Ever looked at a pile of E-waste containing perfectly usable electronic spare parts? Ever cringed at the thought of such aggregated piling waste from all the countries advancing in the field of technology? And all this waste being dumped in landfills in developing countries where kids who should be in school, work here for a meagre pay of a dollar a day.

Having seen this, ThinkerToys started as an idea to reuse this eWaste and convert them into fun toys for kids. The creations by Dhairya Dand,

a researcher at Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Singapore, was noticed by everyone at the ICTD (International conference on information and communication technologies and development), Atlanta 2012.

The design is simple: E waste + Arduino =

Keyano turns an ordinary keyboard into a piano! With the keys musically mapped to notes.

Basic addition, subtraction can be an invaluable skill for any kid. RandoMath is a small LED screen connected to your computer keyboard, and asks you random math puzzles.

Storynory has recorded fun stories in your local language, plug in the headphones or speakers for collaborative hearing.

Connect any old TV or CRT monitor and make it TV++, add a keyboard or a mouse for controls. This is a power packed mini computer designed for kids to be hooked on to the TV again, but this time for good reasons!

eWaste is directly connected to these toys without any modification. The resulting combination turns the eWaste (keybaord, mice, speakers, monitors) into something totally new and unexpected.

openTOYSis an ongoing project and more people might contact the creator for further development or for collaborating ideas. More of his works can be found here.

A former student of a college located in the town Bikaner, Rajasthan(India), Anirudh Sharma (twitter, blog) is a maker with a lot of perseverance. His first project Sparsh (Video) during college days generated a lot of interest in the Indian Maker community. His regular work at HP labs as a consultant, and his most famous recent work which was presented at TEDx BITS, Goa, the shoe for the blind – Le-chal, has brought him to the attention of makers around the world.

The latest was him getting featured in the MIT Technology Review, India TR35 list as a ‘young technology innovator’ followed by a call to pursue further studies with MIT Media Labs.

A casual chat-up with him threw light on the way open source hardware is affecting the lives of independent makers of India.

Priya: Congrats Anirudh! How does it feel to be featured in MIT list of young inventors?
Anirudh: Feels great that our work is being recognized at that level. Its a great platform to meet other people in doing technology related work.
Priya: Could you explain the project that was featured for our readers?
Anirudh: Codenamed as le´ chal, it’s a way of communicating navigational information with an intuitive eye-free interface. We used pizeo vibrational actuators in the four sides of the shoe that ‘poke’ the user about the direction he needs to walk in. The system could fit within a shoe. The reason we used a shoe is because it is something that we can repeatedly use in our day to day lives. We’ve started a company – Ducere Technologies [website yet to be up] to take this forward as a full fledged product.
Priya: Which specific area interests you the most in the field of electronics?
Anirudh: [I am] Not much of an electronics guy, I started fooling around with transducers back in 2010. I like the research going on in area of MEMS/Biomechatronics though.
Priya: What prompted you to use Arduino?
Anirudh: [Laughs] Not being an electronics guy, Arduino was the easiest way for me to start prototyping. The high-level easy access to sensor data pushed me to choose this platform to begin with.
Priya: So, MIT media labs that is big! What do you plan to study there?
Anirudh: Not thought yet. I’d love to explore tangible input to CAD systems, Raskar’s NETRA project which creates an inverse Shack-Hartmann sensor. This compiles to new hardware add-on to mobile phones for instant eye-prescription data. Other projects that interest me are AutoStereoscopic displays-BiDi screen, similar to explorations I did with my mentor ‘SriG‘(Sriganesh Madhvanath) at HP Labs.
Priya: I see that you have taken initiatives for the blind, what other areas can you see open source hardware solving problems?
Anirudh: If you’ve an idea that could touch lives, there’s nothing better than open source hardware to start your explorations with, as it not only provides the right tools but a community backing that you could rely on.
Priya: Any special blogs/people that you follow in the field of technology?
Anirudh: [I follow the works of] Arduino, MIT Tech Review, Seth Sandler, Bret Vitor, Aza Raskin, ladyada for it brings out fresh insights. In general, I admire works of VS Ramachandran, Feynman, Shwetak Patel and Bill Buxton.
Priya: Any other hobbies other than tinkering?
Anirudh: I play Portal 2, FarCry, trek to new places, and do photography.

Sphero goes modular, spins out for a drive (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"SpiDuino" because of course it's Arduino for brains, and if you watch the end of the video it tries to climb up the wall.  Gets about to 90 degrees, too.  This is a variation on the "Start Here" robot that this site is famous for.  Essentially I wanted to test the base and the SN754410, which I was having trouble with and noted in this node.  Obviously I got it going, but special thanks to ChrisTheCarpenter and Kyle (birdmun) for their guidance.

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I had bought a RC Car from walmart for about $15 to use with the Arduino Motorshield a while back (see here). Fortunately, I had taken some pictures before I removed the RC receiver circuit from it. Turns out that its lot more efficient to use the onboard controller along with an Arduino instead of using a motorshield. I didnt some research and found out that many “cheap” RC cars use the same Realtek TX2 & RX2 chips inside. I was lucky enough to find the same inside this RC car.

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In a reply to this post: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/31641 I have exposed one of my software problems that I encountered on one of my robots. I am re-posting this separately with some added info:

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Watching the seconds go by is a frightening reminder that time pauses for no one, but somehow, a hacker going by the name of Ekaggrat has figured out how to make the process a bit less daunting. The so-called Doodle Clock is an Arduino-powered robotic arm that’s been trained to jot down the time with a dry erase marker; once the minute passes, he erases the last digit and rewrites it — a number beyond what he just erased.

More of Ekaggrat’s work can be found here.

[Via: Hackaday and Engadget]

How to become YouTube from Thechnocrat on Vimeo.

It may be on a T shirt or it may be on a bag, either way it will look awesome! A simple DIY weekend art using your arduino and a few more common components.

Using an Arduino, a 9-volt battery, and eight ping-pong balls with a white LED inserted into each one, the ring of dots lights up in sequence, endlessly chasing its tail waiting for a non-existant video to load. A giant F5 refresh button would have really completed the costume, though, since that’s everyone’s secret weapon for getting a YouTube clip to finally load.

[Via:Hackaday and Gizmodo]

Continue reading Arduino-powered Artbot writes the time, erases it, writes again (video)

Arduino-powered Artbot writes the time, erases it, writes again (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.