With graduation season upon us, Makers are coming up with creative ways to decorate their mortarboards. One thing is for certain, Fahad Mirza will stand out in the crowd of his classmates with a movie-themed cap that would even impress Keanu Reeves himself. Inspired by The Matrix, the headpiece is equipped with an Arduino Pro Mini, an Adafruit NeoPixel ring for its green LED effects, and a 3.7V lithium-ion battery for power. The electronics are all hidden inside the cap which aptly reads, “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

Great news! Thailand now has an official reseller of Arduino.cc’s sister brand Genuino boards! Say hello to ThaiEasyElec and its CEO Chutiman Yongprapat.

- Tell us a bit more about ThaiEasyElec..
We founded Venus Supply Co., Ltd. on 2004 to sourcing and reselling SMD electronics component, evaluation boards, robotics kit, sensor, etc. Mainly focus on rare products that are hard to find in the Thailand market. Also, we have a research and development team to support our customers hardware design and production needs.

In 2006, we launched an e-commerce website (ThaiEasyElec.com) to provide Thai hobbyists, students, teachers, researchers, and developers with a fast and easy way get hardware. We started with a small office in our founder’s apartment, and in 2011, opened our training center. Today, we have various embedded training courses, such as Embedded Linux, Windows CE, Eagle PCB design, and also customized courses for customers.

In total, we have three departments dedicated to e-commerce, R&D, and education.

- What’s your company’s super power?

We are experienced on various technologies related to embedded systems and we can design hardware, firmware, and software.

- Do you have a favorite Arduino/Genuino product?

– Sure! Our 3G Shield product is our favorite. We already provide an Arduino library for it, too.

Contacts

ThaiEasyElec Store Website  – Facebook – Twitter

Electronic musical instruments are fun for Makers. With some cheap tools, know-how and passion, anyone can become a real synth geek. Just ask software developer Liam Lacey, who also happens to be a sound coder and freelance hacker. He recently won element14’s Open Source Music Tech design challenge for his Vintage Toy Synthesizer project — it’s an acoustic wooden toy piano converted into an open-source, standalone polyphonic digital synthesizer running on a BeagleBone Black and an Arduino Pro Mini.

Playing an instrument is about a lot more than just the sound you create – the way you play it; the physical feedback; and the overall feel and aesthetics of the instrument also play a big role in the overall experience, with these elements also helping to nurture inspiration, and can even affect your perception of the sound created.

Lacey developed the voice engine using the C++ audio DSP library Maximilian, and the keyboard mechanism uses homemade pressure sensors made out of Velostat. The instrument has 18 keys, with players able to also alter scales using the knobs on top of the mini piano’s lid.

Other dials are used to toggle dedicated waveform oscillators, various filters and onboard distortion effects, and there’s even vintage parameters for replicating old or broken analog synth voices. What’s neat is that the converted toy can also act as a MIDI controller to send velocity-sensitive note messages and polyphonic aftertouch to Logic Pro, Ableton Live and various music software programs.

Here’s a diagram of the software architecture of the synth:

You can read more about the hack here, as well as listen to some quick and rough sound/patch demos:

The project took three and a half months to bring to fruition, and let us just say, the final result is quite impressive! Check out the video below to learn more about  its specs and explore the complete documentation on GitHub.

Graduation season is now underway across America, and Western Carolina University student Michael King wanted to be sure he’d stand out from the crowd during his commencement ceremony. So being a computer science and electrical engineering major and all, naturally he decided to do some tinkering. He equipped his mortarboard with a 32×32 LED array, an Arduino Mega, three SPDT switches, a 2000mAh li-ion battery, and lots of wire, along with plenty of code. This enabled him to display a running Super Mario, Pac-Man, his school’s logo, a “Hire Me Google” message, and several other animated images on top of his cap.

I used three SPDT switches — one for LED grid power, one for Arduino power, and another to break out of the loop and display a static “WCU” logo. LED grid is powered via a 3.7V li-ion battery. 9V battery to power the Arduino Mega.

Lots and lots of Arduino code. I could convert bitmaps to arrays to use in the code. For those that would understand, I had a script written in Processing that could read a 32×32 pixel image, parse and convert it into an array of hex values, and literally format/write it out to a header file that I could just copy and paste into Arduino IDE… And yes, I am working on programming pong. Yes the actual, playable game.

If you’ve ever wanted to add biometric security features to your Arduino project, you’re in luck. That’s because Nick Koumaris of educ8s.tv has put together a quick tutorial on how to integrate a fingerprint sensor module with an Arduino Nano and a 1.44” color TFT display.

The fingerprint sensor module is small, nicely built, and it uses some advanced DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chips inside. The sensor works like this. It is an optical sensor, which means it analyzes the photo of a finger. It then renders the image, makes some calculations, finds the features of that finger and then searches in its memory for a fingerprint with the same characteristics. It can achieve all that in less than a second! This module can store up to 1,000 fingerprints in its memory and its false acceptance rate is less than 0.001% which makes it pretty secure!

As you can see in the video below, the project requires a valid fingerprint in order to unlock. If it recognizes the user, which in this case is Koumaris or his girlfriend, the fingerprint icon on the display turns green along with a kind greeting, e.g. “Welcome, Nick!”

A few years ago, Integreight set out to turn your smartphone into more than 40 different Arduino shields. Now, the creators of the 1Sheeld have launched an open-source, fully-customizable home automation kit that will enable you to control your door locks, light switches and power strips using that very same mobile device.

“Togglit” can be assembled without any programming, wires, or hassle — only a screwdriver. For its debut at Maker Faire Bay Area, the connected interface was based on an Arduino Uno and 1Sheeld; however, the startup’s founder Amr Saleh notes that it can run on virtually any hardware platform, ranging from Raspberry Pi to other Wi-Fi products.

At the moment, Togglit is compatible with typical toggle light switches, standard deadbolts, as well as American and European power outlets. Ready to make your house smarter? The DIY kit is currently available for pre-order.

With school just about out for the summer, Brian Fitzgerald’s son was throwing a party to celebrate the end of exam week. Like any cool Maker dad would, he decided to build awesome lights made out of a few old soda bottles, the “gooey innards” of glow sticks, and some other supplies he had lying around the basement.

Fitzgerald used a wooden plate for the base and a playground post bracket for the mount, along with an Arduino Leonardo (though any Arduino would do) and three NeoPixel rings for the colorful effects.

Fill the Coke bottles with water. Alternatively, you can add a drop of milk to get a cloudy effect — it makes the liquid translucent and gives the impression of solid light, but you loose the little bubble and scratch effects that clear water highlights, which we thought was cooler. We put a black Sugru cap on the bottles to avoid a drunken accident involving water and electronics. And filled the countersunk bolt holes with Sugru to hide the bolt heads as well.

I attached the plastic Arduino casing with double-sided velcro to the base unit for easy removal. It’d look nicer if I’d put the whole unit inside the base, but as we’re planning to pull the board out and modify for music sensitivity, I opted for convenience over beauty. If anybody has any cool Arduino code that gets an Adafruit auto-gain mic and NeoPixels jamming via FFT, I’d love to see it. There are some great color organ projects out there, but I can’t seem to find this particular combo. So we may have to write it ourselves!

Plug the 9v wall wart into the Arduino and BOOM. You got yourself a classic party light that’s mesmerizing to look at, throws patterns on the ceiling that look like Hubble images of distant nebulae, a fine conversation piece, and a bunch of cast off junk transformed into a thing of beauty.

Intrigued? You can check out the entire project on Instructables, as well as see it in action below.

Unlike many cars today, Aykut Celik’s 2014 Volkswagen Polo didn’t have Bluetooth connectivity or an elaborate touchscreen navigation system. So, the Maker decided to take matters into his own hands and swapped out his “useless” radio for a Samsung tablet, putting Google Maps, Spotify and other apps right in his vehicle’s dashboard.

In order to accomplish this, Celik needed an amplifier (to replace the one attached to the prior radio), a CAN bus shield from Seeed (so he could use the steering wheel’s volume buttons), a Bluetooth module, and an Arduino Mega 2560 (for parsing data and sending it over to the Android device).

A CAN-BUS shield is necessary to be able to read CAN-BUS commands from the CAN bus line… I used this shield for detecting wheel button commands like volume up, mute and volume down. Behind the car radio there are two CAN bus cables. One of them is CAN bus – HIGH and the other is CAN bus – LOW. These cables must be connected to green sockets on the shield.

Using the SeeedCAN bus shield, you can sniff you car’s CAN bus data.

The info which is gathered from CAN bus is transferred to the Android tablet via Bluetooth. There is a little app which is responsible, for example, reducing volume whenever the wheel volume button is clicked. And a menu activity to open other apps.

You can watch the elaborate project below, and read more about it on Celik’s blog. The Maker has also made the software and other information available on GitHub.

Released in 1972, Pong was one of the earliest arcade video games to hit the scene and has since claimed its place in pop culture history. Whereas the Atari classic took the sport of tennis and brought it into the virtual world, a team of Makers led by Daniel Perdomo are taking it back to into the real world with an air hockey-like tabletop version.

As you can see in the video below, the “Pong Project” uses knobs similar to familiar arcade controls to move the paddles, which just like in the original, change the ball’s trajectory as it makes its way over to the opponent. The only difference is that it’s happening on a table instead of a screen. From the looks of it, there may even be a single-player mode with the other paddle seemingly moving all by itself.

To pay homage to the game, its creators gave the Pong Project some ‘70s flair with the iconic logo and play area, as well as neon lights along the sides that illuminate whenever the ball bounces off. Score is kept on seven-segment displays, while it would appear that at least a pair of Arduino boards are helping to drive the system. The team is currently seeking a hardware incubator and other Makers who may be interested in turning this into a final product. You can follow along with the project’s progress on Facebook.

Walking the streets of a highly-populated city, or even a crowded event for that matter, comes with certain risks like pickpocketing. Mindful of this, Maker TVMiller has come up with a clever system to prevent bag thieves from unknowingly creeping up behind you. Called the “Arduino MetroPhones,” the device consists of a Nano, an ultrasonic sensor, a digital potentiometer, a coin-cell battery, and a few other components, all housed inside a 3D-printed case.

The metropolitan in its natural habitat; unaware, oblivious, purposefully deafened and subsequent prey. To increase perception thus safety, we wed an Arduino Nano and ultrasonic sensor to regulate volume to proximity to someone behind you; easily deactivated per environment and rechargeable. Beyond this proof of concept, intention for apparel or accessory (purse, back pack) embedding is ideal.

This prototype of a prototype is a mono-version. A stereo version would merely require dual channels. Thus, imagine, you plug your head phones in to your purse strap which is embedded with a MetroPhone with Bluetooth that streams to your smartphone..