If you are really enjoying a song, you may start to bob your head to the tunes, but what if you could instead create actual music with this subtle movement? That’s exactly what Andrew Lee’s “Nod Bang” system accomplishes.

An accelerometer mounted to a pair of headphones senses nods in order to dictate the beat, while four 3D-printed arcade buttons are used to select which sounds will be played. An Arduino takes these inputs and passes them to a computer via a MIDI USB interface. The board also controls lights on the buttons for visual feedback.

Be sure to check it out in action below and read Lee’s entire write-up here.

Santa’s Shop is an amazing Christmas display consisting of trains, animated figurines, a rotating tree, and several other interesting holiday-themed gadgets.

The decoration features hundreds of 3D-printed parts and many handmade characters, controlled by 46 servos and a total of 12 Arduino boards. Bringing the installation to life was no small task, requiring over 2,000 hours of labor for creators Mike and Annelle Rigsby.

More details on the project can be found in this write-up. You can also see it in action in the video below, or on display live in the window of the Brightway Insurance Agency in Gainesville, Florida this month.

Over the years we’ve noticed that there is a subset of hackers out there who like to turn real life vehicles into remote controlled cars. These vehicles are generally destroyed in short order, either by taking ridiculous jumps, or just smashing them into stuff until there’s nothing left. In truth that’s probably what most of us would do if we had access to a full size RC car, so no complaints there.

As a rule, the donor vehicles for these conversions are usually older and cheap. That only makes sense, why spend a lot of money on a vehicle you intend on destroying? But even still, the RC conversion [William Foster] has recently completed may take the cake. We don’t know how much of the “antiquing” of his donor vehicle was intentionally done, but on the whole, the thing looks like it got dragged from the bottom of a lake somewhere. Presumably, he got a great deal on it.

The video posted to YouTube is primarily about [William] driving his creation around (sometimes from the back seat, no less), but towards the second half of the video there’s a quick rundown on the hardware used to make this pile of rust move.

A standard RC transmitter and receiver combination are used to control a pair of Arduinos mounted in the center console, which are in turn hooked up to external stepper drivers. The wheel is turned via a chain and sprocket arrangement, and the pedals are pushed with homebrew contraptions that look like they are made from lead screws intended for 3D printers.

All in all, it appears [William] has cooked up a fairly responsive control system with commodity hardware you could get on Amazon or eBay. Not sure we’d be backseat driving this thing personally, but to each their own.

We recently covered a Jeep that got a similar remote control upgrade, but these super-sized remote controlled vehicle builds are not just limited to the ground either.

When you work in a machine shop, you often need to convert numbers from metric to imperial. As long as you have to do this on a regular basis, why not make a tool to do so easily?

Instead of pulling out a phone or taping a calculator to their CNC machinery, NYC CNC came up with an Arduino Nano-based device that does this conversion in style. “The Imperializer” features a beautifully milled enclosure that magnetically sticks onto a machine, a backlit LCD, and a toggle switch to flip between metric and imperial units.

The Imperializer is a desktop or machine mountable device that does one thing: converts inches to millimeters (and millimeters to inches)!  It uses an Arduino Nano and is powered by a Lithium battery that can be recharged with a Micro-B USB cable!

If you’d like to have your own for your shop, the bill of materials and Arduino code can be found on the project page. The housing, and even a fully-assembled version, can be purchased here.

After finding that purchasing a tracking device for his satellite dish would be quite expensive, YouTuber “Tysonpower” decided to simply build one himself. What he came up is an assembly made with 3D-printed parts and extruded aluminum that uses a pair of NEMA23 stepper motors for movement.

While it doesn’t quite work with the dish itself due to its offset weight, the concept was successfully used to track weather satellites using a VHF Yagi antenna.

Control is provided via an Arduino Nano, which interfaces with a computer over USB serial that provides satellite information. You can check it out in the video below, and find more details in the project’s write-up.

To capture images of bullets “interacting” with various objects, photographic hacker Tyler Gerritsen created an impressive chronograph rig, able to measure the speed of a bullet launched from a rifle at 1000 meters per second. While the concept of measuring time from one sensor to another isn’t new, implementation at this speed required some interesting tricks.

To accomplish this feat, Gerritsen designed his own sensor array using photodiodes in a reverse-biased setup, and even calibrated the clock speed of the Arduino Uno for control in order to account for any variation. Finally, the time between triggering a flash and light actually appearing had to be compensated for in the code, a different value for each type of equipment.

The project write-up is a great read for anyone interested in this type of photographic or measurement technique, and the resulting photos can be seen here.

Water is essential to life on earth, and making sure our rivers and lakes are free from pollution is therefore quite important. For environmental monitoring, students from Bergen County Academics Magnet High School have come up with the Intelli-Buoy system that can track water turbidity, pH, oxygen, and temperature levels for analysis. It can also keep tabs on wind speed and rain stats for possible correlation.

The floating device uses a pair of Arduino Unos with an SD card shield mounted on each in order to record these statistics over several days, and it’s designed with two external USB ports for easy access.

Be sure to check out this orange PVC sensor assembly the video seen here.

What’s the best way to dispose of the dust that is produced when cutting with power tools? YouTuber Bob Claggett’s answer is to automate the process entirely, using a series of PVC sewer pipes to transport air to a central vacuum system, along with an Arduino Uno for control.

Airflow is regulated via a blast gate for each power tool, which is opened and shut using a hobby-style servo and custom linkage system. The powerful dust collector is controlled with the help of a relay.

Cleverly, a voltage sensor is employed for each power tool needing dust collection, allowing the Arduino to turn on the system and decide which gate to open without any human interaction.

Want a similar system for your workshop? Be sure to check out Claggett’s entire build in his write-up here and in the video below!

If you’ve been interested in creating a word clock for your home, then perhaps this neat build by “oliverb” will be the perfect place to start.

The clock, powered by an Arduino Nano along with a RTC module, is capable of displaying the time by spelling it out as you expect, or can use the letters as a matrix in order to show the time in digital format. These letter-dots can even be configured to form an “analog” clock if you prefer.

But that’s not all. The device can reveal the temperature and humidity, as well as play games like Tetris. Be sure to see it in action below!

[Dimitris Platis] wanted to add gesture control to his PC. You’d think that would be expensive, but by combining a diminutive Arduino, a breakout board with a gesture controller, and an interconnect PCB, he managed to pull it off for about $7. That doesn’t include the optional 3D-printed case and we think you could omit the interconnect board if you don’t mind some wires and further cut costs. [Dimitris] calls it Nevma, and you can see how the device works in the video below.

The heart of the project is a sensor that measures light and motion. The chip and the breakout board are just a couple of bucks if you order them from China. You can find them in the US if you don’t mind spending a little bit more. The device has an I2C interface, and [Dimitris] uses a tiny Mini SS Micro for the USB interface and the CPU.

The sensor chip is made for the mobile phone market and can also sense proximity. From its data sheet:

Gesture detection utilizes four directional photodiodes to sense reflected IR energy… The architecture of the the gesture engine features automatic activation (based on proximity engine results), ambient light subtraction, cross-talk cancellation, dual 8-bit data converters, power saving inter-conversion delay, 32-dataset FIFO, and interrupt-driven I2C communications.

That seems like a lot of power for a few bucks. Sparkfun has a library (and a matching board) and [Dimitris] uses it. The library is released as beerware. In particular, the documentation says: “The code is beerware; if you see me (or any other SparkFun employee) at the local, and you’ve found our code helpful, please buy us a round!”

We really like Nevma. You don’t have to hold any device in your hand. It also looks slicker than the solutions we’ve seen (and even created) using SONAR.