The Moog Werkstatt-Ø1 is a patchable, 100% little analog synthesizer whose design is based on classic Moog circuits. It was created as an educational tool for teaching electronics assembly and analog circuit design. Recently a series of tutorial projects appeared on Werkstatt website, featuring the use of the Arduino Uno to mod and create effects using  different sensors and components:

We used the Arduino UNO R3 for all mods, and the Moog Werkstatt Arduino Library was written specifically for it. Other micro-controllers with similar bootloaders (Teesnsy, Seeeduino, etc) have not been tested but could work. The Arduino features a USB interface, 6 analog input pins, and 14 digital I/O pins.

The 5 tutorials have also series of videos that demo each mod. For example, they integrated an accelerometer to measure movement in three dimensions:

And they added an arpeggiator/sequencer function:

Check them all >>  And add your own mod!

Here we are after winter break with a new tutorial on 3d printing with Arduino Materia 101. The 5-step tutorial allows you to design a Lego-compatible case for the Arduino Micro to be used together with the power function IR-receiver mentioned in this other Tutorial.

During the lesson you’ll learn also how to make the Lego-compatible pieces accurately and easily with FreeCAD without taking all the measurements!

Follow the steps and print yours >>

Check the previous tutorials on 3d printing with Material 101

Interested in getting in touch and showing your experiments? Join Kristoffer on the Arduino forum dedicated to Materia 101 and give us your feedback.

Recently Arduino user Botberg implemented an auto-levelling bed sensor  to be  sure that the placement of the first extrusion layer is placed well and increasing the printer successes!

Maker Faire Rome video interviews – “What have you built with Arduino?” – A couple of new protagonists for our short series:

• Collective City Memory – Wearable Arduino Tech, university project by Assunta Matassa
• Insettoteca – Remote-controlled Terrarium by Hacklab Terni

Explore playlist on Youtube >>

At the end of last year we received an email on our support center from an unusual location. It was sent by Giovanni Bianchini an italian physicist researching at Concordia Station, located in East Antarctica (see the red dot in the map below!) where the hottest temperature is around -25C?/-13F. He was working on a project based on Arduino and yes, this is the Arduino project based in the most southern location ever! When we realized that we thought of getting in touch with him and discover the details.

Giovanni was very happy to start a conversation with us, shared  some pictures and explained  why and how he is using Arduino in Antartica.

 Tell us a bit more about Concordia Station and what you are doing there…

 Concordia Station is a scientific research base placed more or less in the middle of the plateau region, East Antarctica. This site is peculiar for the fact of being surrounded of at least 1000 km of ice plain in every direction, a condition that provides relatively stable and unperturbed weather conditions and a dry and very transparent atmosphere, that is the reason for which it has been chosen for astronomic and atmospheric observations.

The downside is isolation: the nearest emplacement is the russian Vostok base, at a mere 700 km, while the italian and french bases on the coast, that are the intermediate stops for the researcher coming to Concordia, are both at more than 1000 km. Usually coming to Concordia involves a 7-8 hours flight from Christchurch (NZ) to the italian “Mario Zucchelli” or the US “Mc Murdo” bases and a second 5 hours flight to Concordia. In alternative it’s possible to reach the french Dumont D’Urville base from Hobarth (AU) with a 7 days (more or less, much more than less…) cruise on the “L’Astrolabe” ship, and fly to Concordia. Since every stop in a base usually involves one or more days of stop, depending on the weather conditions, reaching Concordia is somewhat an adventure itself…

What is your job at the station?

Most of the instrumentation operating in Concordia is installed in some “shelters” placed some hundreds of meters upwind from the base, in order to sample unperturbed air. The shelters are put on elevated platforms to prevent snow accumulation, and are heated and connected to the base LAN, so the instrumentation can be remotely operated.

Specifically I work on atmospheric physics, and in the past two year I am responsible of a scientific project (Concordia Multi-Process Atmospheric Studies) that involve several instruments performing vertical remote sensing of atmospheric properties. The setup include two LIDARs, one SODAR, and an infrared spectroradiometer (Radiation Explorer in the Far-Infrared – REFIR).

All this instrumentation is installed in the Physics shelter, and operates continuously, even during the winter period, in which the base is completely isolated for almost 9 months and is crewed by only 12 persons. This implies that the instruments operating during winter should require the least attendance possible from the reduced crew, and possibly should be remotely accessed from Italy for checking and maintenance.

How are you using Arduino at the base?

While the shelters are quite a comfortable workplace for researchers and technicians, they present a critical (and maybe unexpected) problem for the instrumentation: overheating. The small volume, good thermal insulation, high density of powered devices, united with the low heat transfer capacity of the very dry air inside, makes heat dissipation a difficult task.

 For this reason, the first application I found for an Arduino board in Antarctica has been a cooling system for the REFIR spectroradiometer.

This optical instrument features tens of optical components with critical alignment requirements, so in the past years every time the instrument was subject to a strong thermal cycle, it needed to be realigned.

The original design provided just a simple heater with an analog proportional control loop (go figure you had to heat things at the south pole). Luckily, providing cooling power was as simple as getting air from outside and sending it to the instrument box through a tube. A valve and a fan regulate the cool air flow according to the instrument temperature.

The old heaters, the flow valve (servo controlled) and the cooling fan all are controlled by an Arduino Uno board, with a simple proportional loop that allows a thermal stability of a few tenths of degree.

Using an Ethernet Shield, all the system parameters (temperature, setpoint, cooling and heating gain, valve position) can be monitored through a simple web interface that gives this kind of output:

REFIR-PAD
thermal control
(commands: T, R, H, F, G, V, M, Z)
setpoint = 20.00
averages = 128
threshold = 0.10
fan_gain = 300
htr_gain = 200
valve_full = 0
valve_mid = 0
valve_zero = 38
temperature = 20.49
fan_drv = 118
htr_drv = 0
val_pos = 0

Parameters can also be set sending commands to the web server on the arduino board, for example, the command:

http://192.168.14.3:81/&T210

changes the setpoint temperature to 21.0 C

How does it work?

(see picture above) The yellow pipe  goes through the floor to get cool air from the outside, with a manual emergency valve and the servocontrolled flow control valve (the black block below the white box).

The white box connects the pipe to a standard 8cm computer fan that blows the air inside the instrument enclosure. the control system is also inside the instrument box, the green led indicates cooling in progress.

The custom shield (see pic above) is used to interface the Arduino with the various system components. The big transistor (2N3904) drives the cooling fan, the two smaller ones (2N2222) control the green/red led that signals cooling or heating. The voltage regulator provides the ~8v needed by the arduino board (could work without, but at 12v it overheats a lot…)

The heater is made by three transistors in series mounted on heat sinks with a small fan each, and is driven directly by a digital output pin on the arduino, the servo on the flow valve is also driven directly by a pwm output.

Download the Arduino Sketch here.

Maker Faire Rome video interviews – “What have you built with Arduino?” – A couple of new protagonists for our short series:

• Zaho – Print your own megastructure – Controlled by Arduino
• Eco Floppy Robot – Robot controlled by Arduino

Explore playlist on Youtube >>

Maker Faire Rome video interviews – “What have you built with Arduino?” – A couple of new protagonists for our short series:

• Biopic Agriorto – Agricultural Plantation using Irduino / Arduino

• UniRoma 2 – Interview with automation engineering students using Arduino Due

Explore playlist on Youtube >>

Maker Faire Rome video interviews – “What have you built with Arduino?” – A couple of new protagonists for our short series:

• Arduino controlled Exo-Skeleton – Interview with Mel Li (Ph. D) about her latest project
  
• Vertical Automatic Garden – Automatic garden controlled by Arduino
  

See playlist on Youtube >>

Maker Faire Rome video interviews – “What have you built with Arduino?” – A couple of new protagonists for our short series:

• MegaBreadboard – an  educational tool for easy Arduino learning

• Qtechknow –  Quin Etnyre and his new line of maker products

Many of you were with us last October  in Rome for the European Maker Faire together with more than 500 makers from all over the world! The event was massive and 90 thousands people visited the booths, the workshops and the presentations taking place in those days.

To celebrate the amazing moments we created a series of short videos showcasing the use of Arduino in projects hosted during the Faire. Our crew explored the whole exhibition and talked with a lot of makers presenting a project with Arduino inside. We asked them four simple questions:

• What have you built?
• Which problem does your project solve?
• Why did you use Arduino as a controller
• How long did it take to make it?

Now it’s time to  share with you the videos.
In this page you can find the video promo with a preview of the upcoming videos and the first interview (of  18 interviews) to the makers: Stefano Ceroni talks about his “Brain-controlled bionic hand”:

We recently posted on Intel Makers Community the first of a series of educational tutorial focused on Intel Galileo Gen 2. Our team worked on  a smart Christmas star able to receive sms and change pattern according to it. The bill of materials contains also an Arduino GSM Shield, a Proto Shield and some flexible  LED  strips:

To kick off a festive mood, we decided to adapt a typical Scandinavian tradition. In December, many people will decorate their homes by hanging large paper stars inside their windows. The stars usually have a single bulb inside that casts a warm, welcoming glow.

We thought we’d try to make this tradition a bit more merry by making it interactive. By sending text messages, we will change the blink pattern and color of the star.

This project is a fun and easy introduction on how to use the Intel Galileo Gen 2 board and the Arduino GSM shield. After making this tutorial, try modifying the code to change the patterns or taking the functions to insert GSM connectivity into your own projects.

Happy Holidays!

Follow the link and make it as well!