Cloud Mirror adds Internet to your morning ritual

This mirror has a large monitor behind it which can be operated using hand gestures. It’s the result of a team effort from [Daniel Burnham], [Anuj Patel], and [Sam Bell] to build a web-enabled mirror for their ECE 4180 class at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

So far they’ve implemented four widget for the system. You can see the icons … Read the rest

Ultrasonic combo lock

[John Boxall] took a different route for a single-input combination lock. This unit uses a Ping ultrasonic range finder to input a four digit code. It’s a hardware upgrade, but uses the same basic concept as his button-based combo lock. That design used an Arduino to measure how long you hold down a single button, with a one … Read the rest

Ultrasonic rangefinder as scanning radar

Ultrasonic rangfinders are a cheap and easy way to gather obstacle avoidance data. When added to a servo motor they form something of a scanning radar for near-proximity objects.

In this implementation, [Rui Cabral] is driving the servo, and collecting data from the sensor using a PIC 18F4520. The servo rotates 180 degreees, taking sensor measurements in increments of … Read the rest

Boost your garden’s output using ultrasonic mist

ultrasonic_aeroponic_growing_rig

If you enjoy gardening, it’s never too early to start thinking about next year’s growing season. [Jared Bouck] over at InventGeek loves his tomatoes, but the slow grow rates of his dirt-bound plants were less than impressive. To get things moving faster, he created a low-cost aeroponics system that uses ultrasonic mist to produce some pretty impressive results.

The construction … Read the rest

Harvesting ultrasonic sensors

With many modern cars coming equipped with an array of ultrasonic sensors mounted in the bumpers, it stands to reason that many junk yards have them too. [jimk3038] points out that, unless they’re crushed, they’re probably good. The list of features on these is pretty long, including being short proof, water proof,  EMF proof and fast. These tough little … Read the rest

DIY Ultrasonic range finder for $5

After finding some ultrasonic transducers online for a dollar each [Kerry Wong] decided to create an ultrasonic range finder. The result is much like parallax’s PING))) sensor but much cheaper. His post is not only a good way to save some money, but also does a good job of explaining how ultrasonic sensors work.  The transmit circuit is essentially … Read the rest

Touch screen using range sensors

This touch screen relies on measurements from two range finders to track your finger as you press buttons. [James Alliban] put this together as his first Arduino project. We’re familiar with [James'] background because of his informative augmented reality business card. As the Arduino picks up data from the range finder it sends it to a Flash script that … Read the rest