Do you need a small weight scale? You can of course buy one, or you could instead make your own 3D-printed device with a load cell and an Arduino, as shown in the below video by MN Maker.
In his setup, the load cell first sends readings to an HX711 breakout board, which converts this analog signal into a digital output that the Nano can easily interpret. The output is displayed on a 0.96” 128×64 OLED, with a button on the back to switch power on and off, and another to tare the scale to zero.
What really happens when you open the refrigerator door? Sure, you know intuitively that cold air escapes, but just how much? And how fast does the food inside actually heat up? To find out, Ryan Bates came up with his own data logging setup using an Arduino Uno, a custom sensor shield, and a microSD card reader.
His device uses a photoresistor to tell when the door has been opened, as well as a DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor to log the air temperature and door status. Along with this, TMP36 sensors are placed around the fridge to get a more granular look at temperatures, including one attached to a pickle jar.
As a kid you may have played Operation, but certainly never anything like this nine-foot-tall version from SPOT Technology. This device is not only impressively large, but assists doctors in their surgical pursuits with a CNC gantry setup to pull out obstructions.
In the game, amateur surgeons control the system using a small arcade cabinet next to the patient (Sergio), moving a magnetic gripper with a joystick and buttons. A camera rides along and transmits images to the cabinet, hopefully leading to a clean extraction. If the gripper isn’t aligned correctly, a button on the plunger reports the doctors error, and Sergio’s nose lights up red to indicate a failed surgery. Two Arduino Megas are implemented, one on the CNC playfield itself, another in the cabinet.
The project will be on display at the Philadelphia Mini Maker Faire on October 6th if you’d like to see it in person.
Spilled wine may be a hassle to clean up, but you might also observe that it makes interesting patterns. Marketing firm KPS3 had the same sort of thought process when they created “The Santa Maria Swirl Machine” to promote the Santa Maria Valley wine industry.
The machine takes the form of a tabletop display, where a vacuum gripper first picks up a piece of paper and transports it into a clear “swirl area.” A glass is then automatically filled with wine, spun up to speed, and flung at the paper in order to create art.
Visitors to the website can watch the current splash art being made, or register to join the queue to use the service—once their turn arrives, they are given a full-screen view and options to control their creation. Specialized watercolor paper is picked up by a servo equipped with a suction cup attached to a venturi (itself attached to an air compressor), which proceeds to hand off to a custom gripper to hold the paper in place for the wine to be spilled.
From there, the Arduino-controlled stepper motor turns the lead screw, moving the paper into the splash zone, and fills the glass to the user-selected level, and begins to swirl the glass at the user-selected speed. Once the proper speed is attained, an actuator tips the glass forward, spilling the wine onto the paper. All of this is streamed by two cameras, with the final result photographed by a third. This photo is then processed in Lambda to clean up the photograph, detecting corners, applying filters and branding for the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Hearing live music is certainly enjoyable, but if the musician is using a drum machine, things can eventually get static. To add a bit more spontaneity into this class of robo-musician, Matt Bradshaw has created DrumKid — a handheld, battery-powered unit that uses random numbers to determine the rhythm and sound of a beat.
The device goes through a drum sequence, with a series of LEDs to indicate its progression, but also inserts randomly generated drum hits to the original beat. It features a variety of controllable parameters to alter how it sounds when played live via four knobs and six buttons.
The DrumKid was developed on an Arduino Uno and breadboard, then transferred to a PCB for the final version that will be for sale later this year. More info on the build is available in Bradshaw’s project write-up, while code and design files are on GitHub if you’d like to make your own!
Remembering to refill water and coffee cups at regular intervals certainly has to be a challenge for restaurant waitstaff, but not for servers at one diner thanks to Mark Wilson’s, “TetrisWaterRun” project.
Wilson’s device takes the form of a miniature arcade cabinet, with two “players” named H2O and JOE controlling Tetris playfields.
As each block drops, some complete a line, while others leave spaces, eventually stacking up to a yellow warning level, along with a red section for overdue. Each game/playfield is started with its interface button, which also lights up intermittently to indicate drink warnings. A buzzer is included, so that there’s even less of an excuse for unfilled drinks. The build was prototyped on an Arduino Uno and now runs on a Nano for space savings, with a 320×480 LCD screen displaying the game.
Today we are releasing IDE 1.8.10 and you should try it because it’s awesome! With the support of our incredible community, we’ve been improving a lot of (small and not so small) things.
Besides taking a look at the complete changelog, we’d like to point out one outstanding contribution that we received during this dev cycle.
Our friend Joe Wegner from APH reached out to us with a very clear plan on how to improve the IDE’s accessibility with some very convenient patches. With the help of co-founder Tom Igoe and ITP alumnus and research resident Jim Schmitz, we’ve started targeting some of the most problematic components that used to interact badly with screen readers (popups, links, lists not entirely navigable by keyboard) while also adding a plethora of accessibility descriptions to components that were basically hidden for blind and visually impaired users.
To keep things clean, Wegner added a checkbox under Preference panel to enable some particular optimizations for screen readers (like transforming links into buttons so they can be reached using the TAB key).
We hope it is the start of a lasting collaboration to make Arduino truly available for everyone willing to learn and hack with us.
The holidays are over and we’re back at work, so it’s time to clean up the house. To get ready for autumn, our amazing dev team has decided to devote an entire week to resolve as many of the open issues on the Arduino IDE repository and related projects (cores, libraries, etc.) as possible.
Starting this Monday, the dev team will be going through the open issue log — analyzing requests, fixing them where immediately possible, and in some cases, reaching out to the original submitter to establish if they are still seeing an issue or if it can be closed out. If you do receive such a notification in your GitHub account (with a subject starting with [arduino/Arduino] …), please help us help you by responding accordingly.
Big thanks to all of you who’ve contributed in the past and continue to submit the issues you find within the Arduino IDE for resolution. We appreciate your support and acknowledge your patience while waiting for them to be fixed.
Let’s watch that open issue counter fall by the day!
What has a dozen servos, a camera, and an Arduino Mega for a brain? Nevon Projects’ snake-bot, of course!
This impressive robot uses a total of 12 servos for locomotion and can travel across a variety of surfaces under the control of Android app, or autonomously via a sensor mounted to a smaller servo on the head.
The snake’s electronics are split up between a head section that houses batteries and the sensor, and a tail bearing electronics including the Arduino.
The project is available as a kit, or could certainly provide inspiration for your own project if you want to start from scratch. Check it out oscillating across the ground on tiny rollers in the video below, along with a surprising transformation into a square shape at just before the 1:45 mark.
To help a patient in his country with a congenital limb deficiency, Buzi Nguyen has designed a 3D-printed transhumeral—above the elbow—prosthesis prototype. The device features 10 degrees of freedom, including independent control of four fingers and a thumb, along with movement capabilities for the wrist and forearm.
The prosthesis is powered by a number of Arduino boards and a Raspberry Pi, and equipped with computer vision to track and choose grip patterns for object handling. It can also potentially be operated via brain-computer interface and electromyography.
A demonstrate of all the currently supported features can be seen in the video below.
