If you’ve ever dreamt of sitting in the driver’s seat of an RC car, you’ll love this recent project from Paul Yan. The designer has hacked together a first-person driving experience using a natural steering wheel that lets you feel like you’re playing a race kart game in real life.

As he describes in the video below, Yan used an old PS2 wheel controller, two Arduinos, a mini FPV camera, and a headset to act as a standalone monitor. The RC car–which is equipped with a Micro–interfaces with the wheel using an Uno and a PS2 Shield. Both Arduinos communicate via a pair of NRF24L01 modules.

I got the idea for this project while watching my three-year-old son play with his radio controlled toy cars. These all use the conventional two joysticks. The left is isolated to vertical movement to control the motor and the right stick is isolated to horizontal movement to control the turning direction of the front wheels.

If you have an old keyboard lying around and wish it were wireless, Maker DastardlyLabs has a solution.

The “HID Relay” is a small adapter that uses an Arduino Pro Mini, a Bluetooth module, a USB host shield, and a few other components to upgrade any USB keyboard to Bluetooth. DastardlyLabs has made three videos to explain the entire “Bluetooth-ification” process–which can be found below.

So far, the method has worked with all of the keyboards that DastardlyLabs has tested it on, as well as most mice (except for one “gamingish” USB mouse). The Arduino source code and build notes are available on GitHub. The HID Relay was inspired by a recent Arduino hack by Evan Kale. 

Suicide prevention charity R U OK? has partnered with digital innovation agency Fusion to create a fully-connected device in the form of a question mark with hopes of sparking a million conversations throughout Australia. Similar to the Olympic Torch, Quentin will be passed from person to person as it makes its way from town to town starting on Thursday, September 8th.

But unlike the Olympic Torch, the route is not planned. Instead, the journey is determined by the challenge it issues to each new keeper motivating them to reconnect face-to-face with people in their lives.

Quentin consists of a translucent 3D-printed shell, and is equipped with an Arduino/Genuino, some sensors, GPS, a display, and an array of LEDs that illuminate, animate and communicate. Users can interact with the device either by SMS or shaking it to receive their R U OK? challenge. Quentin also publishes its activity to the charity’s website, including distance travelled, challenges issued, and the number of keepers.

(Photos: Fusion / Campaign Asia)

Matthias Faust has created an Arduino controller for speeding up software development.

The “Maven Box” is based on an Uno and communicates with a Java program running on a desktop. The device is equipped with customizable buttons, switches and a dial, which act as physical inputs for expediting his daily routine. This enables Faust to select a branch from several GitHub projects, stash changes before pulling, pull the changes, trigger a maven build, as well as display the status of six tests on a set of notification LEDs.

Every job has it’s routine. I am a software developer who works with a Git/Maven based workspace everyday. So when I start working, my daily routine is to update and build my local workspace, pulling changes from GitHub, execute a maven build and execute the updated software. Usually I get my first coffee after that, but because I love coffee so much I thought there must be a faster way to get my system updated and running.

Whether a software developer yourself or simply a fan of awesome Arduino builds, check out the Maven Box’s Instructables page to see more!

[Markus Gritsch] and his son had a fun Sunday putting together a little toy airboat from a kit. They fired it up and it occurred to [Markus] that it was pretty lame. It went forward and sometimes sideward when a stray current influenced its trajectory, but it had no will of its own.

The boat was extracted from water before it could wander off and find itself lost forever. [Markus] did a mental inventory of his hacker bench and decided this was a quickly rectified design shortcoming. He applied a cheap knock-off arduino, equally cheap nRF24L01+ chip of dubious parentage, and their equivalent hobby servo to the problem.

Some quick coding later, assisted by prior work from other RC enthusiasts, the little boat was significantly upgraded. Now the boat could be brought back to shore using any R/C controller that supported the, “Bayang,” protocol. He wouldn’t have to face the future in which he’d have to explain to his son that the boat, like treacherous helium balloons, was just gone. Video after the break.

Evan Kale is back with another hack. This time, the YouTuber decided to convert a weed wacker-like toy into a metal detector with the help of an Arduino Uno.

As Kale explains, the project is based on a Colpitts Oscillator, which combines an LC circuit with a transistor amplifier for feedback. The frequency of oscillation is somewhere in the 100KHz range, which cannot be heard by humans. Enter the Arduino. When the trigger is pressed, an Arduino program translates the oscillation into an audible tone that is played out of the speaker. When the oscillation exceeds a certain threshold, it also emits a celebratory light show because… why not?

Kale walks through his entire build—along with the science of it all and how it works—in the video below. The schematics can be found on Imgur.

Calling Makers in New York! Planning on attending World Maker Faire next month? We’re looking for volunteers to join our team during the event, e.g. staffing tables and displays, helping with one-on-one workshops and demos, and providing technical assistance.

If you volunteer with us for one shift, you’ll receive a pass for both days so you can explore and enjoy everything happening around the faire grounds. Water and snacks will be provided, of course, and we’ve prepared a small gift to show our appreciation at the end of the your shift.

Interested? Please fill out this questionnaire, and we’ll get back to you soon!

• When: Saturday and Sunday, October 1-2, 2016
• Location:  New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th St, Corona, NY 11368

If it wasn’t for the weird Dutch-Norwegian techno you’d presumably have to listen to forever, [Gianni B.]’s doll house for his daughter, [Rita] makes living in a Barbie World seem like a worthwhile endeavor. True to modern form, it’s got LED lighting. It’s got IoT. It’s got an app and an elevator. It even has a tiny, working, miniature television.

It all started with a Christmas wish. [Rita] could no longer stand to bear the thought of her Barbie dolls living a homeless lifestyle on her floor, begging passing toys for enough monopoly money to buy a sock to sleep under. However, when [Gianni] visited the usual suspects to purchase a dollhouse he found them disappointing and expensive.

So, going with the traditional collaborating-with-Santa ruse, he and his family had the pleasure of collaborating on a dollhouse development project. Each room is lit by four ultra bright LEDs. There is an elevator that’s controlled by an H-bridge module, modified to have electronic braking. [Rita] doesn’t own a Dr. Barbie yet, so safety is paramount.

The brain of the home automation is a PIC micro with a Bluetooth module. He wrote some code for it, available here. He also went an extra step and used MIT’s scratch to make an app interface for the dollhouse. You can see it work in the video after the break. The last little hack was the TV. An old arduino, an SD Card shield, and a tiny 2.4 inch TFT combine to make what’s essentially a tiny digital picture frame.

His daughter’s are overjoyed with the elevation of their doll’s economic class and a proud father even got to show it off at a Maker Faire. Very nice!

[Ken Rumer] bought a new house. It came with a troublingly complex pool system. It had solar heating. It had gas heating. Electricity was involved somehow. It had timers and gadgets. Sand could be fed into one end and clean water came out the other. There was even a spa thrown into the mix.

Needless to say, within the first few months of owning their very own chemical plant they ran into some near meltdowns. They managed to heat the pool with 250 dollars of gas in a day. They managed to drain the spa entirely into the pool, but thankfully never managed the reverse. [Ken] knew something had to change. It didn’t hurt that it seemed like a fun challenge.

The first step was to tear out as much of the old control system as could be spared. An old synchronous motor timer’s chlorine rusted guts were ripped out. The solar controler was next to be sent to its final resting place. The manual valves were all replaced with fancy new ones.

Rather than risk his fallible human state draining the pool into the downstairs toilet, he’d add a robot’s cold logical gatekeeping in order to protect house and home. It was a simple matter of involving the usual suspects. Raspberry Pi and Arduino Man collaborated on the controls. Import relay boards danced to their commands. A small suite of sensors lent their aid.

Now as the soon-to-be autumn sun sets, the pool begins to cool and the spa begins to heat automatically. The children are put to bed, tired from a fun day at the pool, and [Ken] gets to lounge in his spa; watching the distant twinkling of lights on his backyard industrial complex.

Gone are the days of fumbling with your keys! Adham Negm has come up with a way to open your door with a simple hand gesture while holding your smartphone.

To accomplish this, Negm uses an Arduino Uno, a servo motor to move the bolt, and a 1Sheeld to interface with the smartphone. The 1Sheeld reads the device’s accelerometer data, and then activates the servo when it recognizes a predefined gesture.

Sound like a hack you’d like to try for your room? You can find the entire project on Instructables.