These eight boards stand out for their advanced specs, built-in offerings, and, in some cases, their innovative interface options.
The post From the New Issue of Make: Our 8 Standout Dev Boards appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
This Week in Making saw the reveal of the Two Bit Circus Foundation, hand-made Dark Souls rings, some new crowd funding campaigns, and more.
The post This Week in Making: ChickTech Meetup, Dark Souls Props, and Robotic Arms appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Using an Arduino Uno along with a Raspberry Pi for control, hacker “HomoFaciens” came up with this clever delta-style robot.
If you were going to make a robot with five servos, many Makers would make a robot arm with them and call it a day. HomoFaciens, however, who is known for making amazing machines with minimal tools and improvised materials, instead made something that seems to be a cross between a delta robot and a Skycam.
His device, called “WinchBot,” uses three winches attached to an equilateral triangle frame to move a slider on a central pivoting square rod. This allows the robot’s 5-axis “hand” to be positioned within the robot’s work area. The servos are then tasked with keeping everything in the correct orientation, as well as opening and closing the gripper as needed.
If you’d like more details than given in the very entertaining video seen here, be sure to check out the project’s write-up.
Most parents would do anything to enrich their kids’ worlds and teach them what they need to know. Hacker parents often take it one step further by modifying the kid’s world to allow them to work past a disability. To wit we have an interactive game board to help a toddler learn her shapes and colors.
The toddler in question is [Becca], and her needs are special because of the progressive nature of the blindness that will result from her Usher Syndrome. [Becca] will need visual acuity testing much earlier than most toddlers, but a standard eye chart is meaningless to kids before they get their letters. This is where Lea shapes come in – a set of four shapes that are used to make visual testing a game and help practitioners assess what a child can and cannot see.
[Jake] and his wife [Beth] were advised to familiarize [Becca] with the shapes, but all she wanted to do was eat the printed sheet. In order to make the task more entertaining, [Jake] built an interactive board where brightly colored Lea shapes trigger the room lights to change to the same color as the block when it’s inserted into the correct spot on the board, as a visual reward. Reed switches, magnets, and an Arduino comprise the game logic, and the board communicates to the Philips Hue smart bulbs over an NRF24L01. The video below also shows some cool under-bed lights and a very engaged [Becca] learning her shapes and colors.
As we expected when we last covered his efforts to help [Rebecca], [Jake] has leveraged the Raspberry Pi he used as a hub for the stairwell lighting project. We’re looking forward to seeing what else he comes up with, and to see how [Becca] is thriving.
animated GIFs work great and are very expressive
The post The Peeqo Robot Communicates Using Only Animated GIFs appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
“I’m a big fan of digital music, especially Spotify. The ability to dial-up a much loved song I’ve not heard for ages or discover new music are just some of the benefits I never tire of,” writes UK-based designer Brendan Dawes. “Yet the lack of physicality to this digital medium has always left me wanting. I still own vinyl and a turntable and I love the ritual of physically flicking through what to place on the platter and then wait for the needle to drop on the spinning vinyl.”
To bridge the gap between the digital and analog worlds, Dawes decided to create what he calls the “Plastic Player.” The playful interface features a Raspberry Pi running Pi MusicBox connected to his 50-year-old B&O stereo, and an Arduino Yún with an NFC shield.
The “albums” themselves are made from a box of slide mounts with tiny NFC stickers on the back. When Dawes drops one in place, the Arduino identifies the tag, matches it to a specific record, turns on a backlight, and then communicates via WiFi with the Pi MusicBox API to play the tunes.
Removing the cartridge from the device pauses the track. But that’s not all. There are also three buttons on top, which can be used to skip, go back, or stop a song.
It’s often easy to romanticise the past, convincing ourselves that things were better back then when really I think that’s just not the case. I’ve discovered way more music since moving to Spotify then I ever did in record shops. What I do like though is the physicality of choosing an album to play and this system is an attempt to blend the good parts of both worlds. The future will continue to be digitised and I embrace that, but I think there’s a space in between the digital and the analog to create interactions that are filled with the inconvenience of what it is to be human.
You can read more about the Plastic Player on Dawes’ website, and see it in action below!
(Photos: Brendan Dawes)
Hey guys,
I'm starting out a project in which I want to build a Raspberry Pi Self Driving Robot. The basic tasks the robot will perform are:
The materials I currently plan to use in this project are:
Hey guys,
I'm starting out a project in which I want to build a Raspberry Pi Self Driving Robot. The basic tasks the robot will perform are:
The materials I currently plan to use in this project are:
Hey guys,
I'm starting out a project in which I want to build a Raspberry Pi Self Driving Robot. The basic tasks the robot will perform are:
The materials I currently plan to use in this project are:
Hey guys,
I'm starting out a project in which I want to build a Raspberry Pi Self Driving Robot. The basic tasks the robot will perform are:
The materials I currently plan to use in this project are: