We’ve been waiting to see what ::vtol:: (a.k.a. Dmitry Morozov) would come up with the next! The Moscow-based hacker artist has now created an electro-mechanical drawing machine.

The Electropollock, which pays homage to influential American painter Jackson Pollock, is driven by the sound of music. A special algorithm analyzes the tunes and then controls the electric valves, servo motors with brushes, and the special fan intended for spray painting. The intensity of ink supply, the rate of the moving paper, and the activity of the brushes all depend on the frequency and amplitude of the peaks in the music.

The machine features an old printer mechanism, an Arduino Uno, and is programmed using Pure Data. You can see how it works in the video below!

GeekCon participants add a switch and actuator to a HAL 9000 model for the world’s largest “leave-me-alone box.”

You’ve probably seen the silly boxes that when you flip a switch to turn it “on,” an arm comes out to turn itself “off” again. At this year’s GeekCon Makers conference, participants decided to make a useless machine, but in place of a simple box, they made a model of the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rather than the normal “useless” configuration, it turns itself “on” instead of “off” in an apparent nod to the fact that the computer didn’t want to be disconnected in the movie. One Arduino controls a projector for the “eye” assembly, while another takes care of the servos and audio. HAL’s sounds are stored on an SD card inside an Adafruit Music Shield.

Behind the eye, made out of round lamp and a red plastic diffuser, there is a projector. The projector is connected to Arduino TVout which only outputs a white filled circle that also changes its diameter based on microphone input. Having the circle moving according to the sounds gives HAL’s eye more realistic look.

The second Arduino was in charge of servos and audio. We divided the tasks to two Arduino Uno to avoid collisions in PINs requirements.

You can find more information on this project on its blog and in Hackaday’s recent writeup. If you just want to see the Arduino code, it’s available here.

(Photos: Rafael Mizrahi)

This dust buster-based robotic vacuum may or may not work as well as a Roomba.

If you’re fascinated by the idea of a robotic vaccum cleaner to keep you from having to do certain chores, you could buy an iRobot, or you could make your own instead. This particular DIY model uses four motors for locomotion, an Arduino Uno, an IR and ultrasonic sensors to avoid obstacles, as well as a (formerly) handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up debris.

The assembly sits on a wooden chassis, and as author B. Aswinth Raj is quick to point out, many variations on this robot could be made. Code is included and fairly short, so whether you’d like to copy this design or improve upon it, the bot should certainly give you some build ideas!

In this project we will use the power of embedded systems and electronics to make our own robot which could help us in keeping our home or work place neat and tidy. This robot is simple four wheeled vacuum cleaner which could smartly avoid obstacles and vacuum the floor at the same time. The idea is inspired by the famous vacuum cleaner iRobot Roomba…

You can find more detailed instructions, along with its code and a circuit diagram, on this CircuitDigest page.

The MR-808 robotic drum machine looks like a gigantic Roland synthesizer, but plays with real instruments!

The Roland TR-808 was released in 1981 and was meant to replace a human drummer for practice purposes, but was instead used to produce music itself, helping to birth the electronic, techno, and hip hop genres. Moritz Simon Geist and the Sonic Robots collective, however, decided to turn this on its head, with a machine made to look like a gigantic ‘808, but containing real instruments.

With a variety of hardware, including an Arduino Uno and Mega, an audience can program the MR-808 using a tablet and get down to the grooves they create themselves!

In 2013 I [Geist] found Sonic Robots a loose group of friends, hackers, technicians and artists and we had the idea of reversing the concept of the ‘808 and putting the physical aspect back into this gorgeous drum machine. For the Installation MR-808 we began to replaced eleven sound with mechanical actuators like motors and solenoids, so that reals drums (snare, BD ..) could be played live.

You can read all about the device on the Sonic Robots page, as well as find more information on how it works here.

A group of students from Farmington, Connecticut partnered with artist Balam Soto and master teachers Earl Procko and Jim Corrigan to create a community-based sculpture project that allows people to explore the sights, sounds and history of their town through new media.

The installation runs on Arduino Uno and XBee, and is comprised of two panels which act as viewing screens for multiple visual projections. Visitors can interact with the display and manipulate the images using 24 buttons placed on the physical map. Plus, they are encouraged to record and add their own stories and memories of Farmington to the ever-growing multimedia library.

Permanently exhibited in Farmington’s public library, the Farmington Map Project was also the opportunity to introduce the students to physical computing, digital fabrication, woodworking, Arduino programming, and to the potential that Makerspaces have to offer for bringing ideas to life.

The project was created with the support of an Arts in Education Mini-Grant, funded by the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Department of Economic and Community Development, the Connecticut Office of the Arts, and the Connecticut Association of Schools, Farmington High School’s Fine and Applied Arts.

Interested? Check it out on Hackster.

Tired of adjusting your blinds depending on outside lighting conditions? YouTuber “Dial” has the solution!

Perhaps you’ve seen hacks where people hook a servo up to blinds to flip them open and shut. If, however, you have the kind of blinds that need to be pulled all the way up to let light in, things become a little more tricky. Dial serves up an incredible solution in the video below, with a servo fixture that holds the balls on a blind’s roll up rope in a setup that could be described as the inverse of how a bicycle sprocket works.

This is interesting enough, but after finding that the rope needed 4x the force that the stepper was capable of, a gear train system was devised using Matthias Wandel’s gear generator. Making it even more impressive, only hand tools were used to complete this build, and it employs an Arduino Uno to automatically raise and lower the blinds depending on lighting conditions.

More info on the project’s parts as well as other useful websites are listed in the video description found here.

Bored with normal cell phone charging stations, “Makjosher” decided to make his own with pipe fittings and Edison bulbs.

Makjosher’s charging station resembles a retro-looking light fixture more than a cell phone charger, but it seems to perform both functions quite well. Using an Arduino Uno in conjunction with a current sensor, his charging station senses when a phone is getting “juice” and turns on an Edison bulb to, perhaps, celebrate the occasion. Though it’s shown here being used with an Apple device, there’s no reason a very slightly modified setup couldn’t be used to charge an Android phone, or really any other gadget as needed.

Makjosher gives a pretty good overview of his project in the video below, but if you want more specifics, you can check out his Instructables page here.

Remember Ryan Bates’ mini vending machine, the Venduino? Well, the Maker has now built a wooden coin pusher that’ll complement his earlier project quite nicely.

If you’ve seen a machine at an arcade with coins hanging off an edge, you probably thought, “Wow, if I just put one more quarter in, I’ll get like $10 back.” Although perhaps he could make money with it, Bates built his own as a fun distraction. His machine uses a cam mechanism to push a “dozer” back and forth so that when you drop a penny down the money input chute, it hopefully knocks a few coins into the area where you can collect them.

The mechanism is simple, but Bates used an Arduino along with a motor shield to drive dozer motor. It also monitors a tilt sensor to detect if someone tries to cheat. On the other hand, as he notes, it’s small enough that someone could take the device.

Although it’s apparently not ready as of this writing, Bates plans to have this game available as a kit on his website.

Instead of a huge box of disks, David Schmenk decided to use an Arduino to add a massive amount of storage.

For Apple II enthusiasts, loading games or other programs via a normal disk drive works, but since storage capabilities have exploded since the 1980s, Schmenk’s setup uses an Arduino Uno to access an SD card via the gameport. As seen in the video below, Schmenk is able to read and write data, pulling up Lode Runner in 45 seconds. The Arduino shield’s real-time clock can also be accessed if needed.

There are already plenty of Ethernet products available for the Apple II, but few SD card options for transferring individual files… For my project I wanted something closer to a hardware version of CiderPress: the Apple disk image utility.

Be sure to check out the entire project on Schmenk’s writeup!

Matthias Faust has created an Arduino controller for speeding up software development.

The “Maven Box” is based on an Uno and communicates with a Java program running on a desktop. The device is equipped with customizable buttons, switches and a dial, which act as physical inputs for expediting his daily routine. This enables Faust to select a branch from several GitHub projects, stash changes before pulling, pull the changes, trigger a maven build, as well as display the status of six tests on a set of notification LEDs.

Every job has it’s routine. I am a software developer who works with a Git/Maven based workspace everyday. So when I start working, my daily routine is to update and build my local workspace, pulling changes from GitHub, execute a maven build and execute the updated software. Usually I get my first coffee after that, but because I love coffee so much I thought there must be a faster way to get my system updated and running.

Whether a software developer yourself or simply a fan of awesome Arduino builds, check out the Maven Box’s Instructables page to see more!