Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Zork, the famous Infocom text-based adventure game, is actually quite the technical achievement in software engineering. It’s an amazingly large world to explore, albeit in text form only, running on an interpreter that allows paging, loading, and saving the complete state. All this, built to run on computers with meager amounts of RAM in the late 70s. You might think it would be easy to play Zork on an Arduino, but as [rossum] found out, that’s easier said than done (alternate blog link)

While most computers that were capable of running Zork had at least 8k of RAM, if not more, the ATMega328 in the Arduino only has 2k of RAM. Those fancy home computers of yore also had built-in video, a keyboard, and most of the time, a disk drive. The Arduino has none of that.

[Rossum] faced this challenge head on, capitalizing on the onboard hardware of the Arduino. Video is generated by using SPI mode on a UART at top speed – 8 MHz. This just shifts out pixels from the video buffer on an SD card. The keyboard is handled like any other PS/2 keyboard project on the Arduino, and audio is generated by toggling a pin at 1000Hz for a keypress, and 3600Hz for SD card access.

The finished product includes a bunch of other Infocom games on the SD card, including Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and the ability to run Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the game regarded by many as being better than the book. Video below.

Datamonsters are creatures that respond to you. They can see you and respond to your presence and movement. In addition to responding to immediate interactions, they can also be influenced by events happening in the world outside.

The project you see in the picture was made by Lucas Ainsworth  using Intel Galileo board and needs 3 main things:

- a physical structure
The physical structure uses commonly available materials and a relatively easy-to build wooden kit pattern, so that the physical form “gets out of the way”
as much as possible. If you cut this kit and put it together, you will have a robot with 5 joints: waist rotation, waist elevation, mid-body elevation, neck rotation, and head movement.

- sensing
For this version, we’re using 3 long range active IR sensors for simplicity and low cost. This sensor pack estimates object location in 3D space. Next gen could possibly use a webcam and OpenCV to include face-detection and motion in addition to presence.

- software
This is where the fun is and where the most work remains to be done. We have code for the Arduino IDE (written for the Intel Galileo board) that you
can use to calibrate and control your monster. If you use our code unchanged, you’ll have some basic reactions to objects, and a connection over WiFi to Thingspeak. Thingspeak is an easy-to-use repository for data collected from the internet or any data sources you create.

You can make your own Datamonster following the detailed documentation at this link. The Galileo code to get started (for the Arduino IDE) is on GitHub.

Some projects are both educational and useful. We believe that [Jasper's] Arduino based electronic load is one of those project.

[Jasper's] electronic load can not only act as a constant current load, but also as a constant power and constant resistive load as well. The versatile device has been designed for up to 30V, 5A, and 15W. It was based on a constant current source that is controlled by a DAC hooked up to the Arduino. By measuring both the resulting voltage and current of the load, the system can dynamically adapt to achieve constancy. While we have seen other Arduino based constant loads before, [Jasper's] is very simple and straight forward compartively. [Jasper] also includes both the schematic and Arduino code, making it very easy to reproduce.

There are tons of uses for a voltage controlled current source, and this project is a great way to get started with building one. It is an especially great project for putting together your knowledge of MOSFET theory and opamp theory!

In proper, high-dollar embedded development environments – and quite a few free and open source ones, as well – you get really cool features like debugging, emulation, and profiling. The Arduino IDE doesn’t feature any of these bells a whistles, so figuring out how much time is spent in one section of code is nigh impossible. [William] came up with a clever solution to this problem, and while it doesn’t tell you exactly how much time is spent on a specific line of code, it’s still a good enough tool to be a great help in optimization.

[William]‘s solution is to create a ‘bin’ for arbitrary chunks of code – one for each subroutine or deeply nested loop. When the profiler run, you end up with a histogram of how much time is spent per block of code. This is done with an interrupt that runs at about 1 kHz, with macros sprinkled around the code. Each time the interrupt ticks, the macro runs and increases a counter by one. Let the sketch run for a minute or so, and you get an idea of how much time is spent in a specific area of code.

It’s a bit of a kludge, but when you’re dealing with extremely minimal tools, any sort of help in debugging is sorely needed and greatly appreciated.

A recent Pew Research study says 51 percent of Americans believe robots will be able to create art indistinguishable from a human's. Well, they might be surprised that robots like those already exist, and one of them's this new mechanical Picasso called Roboartist. Obviously, this robotic arm can't think up its own masterpieces, so its operators feed it images to draw -- once it "sees" its subject, the system uses an image processing tool called Canny edge detector to determine where pen strokes go. Roboartist then uses rows of violet lights under the drawing surface as a guide to determine the lines on an A3 paper. If you're curious how its creators assembled the whole thing, Hackaday has its full hardware list (they used an assortment of parts, including Arduino), as well as as a diagram on how its software works. As you can see in the video below, the artistic robot works great and has even successfully sketched an eerie rendition of Heath Ledger's Joker.

Filed under: Robots

Comments

Source: Hackaday (1), (2)

A connected home is in the dreams of many of us and we all spent at least a few moments thinking about how would it be for real. The problem is that most of the hardware devices and software platforms are not designed to work together and that’s why things become complicated.

Today we introduce you to a new Arduino At Heart project called EZcontrol.IT, crowdfunding now on Indiegogo, and designed to simplify the world  of internet of things:

EZcontrol.IT offers dedicated hardware that is affordable and easy to use, compatible and programmable with the Arduino™ IDE and language; designed to interact with a full and extensive software platform: Lelylan, that is an open, easy to use and personalize, cloud platform for Home Automation.

The project is composed by:

•  EZboard, a low power consumption Arduino compatible board, equipped with an onboard Ethernet controller, microSD card socket, temperature sensor, and power relay. It’s designed to run for long periods of time powered by batteries and it integrates all the hardware necessary to implement most of the common applications for Home Automation.
• Leylan platform, a very easy to use Home Automation cloud platform, universally compatible with any device capable of being connected to the web. It’s  based on the MQTT protocol (MQ Telemetry Transport), the same used by Facebook to send live updates to the mobile messaging applications, and offers a simple API that can be used to program basically any platform.

EZcontrol.IT decided to join the Arduino AtHeart program to better identify this solution as dedicated to makers, and to remark the compatibility with the Arduino platform at the highest possible level.

EZboard in bundle with Lelylan is available starting today for a short initial period of pre-order, with packages for makers and extremely affordable early-birds offers. Make your pledge!

Read more on MAKE