A stretchable light-emitting device becomes an epidermal stopwatch. Image: Adapted from ACS Materials Letters 2019
Imagine if your watch wasn’t mounted on your wrist, but was instead integrated into a sort of temporary tattoo on the back of your hand? Such an idea is now one step closer to reality, thanks to new research into alternating-current electroluminescent (ACEL) display technology.
While normally such displays require well over 100VAC to produce sufficient brightness, scientists have worked to get this number down into the 10-35V range, allowing them to be used in much closer proximity to human skin.
To demonstrate this technology, the team constructed a 4-digit 7-segment display that can be applied to one’s hand, using an Arduino Mega and driver circuitry to turn it into a digital timepiece.
If you find yourself debating between a pen plotter or laser engraver, this project by Patrick Panikulam lets you have the best of both worlds in style. The DIY device pulls a writing instrument in the X-axis using a belt-driven overhead system, while the base itself moves in the Y direction.
Motion is handled by an Arduino Uno, along with a CNC shield and two A4988 drivers that actuate modified 28BYJ-48 steppers. The shield also outputs laser control signals, which are converted into PWM signals for the lifting servo when in pen mode.
It’s an extremely clean build, and even features a Bluetooth module for wireless communication with your computer. Panikulam provides more details here if you’d like to create your own!
A couple of months back while checking out a few laser engravers on aliexpress, I came across some USB powered laser engravers. It was awesome that these could engrave on a variety of materials and also cut out shapes and designs from sticker sheets and paper and doing all this powered by a 5V USB supply. But the downside of these engravers was that they had a small work area, in most cases just 40mm X 40mm which is definitely way too small for my needs.
So I thought why not design and 3D print my own laser engraver from scratch. I started the designing process in Fusion 360 while keeping in mind all the 3D printing tolerances. And finally came up with something really cool. Along the way, I decided to make the laser holder modular so that I can easily replace the laser with a pen or marker for pen plotting. I also added a Bluetooth connectivity feature so that wired connection between your PC and the engraver can be eliminated while transmitting G-codes.
While some of us live directly beside the beach, others—the vast majority, in fact—reside inland where we can’t see the waves on a day-to-day basis. As a solution to this issue, surfer-maker Luke Clifford came up with his own “Surf Window,”an interactive diorama that shows real-time surf conditions at a glance.
The Arduino Mega-controlled device pulls beach info from the Magicseaweed API, then adjusts the laser-cut wooden stage to match. Indicators include starfish that light up depending on how good the surf conditions are overall, a physical wave model that moves up and down to represent height, a rotating seagull to reveal wind direction, and more.
Whether you’re a landlocked surfer, or just someone who wants to know more about the environment, this looks like a really interesting gadget. The build is currently wrapping up a Kickstarter campaign if you’d like to have your own!
Although we can’t all have the MIT Mini Cheetah at home, Jegatheesan Soundarapandian decided to make his own version — measuring just 23 cm x 9 cm x 9 cm.
As shown in the video below, the aptly named “Baby Cheetah” does an amazing job of getting around on four legs, and is not only able to walk upright, but can even move at a crouch, turn, and tilt forwards or backwards.
The robot is equipped with eight SG90 servos to actuate each 3D-printed leg linage assembly, giving the limbs excellent mobility in a vertical plane. An Arduino Nano is used for control, while an HC-05 Bluetooth module links to a smartphone running a custom app for user interface.
With the latest release of Arduino IoT Cloud (version 0.8.0) we did a lot of work behind the scenes, and while it might be transparent to most users, it introduced some big changes. But the one we’re most excited about is that the Arduino IoT Cloud has begun supporting a number of third party devices.
Starting with the uber-popular ESP8266 by Espressif — NodeMCU, Sparkfun’s ESP Thing, ESPDuino, and Wemos (to name a few) — along with other inexpensive commercially available plugs and switches based on this module. You can now add one to your Cloud Thing and control it using our intuitive web-based Dashboard.
Like every new release, there were plenty of obstacles to get around, especially providing security between the third party boards and the Arduino IoT Cloud, where there’s no possibility to go through our secure certificate provisioning process because the hardware is lacking an essential component: the cryptographic element.
The Arduino IoT Cloud was born with security in mind and developed around the Arduino MKR series of boards featuring Microchip’s ATTECx08, an encryption chip capable of elliptic-curve cryptography. These boards store the bits necessary to authenticate with a server in a very secure way, guaranteeing your board is connecting to the real server and exchanging data over TLS.
When it comes to boards that don’t have enough RAM and do not feature such cryptographic elements, we had to enable a secondary way to get in. Data transfer will still be encrypted over SSL, but the server authentication part will be a little less strict, allowing the Arduino IoT Cloud to be available to a wider user base. Nevertheless, we do inform users that if they want the highest levels of security they’ll have to use a board which embeds a cryptographic chip. As more and more IoT device users become concerned with security, manufacturers are starting to implement such technologies. We have just recently seen standalone ECC modules which can be paired with your microcontroller of choice. It’s looking bright, and we’re proud to have been amongst the first to bring about this change.
For third party boards without a crypto chip, we had to extend our API and allow the creation of a device-exclusive unique identifier (which will be used as a username) and the generation of a Device Key, providing the final user to access the platform using a username: password pair.
Internally we already used those tools and APIs; we’re just opening them up for use by a broader audience.
One small requirement for this to work is that you’ll need to upgrade your Arduino Create plan to the ‘Maker plan.’ This will give you access to ESP8266 compilation and IoT Cloud pairing of the device. The Maker plan will also extend the amount of original Arduino boards and Things you can create and manage.
This is just the first step in opening up to more and more hardware, and we have a lot of things lined up for our users. We really hope you’ll enjoy the ease of development and the tools to bring your application to the Cloud in the shortest possible time.
October 31st is almost here and we’re all super excited, because this is the perfect time for some DIY fun! Nothing to wear? Not a problem! Need a spook-tacular decoration? We’ve got just the thing.
To help get you into the spirit, we’ve selected a handful of Halloween-themed projects from the Arduino Project Hub that will surely catch the attention of trick-or-treaters (or send them screaming into the night.)
This Arduino Mega-based robot can be operated remotely from your smartphone or move about autonomously, complete with creepy lights and a terrifying soundtrack.
Here’s a quick, last-minute scare prank for your porch. Drop a fake spider on anyone that tries to ring your doorbell via an Arduino Uno, an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, and a servo.
Last weekend we announced that we’re working on the new Arduino Pro IDE and we got a huge response! Let’s take a deeper look at what is in store.
Here are the choices you have to develop code from Arduino today — some you might know, others you might not — and how they paved the way for a brand new IDE.
Arduino Create
The quickest way to get started developing for Arduino today.
A simple, modern web app version of the Arduino IDE — with boards and libraries available without needing an install. Just open your web browser, head to create.arduino.cc/editor to get started.
In the creation of the new Arduino Pro IDE, we chose to build on the Theia framework. As Theia is based on Electron, using web technologies, it allows us to unify the front-end development work and user experience between the web-based Arduino Create and the Arduino Pro IDE desktop application. Magic!
Arduino CLI
Designed for power users; everything you need from the command line.
Arduino CLI is a single binary command line solution that provides builder, boards/library manager, uploader, discovery and many other tools needed to use any Arduino compatible board and platforms. You can include this in Makefiles or use it to add Arduino support to whatever development flow you prefer. Whether you use Atom, Eclipse, Emacs, Vim, VSCode, or are even building your own tools, Arduino CLI makes this possible. You can try it today at arduino-cli.
The Arduino CLI
Arduino CLI is already hard at work in the backend of Arduino Create enabling day-to-day development for over one million users. The daemon mode support and gRPC interface means the User Interface doesn’t even need to be running on the same machine as the Arduino CLI — this opens the potential for remote build and deploy to Linux machines such as Raspberry Pi. Third party boards are also supported today through a configuration file. The backend of Arduino Pro IDE is also based on Arduino CLI, naturally.
Arduino IDE
A simple classic.
The simplicity of the classic Arduino IDE has made it one of the most popular in the world — with over 15 millions downloads per year. If you want to develop code for Arduino and prefer not to use the online tool Arduino Create you can get started today by downloading the classic Arduino IDE application.
The classic Arduino IDE
We felt it was very important to maintain continuity with this look and feel in the Arduino Pro IDE. For this reason it has a mode identical to the classic Arduino IDE that millions of you are familiar with — the difference being if you want advanced mode, you have that too!
Arduino Pro IDE
More features for advanced users (still in development).
Which brings us the upcoming Arduino Pro IDE! This is a product still in development, but we’ve opened up the alpha binary so early users can try it out and give feedback – the source code will be released at a later date. Because it is not yet ready for production release you must expect bugs and unimplemented features. (If you just want to get your Arduino project running, we’d recommend Arduino Create or the classic Arduino IDE for now.)
The Pro Arduino IDE
However, if you want to be the first to try it and give us feedback to help shape the product as we develop it, please give it a try! The preview is already available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.
Initial feature list
Dual Mode; Classic Arduino look and Pro (File System view)
The tool only reveals advanced features when you need them
Modern fully featured development environment
Modern look, multi-panel IDE with integrated file system view
Designed for developing larger, multi-file, repository-based projects
Debuggercoming soon!
Set breakpoints, view trace, step through execution and much more
Debug your application without affecting timing with a Serial.print()
Open to third party plug-ins and boards coming soon!
Add third party boards, libraries and IDE function plug-ins
Support for additional languages other than C++coming soon!
Exactly what it says, and it’s going to be exciting!
New Board Manager, Library Manager and Serial Monitor
All the features you expect in a cleaner more modern environment
Basic Auto Completion (Arm targets only)
Git Integration
Dark Mode
Easier on the eyes
That’s all for now
We’ve been working to improve our tools and give the community choices that fit their way of working – be that web-based, desktop application or command-line. The Arduino Pro IDE builds on these to bring something new — we’re excited to share the alpha preview with you and look forward to your feedback!
Since very early on I developed an interest in education. During my studies I worked as afterschool teacher in math, physics, chemistry, and languages. Shortly after graduating from my MSc in Engineering I became a teacher at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmo University, Sweden. For over a decade I worked in the creation of education programmes for the university, looking at how to introduce technology transversely as part of several subjects within undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate education.
Back in 2012, I realised at the time that almost no one was addressing the needs of educators when introducing curriculum. Therefore, I decided that we had to put educators at the center of our concept and help them find creative ways to use technology in the classroom.
As we now are approaching 2020 I am very proud of where this has taken us.
We have managed to bring Arduino Education programs into the classrooms in a large number of countries with great success, and not least with the help from all of you — our trade partners around the world.
We rely on you to be our faces in the market and also understand how we need to step up in our offering to make sure you are equipped to bring Arduino Education to market and give the best support to the teachers.
The Arduino Education team has been expanding the past year and we now have a strong, creative and dedicated team to make sure we deliver relevant education programs, content, training and support.
Every single day we build on our vision in wanting to make technology accessible to everyone and put it into the hands of every student and educator.
There is still a long way to go — we are on an amazing journey and this is just the beginning. The world of technology is constantly changing and new technologies keep showing their faces. Hence why it is so very important that we work hard to make students of today aware of technology and give them confidence in working with it.
Formal education is going through a strong transformation due to the digitalization of many aspects of contemporary society. If we look at the future classroom, we see technology not just as a tool to learn about, but as a system to enhance lots of processes that currently stop us from building a better interaction between teachers, students, and their families. Technology will help us accessing knowledge in better ways right at the time we need it. Assessing the student’s learning process will be easier and more personalized. We will be able of scaling pedagogical models that schools are currently only dreaming of. It will be possible to make cross-age study groups, where students will join based on their interests. Teachers will have access to tools that will help them see at once the student’s progress and needs. Student mobility will be a matter of transferring a file between schools.
While the future is there, a few steps ahead, we still have to walk the path. At Arduino we look forward to being your partner in reaching that future, one step at a time.
Let us change the world by making technology accessible to everyone and put it into the hands of every student and educator.
If you want to measure the temperature of an object, one very convenient way is to use an infrared thermometer. MN Maker didn’t have one, and after wondering just how hot a component was getting, he decided to simply build one.
His device utilizes an Arduino Nano for control, and resides inside a 3D-printed enclosure that he designed. Temperature sensing is handled by an MLX90614 IR thermometer on a GY-906 breakout board, and a small laser is used for aiming. Once the temperature is obtained, it’s displayed on an OLED screen in the back of the housing in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.
While OLED displays and the like are extremely versatile, there’s still something really charming about vintage VFD tubes. Christine Thompson (AKA ChristineNZ) in fact built her latest clock specifically to use eight ILC1-1/8L VFD tubes, which each stand nearly four inches tall.
The device is equipped with an Arduino Mega board, a MAX6921 VFD driver, a DS3231 RTC module, and a BME280 sensor that allows it to also show pressure, humidity and temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.
The retro-themed timepiece packs a speaker and an MP3 module to play chimes every 15 minutes, and in addition to the digits on the front has a secondary display and control panel on the back for setup. The unit is housed in a mahogany frame with shaped copper supports, nicely complementing its glowing green numbers.
