[Paul] participated in a hackathon at work and created a hack to help solve what was ultimately a people problem. A soda fridge at work wasn’t getting refilled when empty. Instead of trying to make people less lazy, [Paul] went with making the fridge more needy.

The first thing [Paul] did was make a soda fridge refill sensor from a scale. As the fridge got emptier, it got lighter. The scale senses that and can decide it’s time for a refill. The only part missing was how to read the output from the scale. To do that, he took an unusual approach.

The soda fridge sits on an analog scale with a dial. [Paul] saw there was no need to measure the exact weight of the fridge, only to detect a refill threshold. He came up with a simple hack: colored paper attached to the scale’s dial and an Arduino with an OSEPP COLOR‑01 color sensor pointed at the paper. The dial moves in response to the fridge’s changing weight, and the color sensor reads the color of the paper as it moves under the sensor. With a little bit of trial-and-error calibration and some barely modified sample code for the sensor, it was possible to reliably detect when the fridge required refilling. With the sensor done, it was time to use it to solve the lazy people problem.

In a way, the root problem wasn’t that people couldn’t be bothered to check if the fridge needed a refill – it was that the right people weren’t finding out at the right times. This resulted in spotty refilling as well as soda not being ordered when needed. This hack means that the fridge can now actively announce its state, which now allows things like notifying people via email that it is their turn to refill and re-order. It turns out that a fridge that can tell people what it needs has a much better chance of being serviced, compared to a one that has to wait for people to check up on it.

We’ve seen people interface directly to the load sensors in weight scales before, but this hack took a completely different approach.

Thanks to [Paul] for sharing.

If you are a regular Hackaday reader, you’ve probably seen plenty of ESP8266 projects. After all, the inexpensive device is a workhorse for putting a project on WiFi, and it works well. There is a processor onboard, but, most often, the onboard CPU runs a stock firmware that exposes an AT command set or Lua or even BASIC. That means most projects have a separate CPU and that CPU is often–surprise–an Arduino.

It isn’t a big leap of logic to imagine an Arduino with an integrated WiFi subsystem. That’s the idea behind the MKR1000. But the real question you have to ask is: is it better to use an integrated component or just put an Arduino and ESP8266 together?

[Andreas Spiess] not only asked the question, but he answered it in a YouTube video (see below). He examines several factors on the MKR1000, the Arduino Due and Uno, and several other common boards. The examination covers performance, features, and power consumption.

We’ve covered a slew of ESP8266 projects. We’ve also seen at least two MKR1000 projects, one for an automotive project and the other controls a shower.

Congratulations to Gustavo Reynaga from Sinaloa (Mexico) for the following picture taken at Genuino Day at Mazatlan International Center. We’re sending him a Genuino MKR1000 and a Genuino Mug!

First Arduino/Genuino Day in Sinaloa State of Mexico @arduino.cc @arduino.cc #ArduinoD16 #GenuinoD16

A photo posted by Gustavo Reynaga (@hulkco) on Apr 21, 2016 at 10:11am PDT

It’s your time to win a MKR1000 too!

– Follow our official Arduino.cc account on Instagram

– Share your pics on your account on Instagram using hashtag #ArduinoD16 and #GenuinoD16 and mention us with the tag @Arduino.cc

– Every thursday, from April 7th to May 26th we are going to choose one of your pics (posted starting April 2nd) and announce on this blog a winner of an Arduino or a Genuino MKR1000 and one of our t-shirt or mug for a total of of 8 lucky people. Easy enough, right?

Remember to share cool pictures regarding Arduino and Genuino moments in your community also beyond Arduino and Genuino Day.
Show us your local activities!

Last night Massimo Banzi was Guest Judge on Intel  America’s Greatest Maker - episode 4 and had the difficult task of evaluating the teams and their projects competing in the Make or Break rounds for $100,000 and a spot in the million dollar finale.

Check some bits of the episode in this Meet and Greet video and in the Fast Forward of the episode!

“String Art” is the name of the art form that transforms thousands of nails and just as many feet of thread into unique masterpieces. Some artists have developed techniques to create photorealistic string art works, but until now, there was no way around the tedious and time-consuming manufacturing process. Depending on the size, it can take months to complete a single piece by hand.

Now, you might think, wouldn’t it be great to build a sophisticated “nail and thread”-machine that takes care of the whole assembly process, from placing the nails on the board to winding the string around the nails? The people behind Laarco, a design studio in London, UK, did exactly that. Their project “Autograph” is effectively a large scale “printer” for string art, capable of satisfying the increasing demand for this form of image reproduction.

While they are not shy to show their amazing results, mostly string-art-converted photographs of celebrities, we will probably not get a full documentation on the hardware and software behind Autograph. After all, it took them four years of development to build this fully automated machine, and they are about to turn their string boss-ness into a strong business: You can now buy their unique string art pieces starting at $1,100.

Too expensive? Well, you can still build your own: The brain of the machine is a Raspberry Pi which sends commands to an Arduino Mega equipped with a 3D printer shield. The gantry design looks very similar to a popular low-cost CNC-mill, however, they added a custom tool head to position and uncoil the thread while keeping it under tension.

In preparation of an assembly pass, the nail positions are derived from Voronoi diagrams, an unknown mechanism then picks and places the nails into pre-drilled holes. During the threading run, the height of the tool head increases as the process progresses to avoid collisions with previous string segments.

We’ve seen drawing-bots, polar graphs and robotic artists in various forms in the past, but it’s probably safe to say that this is the first string art machine ever built. That said, enjoy the video:

Last November, after [HomoFaciens]’ garbage-can CNC build, we laid down the gauntlet – build a working CNC from cardboard and paperclips. And now, not only does OP deliver with a working CNC plotter, he also plans to develop it into a self-replicating machine.

To be honest, we made the challenge with tongue firmly planted in cheek. After all, how could corrugated cardboard ever make a sufficiently stiff structure for the frame of a CNC machine? [HomoFaciens] worked around this by using the much less compliant chipboard – probably closest to what we’d call matboard here in the States. His templates for the machine are extremely well thought-out; the main frame is a torsion box design, and the ways and slides are intricate affairs. Non-cardboard parts include threaded rod for the lead screws, servos modified for continuous rotation, an Arduino, and the aforementioned paperclips, which find use in the user interface, limit switches, and in the extremely clever encoders for each axis. The video below shows highlights of the build and the results.

True, the machine can only move a pen about, and the precision is nothing to brag about. But it works, and it’s perfectly capable of teaching all the basics of CNC builds to a beginner, which is a key design goal. And it’s well-positioned to move to the next level and become a machine that can replicate itself. We’ll be watching this one very closely.

Give some mundane, old gear to an artist with a liking for technology, and he can turn it into a mesmerizing piece of art. [dmitry] created “red, an optic-sound electronic object” which uses simple light sources and optical elements to create an audio-visual performance installation. The project was the result of his collaboration with the Prometheus Special Design Bureau in Kazan, Russia. The inspiration for this project was Crystall, a reconstruction of an earlier project dating back to 1966. The idea behind “red” was to recreate the ideas and concepts from the 60’s ~ 80’s using modern solutions and materials.

The main part of the art installation consists of a ruby red crystal glass and a large piece of flexible Fresnel lens, positioned in front of a bright LED light source. The light source, the crystal and the Fresnel lens all move linearly, constantly changing the optical properties of the system. A pair of servos flexes and distorts the Fresnel lens while another one flips the crystal glass. A lot of recycled materials were used for the actuators – CD-ROM drive, an old scanner mechanism and old electric motors. Its got a Raspberry-Pi running Pure Data and Python scripts, with an Arduino connected to the sensors and actuators. The sensors define the position of various mechanical elements in relation to the range of their movement. There’s a couple of big speakers, which means there’s a beefy amplifier thrown in too. The sounds are correlated to the movement of the various elements, the intensity of the light and probably the color. There’s two mechanical paddle levers hanging in there, if you folks want to hazard some guesses on what they do.

Check out some of [dmitry]’s earlier works which we featured. Here’s him Spinning a Pyrite Record for Art, and making Art from Brainwaves, Antifreeze, and Ferrofluid.

I'm hoping someone can shine some light on a frustrating issue I'm having with placment of componets in the very limited space inside the DF Robotics Devasator. Ideally I would like to use a Mega Arduino for this ambitous project. However the Mega a slight bit larger than the UNO. The L298 board, Arduino,breadboard and battery pack needs to fit into the very limited space. There is space for the Arduino at the front, however there would not be access to the USB port on the Arduino.

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