Between old Paro the robo seal and the original iteration of Keepon, we've seen plenty of adorable robots designed for therapeutic purposes. Romibo's creators have no qualms admitting that their own creation is following in those cuddly footsteps, but what sets their furry 'bot apart from much of the competition is a focus on (relative) affordability. For starters, there's the fact that Romibo is being offered up as an open-source project online, letting do-it-yourselfers build their own versions and contribute custom designs.

The company's also hoping families will get into the act, making sure that Romibo is "able to be assembled by a neurotypical child 10+ and a parent" -- and then there are the plans to offer up workshops to let folks build robots to be donated to special needs facilities. Once built, Romibo can drive around, blink its eyes, speak and move its antennae. Crack it open and you'll find WiFi, bluetooth, light sensors, an IR Proximity sensor, accelerometers and a big 'ole Arduino Mega. There's a certain amount of autonomous functionality (watch in the video below as Romibo's handler warns about it driving off the edge of the table), or you can control the robot via an iPad app. You can also use an SD card to help teach it some new words.

Gallery: Romibo robot eyes-on

Continue reading Romibo therapeutic robot, eyes-on (video)

Filed under: Robots

Romibo therapeutic robot, eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One-time-password (OTP) and its time-based version (time-based OTP, or simply TOTP) are commodity solutions to provide a second factor, in addition to simple passwords, for authentication.

Here Jose Damico proposes his way to implement a simple TOTP device using only open-source tools. The core of the project is an Arduino board connected to a small LCD. From the software perspective, the SHA-1 library comes from Cryptosuite, a cryptographic library for Arduino.

The device, which is OATH-compliant, will be presented soon to the “13th Fórum Internacional Software Livre“, that will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in next July 25-28.

More information can be found here.

[Via: Hack A Day]

Hi Everybody!

Long time robot enthusiast here, but just joined up after searching for some robotics tutorials. I'm searching for ideas to create a beginners robotics kit for my open source project, BoardX.

I'm going to post some information here, and if anybody is interested in purchasing one, send me an email and I'll give you instructions on how to get a discount!

Here's my site: http://www.upgradeindustries.com

read more

Arduteka en colaboración con Cooking Hacks y Milla Digital del ayuntamiento de Zaragoza han preparado un evento con capacidad para más de 400 personas en uno de los edificios más emblemáticos de la ciudad, el Antiguo Seminario Metropolitano de Zaragoza transformando en una moderna Ciudad Administrativa Municipal y que amablemente han cedido para organizar el evento.

Desde charlas sobre arte interactivo con Arduino como interface, pasando por talleres sobre impresión 3D hasta demostración de integración de Arduino con Asterisk será solo una parte de lo que vamos a poder disfrutar, ya que estarán habilitados diferentes Stands como el de Parrot, en que podremos probar el nuevo Ar-Drone 2.0, el de Cooking Hacks que nos amenizarán con micro talleres Arduino e incluso el de nuestros amigos de Ultra-Lab que seguro hará las delicias de los asistentes.

Por si esto fuera poco.. Contaremos con la presencia y colaboración de David Cuartielles, el cual nos ofrecerá una charla sobre los últimos productos Arduino que se está aconteciendo…

Accede ahora a toda la información en la nueva web de Arduteka AQUÍ e inscríbete!!

Te lo vas a perder??

Via | Arduteka

The Artisan's Asylum has a few guiding principles, one of which is anyone can "make." We assume one of the others is "you can never have too many hexapods." If Stompy, the giant rideable bot, is a bit much for you to handle (or store), then maybe Hexy is more your speed. He's got six legs and 20 servos, but at only $200, he's much cheaper than similar hexapod kits and, most importantly, more adorable. The bot is the brain child of Joseph Schlesinger, a resident at the Somerville hacker space who saw a need for a low-cost but serious robotics kit. Since hitting Kickstarter in May, his creation has raked in roughly $86,000 in pledges, far surpassing his original goal of thirteen grand. We swung by Joe's booth to get a taste of what exactly his hundreds of backers have bought into and to find out what's next for the budding bot entrepreneur.

Gallery: Hexy the hexabot hands-on

Continue reading Hexy: hands-on with the adorable, affordable hexapod (video)

Hexy: hands-on with the adorable, affordable hexapod (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Many solutions exist for publishing data coming from Arduino boards on the web. Bangon Kali, in his detailed tutorial, proposes his novel approach, which makes use of several widespread and open-source technologies, such as Node.JS, jQuery and Apache:

Using the USB, the Arduino Board is connected to the PC serially to a certain COM port which the OS allocates. Node.JS, the asynchronous server side JavaScript engine then listens for the port using a Node.JS module called SerialPort2. When a signal is received, using the Node.JS Socket.IO module, data is then served also asynchronously to the web providing a real time feed of the Arduino signal.

The tutorial (which can be applied on Linux, Mac OS and Windows) can be found here.

[Via: DangerousPrototypes and The Code Project]

En este nuevo tutorial Arduino by ARDUTEKA, estudiamos a fondo los módulos GPS, en concreto los módulos diseñados por LIBELIUM, para aprender a extraer y comprender todas las tramadas de datos que recibimos de los GPS y posteriormente, tratar esa información para mostrar en un display con bus i2C datos como la latitud, longitud, altura y hora UTC…

[Via: Arduteka]

There are people who use the Arduino for some serious electronics related stuff.

Then, there are folks who use it just for fun. Alan Chatham and his team over at UnoJoy have developed a concept for Arduino Uno based USB Controllers.

Here is an excerpt of our interview with Alan:

Me: What made you choose the Arduino Uno as the heart of the controller? There are many development boards available which incorporate an ATmega8U2/16U2 or even 32U2.

Alan: This is easy – everyone loves Arduino!  It comes down to ease of use and reach.  Our primary goal with this project is to make a tool that is both easy to use and accessible.  There’s lots of code out there to make joysticks with other chips, but all the Atmel USB chips are surface-mount, and they all need a whole big toolchain to use. Plus, USB is super-complicated, and we want to encourage people, even non-technical ones, to spend their time thinking up really sweet new ways to play games, not trying to figure out what an HID descriptor is for.  On the reach side of things, Arduino is a perfect platform – even those of us that love our inline assembly and fuse settings tend to have an Arduino around for quick prototyping, and of course, Arduino’s a great platform for students and designers.

 

Me: Any problems that you faced while developing the prototype?

Alan: I think the biggest challenge we faced was to make it much easier for non-experts to do some more complicated things, like re-flash the ATmega8u2 on the Arduino. Let’s face it, any instructions that open up with ‘First, install XCode’ aren’t exactly user-friendly. In that vein, I put together some simple one-click batch files for installing the appropriate drivers on Windows and OSX, as well as ones for reflashing the ATmega8u2 chip between Arduino and UnoJoy firmwares.  It’s still not as simple as I’d like, so if anyone out there is handy with basic OSX GUI application programming, or the program installation chain on Windows, drop me a line!

In the end, we’re hoping that our code and examples can inspire other designers and builders and gamers to make some really awesome controllers. If they do, I of course encourage them to send their pictures and videos our way, at unojoy.tumblr.com!

Now, you too can make yourself a USB Joystick/ Gamepad/ Controller by choosing any form of input that the Arduino boards can understand. The source code and all the necessary download files are available at Google Code. Don’t forget to check out the Controller for Gran Turismo:

Thank you Alan for sharing a wonderful project with us.

A nice, detailed, well linked article on Open source hardware, its impact and future scope along with real life citations about the key players.

Click here to read the full text.

Via:[ISGTW]

Have you ever wondered where all those magical Arduinos come from?  Surprise!  They come from Torino, Italy.  The video below will walk you through the PCB manufacuring and assembly process.  A quick history lesson for you: this revolutionary microcontroller platform was created in 2005 by founders Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles who wanted a device to make student learning less expensive.  For a full history rundown, check out Arduino History from IEEE Spectrum.

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