Arduino Sticker Dispenser Saves Time

November 12, 2023 by Kristina Panos 18 Comments

What’s the worst part about packaging up a whole lot of the same basic thing? It might just be applying the various warning stickers to the outside of the shipping box. Luckily, [Mr Innovative] has built an open-source automatic sticker dispenser that does the peeling for you, while advancing the roll one at a time quite satisfyingly.

This tidy build is made primarily of 20×20 extruded aluminium and stainless steel smooth rod. All the yellow bits are 3D printed. The brains of this operation is an Arduino Nano, with an A4988 stepper motor driver controlling a NEMA17.

Our favorite part of this build is the IR sensor pair arranged below the ready sticker. It detects when a sticker is removed, then the stepper advances the roll by one sticker height. The waste is collected on a spool underneath.

Between the video and the instructions, [Mr Innovative] has made it quite simple to build one for yourself. Definitely check this one out after the break.

[Mr Innovative] may as well go by [Mr. Automation]. Check out this automated wire prep machine from a few years ago.

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We Like Big Keyboards And We Cannot Lie

November 7, 2023 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

So, let’s say you’re good at DOTA. Like, world-class good. How good do you think you’d be on a keyboard that’s 16 feet long, with a space bar the size of a person? Well, you’d need the rest of your team, that’s for sure.

Alienware have created the world’s largest mechanical keyboard and mouse, which are working, 14:1 scale representations of their AW420K keyboard and AW720M mouse. And they got Team Liquid to try it out.

While this may be a marketing ploy, it took quite a lot of work and weeks of 3D printing to faithfully reproduce those peripherals on that scale.

What’s really impressive are the custom key switches, which are described early on in the video after the break. They are nearly a foot wide with the keycap on, and they have an incredible four inches of travel.

Each of the 87 key switches is made with two snugly-fitting pieces of PVC, a thick rubber band, and of course, an actual, regular-size key switch to register the presses. Not satisfied with that, the team added a small piece of measuring tape to produce a nice clicky, tactile feedback. And, oh yeah, that space bar? The stabilizer is made from a 1″ copper pipe. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

This just so happens to be the same size as the last keyboard we saw claiming to be the world’s largest, which was rejected from the Guinness Book because it’s not an exact replica of an existing keyboard. So, somebody call Guinness, we suppose.

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Servo Claw Game Puts Your Muscles To The Test

November 5, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

As fun as claw games are, the jaws are always disappointingly weak, and you usually end up with bupkis. What if the jaws were completely within your control? That’s the idea behind [Upside Down Labs]’ muscle-controlled servo claw game.

While electromyography (EMG) is great for identifying neuro-muscular abnormalities and allows for amazing prosthetic limbs to work, it can also be used for fun. As you’ll see in the video after the break, accurate block-stacking (and possible candy-grabbing) depends on teamwork and tensed muscles.

Though the user provides the muscle, the brains behind this operation is an Arduino Uno with a Muscle BioAmp shield stacked on top, which [Upside Down Labs] also created. This shield makes it ridiculously easy to connect EMG sensors and other I²C devices like screens and, well, servo claws. From there, it’s really just a matter of printing the claw, connecting it to a 9g servo, and using an accompanying kit to prepare the skin and connect the muscles to the Arduino. Be sure to check it out in tense block-stacking action after the break.

If you want to listen in on your muscles, look no further than the BioAmp EMG Pill.

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Mini DDR Cabinet Gets Maximum Upgrade

November 3, 2023 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Those shrunken-down arcade cabinets are a nifty idea, but they sure do suck in practice. At least, the Dance Dance Revolution game is full of empty promises. With the $25 cabinet, all you get are three songs that come out of a crappy little speaker, and a not-great display to match.

[BigRig Creates] endeavored to make it better, however, and managed to cram a Raspberry Pi 4 in the cabinet without disturbing the stock components too much. They did have to trim every extraneous piece of plastic from the inside of the cabinet and trim the I/O pins down, but it fit.

What didn’t fit are the fans that [BigRig Creates] needed once it was clear that it was necessary to overclock the Pi. As [BigRig Creates] points out, a custom PCB would have saved some room. And perhaps time. And definitely some wires.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple on the software side. (It never is, is it?) Even getting the screen to work was no picnic. But in the end, it worked, and even survived a bunch of gamers testing it out at LTX. Check it out after the break.

Got an old PS2 DDR controller? You could make it play Simon instead.

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Pour One Out For This Bottle-Playing Robot

November 2, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

If you have an iota of musicality, you’ve no doubt noticed that you can play music using glass bottles, especially if you have several of different sizes and fill them with varying levels of water. But what if you wanted to accompany yourself on the bottles? Well, then you’d need to build a bottle-playing robot.

First, [Jens Maker Adventures] wrote a song and condensed it down to eight notes. With a whole lot of tinkling with a butter knife against their collection of wine and other bottles, [Jens] was able to figure out the lowest note for a given bottle by filing it with water, and the highest note by emptying it out.

With the bottle notes selected, the original plan was to strike the bottles with sticks. As it turned out, 9g servos weren’t up to the task, so he went with solenoids instead. Using Boxes.py, he was able to parameterize a just-right bottle holder to allow for arranging the bottles in a circle and striking them from the inside, all while hiding the Arduino and the solenoid driver board. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Don’t have a bunch of bottles lying around? You can use an Arduino to play the glasses.

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The Best-Sounding Walnut You’ll Hear Today

November 2, 2023 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Do you ever find yourself eating walnuts and think, this would make a great enclosure for something like a Bluetooth speaker? That seems to be exactly what happened to [Penguin DIY].

In the mesmerizing video after the break, you’ll see [Penguin DIY] do what seems to be impossible. They start with a tiny 5 V power bank module which is still not small enough to fit, so they remove all the components and dead-bug them back together.

This is really just the beginning. There of course has to be a female USB of some type, so [Penguin DIY] Dremels out the perfect little slot for it.

They did manage to stack and fit a MH-MH18 Bluetooth audio module and an HXJ8002 mini audio amplifier module in the walnut, but of course, it took a lot of fiddly wiring to extend the LEDs and wire them up.

Then in the other half of the shell went the 4Ω 2 W mini speaker. [Penguin DIY] of course drilled a ton of little holes in the shell for the sound to come through. Also on this side are three tiny switches for play/pause and previous and next track, and the latter two can be long pressed to control the volume. Definitely check this out after the break.

Do the notifications of your Bluetooth speaker annoy you? There’s a hack for that.

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2023 Halloween Hackfest: Spooky Noise Maker Is Self-Contained

November 1, 2023 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

We just love it when y’all build off of each other’s projects. This spooky Halloween noise maker from [C.M. Herron] is no exception. But while the projects we’ve seen lately rely on external computers and/or guitar pedals to create the effects part of the build, this one has everything running on a Raspberry Pi that sits inside the box.

Readers of a certain vintage will recognize this as an 8-track storage box, on top of which are several noise-making objects that creak and ting and reverberate nicely. A USB microphone picks up the sounds, and by using a regular microphone instead of a piezo, [C.M.] can introduce varying levels of feedback to make the sounds even spookier.

So, how did [C.M.] make this work on a Pi 4? To put it simply, they’ve got the Reaper DAW and Windows Valhalla plugins running on top of WINE, which running on top of Box64, which is running on top of the Bullseye Pi OS. [C.M.] sure learned a lot from this build, and hopes to inspire others to build their own spooky noise boxen. Plus, they’ve already thought of ways to improve it for next year. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

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