230 color sensor when pulled through a slot. An Arduino Uno then takes this information and lights up an LED if the correct sequence is recognized.

This is a door locking system that uses a card with a preset color sequence printed on it to unlock the door. The system is still in the prototyping stage, i’m waiting for the actual lock part to arrive in mail to continue developing this. The idea behind this system is to avoid using RFID authentication, as it can be ‘stolen’ without contact, and this system offers a simple physical object that you use to authenticate yourself – think of it as an updated physical key. The system can offer much more than the conventional keys: if you lose your key, you simply print a new one, you can use a number of different keys for the same lock (or just one if you choose), the system logs all entries with timestamps (useful for tracking access), you can use your regular printer to print new keys, you can unlock it via Wi-Fi when paired with your phone or another device, the system can be used to authenticate in various situations (doors, cabinets, computers, entry points etc.

It’s an interesting concept that could be taken in a variety of directions depending on security needs. A clip of the prototype can be seen below!

Witaya Junma decided to combine creations from three different time periods: a Spirograph (1965), Stirling engine (1816), and an Arduino board developed in the 2000s to form a unique art piece.

What he came up with is the Spirotrope, which invites users to draw a pattern using a Spirograph, then place it in a special holder that spins it with a Stirling engine. This engine also provides electrical power for the Arduino, allowing it to blink a light on the moving pattern at various rates.

These flashes make the drawings appear to rotate at different speeds, and several patterns can even appear to move independently, forming a unique layered effect.

Hardware used includes a Stirling engine, Arduino, Spirograph, motor 12 DC, LED 3V, B10K, Capacitor 470uf 16v, diode 1N4001, TIP 31 and round belts. Software: Arduino

Stirling engine is a heat engine that operates by expansion of hot air, which is created by an alcohol burner in this work. The engine does two jobs: it turns the wheel by giving power to the belt and generate AC currents by spinning the generators. The currents are then converted to DC by a 1N4001 diode and fed into a set of capacitors, which stabilize the currents before powering up the Arduino board. The board controls the frequency of LEDs, which can be controlled by turning the B10K potentiometer.

The blinking LED creates the illusion of moving patterns from a rapid succession of static images.

Be sure to check it out in the video below. More project details are available in his write-up and on Creative Applications.

[Dickel] always liked tracked vehicles. Taking inspiration from the ‘Peacemaker’ tracked vehicle in Mad Max: Fury Road, he replicated it as the Mad Mech. The vehicle is remote-controlled and the tank treads are partly from a VEX robotics tank tread kit. Control is via a DIY wireless controller using an Arduino and NRF24L01 modules. The vehicle itself uses an Arduino UNO with an L298N motor driver. Power is from three Li-Po cells.

The real artistic work is in the body. [Dickel] used a papercraft tool called Pepakura (non-free software, but this Blender plugin is an alternative free approach) for the design to make the body out of thin cardboard. The cardboard design was then modified to make it match the body of the Peacemaker as much as possible. It was coated in fiberglass for strength, then the rest of the work was done with body filler and sanding for a smooth finish. After a few more details and a good paint job, it was ready to roll.

There’s a lot of great effort that went into this build, and [Dickel] shows his work and process on his project page and in the videos embedded below. The first video shows the finished Mad Mech being taken for some test drives. The second is a montage showing key parts of the build process.

Paper and cardboard are very versatile and accessible materials for making things. It’s what was used to do some target practice with this working paper and cardboard gun. With the right techniques foam core can be worked into an astonishing variety of shapes, and we also made a case for the value of a desktop vinyl cutter on any well-equipped hacker’s workbench.