Arduino Hacks

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Open Bitcoin ATM

February 20, 2014 by 30 Comments

openBitcoinAtm

If there’s one thing Bitcoins can benefit from, it’s easier accessibility for first-time users. The process can be a bit daunting if you’re new to cryptocurrency, but [mayosmith] is developing an open Bitcoin ATM to help get coins in the hands of the masses. There are already some Bitcoin dispensers out there. The Lamassu is around 5k a pop, and then there’s always the option of low-tech Condom Vending Machine conversions.

[mayosmith’s] build is still in the proof-of-concept phase, but has some powerful functionality underway. The box is made from acrylic with a front plate of 12″x12″ aluminum sheet metal, held on by 2 aluminum angles and some bolts. Slots were carved out of the aluminum sheet for the thermal printer and for bill acceptor—the comments identify it as an Apex 7000. Inside is an Arduino with an SD Shield attached. Dollars inserted into the acceptor trigger the Arduino to spit out a previously-generated QR code for some coins via the thermal printer, though all values are pre-determined at the time of creation and stored sequentially on the SD card. Stick around for a quick video below, and check out the official page for more information: http://openbitcoinatm.org

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Real Life Flappy Bird In A Box

February 20, 2014 by 14 Comments

Flappy bird this, flappy bird that, we’re really not too sure how a clone of the original helicopter game became so darn popular. Anyway, [Fawn Qiu] — founder of MakeAnything — decided to hop on the bandwagon and made this awesome physical version of Flappy Bird!

She threw it together at the Tribeca Hacks Hackathon, and it uses an Arduino, two servo motors, a reed switch and some magnets. She was inspired by the original Mario in a Box game and this is a great example of her project MakeAnything, which is a technology project community which helps foster the new culture of STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) for kids and adults alike, in the United States. They believe that “with the right tool and instructions, we can all make anything and everything!”.

Stick around for the following video where [Fawn] takes it to the streets to let random strangers try their hand at the now iconic game!

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Mobile Hackerspace Status Indicator

February 18, 2014 by 16 Comments

HACKERSPACE LIGHT

Cruising around town, not sure what to do — oh hey look, someone is at the hackerspace! Introducing the Mobile Spacestate Indicator!

During our Hackerspacing in Europe tour, we had the pleasure of visiting ACKspace in Heerlen, the Netherlands. And like many hackerspaces, they have an online status indicator letting members and non-members alike know if the space is open. [Vicarious], the gentleman who kindly picked us up from the train station, has just finished off an awesome modification to his car. Using an Arduino Uno and a Raspberry Pi, he has created a mobile indicator of his hackerspace’s status.

The Raspberry Pi automatically tethers to his phone and checks the status of the hackerspace online. It then sends the data to the Arduino Uno which controls a small strip of RGB LEDs. He’s cleverly hidden all of this inside his center console, and it looks awesome!

To see more of ACKspace’s cool projects, check out their wiki!

Arduino Gets Fowl With Flappy Bit

February 18, 2014 by 7 Comments

flappy-bit

We have to swallow our pride and hand it to [Dan200]. He may have finally found an application that everyone can agree is a perfect fit for Arduino. Flappy Bit is [Dan’s] Arduino Uno based Flappy Bird clone. [Dan] is a software guy at heart, but he’s taken a peck at electronics of late. Flappy Bit was just a fun side project for him to learn how to program the Arduino. The hardware consists of an 8×8 LED matrix, current limiting resistors, and a single button.

[Dan’s] implementation isn’t 100% faithful to the iOS/Android original. Rather than simply parrot Flappy Bird, he changed it up a bit. The user presses and holds the button to climb, and releases it to descend. This seems to make the game a bit more forgiving. We also won’t be missing all the lovely sound effects from Flappy Bird.  While there is less flapping in Flappy Bit, it does make us more nostalgic for those  tabletop LCD/LED games we played in the 80’s and can’t stop crowing about today.

[Dan] has released the full source code to the project (Pastebin link), and there is more information available on his reddit thread. Give flappy bit a try. You won’t egret it!

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Generating Embroidery With An Arduino

February 15, 2014 by 8 Comments

Arduino Embroidery Generation

Want a nifty way to combine the craft of embroidery with electronics? The folks working on the open source Embroidermodder demoed their software by generating an embroidery of the KDE logo using a TFT screen and an Arduino.

Embroidermodder is an open source tool for generating embroidery patterns. It generates a pattern and a preview rendering of what the embroidery will look like when complete. It’s a cross-platform desktop application with a GUI, but the libembroidery library does the hard work in the background. This library was ported to Arduino to pull off the hack.

While generating pictures of embroidery with an Arduino might look neat, it isn’t too useful. However, since the library has been ported it is possible to use it to control other hardware. With the right hardware, this could be the beginning of an open source embroidery machine.

After the break, check out a video of the pattern being generated.

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Robot Controller More Fun Than An Actual Wii-U

February 15, 2014 by 1 Comment

wii-u-bot-controller

Okay, that’s probably not fair since we never gave the Wii-U a try at all. But doesn’t this seem like a much better idea for controlling a robot than playing a gaming console?

The photo above is a bit deceiving because the unit actually has quite a bit of depth. Despite that, the cleanliness of the build is very impressive. [Alec Waters] started off with a backup monitor meant for automotive use (we’d estimate 7″). There’s a radio receiver, two analog joysticks where your thumbs line up when holding the controller, and an Arduino to pull it all together. If you haven’t figured it out already, this displays the wireless video from the robot he’s controlling. He’s also include an auxiliary port which lets you bypass the radio receiver and plug in a video feed directly.

Still convinced you need Nintendo’s consumer controller with a built-in screen. Yes, that can be hacked to work with all your projects. But seriously, this is way more fun.

A Clock That Plots Time

February 13, 2014 by 56 Comments

[Johannes] just sent us a tip about his small plotter that plots out the current time.

[Johannes] small clock plotter uses a dry wipe pen to write out the time on a small piece of dry erase board. The design is Made of three small 9g servos, with one to lift the pen off the writing surface and the other two to control a pair of connected jointed arms for the x and y-axis.

The little robot painstakingly wipes away the previous time before scrawling the current time in its place (with minute accuracy).

[Johannes] had hackability in mind when creating this project, making sure to keep to standard parts and making the code and design files available. The hardware for the build can be laser cut or 3D printed. The Arduino sketch can be found on GitHub and the design files can be found on Thingiverse. There are more detailed build instructions on Nuremberg’s FabLab page (translated).  Continue reading “A Clock That Plots Time” →