Be sure to check out Part 1 of the KC Maker Faire photo series. In this post, we explore some of the big hitters of the show, including crowd favorites ArcAttack, as well as battling robots. Read on to see the wonders!

ArcAttack!: We have seen these guys from Austin, Texas in the past, and they never seem to disappoint. This time they were putting innocent victims volunteers into a faraday cage, and singing away with their musical Tesla Coils. The video is even in optional 3D, for those in the audience with a pair of glasses sitting around.

Mech-Warfare: A number of people were showing off their Mech Warfare robots. These robots were remotely controlled, and piloted using only the video cameras mounted on board. Suited up with Airsoft weapons, they were amazing to just look at.

While there were mostly biped walkers, this was one of the few quadruped warriors

One of the other mean looking fighters

Showing battle scars from taking Airsoft hits

Hackerspaces: There were at least two hackerspaces being represented at the Maker Faire. Kansas City’s own Cowtown Computer Congress, as well as St. Louis’ Arch Reactor. Both of these groups have seen a bit of limelight on Hackaday, and it was good to see them out in public showing off projects and educating the public.

Cowtown was showing off a number of Arduino and LED based projects, as well as handing out Ubuntu and Project Gutenberg CDs and DVDs

Demonstrating a Makerbot, as well as being one of the few groups who ventured outside

Miscellaneous: Some projects just did not categorize well, but were still worth showing off. 

MindDrive, a non-profit for at risk kids was showing off their high efficiency car prototype

A Ruben’s tube to go, not fired up inside the hall, but we were assured it was fully working.

There were countless other projects to see, touch, and listen to at the Kansas City Maker Faire. A wonderful way to spend a weekend, I can’t wait to see you all next year.

-[james]

As a writer for Hackaday, I get to see CNC machines, Prototypers, Tesla coils, and much more on a nearly daily basis. However, there are an uncountable number of people that don’t usually get to share in these technical wonders. Maker Faires provide the chance for the public to see and interact with the inventions, kludges, and geniuses that put together the things we write about on Hackaday.

Follow along after the break for some photos of the interesting things I got to see and enjoy.

Prototyped: I ran into more Makerbots, RepRaps, and home made rapid prototypers than I could count. These were always a crowd pleaser, as many people had never seen anything like them before.

Just one of the many prototypers around

Companion Cubes were all over the place, and this one was definitely one of the best.

As seen in parts, as well as fully assembled, these Portal Turrets were definitely impressive.

This red Mario Kart shell was made from both standard white and red prototyping material

Another RC car topper in the same theme

2 Axis Foam Cutter: A much simpler implementation than most CNC machines, this two axis foam cutter was responsible for spitting out a number of little motorized and unmotorized sculptures without pause.

Two Axis Foam Cutter

Foam Sculptures

Nerd Art: Not necessarily technical in nature, but there were faux robots, steampunk costumes, and much more to see. Rarely did they have anything more technical than blinking lights, the love and care put into these pieces was easily seen.

Robots and Daleks galore, even plans to make your own.

These were just a few of the wonders to be seen, be sure to keep an eye out for part two, featuring old favorites ArcAttack now in 3D!

As a proof of concept for his long term work in progress “The Pac-Machina” (an electro-mechanical reimagining of a Pac-Man cabinet), [Jonathan] needed some way to make a mechanical Pac-Man, flappy jaw and all. After working through a couple different design possibilities, he decided on an interesting setup which includes using a cog with only half its teeth to make the mouth open and close. Unfortunately, NAMCO BANDAI has asked him nicely not to sell these as kits, but he has helpfully included just about all that is required to make one of these from scratch. [Jonathan] even cut and laser etched his own faux-Victorian frame to keep his proof of concept Pac-Man ready until needed for the main project.

We asked for responses to our last Development Board post, and you all followed through. We got comments, forum posts, and emails filled with your opinions. Like last time, there is no way we could cover every board, so here are a few more that seemed to be popular crowd choices. Feel free to keep sending us your favorite boards, we may end up featuring them at a later date!

The Popular:

Parallax Propeller: We heard the loudest cries from the Parallax fans out there. The Propeller is a unique chip, in that it contains 8 cores called cogs which each take turns executing separate code. This design allows for disregarding of interrupt style programming in favor of assigning each core a specific task. There are a number of boards available, including Gadget Gangster’s platform as well as boards from Parallax. Thinking in terms of 8 cores rather than one may present a learning curve to some embedded programmers, though there are a number of code examples to pull from online to get beginners on their feet.

Atmel’s AT90USB and AT32U4 based boards: Atmel’s AT90USB and ATmega32U4 chips are common on low part count boards like the Teensy/Teensy++ because of their built-in hardware USB support, which means no FTDI or equivalent chip required. These development boards tend to be low-cost, easy to implement on a breadboard, and in cases such as the Teensy, are Arduino IDE compatible. The chips these boards are based on are also an excellent place for those trying their hand out at microcontroller circuit design for the first time because of their simplicity and low hardware requirements.

Microchip’s PIC line: Somehow, we managed to leave the entire Microchip crowd in the cold last time. A popular set of microcontrollers with a similar market segment to Atmel’s chips, these chips vary from the low-end and low-cost 8-bit series to the higher end 16 and 32-bit models. We received a good number of development board recommendations, all ranging in price, features, and ease of use. We’ll rely on comments and forum posts to help convince you what specific model to try.

[edit: Added the PicKit3 as per popular request]

The Powerful:

mbed: Possibly one of the most popular hobby development boards for ARM’s Cortex-M3 chip, the mbed features a similar footprint to the Teensy, but with a huge jump forward in power. The mbed includes hardware for a number of peripherals, including support for ethernet with the addition of an RJ-45 port. The major difference between the mbed and other similar boards is the entirely web-based IDE. We have previously reviewed the mbed, so for more details be sure to check it out.

Renesas’ RX62N RDK: Whenever a company gives away development boards for free, the community often jumps on the offer. Rather than the normal free barebones boards though, the RDK has a good number of on board peripherals, including an Ethernet port as well as a 3 axis accelerometer. Unfortunately you can’t get one for free anymore (at least not this contest), but from all we have heard from our readers, it may be worth investing in anyway.

The Maple: The Maple from LeafLabs is an excellent example of the effect open hardware tools such as the Arduino have had on the hobbyist environment. Featuring an ARM Cortex-M3, the Maple has plenty of processing power and also can brag that it has the same header layout as the Arduino. This means that almost all commercially available Arduino shields will work on the Maple, a major selling point for anyone who has invested into a well stocked Arduino setup but needs an injection of performance.

Bonus Points:

OpenWRT based routers: Often, projects need to be networked either by wire or wirelessly to operate as desired. Rather than buying a high-end development board with ethernet or Wi-Fi built-in, many readers suggested buying (or salvaging) any one of a number of low-cost wireless routers, and installing a custom linux based firmware on them. These boards often tend to have UARTs or USB ports originally meant for debugging available for expansion with sensors or other low-end microcontrollers. A hack in the true sense of the word, we applaud this sort of creativity. Some popular firmwares to check out would include DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and the Tomato firmware. Be sure to make sure support exists for your device before you go buying anything though.

FPGA boards: When we set out to cover development boards, we had microcontrollers in mind. However when it comes to signal processing, custom high-speed logic, or flexibility, FPGAs are an excellent choice. The two major players for hobbyists these days are Xilinx with their Spartan line, and Altera with their Cyclone line. Both companies offer their IDE for free, and it comes down to personal preference when choosing which way to go. Both companies also support SoC designs to implement virtual microcontrollers on the FPGA, which adds an additional layer of flexibility for any hobbyist or engineer. Chances are, most hobbyists will not need the performance of cutting edge FPGAs (or CPLDs), so keep an eye out for older development boards on sale, or development boards made by third parties.

Build your own: Although it may appear as a sort of “Get off my lawn” answer to our question, there is a lot to be said about building a development board from scratch. These days, many 8-bit or 32-bit microcontrollers require few if any external components to run in a basic mode, and can be combined with a JTAG or FTDI cable for programming and communication. There are countless tutorials on using perf-board or etching a board to make a custom circuit, and the experience is invaluable for breaking away from high cost development boards in simple projects.

Sometimes projects are vast, complicated, and complex. Other times projects are a bit more on the simple. Today we thought we would share a couple projects with something in common that may be familiar sounding to the more experienced crowd, but may inspire a few readers new to the world of microcontrollers.

First off, a cool decor tip looking to snazz up a college residence or bar is a guide for lighting up a shelf of liquor bottles using an Arduino to control a few RGB LEDs. This guide includes easy to follow schematics, source code, and a good explanation of using transistors to drive higher current to the LEDs than the Arduino could provide.

This six finger drum machine uses a Drum Kit – Kit AI to take in values from piezo sensors and convert those values into MIDI information to be used by either a hardware MIDI controller or PC. We like the CNC cut hand, and the design considerations put into it (like vibration buffering)

When moving beyond the buttons and LEDs in every starter kit out there, PIR motion sensors are usually a good next step. [LemonSlice] even goes so far as to add a a pair of XBees for making this motion sensor a little more autonomous.

Sometimes, you just need more ammo available. In this weapon mod, the chamber of a 12 gauge shotgun, a hammer from an 1857 Remington Perc Revolver, and other parts from an Italian auto shotgun were all combined to make this happen. The gun is of questionable legality depending on what state or country it resides in. Don’t quote us on it, but the members of the forum seem to think it should be fine anywhere in the US but California. Slightly more practical than other shotgun mods we have seen, the inventor has been kind enough to share some stills of the inner mechanisms to see how this gun ticks.

[via Neatorama]

Rotary tools such as a Dremel are useful to have around for all sorts of tasks in a workshop, including cutting, polishing, and grinding. [Konstantin] sent us in his home made wall mount rotary tool based off of parts from a blender and an old bench top jigsaw. Unlike a Dremel where the motor is in the hand held part of the tool, this setup hides the blender motor (which provides the power) behind a wall panel, and is controlled via the blender’s speed settings buttons. We could see this configuration allowing for more delicate work due to the reduction of weight in hand, as well as the added bonus of a near impossibility of losing this tool. Overall an excellent re-purposing of leftover parts, be sure to check out [Konstantin]‘s blog for more build info and photos.

We love all of the projects that are coming out for the 555 design contest, so we thought we would share a couple more that have caught our collective eye.  Have a 555 project of your own? Be sure to share it with us, and keep an eye out for the contest submission dates. Read on for a few of our project picks.

A wonderful combination of a number of commonly used ICs, this amplifier with built in visualizations features the LM3915 as a circular VU meter, a TDA2003 audio amp chip, as well as a 555 to control an LED “breathing” light. Sure the role of the 555 is limited as of now, but there is plenty of time to beef up any designs before the contest is over.

A follow up to a previous project we covered, this revamped low cost fuel injection tester, this build by [Dino] has taken in to account some of the suggestions by Hackaday commentors to step up the submission. Be sure to check out the explanation video, as well as a video in action.

This odd looking perforated disk acts similarly to a record, however it uses optical sensors in place of a needle to sense notes of a “song”. Using 555 timers to generate the audio signals, this project definitely has a distinctive sound to it. Right now it is hand turned, and the resolution seems a bit low, but a quick servo or stepper add on and some more fine tuning could yield a very unique music box build.

Wielding the power to melt glass or instantly ignite most day to day materials can be intoxicating pretty fun. With a little math, a lot of patience, and 5,800  1cm pieces of mirror, this build requires welding glasses just to look at the 1-2cm focal point. With an idea rumored to date back to Archimedes, this more portable parabolic project is perfect for your home burning needs. Unfortunately, this setup seems to have burnt itself to death at some point, though that makes room for version two, which will reportedly bump the mirror count to 32,000 or so.

There are plenty of other ways to make a death ray out there as well, including using lasers or lenses. Think you have a better tool of destruction? Be sure to tell us about it.

Here at Hackaday, we see microcontroller based projects in all states of completion. Sometimes it makes the most sense to design systems from the ground up, and other times when simplicity or a quick project completion is desired, pre-built system boards are a better choice. We have compiled a list of boards that we commonly see in your submitted projects, split up by price range and with a little detail for reference.

After reading our list, sound off in the comments or on this forum post, and we may include your board in a follow-up guide at a later date. We will also be giving away 10 Hackaday stickers to the most insightful, the most original, and most useful advice given on the forum, so if you haven’t registered yet, now would be a perfect time. Winners of the sticker giveaway will be selected from the forum thread, and the final decision for prizes will be judged by the wit and whim of the Hackaday writing team. More prize details to follow in the thread. Read on for our guide based on past project submissions.

The Cheap ($0-$50):

When it comes to cheap boards, users can expect a simple breakout board, usually with some debugging facilities and minimal extra components. These boards tend to be aimed at hobbyists and the education crowd rather than companies who can afford full featured development setups for their engineers. Unfortunately, boards that come directly from manufacturers tend to have locked down or overly simplified IDEs or debugging software, though low price points often inspire the open source communities to write their own to take advantage of all the features.

• TI’s MSP430 Launchpad: Coming in at $4.30, TI’s Launchpad board is definitely a bargain. For your money, you get a set of 16-bit MSP430 processors, a mini-USB debugger and programming interface, and a set of Windows IDEs to choose from. Not much more to write home about, but we have featured a number of projects with this family of microcontrollers running the show.
• STMicroelectronic’s Discovery: Costing you a paltry $11.85, This 32-bit ARM processor may be one of the best performance to cost values. Similar to the Launchpad, the Discovery has a mini-USB interface, a breakaway programmer and debugger, and a few locked down IDEs to select. For students or professionals looking for experience with the ARM architecture, this Cortex-M3 based system would be a great place to start.
• The Arduino Family: Needing no introduction, these 8-bit AVR based systems have been displayed by us numerous times. Due to an open source hardware and software design, these boards are available for as low as $20 or so for Arduino Compatable clones, or any price range up depending on included peripherals. Because of the simple IDE and coding environment familiar to anyone familiar with C, C++, or Java, the Arduino is a common choice for beginners, non-engineering types, and professionals alike.

Mid-Range Boards ($50-$150):

For a little more money, more can be expected from a development board. Often featuring higher I/O pin counts, more complex interfaces such as host USB ports, Ethernet, or Video-Out, these boards are a great place for a little computational and functional muscle. However, with a higher cost, it is more difficult to just throw one of these boards at any one-off project. More costly boards are often supported better as well, because they are used by engineers who will decide on important purchasing decisions. This area is also a transition area from more hardy microcontroller type boards into the more powerful microprocessor type systems (such as shifting from the Cortex-M to the Cortex-A series of ARM processors).

• The Arduino Mega: For all the same reasons as the original Arduino, the Arduino Mega has its place in a prototyping or development environment. For a bit more money than the original, extra code space, processing power, and I/O pins are gained, with the same comfortable, familiar, and similar development tools. The Arduino Mega runs at $65, which makes for a costly 8-bit system.
• The Chumby Hacking Board: An interesting example of a product going from production to prototyping as an afterthought, this board is based on the guts of the Chumby One, featuring a 32-bit Freescale i.MX ARM processor at 454 MHz. This system has video out, as well as a trio of USB ports for all the peripherals you can find or write your own drivers for. The Chumby Hacking board clocks in at a reasonable $90 or so, though supplies seem to be dwindling, so act fast if interested.
• The Original BeagleBoard: At the top of the price range, the BeagleBoard (Revision C4) features a 600 MHz Cortex-A8 ARM processor capable of running a number of Linux systems, including Angstrom and Ubuntu. Designed to interface with cool toys like touchscreens, this board also features a powerful DSP chip for crunching numbers, as well as processing video and sound. For a newly discounted rate of $125, this compact powerhouse could be yours.

The Upper Crust ($150+)

At this price range, these boards often contain ARM processors from the Cortex-A series, and have more in common with high-end smartphones than the microcontrollers usually seen on Hackaday and in day-to-day life. Boards like these are a real investment, and often cost and perform similar to many older or low-end PCs and netbooks at a considerably more efficient performance to power use ratio in most cases. These boards tend to run Linux-based operating systems, including Android as well as others.

• The BeagleBoard xM: Coming in at just around $150, this big brother to the first BeagleBoard adds parts such as onboard Ethernet, an additional 2 USB ports, and a bump to a 1 GHz processor. Although the MSRP is listed at $149, a high demand has pushed the cost well above that at places where stocks are even available. Because of a strong similarity to the original BeagleBoard, the existing community is strong, and full of examples and guides to get the board going
• The PandaBoard: With features as far away from an 8-bit microcontroller as imaginable, this board comes dressed to the nines featuring a dual-core 1 GHz processor capable of handling 1080P video stream. We realize this is probably out of the ballpark of just about any “hack” level project at $174, but we know there are some engineers out there very excited to see this.

In Summary:

We know that brand and experience preference can be a strong motivator, so be productive with your advice and sound off in our forum with your picks for our follow-up post(s). We will do our best to wrap up all the information you provide into a more definitive, and hopefully even more informative guide for beginners and professionals alike.

Cats do what they want, which rarely coincides with what their owner wants them to do. In [Dumitru]‘s case, his girlfriend’s cat [Pufu] tended to make it outside into the cold more often than desired. Rather than settle with the normal bell which gets obnoxious even when the cat isn’t misbehaving, he decided to put together a custom Cat Finding collar. He used a PIC microcontroller as the brains, and temperature and light sensors to decide whether the cat had snuck into the cold, dark night. Once the cat has been marked as being outside, a buzzer and LED are set to go off at regular intervals until returned into the safety of the indoors.

[Dumitru]‘s website along with his YouTube videos are in Romanian, though the schematics and source code provided speak for themselves. He does a wonderful job walking through the entire design process, including time spend in the IDE as well as EAGLE designing the board. YouTube has managed to subtitle the majority of the details, but we imagine this post will be a real treat to any Romanian speaking hobbyists out there. Be sure to catch both videos after the break.

Detailed design Walkthrough

Overview and Project in Action

Sometimes it helps to have an entire set of tools with you to tackle a problem, and sometimes it helps to take the discreet route. [StenoPlasma] took the latter of these approaches, and stuffed a USB hub, a 16 GB flash drive, and an Atheros based USB wireless adapter into a regular looking USB mouse to make a Linux bootable system in a mouse. Because he chose the Atheros adapter, he is also capable of doing packet injection with tools like Aircrack-ng, which can invaluable in a security audit or (white hat) hacking situation.

This is the only photo we have, so it could be possible that the mouse is no more than a mouse, however we know all of what [StenoPlasma] claims is 100% possible, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and hope this inspires others to hack up your own mouse kits. Be sure to check out the full parts list after the break.

Parts:

• Targus USB 2.0 4-Port Bend-a-Hub (Stripped and re-soldered)
• Belkin USB 10′ Extension Cord (with the extension USB in place to make it easy for me to change cable lengths)
• IOGEAR Atheros Wireless B/G Injectable Cracking Adapter
• Corsair Voyager Mini 16 GB Thumb Drive
• Logitech MX310 Wired Optical Mouse

When it comes to using servos in projects, there is a definite distinction between the cheap ones and the expensive high power and precision models. The OpenServo project gives you a couple options for enhancing your servo experience. By replacing the control board with a new one based on a familiar microcontroller, a whole new set of features can be attained. For those of you out there with a need for servos like these, you can buy the pre-built replacement board (unfortunately sold out right now), or build your own from the provided schematic, BOM, and source code.

Broadcast TV has come a long way from adjusting the rabbit ears on top of the set just to get a fuzzy black and white picture. While nowadays there are often HD signals broadcast in most areas, it can often still be critical to redirect an antenna to get the best possible signal. By harvesting a stepper motor from an old 5 1/2″ floppy drive, and using a PC’s parallel port to control it, this adjustment can be handled automatically. Broadcast tower locations are easily found online, and once you have calibrated your stepper to face North, you are on your way to free HDTV reception.

What we would like to see is this antenna attached to a HTPC, and some kind of script to automatically direct the antenna for the best possible signal for the current channel. If anyone out there makes this happen, be sure to let us know.

Sure, microcontrollers are useful, easy to apply, and ubiquitous, but where is the fun in the easy route? Well, for those of you out there with a little imagination and a 555 timer sitting around, there could be rewards in store. Brought to you by such famous personalities as Jeri Ellsworth and Chris Gammell, the 555 contest has prizes and awards for a number of different categories, such as over the top designs as well as awards for most minimalistic. To top it all off, they are even selling T-shirts to benefit engineering education charities.

The craziest (and possibly coolest) part of the entire contest is that the it has all been put together by the hacking community, with no exclusive sponsorship deals or payment to the organizers being accepted. In the spirit of giving, we will be adding some Hack a Day merch to the swag pile, so keep an eye out for the skull and wrenches. Currently the prize list includes a pair of Beagle Boards, a custom hacked Commodore 64 Joystick from Jeri, as well as a number of other project parts and lots more. The sponsorship list is still growing, so all of our information is tentative (and exclusive!), but be sure to check out the complete list so far after the break.

Here is the tentative list of prizes. Subject to change.

• Eagle Pro (Layout+Schematic+Autorouter) from Element14 and Cadsoft
• Free shipping on 555’s with no minimum from Element14
• Hacked C64 Joystick from me
• 20sq in of PCB from @laen and DorkbotsPDX PCB pool
• OLED displays from Savage Circuits
• Maker T-Shirts from MakerTees.com
• 2 Beagle Boards
• Hackaday stickers and shirts
• Altium FPGA Nanoboard
• Extech’s “five for five” free pen meters to random contestants
• Extech’s Multiscope
• SumoBot Competition Kit from Parallax Inc and Digikey
• Oomlout Arduino Kit

Special prizes:

• 40 Text LCD Modules from EEvblog for the best Aussie project
• To be determined prize for the best under 18yrs old entry. This will include adult/child entries.