Mike, CEO of the Useless Duck Company, recently got sidetracked playing computer games. After receiving a notification on his phone, he realized that he had lost track of the time and was late to a very important meeting. Being the Maker that he is, he decided to invent a system that would prevent this from happening again. Introducing the Rick and Morty Alarm.

Now Mike just has to enter how much time he has remaining (in hours, minutes and/or seconds), and he’ll receive an alert in the form of a Screaming Sun when it’s time to leave.

The alarm consists of a Windows Forms application that sends a serial signal to an Arduino Uno, triggering a stepper motor. He also designed and 3D-printed the mechanism that raises the TV show character’s cutout. Meanwhile, the loud yelling noise is played through his computer speakers.

Since this worked so well for his desktop, Mike say he created a mobile app to help him wake up in morning. Check it out below!

If you want to play accordion via a MIDI interface, manufacturers such as Roland do make such a device. The downside is that they tend to be fairly expensive, as one would have to assume they are something of a specialty item.

Conversely, if you are able to get your hands on an accordion whose buttons and general movement work, but can’t actually produce good notes, you can build your own! This is just what developer and composer Brendan Vavra did, purchasing a broken instrument for $150 on eBay, then carefully disassembling the keys which were mapped to an Arduino Mega.

The setup also includes a Bluetooth transceiver module for sending MIDI signals wirelessly to a computer running music production software, as well as a barometric pressure sensor for adding dynamic expression using the accordion bellows.

As you can see in the video below, the result and his accordion skills are quite impressive! You can find more information on this project on its GitHub page and read New Atlas’ write-up here.

Everyone knows accordions are cool — they look fly, make neat noises, and get your romantic interests all hot and bothered. What isn’t cool is being relegated to acoustics only. How are you going to play a packed stadium or lay down a crystal clear track like that? You could go out and buy an electric accordion, but even low-end models carry a hefty price tag. But, this is Hackaday, and you know we’re going to be telling you about someone who found a better way.

That better way, shown in a build by [Brendan Vavra], was to take an acoustic accordion and convert it to MIDI. The base for his build was a decent full-size acoustic accordion purchased on eBay for just $150. Overall, it was in good mechanical condition, but some of the reeds were out of tune or not working at all. Luckily, that didn’t matter, since he wouldn’t be using them anyway. Don’t be fooled in the demo video below; it sounds like he’s playing the acoustic according but notice he’s not pumping those bellows! However, the bellows isn’t useless either since it can feed data back as a MIDI input.

[Brendan’s] build plan called for an Arduino Mega to be tied to a series of photo-interrupters that would detect button pushes and fire MIDI signals. But, first he had to take the thing apart — no small task, given the complexity of the instrument. The accordion has 120 buttons, and they’re not interchangeable, which means he had to carefully keep track of them as they were disassembled.

Remarkably, he accomplished this without any major hurdles (just a lot of time). The photo-interrupters were installed, and all of the electronics were tucked in nicely inside the body of the accordion. To start, [Brendan] had this wired to his computer with a USB cable from the Arduino in order to prove the concept. After that worked, he upgraded the setup with Bluetooth to transmit the signals, and even added a barometric pressure sensor that allows him to use the bellows for expression and volume changes. Although we’ve seen elaborate MIDI builds before, this might just take the cake for complexity in a small package. Oh, and just sheer coolness.

[via r/somethingimade]

By now, you are probably familiar with the Toa Mata Band–the world’s first LEGO robotic band controlled by Arduino Uno, which is hooked up to a MIDI sequencer.

Now a few years since Toa Mata Band’s debut, Italian producer Giuseppe Acito has shared the group’s latest music video: a cover of Kraftwerk’s “The Robots.” As you can see below, Acito himself performs the 1978 track’s vocals while the LEGO Bionicle figures play the tunes using a variety of gadgets, including pocket synths, drum pads, xylophone keys, and iPhones running apps.

This is my inspiration to this Kraftwerk ‘s tribute, regarding their vision of the future and to their brilliant approaching to the music with a touch of irony that even now is still influencing a thousand of music producers around the world. My video contribution from Toa Mata Band (a tiny orchestra of Lego robots driven by Arduino) represents a version of the iconic tune “The Robots” using nowadays open-source technologies, microcontrollers, 3D printer, robot arm, music DAW, smarthphones, pocket synthesizers and more… trying to give a new way to read the message we got from them 40 years ago.

[Yannick], aka [Gigawipf] brings us this (mostly) musical delicacy: a 3D-printed siren that’s driven by a brushless quadcopter motor, and capable of playing (mostly) any music that you’ve got the MIDI score for. This is a fantastic quickie project for any of you out there with a busted quad, or even some spare parts, and a 3D printer. Despite the apparent level of difficulty, this would actually be a great quickie weekend build.

First stop is Thingiverse, for the Mini Air Raid Siren model. Start that printing and get to work on the electronics. For the MIDI-to-ESC (electronic speed controller) conversion, any Arduino with USB support (ATmega32u4 or ARM boards) will work. The important bit is that you can run the MIDI-USB library. All that remains is a MIDI-to-servo pulse conversion and lookup table. Here’s [Yannick]’s file, but we’re guessing that you’ll want to tune your own siren.

How well does it work? See the videos below. Short notes, as well as note-offs, tax the quad motor’s ability to stop the siren rotor immediately. There’s a nice portamento effect as it ramps up between notes as well. You’ll need to pick your repertoire accordingly.

We have a strange affinity for musical sirens, so we’ll readily admit that [Yannick] had us at the word “spinning”. This is an easy project, with a pretty cool result. As far as we know, there’s only one 3D-printed, MIDI-controlled siren in the world, but it shouldn’t be hard to scale the siren model up or down to make different registers and effects. So who’s up for an entire symphony of these things?

OpenDrop V2 is an updated design for an open-source digital microfludics platform, which was initiated by GaudiLabs in Luzern, Switzerland and developed by several communities including hackteria | open source biological art, BioFlux and digi.bio. The device is part of a much larger ecosystem focused around digital biology with hopes of making personal lab automation accessible to more people.

OpenDrop runs on a new technology called “electro-wetting” to control small droplets of liquids, which allows anyone to carry out digital biology experiments. Potential applications are not only limited to science, but the art, music, gaming and education fields as well.

One such example is OpenDropper, an 8-bit video game based on the OpenDrop. You can see it below!

Interested in learning more? Read all about the open-source microfluidics platform here.

It’s 2017 and even GoPro cameras now come with voice activation. Budding videographers, rest assured, nothing will look more professional than repeatedly yelling at your camera on a big shoot. Hackaday alumnus [Jeremy Cook] heard about this and instead of seeing an annoying gimmick, saw possibilities. Could they automate their GoPro using Arduino-spoken voice commands?

It’s an original way to do automation, for sure. In many ways, it makes sense – rather than mucking around with trying to make your own version of the GoPro mobile app (software written by surfers; horribly buggy) or official WiFi remote, stick with what you know. [Jeremy] decided to pair an Arduino Nano with the ISD1820 voice playback module. This was then combined with a servo-based panning fixture – [Jeremy] wants the GoPro to pan, take a photo, and repeat. The Arduino sets the servo position, then commands the ISD1820 to playback the voice command to take a picture, before rotating again.

[Jeremy] reports that it’s just a prototype at this stage, and works only inconsistently. This could perhaps be an issue of intelligibility of the recorded speech, or perhaps a volume issue. It’s hard to argue that a voice control system will ever be as robust as remote controlling a camera over WiFi, but it just goes to show – there’s never just one way to get the job done. We’ve seen people go deeper into GoPro hacking though – check out this comprehensive guide on how to pwn your GoPro.

With the rising popularity of electronic textbooks and laptops being used for schoolwork, the ubiquitous high school locker is becoming less and less necessary. So, students are left with a private storage space that they don’t really need. Why let it go to waste when you’re an enterprising young man with budding electronics and fabrication skills?

[Mistablik] is one such high school student who decided to take advantage of his unused locker. After a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” discussion with his friends, [Mistablik] decided to use his summer break to construct a soda vending machine that fit entirely within his school locker. Quite an ambitious project for a high school student, but the result speaks for itself.

Using an Arduino, coin acceptor, LCD screen, and a handful of other components, [Mistablik] started by prototyping the electronics in a shoebox. After his prototype was proven, he used his school’s laser cutter to fabricate an acrylic control panel and enclosure. Other than a couple of hurdles involving false coin triggers caused by static electricity, the process went smoothly and he was able to move onto the soda dispensing part of the build.

Because [Mistablik] was building this in his school locker, it was important that the build was entirely self-contained and that it wouldn’t require any modification to the locker itself. Once again he turned to the laser cutter to build a two-chute system for dispensing two varieties of soda. Using Fusion 360, he designed and 3D printed the dispenser mechanism.

The finished product fits nicely into his locker, and quickly became a source of chatter around the school. [Mistablik] even used the vending machine to ask his girlfriend to prom, a technique sure to win any geek lover’s heart. Vending machines are popular builds for hobbyists, as they are a fun way to combine electronics, mechanics, and programming. But, this project stands out for its unique requirements and inspiring story.

[thanks to Slartibartfast for the tip!]

We’ve featured quite a few of [mitxela]’s projects here in the past, and many of them have the propensity to be labelled “smallest”. His Morse Code USB Keyboard Mk II adds to that list. It’s a Saturday afternoon project, with a few parts slapped onto a piece of perf-board, that allows using a Morse key as a USB keyboard. This project isn’t new or fresh, but we stumbled across it while trying to figure out a use for a Morse key lying in the author’s bin of parts. You can practise transmitting, by reading text and typing it out on the key, and then look it up on your computer to see if you made any mistakes. Or you can practise receiving, by asking a friend to punch it out for you. Either way, it’s a great way to hone your skills and prepare for your radio operators license exam.

The project is a follow up to his earlier one where he hooked up the Morse key via a RS-232 — USB converter directly to a computer and let the code do all the work. That turned out to be a very resource hungry, impractical project and made him do it right the next time around. The hardware is dead simple. An ATtiny85, a piezo buzzer, some decoupling capacitors, and a few resistors and zeners to allow a safe USB interface. The design accommodates a straight key, but there is one spare pin left over in the ATtiny to allow for iambic or sideswiper keys too. There is no speed adjustment, which is hardcoded at the moment. That isn’t very user friendly, and [mitxela] suggests adding a speed potentiometer to that last remaining pin on the ATtiny. This would prevent use of iambic/sideswiper keys. Or, you could use the RST pin on the ATtiny as a (weak) IO. The RST pin can read analog values between 5V and 2.5V, and will reset when voltage falls below 2.2V. Or just use another microcontroller as a last resort.

For the USB interface, [mitxela] is using the V-USB library after wasting some time trying to reinvent the wheel. And since this is designed to work as a HID, there are no drivers required – plug it in, and the OS detects it as a keyboard. He’s borrowed code from the EasyLogger project to use the internal oscillator and help free up the IO pins. And to detect the characters being typed, his code uses a long string of compare statements instead of a dictionary lookup. Writing that code was tedious, but it makes the identification quicker, since most characters can be identified in less that five comparisons (one dit = E, two dits = I, three dits = S and so on). This “tree” makes it easier to figure it out.

If you’d like to look up some of his other “tiny” projects, check out The smallest MIDI synthesizer, Smallest MIDI synth, again! and the ATtiny MIDI plug synth.