[Chris] Writes in to tell us about his motion sensing, Arduino powered Creeper.  As if these buggers were not frightening enough in game, [Chris] had to go and make the closest (legal) real world facsimile.  The Creeper utilizes an Arduino Uno with a wave shield to playback creeper noises, PIR sensor to detect victims, and an RC car as a motorized cart. The creeper sits and waits for a signal from the PIR detector, when it sees motion the RC remote is triggered, Creeper noises played and (we assume) panic ensues.

We might have forgone the entire RC part of the toy car and found the H-bridge motor controller, but using the RC remote has potential. The whole triggering mechanism can be placed remotely allowing the Creeper to jump out from some kind of cover.

Not enough Minecraft? Check out some our other Minecraft projects if you are interested in more tree-punching goodness.

A video of the creeper in action is available after the jump!

[Erv Plecter] likes to recreate movie props that actually work. This time around he’s making the motion detector device from the original Alien movie. You’ll immediately remember this prop after seeing and hearing it in the video after the break. For our money, the most brilliant part of that movie was the use of rhythmic sounds to boost the intensity of the tension in the viewer. [Erv's] build captures that feeling, with the steady beat of sonar and the rising pitch of a ping as an object moves towards you. The device can easily track your own movement, as it contains both a GPS module and an electronic compass. He mentions that there is a motion sensor as well, but is a bit vague about how that part of the build works. Still, it’s a nice little piece which looks great despite not being quite finished yet.

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.

This electronic scarecrow keeps the birds away and makes your neighbors hate you at the same time. That’s because its way too loud, even if the next house is far away. The conrad.de folks that brought us the climbing bike storage device are at it again, putting together car audio and strings of lights as part of the bird-shoo-ing technology. In the video after the break you’ll see that they’re using a PIR motion sensor to switch power to an automotive amp and head unit. The speakers, strings of lights, and spinning doo-dads are all hidden under a black cape. When an unsuspecting bird tries to feast on the crops, the scarecrow unfolds its arm Dracula-style and raises a ruckus. We don’t expect to see this at a local farm, but maybe for next Halloween?

[via Neatorama]

Now you can capture pictures of our furry friends by building a motion activated wildlife camera. [Doug Paradis] took his Air Freshener hack and used it to trigger a camera. The white dome in the picture above is the PIR sensor from an Air Wick Freshmatic, along with a cheap keychain camera and an MSP430 microcontroller. He used one of the chips that came with the TI Launchpad, a transistor, and some discreet components to interface the devices and then put them into a project box. Now he’s got a fully configurable motion-sensing camera.

[Niklas Roy] built a motorized window curtain to screen out foot traffic in front of his window. When you hear “motorized curtain” you may think that this will move up and down but it doesn’t. Instead, the small curtain move horizontally to cover passersby as they travel down the sidewalk. This is accomplished using a camera in conjunction with some motion sensing software. In the video after the break you can see that the software also anticipates the movement, and ends up doing a good job of keeping the target covered. That’s thanks to the Processing sketch working in conjunction with a rotary encoder on the hardware setup. Details for both are available on the page linked above.

This harkens to other community involvement hacks we’ve seen like the subway stair piano, or the bottle recycling video game. It’s fun and quirky, which is not too much of a surprise as we saw a glimpse of that when we looked at [Niklas'] public fountain hydropower generator.

[Thanks Lejupp and others via Engadget]

If you’re too frail to take the full impact of a paintball round let this tank serve as your surrogate. The camera perched on top of the platform feeds video back to the operator’s head-mounted display. Instead of using a joystick or other traditional controller, the user aims by looking around, with his or her head movements mimicked by the camera and barrel of the tank. It looks cooler than it sounds so jump with us after the break to see for yourself. If you’re playing against this thing, we’d recommend aiming for the camera lens.

With exams behind him [Adam Greig] had time to make a Nerf sentry gun. It’s actually quite easy to pull everything together. He’s got a netbook running Motion, an open source motion sensing program for use with a webcam. When movement is detected an Arduino, connected via a USB cable, actuates a servo to pull the trigger of the gun. The turret itself has seen a battery upgrade that increases the firing speed. It’s fun to see hardware prototyping done with a few pencils and a fist full of cable ties. Check it out after the break.

This particular toy, the Nerf N-Strike Vulcan, has become quite a popular starting point for turrent projects. We’ve seen one that uses a motorized base, and another that was part of a final project at Cornell.

There are cars that increase the radio volume as you drive faster, and video games that ramp up the music as your gameplay improves (we’re looking at you SSX Tricky). Now you can add that feature to your workout with [Polymithic's] Motion Feedback MP3 Player. It uses a passive infrared sensor to detect motion so there’s no need to wear any electronics. But if you used some Bluetooth headphones you could bring the system with you to the gym, just don’t exercise so hard that you blow your eardrums out.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Researchers at the University of Liege have developed an algorithm to separate movement from background. They call it ViBe and this patented piece of code comes in at under 100 lines of C. Above you can see the proof of concept shown by hacking the code into CHDK, a Canon PowerShot alternative firmware. The package is available for non-commercial use and might be just the thing you need to get your project to recognize where it needs to serve the beer.

[Thanks Juan via Slashdot]

Popped balloons or bullets fired into apples, anyone can photograph with a quick sound based camera rig. Lasers have been used forever in motion detection. And even door bell chimes have been used before for remote camera shutter releases. No, [SaskView] wanted to go further and created his Laser Triggered High-Speed Photography setup, to photograph (of all things) milk splashes. We liked the simplicity of the project however;  requiring no programmed microchips or overly complicated circuitry – rather he took a quick trip to the local dollar shop, used the amazing CHDK firmware, and he produced perfect results every time.

[Update: CHDK, not CHKD firmware. My mind must be elsewhere. Thanks jbot and agent smith]

We’re not 100% sure the usefulness of this hack, but it is extremely interesting regardless and will probably make a lot of furries happy. WolfTronix presents their method for creating a realistic animatronic wolf tail. It uses an Atmel MCU controlling two servos alongside a mess of Klixx toys and paper clips to produce a nice wag motion. The guide is extremely detailed and looks to be fun, so long as you don’t mind the monotonous task of shaving off potentially hundreds of ‘nubs’ as they call them. Either way, you’ll definitely have the best (and only…) tail on the block.

Thanks [J. Peterson]

We’ve covered weird fluids before, but this is perhaps most similar to SnOil, a game that uses ferrofluids to achieve a similar result. SnOil, however, does not depend of vibrations to create shapes in the fluid, it uses small electromagnets and magnetically charges liquid instead. We love the ordered appearance of the SnOil unit, but the chaotic motion of the cornstarch and it’s non-Newtonian properties make it appear almost otherworldly. We wonder how ferrofluids would react in a situation similar to the cornstarch above, since it would respond to both the vibration and the voice coil’s magnetic field.

[via Neatorama]

Right before the move, he put together a demo for throwable displays. The square pieces of foamcore have retro-reflective tape added to each of the corners. The Wiimote sees the orientation of the square and adjusts the projected image to fit perfectly; even when you pick it up and throw it. He used it to add a trail to an airhockey puck. Embedded above is an earlier project where he used the Wiimote to track a foldable display and project accordingly.

[Johnny] has also been working on 3D tracking with two or more Wiimotes. Since the Wiimote is camera based, stereo triangulation is simple. Check out the video below from the University of Cambridge that uses two Wiimotes for motion capture.

Have a look at [Johnny Lee]‘s full post for even more Wiimote ideas.

To make this work, install Motion on a system running Linux. As its name suggests, Motion is a free motion-detecting application that monitors movement in a webcam’s field of view. Once installed, it should be configured to take a snapshot of the event whenever something moves; with the locate option turned on, it draws a square frame around the area where motion occurred. The program includes http server functionality, so the photos can be viewed from a remote location. When all of that is properly configured, motion can be set to trigger cURL, Wget, or [Goel]‘s Perl script to post a message to Twitter about the event. From there the Twitter account can be configured to send text messages to a phone, creating a virtually instant notification of motion sensed by the webcam.

[via Hackszine]