Reading Bar Codes With Arduino And Unaltered CueCat

July 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Damcave] decided to try out some bar code reader projects. He got his hands on a CueCat years ago. The problem is that it outputs encrypted character sets instead of a clear text string. To get around this he used his Arduino to decrypt the CueCat’s data output.

Originally you could get you hands on a CueCat for free. It was meant to work like QR codes do now — you see a bar code, you scan it to get to a web address. It never really took off but you can still get your hands on one for about twelve clams. We’ve seen projects that clip a pin on the processor to disable to encryption. But [Damcave] didn’t want to mess with the hardware. Instead he connected the Arduino via the PS/2 connector and used software to translate the data. The encryption format has long been know so it was just a matter of translating the steps into an Arduino function.

Thinking Outside The IDE To Make A Fast-counting Arduino

July 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

[Udo Klein] took on the challenge of counting as fast as possible using an Arduino board. The quest involves a search for short-cuts that will let him drive a 20-bit counter as quickly as possible using the stock hardware. But the catch is that the Arduino environment has some overhead running in the background which will slow things down. He looks into each of these road bumps, then shows one way to get around them.

The code uses a command we don’t normally see in modern C embedded programming; the goto statement. He’s using this to bypass the extra cycles used by the Arduino’s in-built loop() function. The only command that is run within his hacked loop is a deeply nested set of macros. They’re toggling output pins using the hardware XOR built into the AVR chip. This is directly addressing the registers and thereby dumps the slowdown added by the digitalWrite() function.

The result is a software counter that toggles the output lights (see the clip after the break) at about 98.9% of the hardware clock speed. Pretty impressive, but [Udo] figures he can make it just a bit faster yet.

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EMIC2 Text To Speech Module

July 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

This is the EMIC2 text-to-speech module. You can see from the logo on the bottom left it’s the latest gadget coming out of [Joe Grand’s] Grand Idea Studios. [Dino] tipped us off about his first experience with a prototype of the board. He’s driving it with an Arduino and the video after the break shows that the sound rendering is high quality and the words are very easy to understand. One of the things that we think is interesting is that the serial communications used to drive the board are not uni-directional. In fact, there’s a serial terminal that provides documentation on how to use the chip. Obviously this is most suited to the Arduino, which always has a PC-side terminal window available to it.

[Joe] himself shows some of the potential for the board. He gave new life to a broken toy by replacing its internals with a PIC-based circuit to drive the EMIC2. That video is also found after the break. He’s just using the demo clips, but from that you will get a good idea of the vocal modulations this device is capable of. The board rings up at $60 and is available from Parallax.

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Playing Footsie With Your Video Games

July 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Jon] will be tapping away with his toes during gaming session thanks to this foot controller which is packed with buttons and sensors. It’s the second iteration of the build. The original had some solder joints break and the USB stopped working. He had also been experiencing some erratic behavior and so he decided to upgrade the control hardware and add a few more things in the process.

This version uses an Arduino Uno as the interface board. He did a bunch of prototyping to find the best way to hook up all the analog sensors, and how to properly debounce the buttons. Once he was happy with the inputs he set about finding a better way to use the USB HID standard with the device. We were surprised to hear that the ATmega16u2 (one of the new AVR chips which includes USB hardware) doesn’t play nicely with Linux. But [Jon] managed to hack his way around that issue and now he’s gaming with an even better foot controller than before.

Time-based One-Time Passwords With An Arduino

July 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Get your feet wet with Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) security by building your own Arduino OATH system. OATH is an open standard authentication system that provides a platform to generate tokens, making your login more secure than a password alone would.

The TOTP approach is what is used with many companies that issue hardware-based dongles for logging in remotely. This security may have been compromised but it’s still better than passwords alone. Plus, if you’re building it around an Arduino we’d bet you’re just trying to learn and not actually responsible for protecting industrial or state secrets.

The hardware setup requires nothing more than the Arduino board with one button and a screen as a user interface. Since the board has a crystal oscillator it keeps fairly accurate time (as long as it remains powered). It will push out a new token every thirty seconds. The video after the break shows that the Arduino-calculated value does indeed match what the test box is displaying.

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Cheap As Chips Arduino Ethernet Shield

July 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 51 Comments

It’s no secret that Ethernet shields for the Arduino are a little expensive. With the official Ethernet shield selling for about $50 and other options not much cheaper, there’s a lot of room for improvement for Arduinofied Ethernet. [Boris] over at Open Electronics has a solution to this problem: his Ethercard powered by a $3 Ethernet controller.

The Ethercard uses the Microchip ENC28J60, a through-hole Ethernet controller. There isn’t much else on the board apart from an RJ45 jack, caps, resistors, and a cheap buffer chip. This board was designed to be easily produced, and we’re thinking it might be possible to etch this board at home.

There are a few drawbacks to this ENC28J60 Ethernet shield – the official Arduino Ethernet shield has a 10/100 Mbps connection where the Microchip-powered shield is limited to 10 Mbps. Given the reduced cost, ease of assembly, and the fact that it’s pretty hard to saturate a 100Mbps connection with an Arduino this flaw can be easily ignored.

Pretty neat, especially considering how much you can do with an Ethernet connection on your Arduino. Files and code available in the git.

Exercise Bike Actuates Your Download Speeds; Messes With Music Playback

July 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

We’re not featuring this project because it involves the tiniest exercise bike in the world. It’s on the front page because the speed-control features which this dynamic duo added are hilarious. They call it the Webcycle and it’s actually two hacks in one.

Way back in 2009 [Matt Gray] and [Tom Scott] slapped an Arduino on the bike and used it to measure the revolutions of the cranks (how fast your feet are going in circles). This was hooked up to the laptop which is fastened to the handlebars. This way you can surf the Internet while you work out, but the bandwidth is directly affected by pedal speed. If you want to watch video you’re going to have to sweat…. a lot. Check it out in the clip after the break.

This March they pulled the Webcycle out of storage so that it may ride again. This time it’s connected to the sound system in their exercise room. A record player motor is the victim in this case. You guessed it — pedal speed dictates the rate of the turntable, modulating the pitch drastically. Make sure the boss isn’t around when you watch this clip because it will be hard not to guffaw.

These guys really have fun with this hacks. It was [Tom’s] birthday that prompted that hacktacular mini golf course.

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