If you're a fan of Arduino's tinker-friendly approach to computing, you'll be glad to hear that it's now extending that open philosophy to 3D printers. The company has teamed up with Sharebot to unveil the Materia 101, a small (5.5 inches by 4 inches) printer that's built to be both friendly to beginners and very accessible. You can modify the code on the underlying Arduino Mega mini-PC, of course, but you also have access to the full schematics of the printer -- you can upgrade it or even make your own, if you have the know-how and parts. Arduino hasn't said when it plans to ship the Materia, but it'll be available both as a build-it-yourself kit (priced under $800) and fully assembled (under $1,000).

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Source: Arduino

Tags: 3dprinter, 3dprinting, arduino, arduinomega, materia101, opensource, printer, sharebot

If you're a fan of Arduino's tinker-friendly approach to computing, you'll be glad to hear that it's now extending that open philosophy to 3D printers. The company has teamed up with Sharebot to unveil the Materia 101, a small (5.5 inches by 4 inches) printer that's built to be both friendly to beginners and very accessible. You can modify the code on the underlying Arduino Mega mini-PC, of course, but you also have access to the full schematics of the printer -- you can upgrade it or even make your own, if you have the know-how and parts. Arduino hasn't said when it plans to ship the Materia, but it'll be available both as a build-it-yourself kit (priced under $800) and fully assembled (under $1,000).

Filed under: Peripherals

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Source: Arduino

Tags: 3dprinter, 3dprinting, arduino, arduinomega, materia101, opensource, printer, sharebot

Getting your feet wet with programmable hardware can be tricky; even if you're comfortable with coding, you may not want to break out the soldering iron just to build a usable device. LittleBits is aware of just how intimidating these make-it-yourself gadgets can be, so it has just launched its first software-programmable module, the Arduino at Heart. As the name implies, it's an Arduino core (the same as the Leonardo) designed to fit into LittleBits' simple, building block approach to circuit boards. If you want to attach a light, motor or sensor to the Arduino board, you just snap it on -- you can spend more of your time coding rather than dealing with wiring and other hardware hassles. %Gallery-slideshow193425%

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Source: LittleBits

Oh, the lowly box. It spends most of the year being broken down, stashed away and pulped, but one day a year, it gets its moment to shine (at least in the UK and various Commonwealth Nations). Consider the ShoeboxCNC a continued celebration of the cardboard vessel, a kit you build from the box it arrives in. The router is an Arduino-controlled CNC fabrication machine you can put to use for all sorts of things that require an arm that moves on the X Y and Z axes - from cookie frosting to picturing painting (with varying degrees of success, of course). It's not exactly a heavy duty router or miller - more the sort of kit you'd expect from something made out of cardboard. Still, it looks to be a fun weekend activity for burgeoning makers - or a nice classroom project. The company's just opened up its Kickstarter, hoping to harness a bit of that spirit of giving. $250 will get you a kit scheduled to be delivered around this time next year, for an early Boxing Day celebration.

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Source: Kickstarter

You'll have to plug in a typical Arduino-compatible board at some point in its life, whether it's to add code or just to supply power. Not Punch Through Design's upcoming Cortado, however. The tiny device centers on a custom Bluetooth 4.0 LE module that both enables wireless programming (including through mobile apps) and helps the board last for more than a year on a replaceable watch battery. In fact, the Cortado will already be powered up when you get it -- you can start coding before you've opened the shipping box. It should also be relatively flexible for its size with a built-in accelerometer and the ability to serve as an Apple iBeacon transmitter. Punch Through is crowdfunding the board with hopes of shipping its first units in May. If you're interested, you can pledge $18 to pre-order a Cortado; there's also a helpful promo video after the break.

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Via: Make

Source: Punch Through Design

"There's something we miss when everything becomes virtual and goes online," says Tyler DeAngelo. "Tactile-ness gives it something that is more interesting and a deeper connection and makes it more meaningful." The ad executive invited us to Havas Worldwide's Chicago offices to show off his latest creation, and with Fifth Avenue Frogger, the Check 'N Chew Foursquare gumball machine and the Buzzed Buzzer under his belt, we took him up on the offer. His latest creation was born of the same desire to bridge the physical and the virtual. Created for a beer client, the bottle opener has Arduino Nano-based circuitry built-in, which connects with an Android handset via Bluetooth, sending texts to friends when you crack open a bottle.

"I'm definitely not the first person to say this, but creativity comes from finding meaningful relationships between things that already exist," explains DeAngelo. "Nothing I'm doing is going to change the world. A lot of the stuff I do is wasting people's time, but I still think that making someone think differently or making someone laugh or have fun -- wasting time is an important piece of innovation." It's also, naturally, an important part of engaging a public increasingly immune to sales pitches. Getting people's attention in an ad-saturated world requires a lot more than clever jingles. "i think the most innovative things in the media field should be happening inside ad agencies right now," DeAngelo adds. "If they're not, those who aren't innovating are going to be dead."

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Conventional wisdom would suggest that making a for-real Katamari Damacy ball would be tricky, but that didn't stop Chris McInnis, Ron LeBlanc and Tom Gwozdz from taking up the challenge. As part of the Nuit Blanche festival in London, Canada (which also included some building-projected gaming), they were able to fashion their very own Katamari ball from a yoga ball, some stickers, wood, an Arduino microcontroller, several optical mice and a dissected DualShock 2 controller. See how it steers after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Science, Alt

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Via: UbercoolStuffldnont (YouTube)

If you're hip-deep in Arduino projects, you're likely aware of shields: graft-on boards that add functionality, most often getting the Arduino in touch with the rest of the world. Many of these require more than a little coding skill to get the ball rolling, even in light of the Netduino, which has led Supermechanical to unveil its new Twine Cloud Shield. The board links the Arduino to a Twine WiFi sensor and gives the Arduino every internet feature the Twine can offer through just three lines of code. There's even a pair of touchpads on the shield to trigger actions through capacitive touch. Do be prepared to pony up for that ease of use when it costs $35 for the Cloud Shield alone, and $150 to bundle one with the Twine. Still, the outlay may be justified if you're more interested in quickly finishing a fun experiment than frittering your time away on the basics.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

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Source: Supermechanical

We've all had that moment where we sit in front of the keyboard and have trouble just getting started. It can be an especially dire problem when the 30-day deadline of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) looms overhead, and that was enough for inventor Steve Hoefer to craft his own USB progress meter. The Arduino-based contraption advances a real-world dial or gauge as the word count reaches the NaNoWriMo servers, giving that extra incentive to meet a daily goal or hit the ultimate 50,000-word mark on time. Hoefer characterizes it as a simple project for those who know their way around an Arduino controller; the toughest part for them may just be constructing the box that keeps the meter presentable. Full instructions are available after the break, although we'd hurry to build the meter before November starts. It could all too easily be the source of the very procrastination we're trying to avoid.

Continue reading NaNoWriMo progress meter uses Arduino to fight writer's block, may be its own distraction (video)

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NaNoWriMo progress meter uses Arduino to fight writer's block, may be its own distraction (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sure, Red Bull may have gotten a lot of attention by sponsoring Felix Baumgartner's space dive, but it's not the only beverage-maker that has made some great accomplishments possible. The Prague-based brewery Staropramen was a sponsor at the recent Webstock 2012 conference, where the folks from Robofun Create showed off this so-called Beer Keyboard built with the brewer's backing. As you can see, it's more beer than keyboard, with 40 cans of Staropramen serving as "keys" that just need to be gently pressed to input a letter. To make that actually work, Robofun paired an Arduino board with some capacitive controllers for the base, and connected that to a Raspberry Pi that linked the keyboard to the TV. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the keyboard has since gone missing. Head on past the break for a video.

Continue reading Beer Keyboard combines Arduino and Raspberry Pi... and beer

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Beer Keyboard combines Arduino and Raspberry Pi... and beer originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.