Most of us spend far too much time in front of the TV. So I designed a system that will automatically limit when and how much the TV can be on.
The post Limit TV Time with an Arduino-Controlled Relay appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
DIY Jukebox is a project made by Mario Pucci to show how Arduino Uno, NFC Shield and Python can be used to build a real jukebox. NFC means Near Field Communication and the NFC shield can perceive objects attached to little chips called NFC tags containing specific messages. In this project, Marco programmed each chip to play a different music genre when the tag is inserted in the cardboard jukebox:
You can download the file of the cardboard Jukebox at this link and the sketches here.
The steps of the tutorial are in italian but you can use google translate if needed! Enjoy the sound of music 
After nine years, Arduino participated to Ars Electronica 2015 to present an intelligent module system developed at the Malmö office: the system is called Eslov and is meant to make creation and coding very easy. This system allows you to explore the concepts of physical computing by plugging modules that can be programmed using a visual interface.
Our partners at the PELARS* project and some of our team members went to Linz to build the PELARS “Learning + Making” Zone for the U19 / Create Your World area, a part of the festival dedicated to teenagers. A pop-up experimental learning environment was built and it aimed to support learners understand what’s going on when they do hands-on science, technology & math in the classroom. Students and visitors tried Eslov and made some game dynamics to experience how the modules work. The feedback from the participants was encouraging with many students staying for a couple of hours and even returning back for multiple sessions.
Eslov will be also presented on our booth at World Maker Faire New York on September 26th to 27th, and Maker Faire Rome on October 16th to 18th.
*Pelars stands for Practice-based Experiential Learning Analytics Research And Support. Pelars is a project meant for improving how teachers, learners and technologies can support one another in hands-on learning of science, technology and math (STEM). Pelars will develop technologies (kits, sensing and electronic systems for classrooms) that will help teachers and learners understand what happens when people do science and math in the classroom.
PELARS project has received funding from the European’s Seventh Framework Programme for research technological development and demonstrations under grant agreement 619738.
If you want to follow up the development of the project in depth, visit the PELARS main page at: http://learningmaking.eu
(The news was originally posted on Arduino Verkstad blog by Laura Balboa)
Makers hacked real problems faced by people with special needs to create tools that will help improve mobility, independence, and comfort.
The post 5 Life-Changing Accessibility Inventions Made in 72 Hours appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
It takes 14 steps, a Prusa i3 3D printer and a lot of soldering to build Spider Robot v3.0, a quad robot running on Arduino Pro Mini. That’s what told us RegisHsu, a maker who shared his project’s tutorial on Instructables and the 3d printable files on Thingiverse.
It took 12 months of work to build the robot and it reached the fourth generation of design, that you can explore on his blog if you are interested in its history:
This is my first project for the 4 legs robot and it took me about 1 year development.
It is a robot that relies on calculations to position servos and pre-programmed sequences of legs. I’m doing this is because of it could be fun and educational for 3D design/printing and robot control.
The robot allows cool customizations like adding IR detection:
[jmilldrum] really gets a lot of use out of his Si5351A breakout board. He’s a ham [NT7S], and the Si5351A can generate multiple square waves ranging from 8 kHz to 160 MHz, so it only stands to reason that it is going to be a useful tool for any RF hacker. His most recent exploit is to use the I2C-controllable chip to implement a Fast Simple QSO (FSQ) beacon with an Arduino.
FSQ is a relatively new digital mode that uses a form of low rate FSK to send text and images in a way that is robust under difficult RF propagation. There are 32 different tones used for symbols so common characters only require a single tone. No character takes more than two tones.
The Si5351A can easily handle the encoding job. Since the output is a square wave, you do need a low-pass filter to put it on the air. [jmilldrum] also used some relatively small amplifiers to get the output up to 20 watts.
You might remember, we’ve talked about [jmilldrum’s] work with the Si5351A before. We also recently were talking about hams experimenting with digital modes and this is a great example, both by the developers of FSQ and [jmilldrum] for implementing it with an Arduino. If you want to learn more about FSQ, see the video below.
Artist Daric Gill used an Arduino, LEDs, and solar power to transform this wooden desk into a Living Orb.
The post The Living Orb Glows Bright When the Sun Goes Down appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
To photograph the stars, you need a gadget that can track the revolving night sky in a perfectly timed arc. Otherwise all you’ll see is streaks and blurs.
The post 6 DIY Star Trackers for Perfect Night Sky Photos appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
We never rest, even during summer, to serve our community and we announce today that we’ve refreshed over 150 example pages and redesigned the Examples area, offering an updated support to the current Arduino Software (IDE) Built-in and Libraries examples
Our website is a living entity that everyday hosts a huge number of visitors. They are looking for software, information, guidelines, ideas and also the right tutorial to start tinkering with their new board on a specific issue or project.
The Reference is the place where everything is documented and explained, with dry and essential information that is also included locally with every Arduino Software (IDE) installation.
Our software also includes a number of built-in sketches that help our users to quickly understand how the various functions and libraries may be used and applied to specific projects and tasks. We all started with the famous Blink and at the end of this tutorial we all felt the power and the excitement of having tamed our board with the upload of our first sketch. Keeping all these examples in good shape and updated is essential to keep you users safe from troubles or difficulties.
These examples evolve, as the libraries also evolve, therefore the sketches may be updated, amended or added. Each of these examples is commented and has an introductory part that gives a description of the purpose of the sketch and – if necessary – the instructions to put together the circuit. We know that the information provided inside the IDE and the sketches is not enough and therefore we made an area of our website where each sketch is explained and documented.
Year after year, board after board and library after library, many “hands” contributed to this area, filling gaps and amending things to reflect the Arduino Software (IDE) status. It has been an ongoing process that inevitably brought the Tutorials area in a state where many styles and ways of explaining things merged. We have big plans for our www.arduino.cc website and it is important to clean and fix the existing areas before we add new contents. This is why my first task – as editorial manager – has been the refresh and overall alignment of our Examples and Examples from Libraries pages.
We have roughly 150 pages documenting our Examples for the current products and libraries and going through them all wasn’t exactly a piece of cake: many things were checked for each example and sometimes things were outdated or missing. We also have our sister brand Genuino that got its space in all the relevant example pages. Now contents, style, look and feel and links in this area are ready for new and fresh developments.
I would like to end this post adding that this task was also a very good opportunity to refresh my knowledge about the powerful capabilities of Arduino programming language and its libraries. I had a few doubts on how to do a few things in my own sketches and going through all the examples gave me the hints I was missing.
The plain list of examples available in the Arduino Software (IDE) is just made of the sketch names, conversely in our pages you find a brief description of each of them. I suggest that you wander through these descriptions: let them excite your curiosity and inspire you!
A clever design for a homemade, radio-controlled BB-8 droid replica.
The post Yet Another Cool BB-8 Droid Project appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
