Arduino Gameboy Killer

October 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgKSLxRPtu8]

For roughly $250, you too can have this sweet bit of gadgetry based off of the Arduino platform. It is open source, and has some pretty impressive specs. Sporting a rumble pack, lithium ion battery, OLED display, and space for expanson. You can buy the pieces pre assembled, or as a kit. If you get the kit, you’ll see that the controller board has been laid out so that you can solder your buttons and joystick in as either left handed or right handed. The only problem? No games yet.

Autonomous Wall-E

October 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[djsures] went crazy on his Interactive Wall-E toy. Wall-E just didn’t have enough bounce in his step, so [djsures] decided to give him an overhaul. He went through the entire robot and replaced most of the joints with servos, giving much more control and adding head tilt. All of this was wired to a microcontroller housed in Wall-E’s body. The distance sensor was mounted in Wall-E’s neck, so when he turns his head, he’s actually surveying his surroundings. Check out the video after the break.

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E Ink Shows Off The AM300 Developer Kit

October 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n2xxqMQyfY]
The AM300 developer’s kit, shown in this video, has some pretty cool new features. It has the ability to show much faster animations than before, as well as having 16 bit gray scale image rendering and pen input. The animations look pretty quick, they mention this being useful for diagrams and advertisements. We just can’t wait to have our newspaper look like its covered with annoying flash banners and animated gifs.

Cellular Automata And LED Matrix Fun

October 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

Blinkomat, an LED matrix, turned out quite well. 240 LEDs controlled by an Atmega 16 is what we call a decent bookshelf decoration. The dimensions of 12×20 were chosen due to the fact that the microcontroller has 32 I/O lines. The LEDs are switched on and off using multiplexing. The brightness, controlled by pulse width modulation can be varied by 16 levels. The overall effect is quite smooth an fun to look at. He has programmed it to do other things than just cellular automata. Our personal favorite is a simple sine wave. Watch it after the break.

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