This is one of my 1st Arduino projects. Along with Arduino, I've used a seven segmeent led display and a piezzo buzzer. First, it beeps to indicate start. Then, counts down from 9 to 0, beeps three times. Finally, it beeps for the last time but this time the beep lasts longer.
Adding some lights to your everyday items will certainly give you a style leaning toward the world of Blade Runner. But if you can add functionality to control the blinky components you’ve actually got something. A great example of this is [Kathryn McElroy's] Chameleon Bag. It’s a shoulder bag with a light-up flap. It can color match your clothing, but she also built some features that will let you know what is inside of the bag.
The project started by using a cardboard template in the size and shape of the bag’s flap. After adding an Arduino to control the LEDs and an RFID reader for an interactive element she sewed a replacement flap that also acts as a diffuser. In the video after the break she demonstrates matching the color of her scarf by reading a tag sewn in the end of it. She then starts loading up all the stuff needed for a day away from home. As the keys, phone, and computer are placed in the bag their tags are read, resulting in different combinations of color. Once everything she needs is inside, the flap turns green and she heads out the door.
This will go great with your illuminated umbrella.
[via Adafruit]
[Dennis Adams'] wreath lights project looks pretty good. But he did some amazing coding to produce a whole set of interesting animated patterns that really seal the deal for the project. Don’t miss the video after the break where he shows off all of his hard work.
He started with a string individually addressable LEDs. These are the 12mm variety like what Adafruit sells (we’ve seen them popping up in a number of projects). To mount each pixel he tried a several different prototypes before settling on a ring that was 14″ in diameter. The design was laser cut from acrylic, with sets of staggered holes to host each ring of LEDs. The final touch was to add ping-pong balls to diffuse the light.
As we mentioned earlier, the light patterns really add the finishing touch to the project, but there is more functionality there too. [Dennis] rolled in the ability to monitor a Twitter feed with the wreath. When he gets a new tweet, a different animation will let him know about it.
[Thanks Chris]
The Maker Shed LED Atmospheric Analyzer Kit is now available in the Maker Shed. Use it to create a photometer, a device that measures how much blue, green, and red light are penetrating the atmosphere.
Dear reader, I need a spark of an idea!
Combine an Arduino, an ultransonic distance sensor, and some common components to build a classic "hot/cold" project. Once assembled, we'll walk through the software "sketch" loaded onto our Arduino, and experiment with three variations of the "hot/cold" theme, all the while using the same circuit.
This is an original way to hack a dvd-player and integrate it with an allarm-clock. Well, building up a new Digital Alarm Clock with Arduino is the real project, the integration with the DVD-Player is the Hack. Thanks [razrbhr] to send us your project.
Arduino led clock driven directly using an Arduino Mega 2560 board.. Has an in built alarm function and triggers a DVD player via optocouplers to start playing songs when alarm time is reached so you wake up with a smile…
You will find more and the full description of the project, included pictures on his [blog]
LED(Lamp) is an advanced bluetooth lighting system made with arduino, has been realized using a very cheap bluetooth module.
The cool part is the control app for Android device that allows you to control the lighting system.
The firmware for Arduino is open source. The app for android offers: brightness control, color, 8 memories, save favorite color on start.
You can find more on the official [website]
This motorcycle helmet was heavily altered to accept all of the hardware that goes into driving that huge array of LEDs. [Brian Cardellini] built it to wear at burning man. He claims to have been in over his head with the project, but we certainly don’t get that feeling when we see the thing in action. It’s light on build details, but there are plenty of demo shots in the video after the break. The animation and fading action really gets started about a minute and a half into it.
One of the early frames of the video is a shot of the parts order webpage. Since it’s an HD clip we were able to glean a few bits and pieces from that. It includes a MAX7219 LED Display Driver and fifteen 25-packs of Blue LEDs. Now that chip is a great choice, and one of the later shots shows two of them on breakout board driven by an Arduino. The look is very clean since he carved out most of the helmet’s padding to make room for the electronics.
[via Adafruit]
Knowing that I’m always happy to get something new and glowy, my wife brought home a cheap “floating pool light” that she found on sale for roughly $10. This is a large white floating ball that has LEDs inside and cycles through different colors. Meant to be put into a pool for neat effects, we found it to be much more interesting just used around the house.
However, it was a bit too bright and cycled colors too quickly for our taste. It was actually somewhat distracting when we were just trying to sit and have a few beers late at night on our patio. This gave me a perfect excuse to tear it apart and start hacking… like I wasn’t going to do that anyway.
What I found inside was extremely simple. There’s a single un-marked chip that holds the different display modes (there were 3 display modes: warm, cool, and white). The LEDs were arranged in an array of Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites (half marked yellow).
My goal was to make this a little more tolerable as mood lighting, so I needed to draw up a plan. I have an arduino sitting here from the redbull contest, so I figured why not hook it up to that? It would allow full PWM control of the channels and I could do some pre-programmed sequences if I wanted.
This was ridiculously easy. All I needed to do was solder leads on to each of the LED channels. There are already great tutorials on how to run PWM from the arduino and a couple quick additions would give me direct controls over each channel via potentiometers. So problem solved right?
Well, sort of. It really bugs me that there’s an entire arduino there just for some PWM. I can go buy the components to do 555 timer PWM circuits if all I want is PWM. Then again, if I compare the price, that free arduino is a much cheaper solution than buying 2xcaps, 1×555, 1xtransistor, and assorted resistors and diodes, especially if consider that I’d have to buy it all in triplicate.
Ultimately if I wanted to just leave this as PWM control on each channel, I’d opt for the 555 circuit. What else is there to do with a glowing ball? Simple notification system? Sound reactive? Give me some ideas.
