With a mouth-operated joystick and “sip and puff” controls, the LipSync aims to make smartphones more accessible for everyone.

For the huge number of people that use them, smartphones have certainly made their lives easier. Unfortunately, these amazing gadgets are difficult to use for those with limited or nonexistent use of their arms and hands. The LipSync attempts to address this issue with a device that can be made in just over a weekend’s worth of work. It uses an Arduino Micro along with a Bluetooth module for communication, and allows someone to interface with the phone using its tiny joystick, as well as the user’s controlled breath.

Smartphones and other similar mobile devices have become a staple piece of technology in this day and age. For people in wheelchairs whom experience difficulties with gross or fine upper body motor control, the usage of mobile devices can be very challenging. The LipSync is an assistive technology device which is being developed to allow quadriplegics the ability to use touchscreen mobile devices by manipulation a mouth-operated joystick with integrated sip and puff controls.

You can find more information on this project, including the files needed to build one, on its Hackaday.io page.

Instead of a huge box of disks, David Schmenk decided to use an Arduino to add a massive amount of storage.

For Apple II enthusiasts, loading games or other programs via a normal disk drive works, but since storage capabilities have exploded since the 1980s, Schmenk’s setup uses an Arduino Uno to access an SD card via the gameport. As seen in the video below, Schmenk is able to read and write data, pulling up Lode Runner in 45 seconds. The Arduino shield’s real-time clock can also be accessed if needed.

There are already plenty of Ethernet products available for the Apple II, but few SD card options for transferring individual files… For my project I wanted something closer to a hardware version of CiderPress: the Apple disk image utility.

Be sure to check out the entire project on Schmenk’s writeup!

If you’ve ever dreamt of sitting in the driver’s seat of an RC car, you’ll love this recent project from Paul Yan. The designer has hacked together a first-person driving experience using a natural steering wheel that lets you feel like you’re playing a race kart game in real life.

As he describes in the video below, Yan used an old PS2 wheel controller, two Arduinos, a mini FPV camera, and a headset to act as a standalone monitor. The RC car–which is equipped with a Micro–interfaces with the wheel using an Uno and a PS2 Shield. Both Arduinos communicate via a pair of NRF24L01 modules.

I got the idea for this project while watching my three-year-old son play with his radio controlled toy cars. These all use the conventional two joysticks. The left is isolated to vertical movement to control the motor and the right stick is isolated to horizontal movement to control the turning direction of the front wheels.

If you have an old keyboard lying around and wish it were wireless, Maker DastardlyLabs has a solution.

The “HID Relay” is a small adapter that uses an Arduino Pro Mini, a Bluetooth module, a USB host shield, and a few other components to upgrade any USB keyboard to Bluetooth. DastardlyLabs has made three videos to explain the entire “Bluetooth-ification” process–which can be found below.

So far, the method has worked with all of the keyboards that DastardlyLabs has tested it on, as well as most mice (except for one “gamingish” USB mouse). The Arduino source code and build notes are available on GitHub. The HID Relay was inspired by a recent Arduino hack by Evan Kale. 

Suicide prevention charity R U OK? has partnered with digital innovation agency Fusion to create a fully-connected device in the form of a question mark with hopes of sparking a million conversations throughout Australia. Similar to the Olympic Torch, Quentin will be passed from person to person as it makes its way from town to town starting on Thursday, September 8th.

But unlike the Olympic Torch, the route is not planned. Instead, the journey is determined by the challenge it issues to each new keeper motivating them to reconnect face-to-face with people in their lives.

Quentin consists of a translucent 3D-printed shell, and is equipped with an Arduino/Genuino, some sensors, GPS, a display, and an array of LEDs that illuminate, animate and communicate. Users can interact with the device either by SMS or shaking it to receive their R U OK? challenge. Quentin also publishes its activity to the charity’s website, including distance travelled, challenges issued, and the number of keepers.

(Photos: Fusion / Campaign Asia)

Matthias Faust has created an Arduino controller for speeding up software development.

The “Maven Box” is based on an Uno and communicates with a Java program running on a desktop. The device is equipped with customizable buttons, switches and a dial, which act as physical inputs for expediting his daily routine. This enables Faust to select a branch from several GitHub projects, stash changes before pulling, pull the changes, trigger a maven build, as well as display the status of six tests on a set of notification LEDs.

Every job has it’s routine. I am a software developer who works with a Git/Maven based workspace everyday. So when I start working, my daily routine is to update and build my local workspace, pulling changes from GitHub, execute a maven build and execute the updated software. Usually I get my first coffee after that, but because I love coffee so much I thought there must be a faster way to get my system updated and running.

Whether a software developer yourself or simply a fan of awesome Arduino builds, check out the Maven Box’s Instructables page to see more!

Evan Kale is back with another hack. This time, the YouTuber decided to convert a weed wacker-like toy into a metal detector with the help of an Arduino Uno.

As Kale explains, the project is based on a Colpitts Oscillator, which combines an LC circuit with a transistor amplifier for feedback. The frequency of oscillation is somewhere in the 100KHz range, which cannot be heard by humans. Enter the Arduino. When the trigger is pressed, an Arduino program translates the oscillation into an audible tone that is played out of the speaker. When the oscillation exceeds a certain threshold, it also emits a celebratory light show because… why not?

Kale walks through his entire build—along with the science of it all and how it works—in the video below. The schematics can be found on Imgur.

Calling Makers in New York! Planning on attending World Maker Faire next month? We’re looking for volunteers to join our team during the event, e.g. staffing tables and displays, helping with one-on-one workshops and demos, and providing technical assistance.

If you volunteer with us for one shift, you’ll receive a pass for both days so you can explore and enjoy everything happening around the faire grounds. Water and snacks will be provided, of course, and we’ve prepared a small gift to show our appreciation at the end of the your shift.

Interested? Please fill out this questionnaire, and we’ll get back to you soon!

• When: Saturday and Sunday, October 1-2, 2016
• Location:  New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th St, Corona, NY 11368

Gone are the days of fumbling with your keys! Adham Negm has come up with a way to open your door with a simple hand gesture while holding your smartphone.

To accomplish this, Negm uses an Arduino Uno, a servo motor to move the bolt, and a 1Sheeld to interface with the smartphone. The 1Sheeld reads the device’s accelerometer data, and then activates the servo when it recognizes a predefined gesture.

Sound like a hack you’d like to try for your room? You can find the entire project on Instructables.

Increasing accuracy in the collection of data coming from sensors is a need that, sooner or later, Makers need to face. Paul Martinsen from MegunoLink created a tutorial to eliminate noise from sensor readings on Arduino with three simple filtering techniques.

The Averaging and Running Average techniques are easy to implement as they work by adding a number of measurements together, then dividing the total by the number of measurements. In both cases, the downside is that it can use a lot of memory.

The Exponential filter is a better solution for several reasons: it doesn’t require much memory, you can control how much filtering is applied with a single parameter, and it saves battery power because you don’t need to make many measurements at once. For this solution, they developed an Arduino filter library so you don’t need to go mad with math!

Interested? You can find the tutorial and explore the code on MegunoLing’s blog post here.