[Ryan Bates] loves arcade games, any arcade games. Which is why you can find claw machines, coin pushers, video games, and more on his website.

We’ve covered his work before with his Venduino project. We also really enjoyed his 3D printed arcade joystick based off the design of a commercial variant. His coin pushing machine could help some us finally live our dream of getting a big win out of the most insidious gambling machine at arcades meant for children.

Speaking of frustrating gambling machines for children, he also built his own claw machine. Nothing like enabling test mode and winning a fluffy teddy bear or an Arduino!

It’s quite a large site and there’s good content hidden in nooks and crannys, so explore. He also sells kits, but it’s well balanced against a lot of open source files if you’d like to do it yourself. If you’re wondering how he gets it all done, his energy drink review might provide a clue.

Pipe Organs may be out of vogue, but one makers MIDI-fied version definitely turned heads at the Orlando Maker Faire.

Read more on MAKE

The post Listen to the Eerie Music of This Handmade MIDI Pipe Organ appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

[Tim] was tired of compromising his portrait-oriented digital photos by shoehorning them into landscape-only frames. Unable to find a commercial solution, he built his own rotating digital photo frame from a 27″ LCD TV.

It uses a Raspi 3 to find [Tim]’s pictures on a giant SD card. He originally wanted to have the Pi pull pictures from Google Photos and display them randomly, but the API doesn’t work in that direction. Instead, a Python script looks at the pictures on the SD card and determines whether each is landscape or portrait-oriented. If a picture was taken in portrait-mode, the display will rotate 90 degrees. Rotation is handled with an Arduino, a stepper motor, and some 3D-printed herringbone gears. The first version was a bit noisy, so [Tim] re-printed the motor mount and the pinion gear out of flexible filament.

[Tim] designed the mount and frame himself and laser-cut the pieces out of birch plywood. We like that he accounted for the front-heaviness and that he covered the high voltage circuitry with acrylic to mitigate the risk of shock. All the code and design files are available on his project page. Make the jump to see a brief demonstration followed by a walk-through and stay for the six-minute slide show.

This arcade machine helps creator Alex Weber relive arcade memories, but is slightly easier to move than a full-sized “cab!”

Galaga is one of Weber’s–and many others’–top five arcade games. Easy to learn, but difficult to master, it was just asking to accept your money and time! Now though, using a Raspberry Pi and MAME software, you can have this and other old-school games at your disposal. Weber built a cabinet for this purpose around an old CRT television slightly smaller than original size.

In order to keep from having to fool with the TV every time it switched on, he made an automated remote control with an Arduino and IR LED that sends signals to turn it on and switches the TV to AV mode.

I have a soft spot for 8-bit arcades… I saw these for the first time. At least it felt like that. All machines where running. All coin doors were open! Somebody saw me standing in front of them with huge eyes and showed me how to trigger the switch to get credits for free. BAM! I was hooked.

You can see the full build on Weber’s tinkerlog site as well as Hackaday’s writeup here.

While exploring new tangible interfaces, designer Martin Hertig wanted to do something a bit different. He chose to transform the zippers on a guitar bag into a fully-functional instrument. Rather than strum the strings of the guitar, he simply pulls the bag’s zippers to jam: one zip for playing notes or chords, another for changing the bar, and a third for the vibrato.

As Hertig explains, the case was converted into a MIDI controller using an Arduino and conductive thread stitched along the zipper, while a Raspberry Pi synthesizer hidden inside produces the guitar sounds.

Intrigued? Head over to Zippy’s project page, and be sure to see it in action below!

[Ken Rumer] bought a new house. It came with a troublingly complex pool system. It had solar heating. It had gas heating. Electricity was involved somehow. It had timers and gadgets. Sand could be fed into one end and clean water came out the other. There was even a spa thrown into the mix.

Needless to say, within the first few months of owning their very own chemical plant they ran into some near meltdowns. They managed to heat the pool with 250 dollars of gas in a day. They managed to drain the spa entirely into the pool, but thankfully never managed the reverse. [Ken] knew something had to change. It didn’t hurt that it seemed like a fun challenge.

The first step was to tear out as much of the old control system as could be spared. An old synchronous motor timer’s chlorine rusted guts were ripped out. The solar controler was next to be sent to its final resting place. The manual valves were all replaced with fancy new ones.

Rather than risk his fallible human state draining the pool into the downstairs toilet, he’d add a robot’s cold logical gatekeeping in order to protect house and home. It was a simple matter of involving the usual suspects. Raspberry Pi and Arduino Man collaborated on the controls. Import relay boards danced to their commands. A small suite of sensors lent their aid.

Now as the soon-to-be autumn sun sets, the pool begins to cool and the spa begins to heat automatically. The children are put to bed, tired from a fun day at the pool, and [Ken] gets to lounge in his spa; watching the distant twinkling of lights on his backyard industrial complex.

It wasn’t long ago that faced with a controller project, you might shop for something with just the right features and try to minimize the cost. These days, if you are just doing a one-off, it might be just as easy to throw commodity hardware at it. After all, a Raspberry Pi costs less than a nice meal and it is more powerful than a full PC would have been not long ago.

When [Joe Coburn] wanted to make a pan and tilt webcam he didn’t try to find a minimal configuration. He just threw a Raspberry Pi in for interfacing to the Internet and an Arduino in to control two RC servo motors. A zip tie holds the servos together and potentially the web cam, too.

You can see the result in the video below. It is a simple matter to set up the camera with the Pi, send some commands to the Arduino and hook up to the Internet.

The serial protocol for the Arduino is simple: The Pi sends a numeric position followed by a P (for pan) or T (for tilt) at 9600 baud. A web server and some Python handle the interface to the Internet and the human.

We’ve certainly seen our share of similar projects. Some of them have been a bit larger.

Growing your own food is a fun hobby and generally as rewarding as people say it is. However, it does have its quirks and it definitely equires quite the time input. That’s why it was so satisfying to watch Farmbot push a weed underground. Take that!

Farmbot is a project that has been going on for a few years now, it was a semifinalist in the Hackaday Prize 2014, and that development time shows in the project documented on their website. The robot can plant, water, analyze, and weed a garden filled with arbitrarily chosen plant life. It’s low power and low maintenance. On top of that, every single bit is documented on their website. It’s really well done and thorough. They are gearing up to sell kits, but if you want it now; just do it yourself.

The bot itself is exactly what you’d expect if you were to pick out the cheapest most accessible way to build a robot: aluminum extrusions, plate metal, and 3D printer parts make up the frame. The brain is a Raspberry Pi hooked to its regular companion, an Arduino. On top of all this is a fairly comprehensive software stack.

The user can lay out the garden graphically. They can get as macro or micro as they’d like about the routines the robot uses. The robot will happily come to life in intervals and manage a garden. They hope that by selling kits they’ll interest a whole slew of hackers who can contribute back to the problem of small scale robotic farming.

Not only can asthma be difficult to diagnose, it can be fatal if left undetected. As a result, many kids are over-diagnosed with the disease, especially those under five, and over-treated with inhalers which leads to reduced growth and immunity. At just age nine, Arnav Sharma discovered that the best way to manage asthma is to prevent attacks by understanding their triggers and following a treatment plan. His solution? The AsthmaPi kit.

Sharma’s inexpensive device consists of an Arduino Uno, a Raspberry Pi, a Sense HAT, a MQ-135 gas sensor and a Sharp optical dust sensor. Intended for parents of children suffering from asthma and those not sure about the diagnosis, the kit sends emails and text message reminders to take their medication and to visit their physician.

The sensors track and collect data about the current temperature, humidity, dust levels and the presence of hazardous gases, all of which can be used to better understand an individual’s triggers and to avoid severe attacks. It will also enable children and their parents with better self-management of asthma.

Although the kit was developed particularly with children in mind, it can be just as helpful for adults as well. With an idea this incredible from a nine-year-old, it’s no wonder he was the recipient of this year’s Tech4Good People’s Choice and Winner of Winners awards.

Although there are plenty of DIY surveillance cameras already out there, MakeUseOf has taken it to the next level with the ability to remotely control its view. This DIY pan tilt camera uses a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino Uno, a pair of servos, and a USB webcam.

The Pi streams video to a webpage and adds a few buttons to move the camera. Due to the lack of the hardware PWM pins, the servos are controlled by the Arduino that is connected to the Pi. Meanwhile, a Python server handles the web interface and commands.

Sound interesting? Be sure to check out the entire build on MakeUseOf’s page here.