The goal of this project was to create a small device, which detects movement in protected areas (e.g. tables) and allows you to speak usual phrases in your voice to the cat to control its behaviour when you are away. It’s called Cat Protector and prototyped on Arduino Uno  by Lucky Resistor, a creative guy who enjoys software development and electrical engineering:

I started with a prototype, using an Arduino Uno and a large breadboard. The first step was to realize an acceptable sound output. To realize this I added a shield with SD card adapter and wrote some optimized code to stream sound from the SD card in 22.1kHz using a 12bit DAC. The amplification to a speaker completed this part of the project where I have two solutions. Next I experimented with different motion sensors to detect the motion of the cat and finished the hardware part using a dual color LED for a simple status display.

Creating a compact device from the prototype was the next challenge, I could place the whole circuit I used on a small prototyping area and squeezed everything in a small casing. From outside, the device looks simple and tidy.

He documented everything in details on his website, especially the software part:

I read so many Arduino related articles and tutorials, but most of them stop when the prototype is running. I hope this documentation helps people to see how to structure Arduino software to make it extensible and keep it readable. This is especially necessary to write more complex logic than just to blink some LEDs. Also I hope to give some inspiration how to develop the prototype to a final device.

Check the full  documentation here.

We’ve been amazed by the great projects coming up the week before Halloween on Twitter and Gplus community and still being submitted to our blog.

Leah Libresco published an Instructables about a pair of interactive gauntlets made with Arduino Lilypad:

This Halloween, I decided to be Alina Starkov from the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. In the books, she’s the one and only Sun Summoner, doing magic with light and heat.

Since those powers were beyond me, I put together a set of Arduino-controlled gauntlets instead, that would light up on gesture commands and slip under my sleeves. [This set up, with a few tweaks, would probably serve you well for Iron Man, too]

Instead of using a single position value from the accelerometer to turn the LEDs on and off, I picked two different triggers, so that it would be easy to *choose* whether I wanted my hands illuminated when they were straight out in front of me (a necessity, since I plan to host a party in these!)

Full construction and code are available at this link, below you can see the project in action!

Read more on MAKE

The Sensing Umbrella is the second project I’m featuring on this blog (see the first), coming out of the class at  the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design called Connected Objects, with Massimo Banzi and Giorgio Olivero. 

The project created by a team of students Akarsh Sanghi, Saurabh Datta and Simon Herzog is a platform to gather, display, and share hyperlocal air pollution data:

Each umbrella serves as a node for measuring CO and NO2 pollution levels and can provide exceptionally granular data to pollution databases and for scientific analysis. Simultaneously, the light visualisations inside the umbrella respond to pollution levels in real time and spread awareness of air quality in the city for its inhabitants. The umbrella uses open hardware and software to gather and interpret data through a built-in sensor array, displays CO and NO2 pollution locally in two modes, and logs the timestamped and geolocated data to the cloud for analysis.

Check the video to watch the team introducing the project:

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Datamonsters are creatures that respond to you. They can see you and respond to your presence and movement. In addition to responding to immediate interactions, they can also be influenced by events happening in the world outside.

The project you see in the picture was made by Lucas Ainsworth  using Intel Galileo board and needs 3 main things:

- a physical structure
The physical structure uses commonly available materials and a relatively easy-to build wooden kit pattern, so that the physical form “gets out of the way”
as much as possible. If you cut this kit and put it together, you will have a robot with 5 joints: waist rotation, waist elevation, mid-body elevation, neck rotation, and head movement.

- sensing
For this version, we’re using 3 long range active IR sensors for simplicity and low cost. This sensor pack estimates object location in 3D space. Next gen could possibly use a webcam and OpenCV to include face-detection and motion in addition to presence.

- software
This is where the fun is and where the most work remains to be done. We have code for the Arduino IDE (written for the Intel Galileo board) that you
can use to calibrate and control your monster. If you use our code unchanged, you’ll have some basic reactions to objects, and a connection over WiFi to Thingspeak. Thingspeak is an easy-to-use repository for data collected from the internet or any data sources you create.

You can make your own Datamonster following the detailed documentation at this link. The Galileo code to get started (for the Arduino IDE) is on GitHub.

RoboRium.com is an online robotics store by JMoon Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in India that offers a variety of products ranging from tools, electronic development boards, starter kits, microcontroller programmers, motors, mechanical kits and other hardware items related to robotics and home automation design, development & production which are acquired from international suppliers and delivered to customers at competitive prices.

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I’m reblogging from Core77 this interesting wearable project because I’d like to highlight the using of Arduino Lilypad board:

Bio Circuit stems from our concern for ethical design and the creation of media-based interactions that reveal human interdependence with the environment. With each beat of the heart, Bio Circuit connects the wearer with the inner workings of their body.

It was created at Emily Carr University by Industrial Design student Dana Ramler, and MAA student Holly Schmidt and provides a form of bio feedback using data from the wearer’s heart rate to determine what “sounds” they hear through the speaker embedded in the collar of the garment. Here’s the schematic of technology:

Have a look at the video below to see how it works and don’t miss BioCircuit Project page on Dana’s Portfolio:

Scratch, a graphical programming language developed by MIT’s Media Lab, is an excellent tool for teaching programming. [Daniel] created an Arduino Sensor Shield to interface with Scratch, allowing for real-world input to the language.

This board is a derivative of the Picoboard, which is designed for use with Scratch. Fortunately, the communication protocol was well documented, and [Daniel] used the same protocol to talk to the graphical programming environment. The shield includes resistance sensing, a light sensor, a sound sensor, and a sliding potentiometer.

The main goal was to create a board that could easily be built by DIY etching. This meant a one sided board with as few jumpers as possible. The final design, which can be downloaded and etched at home, is single sided and uses only one jumper. Detailed steps on testing the board are provided, which is very helpful for anyone trying to build their own.

This board is perfect for educational purposes, and thanks to [Daniel]‘s optimizations, it can be built and tested at at home.

Read the full article on MAKE