Twilio Adds Touch Tone Telephone Control For Arduino

May 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

An Arduino with an Ethernet shield, nothing new right? Not quite, [Chris] is showing us how to use Twilio to control an Arduino via a touch tone telephone. We saw Twilio used before in a cellphone video game but this time around an audio menu system comes into play. You can make your own menus whose options will be read by the WOPR (see the demo after the break) when you call the Twilio number. This application just turns an LED on and off but once you’ve got access to the Arduino the sky’s the limit. Most immediately this is an easy implementation for all those cellphone door lock systems we’ve seen. We also envision some classic home automation such as feed the cats or turn on the lights.

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Multiple Material 3D Printing

May 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 60 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Yq3glEyec]

It’s no surprise that we’re wild about 3D printing, especially [Devlin]. Now we’re absolutely out of our minds for this multi-material polyjet machine that is featured in the video above. Before we go any further it’s worth mentioning that this post is not advertising, we just think this machine is unbelievable.

It is capable of printing 600 dpi in 3D using multiple materials at the same. Two types of rigid material, one like ABS and the other like polypropylene, as well as seven levels of a soft material all exist on the same print head. They can be deposited along with a support material at the same time. In the video you can see enclosures that come out of the printer with rubber-like padding already mounted in the hard plastic shell. They even show a bicycle chain that is fully assembled after printing. Cost for these machines? We don’t want to know, it’s just fun to dream about having unrestricted access to one.

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Manual Transmission Gear sensor

May 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 57 Comments

[Ben] bought a remote starter for his car but needed a way to make sure the manual transmission was in neutral when starting. He built this infrared sensor frame to detect the position of the stick. It uses four beam paths which will tell him the exact gear or neutral position of the shifter. For this project he just needs to detect neutral but exact gearing is apparently necessary information for his next hacking project. We initially were worried about sunlight interfering with the sensor readings but he’s building this to go under the collar that is used to cover up the mechanical joint at the base of the stick.