UberFridge Helps Keep Beer Production Going Through The Dog Days Of Summer

November 24, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

uberfridge

[Elco Jacobs] used to let his beer ferment in the kitchen, but when things got too hot over the summer, he had to suspend his ale making for a few months. Not wanting to have to put production on hiatus again, he modified an old refrigerator into an awesome fermentation unit he calls the UberFridge.

The refrigerator features two temperature sensors, one that sits in the fermenting beer, and one that measures the temperature of the fridge. This dual probe setup offers him the ability to closely monitor the fermentation process, which he does via a sharp-looking web interface.

An Arduino serves as the PID controller, talking to a wireless router via a serial connection. The Arduino logs and relays data to the router where it can be viewed via a web browser. Not only can he keep tabs on what’s going on inside the fridge, he can reprogram the Arduino via the web interface as well.

Keep reading to see [Elco] explain the ins and outs of his UberFridge – we’re pretty sure you’ll want to build your own after you do.

[via BuildLounge]

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I’ll See Your Launchpad Controlled Arm And Raise You Arduino Controlled Autonomy

November 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

This OWI robot arm has been hacked to add position sensors and Arduino control. [Chris Anderson] took one look at the Launchpad controlled OWI from earlier today and said “wait a minute, I’ve already posted my own version of that project”. Well, that will teach him not to tip us off about his hacks!

The position control is a really nice addition. Potentiometers added to each of the joints (shoulder, elbow, and wrist) can be read by the ADC pins on the Arduino. Just a bit of calibration will let the microcontroller board know the position of the arm at any given time. The control technique is the same as the Launchpad hack, with one glaring drawback. [Chris] is using the Adafruit motor driver shield. It uses L293D H-bridge chips, but it only has four channels. There are five motors on this arm, so the video after the break shows it moving around without any outside instruction, but you won’t see it grab onto anything since the Arduino can’t move the gripper!

Still, the position feedback makes the case for this version. Just remember to order an extra chip if you want full control.

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Tracking Satellites With An Arduino

November 21, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

The guys over at brainwagon just finished up ANGST, the Arduino n’ Gameduinio Satellite Tracker, a build that displays 160 different satellites in Earth orbit on any SVGA monitor.

The build is of course based off an Arduino and Gameduino shield. A real-time clock is always needed for a satellite tracker, so a DS1307 RTC is thrown into the mix. The satellite data is stored on a 128KB EEPROM that is big enough to hold 750 different satellites and orbits.

The software side of things is a bit trickier. The guys at brainwagon used [James Miller]’s very popular and very old-school PLAN-13 sat tracking software. This orbit calculation program was published in 1983 and has since been ported from BBC Basic to just about every system imaginable.

Once the ANGST is hooked up and powered on, it reads the real-time clock and calculates the position of a satellite. This is done in real-time and updated every three minutes. On the screen, the last orbit (and a little more) is displayed along with the sun and the location of the ANGST. You might not find something like ANGST at the Space Command at NORAD, but we can’t think of a better way to keep track of the cubesats and spy sats above our heads.

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Simple Touch Sensors With The Arduino CapSense Library

November 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Ever thought of using touch sensors on your projects but didn’t because it would be too much work? [Paul Stoffregen] proves that it can be pretty easy if you use the CapSense library for Arduino. Here he’s created three touch sensors, connecting them to the Teensy microcontroller with two resistors each. The larger resistor (looks like 4.7 megaohms here) sends a signal through the copper pad which is read by the secondary pin. Here that pin is protected from electrostatic discharge with the 1k resistors. The microcontroller takes a reading by measuring how long it takes the voltage to change on the input pin.

Since the CapSense library takes care of the timing involved in these readings, all you have to do is decide how your program will react to the numbers that are coming in. In the video after the break [Paul] is echoing the timing figures back through the serial monitor to get an idea of what the data looks like. He experiments with touching the copper directly, and touching it through a piece of clear tape.

We’ve seen the CapSense library at work before in this interactive exhibit piece.

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Stroboscope Project Uses Optical Drive Motor And Arduino

November 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

In the quest for a diy laser cutter made from DVD burner parts (that hack’s still in the works) this guy ended up with a junk box full of optical-drive leftovers. He put some of that surplus to good use by building this stroboscope. As the media spins, the white LED just out of focus in the foreground strobes to freeze the little black figure in the same place. The effect, as seen in the video after the break, is a dancing figure created by the optical illusion.

This is the same concept as that amazing 3D rowing skeleton build, but scaled down greatly. Each of the silhouettes seen above are slightly different, showing one pose that makes up a frame of the overall animation. They’re laser cut, but some careful paper-craft could probably accomplish the same thing. Assuming you could keep them from warping when spinning at high speeds.

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An Exercise In Servo Voice Control With Android

November 20, 2011 by Mike Nathan 2 Comments

voice-controlled-android-lock

[Shazin] had some free time on his hands, so he settled in to do something he had been meaning to for a while – learn Android programming. He went an indirect route, and ended up using the Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A), which gave him a head start on the process. Sitting in between the Android API and scripting languages such as Python, SL4A allowed him the ability to apply something he was already familiar with to the Android environment.

He thought it would be cool to try building a door entry system which relied on voice commands to lock and unlock. Using the Google Voice API for Android and an Arduino, he built a small Python application that allows him to toggle a servo simply by talking into his phone.

The application on his phone communicates with an Arduino over WiFi, once Google Voice has decoded the command [Shazin] is giving. The Arduino controls a servo, which in theory could control the locking mechanism on a door.

After a bit of tweaking and some added security, his proof of concept could definitely come in handy.

Check out the short video below to see [Shazin’s] voice-controlled servo in action.

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Nuclear Taco Helmet Measures Reaction To Spicy Food

November 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Apparently there was a Nuclear Taco eating contest at the 2010 Codebits Conference. The team from altLab, a Hackerspace in Lisbon, didn’t partake but the discomfort of those that did was burned into their memory. This year, the altLab members decided to build a spciy taco monitoring helmet as part of the conference’s 48 hour hacking competition.

The helmet was inspired by those beer helmets that let you suck down two head-mounted cold ones through a forking straw. In this case, the beer has been replaced by bottles of milk to help quench your burning piehole. But if you do take a sip, observers will know because a flow sensor measures how much you suck down. There’s also a humidity sensor which monitors the sweat building up on your forehead. The Arduino that runs it all tracks this info and uses it to set the discomfort meter on top of the helmet, all while the audience gets a closeup from the camera projecting beyond the helmet’s brim.

We’re happy to say they won 1st place for the creation. Check out their 90-second presentation after the break.

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