[Saurabh] wanted a quick project to demonstrate how easy it can be to build devices that are voice controlled. His latest Instructable does just that using an Arduino and Visual Basic .Net.

[Saurabh] decided to build a voice controlled lamp. He knew he wanted it to change colors as well as be energy-efficient. It also had to be easy to control. The obvious choice was to use an RGB LED. The LED on its own wouldn’t be very interesting. He needed something to diffuse the light, like a lampshade. [Saurabh] decided to start with an empty glass jar. He filled the jar with gel wax, which provides a nice surface to diffuse the light.

The RGB LED was mounted underneath the jar’s screw-on cover. [Saurabh] soldered a 220 ohm current limiting resistor to each of the three anodes of the LED. A hole was drilled in the cap so he’d have a place to run the wires. The LED was then hooked up to an Arduino Leonardo.

The Arduino sketch has several built-in functions to set all of the colors, and also fade. [Saurabh] then wrote a control interface using Visual Basic .Net. The interface allows you to directly manipulate the lamp, but it also has built-in voice recognition functionality. This allows [Saurabh] to use his voice to change the color of the lamp, turn it off, or initiate a fading routing. You can watch a video demonstration of the voice controls below.

This full-size replica blaster from Star Wars, most iconically used by Han Solo and Princess Leia, has everything. Flashing LEDs, blaster noises, LEGO, and yes, even an Arduino. Not bad for [Baron von Brunk]‘s first project to use an Arduino!

The blaster was based on electronics and LEGO that were lying around and was intended for use for Star Wars Day 2014. (May the Fourth be with you.) “Lying around” in this sense might be a bit of an understatement for [Baron von Brunk], as the design of the blaster required the use of the LEGO Digital Designer and 400 blocks, some of which are quite rare.

The electronics for the project are tied to a moving trigger mechanism (also made from LEGO). The trigger mechanism hits a momentary pushbutton which tells the Arduino to activate the LEDs and a separate 555 timer and sound recording/playback device which handles the classic blaster sounds. The whole thing is powered by a 9V battery and housed in the front of the blaster, and all of the code (and the LEGO schematics) are available on the project’s site.

This is quite an impressive replica, and the craftsmanship that went into the build shows, especially in the LEGO parts. We think Han Solo would indeed be proud! If you’re ready to go even further with Star Wars and LEGO, you might want to check out this barrel organ that plays the Star Wars theme.

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

[Nairod785] wanted to build a lock box that would lock from the inside. He started with an inexpensive, plain wooden box. This kept the cost down but would also allow him to easily decorate the box later on using a wood burning tool.

To keep the box locked, he installed a simple latch on the inside. The latch is connected to a servo with string. When the servo rotates in one direction, it pulls the string and releases the latch. When the servo is rotated in the opposite direction, the latch closes and locks the box once again.

If you are going to have a locked box, then you are also going to need a key to open it. [Nairod785] used a ring with a built-in NFC tag, similar to the ring featured back in March. Inside of the box is a PN532 NFC module. The walls of the box were a little too thick for the reader to detect the ring, so [Nairod785] had to scratch the wall thickness down a bit. The NFC module is connected to an Arduino Nano. Communications are handled with I2C.

The NFC ring actually has two different NFC tags in it; one on each side. [Nairod785] had to program both of the tag ID’s into the Arduino to ensure that the ring would work no matter the orientation.

The system is powered by a small rechargeable 5V battery. [Nairod785] wired up a USB plug flush with the box wall so he can easily charge up the battery while the box is locked. It also allows him to reprogram the Arduino if he feels so inclined. There is also a power switch on the side to conserve energy.

The evolution of the mere beetle has transformed from organic matter into robotic gears, circuits, and wires. This Cyberbeetle project was born during an open culture hackathon in Berlin throughout a few months time period. The event was called Coding for Vinci and was held from April into July 2014. The project used an Arduino and combined openly licensed biology related pictures and sounds from the museums in the area in a fun and playful way.

[Tomi] based the design on a gorgeous Chalcosoma atlas beetle species which was found in insect box scans that were taken from a nearby museum. The cool thing about this project is that the Cyberbeetle that [Tomi] created has its own hi-tech insect box with various special features. For instance, when the box was rotated on its side, small doors were revealed that when opened unveiled a tiny home theater system with a hi-definition flat screen, audio system and infrared communication. Inside the horn of the Cyberbeetle was an infrared receiver, which allowed the creature to interface with its TV program when it started. Music videos as well excited the robotic insect.

The project was awarded the “Funniest hack” prize during the hackathon. And a video of it can be seen after the break:

First things: there are no servo motors. No motors or any mechanical moving parts in this project.

There are 4 HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor units, only one is working as transmitting – pinging module and receiver simultaneously, 3 others are just receivers. Arduino DUE, of course, is a prime violin of the whole project. Small prototype board has an additional 4-channel buffer amplifier (MCP6024).

Technical specification ( approximately ):

• Scanning range 3 m, limited very low power and sensitivity of the HC-SR04 devices.
• Spacial XY resolution depends on a distance, has to be determined.  Two object should be position at least 5 cm apart and not on the same spherical surface around sensor board.
• Directivity diagram +-30 degree, or so.
• Spacial Z – (distance) resolution 12 um. No typo error, micrometers.
• Time to complete full scan 16 milliseconds, frame rate may vary from 60 Hz down to 10 Hz if there is strong reverberation.

Have to say, that ultrasonic units were slightly modified, to brought out an analog signal (40 kHz) before it gets quantization in the local uCPU.  After amplification, 4-channels are digitized by arduino’s ADC (12-bits 1 MSPS).

Fast Fourier Transform, not much differs from the published on this blog library. I’m not ready to disclose complete signal processing algorithm, and is not publishing a code, at this time. Nevertheless, I don’t mind to answer reasonable /meaningful questions.

Video: have to practice more -);

A few comments on a video clip. I intentionally use a pen to draw a picture, even it’s almost violate the basic of the physics, because reflective area of the pen practically equals to wave length, 8.5 mm for 40 kHz in the air. You can see, that arduino is loosing track on a few occasions. Distance ~ 1m.

Computer is running Linux with regular “mtPaint 3.40″ from official source. Software is receiving a mouse commands, as its has no idea where this commands come from. In the same way, if you draw a picture manually. To interface with a host, arduino emulates a left button and XY move mouse commands using “build-in” mouse driver, and I copy ButtonMouseControl example from IDE.

The surface of the touch screen is “virtual”, first things arduino does after I send a command over serial monitor console to start a drawing, is “search – scan” an object. Whatever it finds first, the closest one, would be “locked” and distance to this object is interpreted as “touched – untouched”. This is first try, and I was not pushing hard on the gesture pattern recognition yet. But as you can guess, there is no limits to “slide” “rotate” “scroll” etc movement discrimination, with only one exception. There is no “multi-touch”, as I mentioned in the specification section, two object has to be 5 cm apart. This limitation is introduced by two shortcomings of the current hardware design. First one, because there is no phase array, only one unit is transmitting ( in the middle on right side ), so there is no way arduino could identify two objects on the same sphere. Second, is low sampling rate of the ADC. In order to “shrink” XY spatial resolution down to wave length (8.5 mm), sampling rate has to be at least 6 MSPS or so.

Tracking update rate (scan frame rate – don’t confuse with a video)  is set to 32 fps.

Photo:

eddited: 14 Aug. 2014       “New technology is rising!”

Second video clip is posted, that demonstrates better tracking stability over bigger distance range.

Distance is 1.2 m, same pen. I think, that all for Virtual Touch Screen demonstration. Any improvements I could make in a code ‘d introduced only small changes in overall representativity of the project.

This HID technology is completely new area for me, and I’m not a professional programmer. Be curious, I look into “regular” touch screen (resistive – capacitive)  library free accessible on the i-net. I find over 100 variables that initialized and updated in order to keep track on a bunch of real-time parameters, that “normal” TS supplies with 10 ms time interval. Another 100′s variables are buried inside proprietary driver in the OS. It would takes a years to run a test and debug effects each of this variables on stability, smoothness,  susceptibility etc. And moreover, my invention Virtual TS – 3D would require a lot more than a 100′s….

edited: 26 Aug. 2014   Answering the question, modification to HC-SR04 module.

There is an electrical drawings, I was able to locate on-line:

http://uglyduck.ath.cx/HC-SR04E/HC-SR04E.svgz

And photo:                  

As you can see, analog 40 kHz output is taken from pin 7, LM324. Conveniently,  it’s the rightest one, close to the board edge. Module – transmitter has a jumper wire over B-E of the transistor, others 3 units may not have this wire. I find out, that unit doesn’t transmit anything till it gets a response, that may never happened for echo reflected from tiny object like a pen.  It looks like on-board uCPU is waiting a transition in poling mode.  And additional amplification stage I build with MCP6024, is similar to first stage of the LM324 (U2D), with a gain x50.  In my first try, I connect output of LM324 directly to arduino DUE analog inputs, basically its not realy safe, as voltage goes close to 3.6-3.7 V. But than introducing MCP6024 (rail-to-rail) I decrease power voltage of the OPA down to 3.3V,  not to worry about my DUE.