Alan Chatham of Unojoy wrote an Instructable on using pencil drawings as capacitive sensors:
Did you know? You can make pencil drawings reactive to touch for use with your projects! It’s really easy, and gives you a lot of flexibility in making interfaces for whatever microcontroller project you’re making.
Making a capacitive touch sensor from a drawing via Arduino
Make your own DIY motion alarm using an Arduino, a motion sensor, a few wires and headers.
The code can be obtained here.
Oh also, its been featured on Hacker News, so you can read the thread for pleasure!
Via:[Lifehacker]
This IR based Arduino programmer works from Arduino IDE using ATK500V2 protocol.
Construction details:
For infrared link it uses standard 38kHz modulation – as as in TV remotes. One part of the circuit utilizes FT232RQ module that talks to Arduino IDE. It has a also a circuitry that enables sending and receiving IR signals using IR LED and IR demodulator. Arduino part has also an IR transceiver pair connected to RXD and TXD pins. Arduino bootloader was a bit modified to work as half duplex so the receiver were turned off while transmitting. The only problem remaining is that target board has to be reset manually.
Any hackers in the house to repair that?
Via:[embedds]
Libelium, with its open source hardware division of Cooking Hacks has come out with a new 3G module for arduino.
The new 3G shield for Arduino enables connectivity to high speed WCDMA and HSPA cellular networks allowing transfers up to 7.2Mbps (20 times faster than with GPRS technology). The module also counts with an internal GPS that enables the location of any Arduino both outdoors and indoors, combining standard positioning data from satellites with mobile cell triangulation in the assisted mobile mode (A-GPS).
The new Arduino 3G module also includes a small camera for video recording in high resolution and a complete audio interface that enables Arduino to run with all the functionalities of a smartphone device.
And just to remind our readers about cooking hacks? They were the people who created the XBee shield for arduino.
Further information regarding this new 3G/GPRS module can be found here.
Via:[EMSnow, cooking-hacks, memristor]
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line.
What does microcontroller programming have in common with Tetris? Quite a bit if you're doing it with Modkit Micro from a Kickstarter project out of Cambridge, MA., which allows almost anyone to visually set up their hardware using graphical blocks to write the code. The partially-hooded trio behind it promises that the software is ideal for use with protyping boards from Arduino, Evil Mad Science, Lilypad, Seeed Studio, Wiring and SparkFun, and they even claim that elementary school students have used it to "take their projects from concept to reality in just a few hours." Purists should have no fear either: you can still get into a code view to see what's going on behind the scenes. A web-based Modkit Micro is being offered online starting June 1st for $25, and there'll be a desktop variant for Windows, OSX, and Linux as early as July if they reach their funding target. Check out the video after the break and then try to get your kids to wait for college before inventing version 2.0 of this.
Insert Coin: Modkit Micro asks us if we're ready for six-year-olds coding Arduino boards originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 May 2012 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsMoppy is a musical floppy controller program. By using an Arduino UNO as a translator, you can command an array of floppy drives with a musical keyboard. The head on each floppy drive is controlled by a stepper motor which will put out sounds when driven at the right frequency.
Here is a link to the Moppy project page.
Enjoy your musical floppy drives!
Via:[Hackaday]
The original post from Nick Gammon is old, but I’m pretty sure can still be useful.
Check out this handy Arduino R3 pinout diagram and write up from Nick Gammon. He hits a lot of the important points here, and in addition he explains the limits of all the pins and interfaces in the rest of the post. It’s nice to have all this info collected into a single place.
Via:[Adafruit]
Did you buy a Digilent Max-32 for the 32 bit processor and the Arduino compatability (these boards are VERY Arduino compat.)
Do you know you have an entire OS including the Basic language available to you for FREE???
See the following website for details on: http://www.cpustick.com/ (StickOS).
(By the way, those with a Uno-32 boards are not left out, you can do the same thing!)
This chandelier is something we’d expect to see on sale in the local gallery store. [Starkec] made it a couple of years back and we just love the look. The materials are pretty common, and you can throw it together in an afternoon.
The diffuser are made from clear glass soda bottles. After removing the labels and giving them a good cleaning, they were each set upside down and sprayed with some glass frosting spray. A four-conductor telephone wire serves both as the support for the bottle and electrical path for the RGB LED inside of each. The original screw cap for the bottles makes it a twist to install them after the soldering is done. There are two common color buses so that alternating colors can be shown at the same time. After seeing the video we think you’ll agree that the wiring scheme makes for some great animated effects.
[Thanks Craig]
Having one of those days where your too lazy to do anything? Have a robot doodle for you while you sit back in your favorite chair. This is a very simple drawing robot that was actually started by one of our student engineers. I just made the base plate bigger so I could add a third servo to raise and lower the pen.
My base plate is laser cut acrylic but it could easily have been a small food container, CD or a piece of wood. Just use some double sided tape or hotglue to hold it all together.