If you’d like to observe certain celestial elements, you could do research and search the sky manually. Or just create a system to do it for you!

This is exactly what Subham Paul has done using an Arduino Mega, a GPS module, and 3.5-turn-pan and 180-degree-tilt servos. The real-time tracking device can predict the position of planets, calculated using Kepler’s Laws.

Data about the celestial body is input into his setup and then precisely pointed it out in the sky with a laser. All of this, of course, is dependent on where the user currently resides, which is taken care of via the GPS module as well as an optional MPU-9250.

As you could imagine, this is naturally an involved project in concept and implementation. You can find an introduction and links to further build steps here.

There’s nothing like a dazzling display of lights to help get you into the holiday spirit. Every year, enthusiasts share the magic of the season by decorating their homes with artfully strung, animated bulbs, while some Makers take their projects to the next level using open-source hardware.

2016 did not disappoint. A quick Google search revealed a bunch of Arduino-controlled LED shows that you’ll want to see!

Did you deck out your house? Share it below! Also, don’t forget to enter your Internet of Holiday Things projects in our latest contest here.

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I’m sure many of us remember building toy car race tracks as kids, racing the cars, and then arguing over which car came in first and who cheated because they let go of their car too soon. Ah, good times. [Phil] wanted to create a drag strip race track for his son to introduce him to die-cast cars. The only commercial drag strip [Phil] could find didn’t have an electronic start gate or a timer, so he created his own with the help of an Arduino, a servo, and some light dependent resistors.

The Arduino controls everything, the button input, the light sensor input, and the servo. A button press tells the Arduino to start the race by pulling the start gate down and starting the timer. When the light sensor is covered, the timer for that lane stops. The time is shown for each lane using a different colored 4-digit 7-segment LED.

There were a couple of problems that had to be solved. The servo launching the cars was pulling too much power when activated so that the IR LEDs used at the finish line would dim enough to trigger before the race had even begun! [Phil]’s article goes over these issues and his design ideas as he built the track.

It’s a simple build that should provide hours of fun for [Phil]’s son and his friends over the years and will hopefully put to rest any arguments over who won. There are lots of photos in [Phil]’s article, as well as several videos showing off how things work and at the end of the article, he includes the code he used to control everything. This would be a great surprise for any nieces and nephews coming to visit over the holidays — you might want to wait for final assembly and include them in the fun!

If you like these kind of projects, we’ve seen a similar Hot Wheels timing system, and a different kind of race track based on a turntable system.

Though tape players persisted in vehicles for much longer than needed, cassettes are pretty much an obsolete format. That doesn’t mean they can’t be useful, as this project by Moscow-based media artist ::vtol:: shows.

His interactive robot, dubbed “pzr-10,” traverses a canvas littered with unwound tape, while two heads read the data off of it. Using an Arduino Uno, this data is then transmitted to the built-in loudspeaker and played aloud. Audio can be looped and processed in various ways, giving the user a unique audio experience!

A customized remote operates the robot. The controller is equipped with an Arduino Nano and a joystick that guides pzr-10, while buttons manipulate the sound.

You can read more about the robotic installation on ::vtol::’s page.

[Florian] has been putting a lot of work into VR controllers that can be used without interfering with a regular mouse + keyboard combination, and his most recent work has opened the door to successfully emulating a Vive VR controller in Steam VR. He uses Arduino-based custom hardware on the hand, a Leap Motion controller, and fuses the data in software.

We’ve seen [Florian]’s work before in successfully combining a Leap Motion with additional hardware sensors. The idea is to compensate for the fact that the Leap Motion sensor is not very good at detecting some types of movement, such as tilting a fist towards or away from yourself — a movement similar to aiming a gun up or down. At the same time, an important goal is for any added hardware to leave fingers and hands free.

[Florian]’s DIY VR hand controls emulate the HTC Vive controllers in Valve’s Steam VR Tracking with a software chain that works with his custom hardware. His DIY controller doesn’t need to be actively held because by design it grips the hand, leaving fingers free to do other tasks like typing or gesturing.

Last time we saw [Florian]’s work, development was still heavy and there wasn’t any source code shared, but there’s now a git repository for the project with everything you’d need to join the fun. He adds that “I see a lot of people with Wii nunchucks looking to do this. With a few edits to my FreePIE script, they should be easily be able to enable whatever buttons/orientation data they want.”

We have DIY hardware emulating Vive controllers in software, and we’ve seen interfacing to the Vive’s Lighthouse hardware with DIY electronics. There’s a lot of hacking around going on in this area, and it’s exciting to see what comes next.

We’ve seen plenty of Arduino-equipped holiday sweaters over the years, but none as teched-out as this one. Last Christmas, UK-based Makerspace fizzPOP and electronics retailer Maplin teamed up to create quite the fun and festive jumper.

The aptly named “Ultimate Christmas Jumper” features an Uno, a Mega, an Adafruit FLORA, four 8×8 LED panels, some NeoPixels, a portable 10,000mAh power bank, as well as a pair of electret microphone amplifiers that enable it to react to sounds.

A sewn-on, 3D-printed fireplace holds the display, which as you can see in the video below, flashes a series of holiday images ranging from Santa, to Rudolph, to season’s greetings.

Want to wear one to your next party? Lucky for you, fizzPOP and Maplin have put together a video tutorial to help get you started!