Arduino Heliostat Calculates The Position Of The Sun

January 3, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

We’re past the winter solstice and the days are getting longer, but that doesn’t mean we’re not sick of the sun setting around 5 in the afternoon. There is a way to get more sunlight through our windows – a heliostat. Lucky for us, [Gabriel] sent in his Open Source Sun Tracking / Heliostat project that can reflect sunlight through our windows all winter long.

Using mirrors to brighten up a room is an ancient practice; a few thousand years ago, heliostats went by the archaic term, “slaves.” Luckily there’s a far more elegant way of doing things nowadays – an Arduino. [Gabriel] came up with an Arduino sketch that calculates the altitude and azimuth of the sun using only latitude, longitude and time zone. [Gabriel] used this sketch to drive a pair of stepper motors and reflect sunlight through his window.

You can check out [Gabriel]’s demo of his heliostat after the break.

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Hackerspace Light Wall Plays Video At 30 Fps

January 1, 2012 by Mike Nathan 24 Comments

The folks at The Quad Cities Collaboration and Hackerspace (QC Co-Lab) were trying to find something to build for their first big project, and had to look no further than the wall for inspiration. The north end of their facility is home to a huge 15×17 glass block wall that happens to face a well-traveled roadway.

They decided that turning the wall into a huge LED display would be a great way to attract attention from passers-by, so they picked up some GE Color Effects lights and got down to business. Once they found out that the technical college next door was putting on an open house, the race was on to get the light display assembled as quickly as possible to maximize their exposure.

The team mounted the 255 LEDs in vacuum-formed reflective cones, which were attached to wooden frames before being installed behind the glass wall. An Arduino drives the entire display at a smooth 30 frames per second, a task they say tests the very limits of the board’s capabilities.

They finished the job in time for the open house, and as you can see in the video below, the display looks great.

Nice job QC-Co-Lab!

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Programming An Arduino Using An Audio File

December 30, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This proof-of-concept is just waiting for you to put it to good use. [Mike Tsao] wrote an Arduino sketch that lets him decode incoming audio data which could be used to program the device. He’s calling the project TribeDuino because it decodes an audio file which is actually the firmware update for a Korg Monotribe.

Earlier in the month [Mike] read our feature on a project that reverse engineered the audio-based firmware update for the Korg hardware. He wanted to see if he could write some code to read that file on his own hardware. All it took was an audio jack and two jumper wires to get the Arduino ready to receive the audio file. His firmware reads the Binary Frequency-Shift Keying encoded data as the audio is played, then echos a checksum to prove that it works.

This would be a fantastic addition to your own projects. Since the audio connection only needs to be mono, it only takes just one Arduino pin to add this jack (the other is a ground connection). Having just played around with alternative ways to push data to a microcontroller ourselves, we might give this a try when we have some free time.

Build Your Own Mini Ball Drop For New Year’s Eve

December 30, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

[Dino] wanted to make this New Year’s celebration a bit more interesting, but he can’t make it to New York for the ball drop. Instead, he decided to make his own mini display in his workshop. Obviously he’s working with a slightly smaller budget than the folks at Times Square, but we think his display is pretty neat. If anything, [Dino] can at least guarantee that his New Year’s is 100% Seacrest-free.

The ball drop is made up of five ping pong balls, each backlit by a 10mm LED. The LEDs and ping pong balls were mounted on the electron gun from a broken oscilloscope, giving it a cool look. The balls are lit one at a time by an Arduino, which illuminates each one for 15 seconds while the final minute of 2011 is counted down. Once midnight hits, a flashing “2012” sign illuminates while Auld Lang Syne plays from a tiny speaker.

The musical part of this build is something that [Dino] spent a lot of time on. He thoroughly explains how he translated the song from sheet music into its digital form, a process that would be helpful for beginners to watch.

Continue reading to see how the display was built, and if you’re just antsy to see the ball drop in action, a short demo can be found at 12:13.

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StripInvaders Puts Colored Lights Everywhere

December 26, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

There’s not much to be gained by living in a discotheque but colored lights are awesome, especially when they’re as well implemented as [michu]’s StripInvaders.

The StripInvaders project takes a gigantic 5 meter LED strip with WS2801 controllers and turns it into an Ethernet-enabled 24 bit display with the new Arduino Ethernet. While the Ethernet-enabled may seem a little superflous, [michu] implements it quite nicely. The entire 5 meter LED strip can be controlled from a tablet or smartphone.

Apart from a tablet/smartphone interface with OSC, there’s also mDNS support so we’re sure the StripInvaders could make for an interesting LAN party with the appropriate scripts. While the cost of the LED strip itself is fairly high, we’re sure some Hack a Day commenter will come up with a cheaper solution.

The firmware for StripInvaders has been posted on Github, but for a real treat, check out the demo after the break.

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One Way To Reuse Your Christmas Lights Post-holiday

December 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Andrew] shows us one way to reuse all those strands of Christmas lights you used for decoration this year. He had a friend that was helping with stage props for a local musical and ended up using his skills to build a lighted sign with some animation capabilities.

The original plan was to cut out letters for a sign by hand and ring them with white Christmas lights. It is possible to hand cut parts reasonably well, but [Andrew] knew he could get a much better result in less time using a CNC ShopBot to make them. He didn’t know the spacing for the lights so waited and drilled holes for them by hand. Each strand is connected to a relay, then driven by an Arduino. They turned out great as you can see in the clip after the break.

This is a timely hack, because it uses plain old while incandescent bulb strands which will be going on sale in the next few days. Usually you can get them on clearance for a dollar or less so plan ahead and hit the big box store early. Continue reading “One Way To Reuse Your Christmas Lights Post-holiday” →

Arduino Notebook Cover Makes It Easy To Tinker Anywhere

December 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

arduino-notebook-cover

[Erv] was putting his holiday shopping list together and decided that instead of buying his friends something from the store, he would give them something a bit more useful. A former Electrical Engineer by trade, [Erv] typically prefers PIC microcontrollers, but he says that Arduinos are just so convenient to use for prototyping that he likes to always have one on hand.

He figured that his friends might enjoy having easy access to an Arduino as well, so he made them some slick ZapBook covers which enable them to have a prototyping platform on hand at all times. The cover is made from a PCB and includes a socket for an Arduino Pro Mini, along with a handful of built-in LEDs. He has extended a few other I/O pins from the Arduino as well, but he says that the small solder bridges connecting the LEDs can be removed in a pinch, freeing up 8 additional pins with ease. We are pretty keen on the idea of an easily portable prototyping setup, though it doesn’t hurt that [Erv] incorporated a Hack a Day skull with light up eyes into his design either!

We’re not sure if he’s planning on releasing the schematics for the board, but the notebooks would be pretty useful for any hackerspaces hosting beginner Arduino programming classes.