The wonderful gang at ThingM (makers of the blinkM smart LED) have announced an interesting new product is in the works, the blink(1) programmable USB RGB LED status indicator. Plug the little open source nub into most any USB port – laptop, desktop, server, some Android phones, DD-WRT router – and then you can use apps (or create your own) to make the blink(1) LED light up to indicate an event. A tweet just mentioned me? Steady green light. Email from my wife? Three blue blinks. CPU overheating? Red alert!

From the ThingM blog:

ThingM has just launched a Kickstarter for “blink(1)”. A USB RGB LED that builds on our BlinkM Smart LED. It’s a super status light that packs three dimensions of information (color, brightness and pattern) into a single tiny package that fits into any USB port on nearly every device.
It makes it incredibly easy to connect any data source in the cloud or on your computer to a full-color RGB LED so you can know what’s happening without checking any windows, going to any websites, or typing any commands.

I can’t wait to get my hands on one – the Kickstarter is nearly funded, so I’m optimistic – to play around with the development tools. I’d love, for example, to have the Blink(1) tell me when a Renderman render has completed, or if I have a meeting in five minutes.

Blink(1), the USB RGB LED by ThinkM

Ellen Sundh’s Bad Posture belt uses an Arduino, wave shield, and a flex sensor to detect when the user slouches. If your posture needs correcting, the belt literally yells at you. How’s that for motivation?

The belt is calibrated when the user presses a pushbutton after attaining good posture. After that, he/she is free to be lambasted by this piece of wearable tech.

[via The Creators Project]

We’ve seen many examples of floppy and hard disk drives being sequenced to make music, but the Moppy can be controlled by an external keyboard. Sammy1am created the Moppy using and Arduino UNO and some stepper motors to set the frequencing of the spinning disk drives.

[via Arduino Blog]

San Diego-based software engineer Michael LaGrasta brought his DeskLights ambient notification system to Maker Faire Bay Area this year, where I had the chance to meet him. In a nutshell, using an Arduino Uno Ethernet and 160 RGB LEDs (in the form of Adafruit’s Pixels, “the desk receives event notifications over the network and alters its color and pattern to provide those notifications to the user. The combination of color and location can be used to communicate a wide variety of information.” You can customize the color of the lights, flashing patterns, and where they light up on the desk to denote an endless number of different notifications, like incoming email, calendar alerts, basically whatever would be most useful to you. Also, “a light can change from green to red to indicate server health and process load or increase its intensity the longer you ignore your email.” Michael used an Ikea Galant desk, which has a frosted surface, but he’s currently working on a tabletop version that won’t require a translucent desktop, and will be posting updates on Twitter. Michael shared his step-by-step for the build with us in Make: Projects and is offering his code on GitHub. Useful project, and yet another reason to incorporate pretty lights.

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

Honey, I Shrunk the Maker

I built this 6x larger than real life, fully functional Arduino GRANDE. Why? There was talk among the Make: editors about how Arduino is really big at Maker Faire, and I thought, why not make it even bigger? Literally.

After modeling it in 3D software, drafting it for laser cutting, soldering up all the banana plugs to the real Arduino UNO (this thing is really a shield), etching and painting the graphics, and building some large-scale components to plug in, here we have it. The first time I hoisted it up on my shoulder like a boom box I was pretty darned psyched!

I’m going to be showing the Arduino GRANDE at Maker Faire and doing a two talks about it on Saturday. I’ll use the GRANDE to demonstrate Arduino basics at the Make: Projects Stage in the Maker Shed (Saturday, 3-3:30 pm) and to talk about how I built this beast at the Make: Demo Stage (Saturday, 5:30-6 pm). Come on down and check it out!

It’s all packed up and ready to go.

Arduino GRANDE build photos on Flickr 

Question: Is it possible to control this hobby servo using a PWM signal from Arduino via this optocoupler to the servo?

read more

Though electronics hobbyists may not have the same resources that the Maker Sheds of the world have to design, package and sell do-it-yourself kits, electronics component distributor Jameco plans to change that. With Club Jameco, enthusiasts can pitch their kit ideas to the electronic component wizards in Belmont, CA and if a project is deemed viable for production, they'll be provided with feedback and have their idea posted for public comment. After the creation of step-by-step kit instructions, a list of materials and undergoing final approval, kits will be sold to the adoring masses. Once projects roll off production lines and into garages, creators will be paid royalties anywhere from five to ten percent based on quarterly sales. Aside from giving DIYers another sales avenue, it's also an opportunity for those who've been wary of piecing together projects to finally dive in sans the added fuss. Hankering to propose a bundle of your own? Per usual, all the particulars can be found in the source link below.

Club Jameco borrows from Etsy and Kickstarter, lets DIYers design, sell and buy project kits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 03:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Michael of n0m1 Design built this Arduino-controlled night light as a Mother’s Day gift.

A few years back I made a motion sensitive night light as a Mother’s day gift and while it worked pretty well it really chewed out the batteries. And as with all devices that eat batteries it eventually fell out of use. The standby current was around 4 mA due to the common LM324 opamp that was used to amplify the PIR motion sensor signal. The original enclosure was CNC milled from a bit of re-purposed apple which had a former life as a guitar body I built as a child.

Code and schematics on the project page.

Ok I am planning on building a "small" humanoid robot that can has computer vision and can do many tasks. I am planning on using a small onboard computer to do all the processing so that it can be autonomous and reduce the need to have another computer on for it to work. Anyway I am looking for a small, not expensive, and easy to use, some what powerfull small computer or single board computer that has usb ports,can run off a small battery and can run lunix. I am thankful for all suggestions.

read more