Beer Security System Keeps Freeloaders Out Of Your Stash

November 3, 2011 by Mike Nathan 29 Comments

The crew at the Milwaukee Hackerspace are pretty serious about their beer. They used to have a fridge filled with cans, available to all at the hackerspace, but they decided to beef things up and create a secured beer dispensing system.

Like many others we have seen, their kegerator is built into an old refrigerator, complete with a tap built into the door. To ensure that interlopers are kept from their precious brew, they have secured the refrigerator using an Arduino and RFID tags to grant access. They use the same RFID key fobs members carry to gain access to the space for tracking beer consumption, unlocking the tap whenever a valid tag is swiped past the sensor.

They are still in the midst of tweaking and revising the system, but it looks good so far. It’s a great way to keep uninvited guests from their beer stash, while giving them a way to track consumption at the same time. We’re looking forward to seeing more details and code once things are completely wrapped up.

[via BuildLounge]

Urine Territory Marking, Now For Humans!

November 2, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 14 Comments

Although Dogs and other animals love to mark their territory with urine, this technique has been generally ignored by human beings. Despair no more, fellow homo sapiens, we have now developed the ability to check-in on foursquare through your information stream. This device is descriptively called “Mark your Territory.”

Although this is not currently available to buy in stores (although apparently $10,000 will get you one built), [Instructables] user [blorgggggg] has furnished directions on building your own. The system is powered by an Arduino and an Android phone. The urine tags have both a pointed end for sticking in grass and the like, and a sticky back to be used in a “more urban settings.”

The video after the break gives quite a bit of background trying to justify such a system in terms of communicating in the physical world, animals, et cetera, but it’s doubtful that this excuse will get you out of a public urination charge. You’ve been warned.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdfeb7vDWg&w=470&h=315%5D

LED Sexting Belt Buckle

November 1, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

For some ungodly reason, [Scott] has a friend that wanted a ‘sexting themed’ Halloween costume. We won’t try to make any presumptions of the creativity or mental stability of [Scott]’s friend, but the SMS scrolling LED belt buckle he came up with is pretty cool.

The belt is based around a $13 scrolling LED belt buckle [Scott] found online. There was a problem with the belt buckle, though. Thirteen dollars means [Scott] didn’t get a whole lot of features with his buckle, so there are only 3 buttons on the entire device: letter up, letter down, and enter. Instead of pressing a button 80 times to get a lowercase ‘z,’ an Arduino was thrown into the mix to take care of all the button pressing.

The Arduino sketch could now input any message into the belt buckle in a matter of seconds. All that was left to do is taking care of the SMS to text part of the build. For this, [Scott] used the Sparkfun USB Host Shield and a custom Android app. Whenever an SMS is received on the phone, the message is sent through the USB shield to the Arduino and output on the belt buckle.

We won’t make any assumptions about the content of the messages during the Halloween party, but at least the video demo of the build is family friendly. Check it out after the break.

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Halloween Hacks: A Radioactive Display With More Trick Than Treat

November 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

Halloween Hacks Banner

radioactive_barrel_display

[Shawn] was looking for a way to shake up his decorations this Halloween and decided to build a new prop for his front yard. He had a pair of old oil barrels in his garage and thought they would look great with a little bit of work.

He bolted the pair of barrels together, then slapped a fresh coat of black paint on them before adding a bright yellow radiation trefoil to each one. One barrel contains a pneumatic piston that opens the lid, revealing a light up pumpkin, a fog machine, and a set of water nozzles that spray the area. The second drum houses an air compressor, a wireless router, and an IP camera for recording the action. A web-enabled Arduino triggers the lid and sprayer, both of which can be controlled from the comfort of his house.

We think it’s a creative use of some old scrap barrels, but we’re hoping he doesn’t plan on wetting trick-or-treaters that pass through, as it seems like a good way to get your house egged or otherwise vandalized on Halloween. If the water sprayer were perhaps swapped out with some other cool effects, [Shawn] is far less likely to be the target of some angry, wet teenagers.

Be sure to check out the video below to see the display in action.

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Turning LEDs Into A Camera

November 1, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

[Udo] figured out how to turn a bunch of LEDs into a very low resolution camera.

The build is based around [Udo]’s Blinkenlight shield he’s been developing over the past year. The camera operates under the idea that there’s really not much difference between a LED and a photodiode; LEDs can do light emission and detection. In actuality, the LED ‘camera’ isn’t all that different from a linear CCD array, the type of image sensor in flatbed scanners.

After connecting his Blinkenlight shield to his Arduino and computer, [Udo] wrote a sketch that would capture 17 values from his LED camera. These values are shot over the serial connection where high levels of light show up as smaller numbers and low light levels are understood as larger numbers.

[Udo] has been doing a lot of other cool stuff with his Blinkenlight shield, like a persistence of vision experiment and pretending to be [Michael Knight]. Check out the video after the break for a demo of [Udo]’s linear LED camera.

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Looking Toward Christmas Decor By Learning About DMX

November 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

So Halloween finally arrived, we hope you had enough time to pull off your frightening feats in the way you had originally envisioned. Now it’s time again to look to the future and start planning this year’s Christmas decorations. Lights are always a popular theme, and this year you might want to look into DMX lighting controls and decide if that’s a route you want to take. [Akiba] has your back, he just put together a set of videos explaining the DMX lighting protocol and how to use it with an Arduino.

The thought here is that the Arduino can be used as a sort of DMX hub that is connected directly to a computer running open source controller hardware. It can send commands which the Arduino decodes, deciding whether to just pass them on to DMX compatible devices, or to do what it does best and control other hardware that is not normally accessible through the lighting command protocol. To the control program your four-dollar strand of LED lights looks no different from a thousand dollar stage light, making it cheap and easy to build your own entertaining holiday show right in your front yard. See the second video in this series after the break where [Akibo] details the hardware setup for his system. The other parts are available at the link above.

Be careful, this can be a consuming endeavor. Don’t believe us? Just look around and you’ll find no shortage of large DMX builds just for Christmas lights.

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Wine-o-Meter Quantifies Your Bachelor Party Bad Behavior

October 31, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

wine_o_meter

[Phil] had a bunch of Shiftbrite modules set aside for an LED table project, but before he could get around to it, he decided to use them to build a prop for his friend’s bachelor party. Expecting plenty of drunken revelry, he constructed the Arduino Wine-o-Meter – a carnival “Test your strength” style breathalyzer.

The 25 Shiftbrite modules are lined up in a column, which is connected to an Arduino tucked away in a cardboard box. The Arduino takes readings from an MQ-3 Gas/Alcohol sensor was salvaged from another breathalyzer build [Phil] put together. While it has been noted in the past that this sensor is pretty inaccurate, it seems to serve his purposes quite well. Since his game is based on measuring the players’ blood alcohol content in relation to one another rather than obtaining an exact BAC reading, the poor calibration of the device should affect everyone equally.

It looks pretty cool, and we imagine that it will ensure that the party stays lively throughout the wee hours of the night. Check out the video below to see [Phil] walk you through a demo of his Wine-o-Meter.

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