Last year, we featured an awesome audiovisual project from ANGLE that applied videomapping techniques to their livesets. Now, the Florence-based duo is back with their latest A/V system, “Shining Back,” which was designed in collaboration with JoinT Studio’s Stefano Bonifazi.

Essentially, it’s a grid structure consisting of LED lights that pulse in a geometric matrix to the duo’s live rhythms. The installation runs on an Arduino Uno and uses Mad Mapper and Modul8 software.

The immersive atmosphere created by the music is emphasized by a new research in the visual realm. Taking an architectural form of a kaleidoscope the lighting visually weaves and refracts the music into a surreal yet symbiotic form.

Last year, we featured an awesome audiovisual project from ANGLE that applied videomapping techniques to their livesets. Now, the Florence-based duo is back with their latest A/V system, “Shining Back,” which was designed in collaboration with JoinT Studio’s Stefano Bonifazi.

Essentially, it’s a grid structure consisting of LED lights that pulse in a geometric matrix to the duo’s live rhythms. The installation runs on an Arduino Uno and uses Mad Mapper and Modul8 software.

The immersive atmosphere created by the music is emphasized by a new research in the visual realm. Taking an architectural form of a kaleidoscope the lighting visually weaves and refracts the music into a surreal yet symbiotic form.

Just days after celebrating the Arduino 101‘s first birthday at Maker Faire Rome, we’ve partnered with Hackster, Intel, and Seeed Studio to launch an exciting new contest. We’re challenging you to unleash the powers of the Intel® Curie™ Module-based board and “Invent Your Future.”

Perhaps you want to build an autonomous boat for collecting ocean pollution data, or a pair of shoes that play different sounds for different exercises, or maybe even a wireless gesture-based home automation controller? Whatever you choose, we want to see how you use the Arduino 101 as the brains behind your next creation.

For those who may not be familiar with the 101, the board combines the performance and low-power consumption of the Intel® Curie™ Module with the simplicity of Arduino. It keeps the same robust form factor and peripheral list as the Uno with the addition of Bluetooth LE capabilities and a six-axis accelerometer/gyro to help you easily expand your creativity into the connected world.

The Arduino 101 is designed with two tiny 32MHz cores: an x86 (Curie™, a Quark™ module) and a 32-bit ARC architecture core. Even with this added power, the Arduino 101 is still programmable using sketches from the Arduino IDE.

And now back to the contest… To kick off things, Hackster is giving away 150 Arduino 101 and Seeed Studio Grove Starter Kits to the best ideas submitted by November 20, 2016. But that’s not all, top entries in each category?—?smart home, environment, and healthcare—will receive a Microsoft Surface Pro 4! You have until February 26, 2017 to submit your projects!

Want to learn more? Head over to the contest’s official page on Hackster.io.

Just days after celebrating the Arduino 101‘s first birthday at Maker Faire Rome, we’ve partnered with Hackster, Intel, and Seeed Studio to launch an exciting new contest. We’re challenging you to unleash the powers of the Intel® Curie™ Module-based board and “Invent Your Future.”

Perhaps you want to build an autonomous boat for collecting ocean pollution data, or a pair of shoes that play different sounds for different exercises, or maybe even a wireless gesture-based home automation controller? Whatever you choose, we want to see how you use the Arduino 101 as the brains behind your next creation.

For those who may not be familiar with the 101, the board combines the performance and low-power consumption of the Intel® Curie™ Module with the simplicity of Arduino. It keeps the same robust form factor and peripheral list as the Uno with the addition of Bluetooth LE capabilities and a six-axis accelerometer/gyro to help you easily expand your creativity into the connected world.

The Arduino 101 is designed with two tiny 32MHz cores: an x86 (Curie™, a Quark™ module) and a 32-bit ARC architecture core. Even with this added power, the Arduino 101 is still programmable using sketches from the Arduino IDE.

And now back to the contest… To kick off things, Hackster is giving away 150 Arduino 101 and Seeed Studio Grove Starter Kits to the best ideas submitted by November 20, 2016. But that’s not all, top entries in each category?—?smart home, environment, and healthcare—will receive a Microsoft Surface Pro 4! You have until February 26, 2017 to submit your projects!

Want to learn more? Head over to the contest’s official page on Hackster.io.

If guitar effects pedals aren’t really your thing, perhaps Evan Kale’s touchless MIDI controller will fit the bill.

Using an Arduino, along with a Colpitts oscillator and some other electronics, Kale has come up with a rather unique interface for his guitar. Instead of using a foot pedal, he put a strip of aluminum foil inside of a fingerless glove, then attached a homemade metal detector coil and circuit to the back.

This allows him to strum the guitar, then change the sound by moving his hand away and toward the strings as a MIDI input. Very clever, and as always, Kale outlines everything in his own zany video style!

You can find the code for this project here and check out the schematic on Imgur. On the other hand, if this looks slightly familiar, he uses the same type of circuit for this MIDI controller as the metal detector previously covered on our blog.

If guitar effects pedals aren’t really your thing, perhaps Evan Kale’s touchless MIDI controller will fit the bill.

Using an Arduino, along with a Colpitts oscillator and some other electronics, Kale has come up with a rather unique interface for his guitar. Instead of using a foot pedal, he put a strip of aluminum foil inside of a fingerless glove, then attached a homemade metal detector coil and circuit to the back.

This allows him to strum the guitar, then change the sound by moving his hand away and toward the strings as a MIDI input. Very clever, and as always, Kale outlines everything in his own zany video style!

You can find the code for this project here and check out the schematic on Imgur. On the other hand, if this looks slightly familiar, he uses the same type of circuit for this MIDI controller as the metal detector previously covered on our blog.

If you love chess, but aren’t thrilled about playing it on an app, the InfiVention team has just the board for you.

The origin of the game chess is a fascinating and somewhat unknown tale, stretching continents and many hundreds of years. In the last 25 or so years, however, it has gone from a game played on a beautiful board with finely crafted pieces, to something played on a computer or smartphone. Perhaps this is a good thing, since finding competition is as easy as signing into the correct game.

On the other hand, this type of play looses a lot of charm, and you can’t exactly pass the app on your beat up smartphone to your kids one day. Attempting to fill in the gap is the amazing automated board called “Square Off.” With an Arduino Mega 2560 at its core, it automatically moves the pieces, and detects where you move, allowing you to play in the real world with someone remotely–even if he or she is merely using a tablet!

Square Off is all set to redefine the world of board games, starting with chess. Bringing to you the world’s smartest, most connected and the most evolved chess board. It enables you to play your favorite game against a fellow chess enthusiast from anywhere in the world. The automated board is designed to reflect the move of your opponent with precision. Not just that, you can challenge the artificial intelligence of the board, too.

Intrigued? You can learn more about Square Off on its nearly-funded (as of this writing) Kickstarter page, as well as on the Arduino Project Hub!

If you love chess, but aren’t thrilled about playing it on an app, the InfiVention team has just the board for you.

The origin of the game chess is a fascinating and somewhat unknown tale, stretching continents and many hundreds of years. In the last 25 or so years, however, it has gone from a game played on a beautiful board with finely crafted pieces, to something played on a computer or smartphone. Perhaps this is a good thing, since finding competition is as easy as signing into the correct game.

On the other hand, this type of play looses a lot of charm, and you can’t exactly pass the app on your beat up smartphone to your kids one day. Attempting to fill in the gap is the amazing automated board called “Square Off.” With an Arduino Mega 2560 at its core, it automatically moves the pieces, and detects where you move, allowing you to play in the real world with someone remotely–even if he or she is merely using a tablet!

Square Off is all set to redefine the world of board games, starting with chess. Bringing to you the world’s smartest, most connected and the most evolved chess board. It enables you to play your favorite game against a fellow chess enthusiast from anywhere in the world. The automated board is designed to reflect the move of your opponent with precision. Not just that, you can challenge the artificial intelligence of the board, too.

Intrigued? You can learn more about Square Off on its nearly-funded (as of this writing) Kickstarter page, as well as on the Arduino Project Hub!

Although smartwatches were designed to be an easy-to-use alternative for your smartphone, interacting with their touchscreens still requires your opposite hand to be free. So what do you do when you’re carrying a bag of groceries or holding onto a bus handle?

This is the problem a Dartmouth-led team set out to solve with WristWhirl, a smartwatch prototype that uses the wrist wearing the device as a joystick to perform common touchscreen gestures with one-handed continuous input, while freeing up the other hand for other tasks.

WristWhirl was built using a two-inch TFT display and a plastic watch strap equipped with a dozen infrared proximity sensors and a piezo vibration sensor, which is connected to an Arduino Due board. Commands are then made by moving the hand as if it were operating a joystick, while a finger pinch turns the sensors on/off to indicate the start or end of a gesture.

For starters, the team implemented four sample applications with off-the-shelf games and Google Maps to illustrate potential use cases.

Four usage scenarios for WristWhirl were tested: 1) a gesture shortcuts app was created, which allowed users to access shortcuts by drawing gestures; 2) a music player app was created, which allowed users to scroll through songs through wrist-swipes and play a selected song by double tapping the thumb and index fingers; 3) a map app was implemented for which 2D maps could be panned and zoomed depending on where the watch was held in relation to one’s body; and 4) game input, which often requires continuous input was tested, for which Tetris was played using a combination of wrist swipes, wrist extension and wrist flexion.

You can read more about the project on its page here, as well as see a demonstration of it below!

Autonomous cars seem to get all of the attention, but this autonomous trike is hoping to take things in a different direction.

With the support of Amazon’s Catalyst program, as well as from software company Kerika, University of Washington Bothell professor Tyler Folsom’s self-driving tricycle aims to help us lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. It’s a neat platform in its current form based on a recumbent tricycle.

As seen in the video below, it’s taken one of the first steps toward driving itself, taking a command to drive in a circle without direct control by an operator.

Folsom notes that Google is tackling the challenge of driving in traffic. Once driving software is mature and can be integrated into this type of platform, perhaps we will be able to ride to work or the store in a smaller vehicle like this!

“Of course we used the Arduino microprocessor.” – Professor Folsom

You can see more details on this project in the UW Bothell’s writeup.

(Photos: University of Washington Bothell)