If you need motivation to actually wake up rather than sleep more, this Nerf target clock from “Normal Universe” could be a great solution!

For many of us, traditional alarm clocks have given way to smartphones, but the concept is still the same: an annoying sound, followed by either waking up, or hitting the virtual snooze button just… one… more… time. On the other hand, when this alarm goes off, you need to shoot it with a Nerf gun in order to silence it.

The alarm/target works using a piezoelectric sensor attached to the clock’s housing. When the alarm sounds, if it senses a dart hit by counting the signal pulses generated, it turns off. Ingeniously, and perhaps annoyingly, it can tell if it’s tapped by a finger, and not respond accordingly!

The clock uses a programmable RGB ring controlled by an Arduino Uno to display the time, and is nicely modeled in Fusion 360. Definitely worth a watch.

You can see more details in the video below!

Primary image

read more

Primary image

read more

Primary image

read more

Mike, CEO of the Useless Duck Company, recently got sidetracked playing computer games. After receiving a notification on his phone, he realized that he had lost track of the time and was late to a very important meeting. Being the Maker that he is, he decided to invent a system that would prevent this from happening again. Introducing the Rick and Morty Alarm.

Now Mike just has to enter how much time he has remaining (in hours, minutes and/or seconds), and he’ll receive an alert in the form of a Screaming Sun when it’s time to leave.

The alarm consists of a Windows Forms application that sends a serial signal to an Arduino Uno, triggering a stepper motor. He also designed and 3D-printed the mechanism that raises the TV show character’s cutout. Meanwhile, the loud yelling noise is played through his computer speakers.

Since this worked so well for his desktop, Mike say he created a mobile app to help him wake up in morning. Check it out below!

By now, you are probably familiar with the Toa Mata Band–the world’s first LEGO robotic band controlled by Arduino Uno, which is hooked up to a MIDI sequencer.

Now a few years since Toa Mata Band’s debut, Italian producer Giuseppe Acito has shared the group’s latest music video: a cover of Kraftwerk’s “The Robots.” As you can see below, Acito himself performs the 1978 track’s vocals while the LEGO Bionicle figures play the tunes using a variety of gadgets, including pocket synths, drum pads, xylophone keys, and iPhones running apps.

This is my inspiration to this Kraftwerk ‘s tribute, regarding their vision of the future and to their brilliant approaching to the music with a touch of irony that even now is still influencing a thousand of music producers around the world. My video contribution from Toa Mata Band (a tiny orchestra of Lego robots driven by Arduino) represents a version of the iconic tune “The Robots” using nowadays open-source technologies, microcontrollers, 3D printer, robot arm, music DAW, smarthphones, pocket synthesizers and more… trying to give a new way to read the message we got from them 40 years ago.

A traditional reflex bag is meant to help improve your punch accuracy and timing. However, Carl Gordon decided to make his a bit more interactive and gamified using an Arduino Uno.

As you can see in the video below, his setup adds four LEDs to the device to tell the user which side of the bag to punch, and an accelerometer to let the Arduino in the base of the stand know when it is actually hit. This means that the person using it has to further work on his or her movement skills, adding a whole new dimension to the workout.

Gordon claims that it’s “10x more fun to use and now feels like more of a game than an exercise!” You can find out how to build your own on the project’s Instructables page.

A secret lair isn’t much fun if it’s a pain to get into, so Instructables user SPECTREcat decided to automate his hidden doors using an Arduino Uno. This drives four linear actuators via a MultiMoto shield, which both pull and turn the bookshelf in such a way that the books stay in place.

When opening, the doors first pull apart with one set of actuators, then turn with the other two to allow enough space for a person to pass through. Instead of drilling a hole through the maple plywood shelves, SPECTREcat chose to use a reed switch that’s activated on the other side by a magnet taped inside a DVD cover.

Beyond that, there’ s a PIR sensor that automatically closes the doors if motion isn’t detected for two hours. There’s also an emergency ingress/egress feature in the event of a power failure.

Looking for a hidden bookcase of your own? You can find more on the project’s electronics here, and see how the doors were constructed mechanically in this separate write-up.

After making his first drum with a laser cutter, Ryo Kosaka redesigned it as a 3D-printed structure so more people could build it.

If you’d like to practice playing the drums, but would rather not disturb your family, roommate, neighbors, dog, etc., then an electronic version is probably a good idea. Since you’re reading our blog, making one would be even better!

Although details on how it was interfaced software-wise with the Arduino Uno aren’t included in his log, the drum itself looks quite good. It’s 3D-printed out of several individual pieces, which are glued together using thick paper to help hold everything intact. The sectioned design means that you only need a 120mm x 120mm print area to produce this 8-inch drum pad.

Kosaka also goes into how to set up the piezo sensor for drum use in his write-up, which should be quite useful for this design, or even something derived from it. You can check out the project page for more details as well as Thingiverse for the print files. Additionally, Kosaka recommends this Rockband controller to MIDI Instructable or this one featuring a homemade electronic drum kit.

We’ve all seen geodesic domes in one form or another, whether as a modern experiment, as housing from a bygone era, or perhaps as a gigantic structure in Orlando (technically a geodesic sphere). Jon Bumstead apparently wasn’t satisfied with current dome options, and instead created his own, integrating elements from programmable LED tables to make it interactive.

The resulting build is quite spectacular. Each triangular section able to be lit up with an RGB LED, and further information is output to five MIDI signals in order to produce sound. This means that up to five people can play the dome as an instrument simultaneously. If that wasn’t enough, the Arduino Uno-based dome is programmed to play a version of Simon or Pong, and can be set up to display a light show!

I constructed a geodesic dome consisting of 120 triangles with an LED and sensor at each triangle. Each LED can be addressed individually and each sensor is tuned specifically for a single triangle. The dome is programmed with an Arduino to light up and produce a MIDI signal depending on which triangle you place your hand.

Pretty cool, right? Head over to the project’s Instructables page to see more, or if you’d like information on constructing the dome itself, check out Domerama.