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This is the LMR robot for the today's Campus-Party Berlin. Its purpose in life is to help children if they are afraid of monsters in the night. The Monster Catcher stays under the bed and makes noises to catch the monsters...

The Monster Catcher is a collective work of Drakuni, Antonio, Isotope, TinHead, Frits, RobotFreak, Lumi and Francisco.

The Making

Here some impressions from the making.

Frits, Nils and Antonio elaborate on the ideas. It is important that it is a very easy-to-make robot that does not need rocket science software and hardware.

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[Steve] is often host to all sorts of guests, and he was looking for an easy way to let his friends come and go as they please. After discovering that his front door came equipped with an electronic strike, he decided that an RFID reader would be a great means of controlling who was let in, and when.

Giving all your friends RFID cards and actually expecting that they carry them is a bit of a stretch, but lucky for [Steve] he lives near Boston, so the MBTA has him covered. Just about everyone in town has an RFID subway pass, which pretty much guarantees that [Steve’s] cohorts will be carrying one when they swing by.

He crafted a stylish set of wooden boxes to contain both the RFID reader and the Arduino that controls the system, matching them to the Victorian styling of his home. A single button can control the setup, allowing him to add and remove cards from access lists without much fuss. For more granular control however, [Steve] can always tweak settings from the Arduino serial console.

The card system is both stylish and useful – a combination that’s hard to beat.

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Setup can be made to automatically sweep in X and Y direction or controlled manually using the GUI. Last link is fitted with a force sensing resistor to detect obstacles. It is always perpendicular to the datum plane. On contact with obstacle (my hand in the video), it changes direction in the Z axis. The location of the obstacle is recorded and shown on the MATLAB GUI. Resources: Seeeduino Mega1280, MATLAB, x4 Hitec servomotors and 1 force sensing resistor. For more projects, visit http://retardokiddo.blogspot.sg/

Over on the Arduino blog, the release of the official Arduino WiFi shield was just announced. On the spec page for this WiFi shield. we can see this new board isn’t a slouch; it’s powered by a 32-bit ATMega 32UC3 microcontroller, has provisions for WEP and WPA2 encryption, and supports both TCP and UDP with the Arduino WiFi library. It also costs €69/$85/£55 from the Arduino store.

Now that the announcement of the Arduino WiFi shield is over with, we’ll take this opportunity to go through a few other WiFi adapters for the Arduino that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

The WiFly shield – available from Sparkfun – is a WiFi adapter with the same form factor as the ever popular XBee modules. Of course, it’s possible to make your own breakout board; the WiFly only needs a TX, RX, power and ground connection to connect your Arduino project to the Internet.

We’ve seen a few projects use the WiShield from async labs. It’s a WiFi module packaged in the familiar Arduino shield form factor, and costs $55 USD.

For the hardcore hackers out there, you could always get a bare Microchip WiFi module and get it to work with an AVR as [Quinn Dunki] attempted to. In all fairness, [Quinn] was trying to de-Arduinofy the WiFi library; if you’re cool with Arduino code swimming around in your project, this method will probably work.

There’s also the very, very cool Electric Imp. Basically, it’s an SD card with a built-in WiFi module. After configuring the Imp by holding it up to patterns flashing on your smartphone screen, this device serves as a transparent bridge to the magical ‘cloud’ we’ve been hearing about. The Electric Imp was supposed to have been released in late July/early August, and we’ll put a post up when this cool device actually launches.

Of course we’re neglecting the simplest solution to getting WiFi running on an Arduino project: just use a wireless router. Really, all you need is a pair of TX and RX pins and a copy of OpenWRT. Easy, and you probably have the necessary hardware lying around.

We’re missing a few methods of Arduinofying a WiFi connection (or WiFying an Arduino…), but we’ll let our readers finish what we started in the comments.

Ahh, the Lite Brite.

What could be more fun than pushing dozens of little plastic pegs through a piece of black paper in order to create a pixelated, though colorful image? Well, I can think of quite a few things more engaging than that, and luckily so can [Lonnie Honeycutt] over at MeanPC.

While contemplating what to build with a pile of LEDs, his daughter came into the room with her portable Lite Brite. He thought that the pegs she was using looked awfully similar to the LEDs on his desk, so he did some test fitting and was surprised to see that they fit almost perfectly.

[Lonnie] thought that the toy would make an excellent clock, and his daughter happily agreed to let Dad do some tinkering. A few hours, an Arduino, and some Charlieplexing later, he had a nice looking clock that his kids were sure to enjoy.

If you’re interested in seeing more about how constructed, be sure to check out his YouTube channel and Instructable, where he happily provides all of the build details.

Laser tripwire security systems can be expensive propositions that don't always work as planned -- just ask Raytheon, which saw its $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System for JFK International Airport undermined by one wayward jet skier. Taking that as a form of dare, Justin Huynh and teammates at Liquidware have devised a much cheaper (if also much smaller) tripwire of their own. Any interruption of a laser pointer's beam is caught by an Arduino light sensor that promptly sends the alert to an Android-running BeagleBoard xM; if a toy like Bruce the shark dares cross the line, the BeagleBoard sends a Twitter message to let the authorities, or at least Huynh, clamp down on the trespasser. The invention won't replace Raytheon's handiwork anytime soon, although Huynh notes that additional or more powerful sensors could theoretically catch real, muscle-bound sharks and not just their plastic counterparts. The supply checklist and source code are waiting on the company's project page below, so those who'd like to ward off miniature invasions can get started today.

Continue reading Liquidware team crafts laser tripwire that tweets intruder alerts, keeps fake sharks at bay (video)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Liquidware team crafts laser tripwire that tweets intruder alerts, keeps fake sharks at bay (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hobbyist Erik Kettenburg was concerned that the size and cost of Arduino stifled his ability to craft, so he set about developing Digispark. It's an Arduino-compatible board, the size of a quarter, that offers a few pins at around a third of the cost of an Uno -- so you don't have to worry about taking projects apart when you're done. Designed to be fully compatible with the Italian standard, it's packing six I/O pins, 8k memory and a full USB connection amongst other things. The aim is to retail the gear for $12 a piece, and has been so popular that it's made nearly $100,000 in Kickstarter pledges, smashing its original goal of $5,000. We've got video for you below, and you can still throw some cash Mr. Kettenburg's way if you fancy getting your hands on one quickly.

Continue reading Digispark, Arduino's unofficial kid brother, takes Kickstarter by storm (video)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Digispark, Arduino's unofficial kid brother, takes Kickstarter by storm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

So, i've been having some trouble lately and I can't seem to find a solution on the web. I've managed to controll a brushless motor through and ESC and arduino with PWM. Nothing too dificult. What I need now is a way to controll an inversion of the motor. Like you know, changing two of the wires from the motor makes it turn the other way around.

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The hardware hacking village at Toorcamp provided space and tools to work on hardware. It was interesting to see what hardware hacks people had brought to work on. One example is [Owen]‘s Nibble Node.js Widget. The widget combines the popular node.js platform and custom hardware to create a node for the “internet of things.” The hardware consists of a Arduino Pro Micro, a bluetooth module, a LCD display, and a speaker in a laser cut box.

By using a custom package in node.js, the Nibble becomes an object which can be controlled by its methods. This allows for the developer to push messages to the display and control the device without worrying about the details of the hardware. Since node.js is designed for web applications, it’s simple to make the device controllable from the web.

[Owen] also wrote an emulator for the DCPU from the upcoming game, 0x10c. DCPU assembly is passed in from node.js, which compiles it and sends it to the Nibble. The device can then run the application using the DCPU emulation, which also allows for control of the display and the speaker.

There’s a lot of neat things that can be done with this minuscule cube, and [Owen] plans to release an NPM package for the node.js code.

If you're going to revisit a certain underwater dystopia, you might as well have a ball. At least that's the approach being taken by Sweden-based DIYer rasmadrak, who has decided to build a Bioshock-themed custom pinball machine just for kicks. The project is filled with lots of neat little touches from Rapture, including Little Sister vents and a few Big Daddy homages. The builder also does a pretty good job of drilling into the details and providing insight on the creation process -- like the challenge in using two different systems such as Arduino and chipKIT together, for example -- via detailed posts in the Poor Man's Pinball! blog. The project proved to be a pleasant shock to the system for fellow pinball aficionado Ben Heck, who gave the project a sprinkling of Heckendorn love via Twitter. Pinball geeks can also follow the saga, so to speak, by checking out the source link below.

Filed under: Gaming

Bioshock custom rig is Big Daddy of pinball machines, gives players a taste of Rapture originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 23:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.