A Nintendo Wii-remote along with bluetooth communication and an arduino gives us this magical cart with a wireless steering wheel.

These cool people are staunch DIY-ers and would love to see the community build more such vehicles.

The cart has two motors which use a chain to drive each of the rear wheels. A pair of H-bridge controllers let the Arduino interface with them. It’s also has a Bluetooth module that makes it a snap to pull accelerometer data from the Wii remote. The front end looks like it uses rack and pinion steering, but you won’t find a pinion or a steering column. Instead, a linear actuator is mounted parallel to the rack, moving it back and forth at the command of the Arduino.

The only downside I spot is the Battery life. I am sure that would be worked out too! Till then – Kudos to the inventors! I smell futuristic looking vehicle controls here.

Via:[Hackaday, NewsFactor]

In the Maker’s own words:

This is the final project for my Advanced Mechatronics class at Penn State University. The robot is the skeleton of a turret from the game Portal that uses an IP webcam to track a target and fire nerf bullets at them. This is the current state of the robot as of 5/9/12, but I am currently molding a shell for the frame to make it look like the Portal turret, along with improving my code to make the tracking faster. All programming is done with MATLAB and Arduino. Enjoy!

Via:[Youtube]

There are many available projects for the automated irrigation and lighting of plants using the Arduino board.

For those who were not already aware, here is the link to a tutorial by Instructables published a few days ago.

And here an old but useful article written by Luke Iseman on Make Volume 18.

The Botanicalls crew had created a leaf-shaped electronic board that allows transmission via Twitter of your plant conditions.

It ‘s time to seed!

Happy to see the KegBot Project adding a new fancy Android shell as casing.

“If you are looking for an exciting hardware project, KegDroid deserves a look. It is a sophisticated system that involves Android, Arduino, NFC, plumbing and — beer. Perhaps the final stroke of genius is to package the whole thing in a Droid body. Some how the little green fella looks at home on the bar. You have heard of desktop and laptop apps now we have bartop apps to add to the list“

via [SlashDot]

Lucid dream is a state in which you can control what you dream. Be it winning a million bucks worth lottery, or dating your favorite cine star, it is possible to control your dreams using these DIY goggles!

Simple to build and a nice weekend hack for the bored, these goggles are pretty cost effective and impressive. Put together a pair of glasses, LED, Arduino, a battery and some other minor paraphernalia and you are ready to live your favorite dream in your resting time!

Via:[Hackaday, Madscientist]

In case you hate the office music next time, just throw a paper at it. Just not in front of the boss!

Agency republic in London chose to tackle this issue in an R&D project by putting up a poster in the office that says “change the tune” and when you hit it with a piece of paper (or other things handy) an Arduino powered simple piece of hardware in the poster changes the tune on Spotify.

Via:[christianheilmann]

A yet another reason to have arduino in your basic-electronic toolkit. You can build your own battery capacity measuring device. Now compare all the brands of the so claimed ‘long lasting batteries’. Know what you are buying!

Follow the instructions to build from here. and get building!

Via: [Instructables]

office door hack from Valentin Heun on Vimeo.

MIT Researcher Valentin Heun created the RFID door opener as he was annoyed that he needed both his MIT ID card and a key to gain access to the MIT Media Lab. With this system his RFID-embedded ID card is read by an RFID evaluation shield connected to an Arduino Uno board. His RFID code is approved and a servo opens the door. A laser cut mounting board allows the servo and RFID evaluation shield to be attached to the door’s handle and deadbolt.

The code can be taken from here.

[Via: Lifehacker and colorsaregood.com]

Tired of dealing with keys to get into his office, Valentin Heun hacked together this door unlocker with a laser-cutter, Arduino, and some bits n’ bobs from SparkFun.  Full design files and parts list can be found on the linked page.

A former student of a college located in the town Bikaner, Rajasthan(India), Anirudh Sharma (twitter, blog) is a maker with a lot of perseverance. His first project Sparsh (Video) during college days generated a lot of interest in the Indian Maker community. His regular work at HP labs as a consultant, and his most famous recent work which was presented at TEDx BITS, Goa, the shoe for the blind – Le-chal, has brought him to the attention of makers around the world.

The latest was him getting featured in the MIT Technology Review, India TR35 list as a ‘young technology innovator’ followed by a call to pursue further studies with MIT Media Labs.

A casual chat-up with him threw light on the way open source hardware is affecting the lives of independent makers of India.

Priya: Congrats Anirudh! How does it feel to be featured in MIT list of young inventors?
Anirudh: Feels great that our work is being recognized at that level. Its a great platform to meet other people in doing technology related work.
Priya: Could you explain the project that was featured for our readers?
Anirudh: Codenamed as le´ chal, it’s a way of communicating navigational information with an intuitive eye-free interface. We used pizeo vibrational actuators in the four sides of the shoe that ‘poke’ the user about the direction he needs to walk in. The system could fit within a shoe. The reason we used a shoe is because it is something that we can repeatedly use in our day to day lives. We’ve started a company – Ducere Technologies [website yet to be up] to take this forward as a full fledged product.
Priya: Which specific area interests you the most in the field of electronics?
Anirudh: [I am] Not much of an electronics guy, I started fooling around with transducers back in 2010. I like the research going on in area of MEMS/Biomechatronics though.
Priya: What prompted you to use Arduino?
Anirudh: [Laughs] Not being an electronics guy, Arduino was the easiest way for me to start prototyping. The high-level easy access to sensor data pushed me to choose this platform to begin with.
Priya: So, MIT media labs that is big! What do you plan to study there?
Anirudh: Not thought yet. I’d love to explore tangible input to CAD systems, Raskar’s NETRA project which creates an inverse Shack-Hartmann sensor. This compiles to new hardware add-on to mobile phones for instant eye-prescription data. Other projects that interest me are AutoStereoscopic displays-BiDi screen, similar to explorations I did with my mentor ‘SriG‘(Sriganesh Madhvanath) at HP Labs.
Priya: I see that you have taken initiatives for the blind, what other areas can you see open source hardware solving problems?
Anirudh: If you’ve an idea that could touch lives, there’s nothing better than open source hardware to start your explorations with, as it not only provides the right tools but a community backing that you could rely on.
Priya: Any special blogs/people that you follow in the field of technology?
Anirudh: [I follow the works of] Arduino, MIT Tech Review, Seth Sandler, Bret Vitor, Aza Raskin, ladyada for it brings out fresh insights. In general, I admire works of VS Ramachandran, Feynman, Shwetak Patel and Bill Buxton.
Priya: Any other hobbies other than tinkering?
Anirudh: I play Portal 2, FarCry, trek to new places, and do photography.