Arduinos…. In…. Spaaaaaace…..

June 20, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

Since 2007, [Adam Kemp] has been leading a team of students from Thomas Jefferson High School, guiding them through the process of designing and building a small satellite that NASA selected for launch early next year.

The CubeSat, officially named TJ³Sat, uses commercial, off-the-shelf components for nearly all its systems. The team ran into a problem interfacing the FM430 Flight Module (PDF warning), so [Adam] designed an Arduino-based replacement. Based on an ATMEGA328, the entire board is a drop-in replacement for the FM430 Flight Module. On July 1st, the TJ³Sat will begin testing at Orbital Sciences Corp. to make sure the entire satellite is up to snuff.

The TJ³Sat’s payload will take data from the ground controllers and using a TextSpeak module convert serial data into spoken voice. This audio will then be transmitted over amateur radio frequencies and will be picked up by hams all over the world. We’d like to wish the students at Thomas Jefferson High a hearty congratulations for being the first High School to build a satellite and hope the testing and launch go as planned.

The Perfect Beer Every Time

June 18, 2011 by Nick Schulze 26 Comments

The Pour Master Pro is a beer pouring robot, designed and built by a team of beer/robot lovers as their entry to the Red Bull’s Creation Contest. Pour Master keeps it simple (opposed to some of the other bar bots we have seen), it uses a modified kegerator and tap for the beer, and a few sensors which it uses to maintain its state and pour the perfect beer. The standard tower on the kegerator was replaced with a rack and pinion driven tower constructed using the Vex Robotics Design System, this allows the Pour Master to set its height to the size of any glass using a limit switch and a set of ultrasonic rangefinders.

For a perfect pour the beer must not spill over the side of the glass and needs a decent 3/4″ head, to manage this the Pour Master uses the ultrasonic rangefinder to detect the thickness and height of the head. The entire thing is controlled by an Arduino running a finite state machine which provides state feedback to the user with an LCD display. Check out the video after the break for their competition entry, now all you need is one robot to make the beer and why not another to drink it.

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Thirty Year Old Pachinko Machine Meets An Arduino

June 14, 2011 by Nick Schulze 8 Comments

When [Jim’s] thirty year old Pachinko machine started to freeze up and shorted out his computer’s graphics card he decided it was time to replace the old electronics with an Arduino. Originally the Pachinko machine ran off a 48 volt supply and control was achieved using about 20 relays, the random numbers were generated using some complex mechanical reels which we hope will find their way into a new project in the future.

All of this and the daunting amount of wire inside the machine have been replaced with an Arduino and an MP3 Shield for the sound effects, powered from a much safer 12 volts. The new machine runs just as you would expect a thirty year old machine to run, with all the grinding sounds and flickering lights. Check out the video after the break to see an overview of the project.

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Puppy POV: Four-legged Persistence Of Vision Display

June 14, 2011 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

puppy_pov

We see lots of persistence of vision projects around here, but we can’t recall any that involve a POV display facilitated by a living, breathing animal (humans aside, if you want to picky). [Michael] has a Miniature Pinscher that just loves to run and run…and run…in circles. Since she generally runs very fast and in large curves, he thought she would make a great POV device.

He has a small fleece “jacket” for his dog, and on it, he mounted a Lilypad Arduino, the associated power supply, and five bright white LEDs. Naturally, conductive thread was used to wire up the circuit, and after a bit of trial and error, things came together nicely.

With the vest complete, [Michael] unleashed his dog at the park, letting her run to her heart’s content. All the while, her vest was writing out [Cory Doctorow’s] “Makers” while he snapped some pictures.

We can’t think of a more appropriate text to write with LEDs in the night, but in the spirit of the book, we were hoping to see a circuit diagram or the project’s code posted. If he shares it, perhaps we could convince [Cory Doctorow] to run about the park in a vest, writing out [Michael’s] code in bright white LEDs!

Flashing Arduinos With A Zipit

June 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

zipit_arduino_flashing

[Giacomo] finds that every once in awhile, he needs to flash a sketch to an Arduino while on the go. While he doesn’t always carry his laptop with him, he almost certainly has his Zipit Z2 on hand. He prefers to use the Zipit because it’s tiny, it uses Debian, has built-in WiFi, and can run for about 5 hours before requiring a recharge. The only shortcoming is that the device lacks a serial port.

Following instructions we featured last year he added a serial port to his device, then built a small converter cable that allows him to connect it to virtually any Arduino. He says it only takes a moment to get avrdude up and running on the Zipit via apt-get, and once that’s done, he is in business. He wrote a short script that saves him from entering the flash command over and over, so the process couldn’t be simpler.

He does mention that since the Zipit does not have a DTR line, Arduino resetting must be done manually. For the convenience of flashing sketches from the palm of our hand, we can deal with that.

Check out the video below for a quick demonstration of his setup.

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The WALL-E Robot

June 13, 2011 by Nick Schulze 11 Comments

[Dino’s] latest Hack a Week project, the WALL-E Robot shows quite simply what you can create from a few dollars worth of toys from garage sales and cheap stores. When he found the WALL-E toy at a garage sale, Dino decided that he had to give it a brain. Using the geared motors from some Rumble Robots, the H-bridges from some $5 remote control cars (after his own H-bridges cooked themselves), an ultrasonic sensor and an Arduino, WALL-E was brought to life.

The WALL-E Robot might not be the brightest bot, or the most stable, but the project definitely demonstrates some effective scrounging for parts that would have done WALL-E proud. It also shows how even the most simple projects can cause the most headaches when they don’t go right. Check out the video after the break for the build details, a demonstration and to see a man talk to a toy robot.

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Hacking Cakes With LEDs, The Sequel!

June 12, 2011 by Phil Burgess 27 Comments

A few weeks back we ran a piece about the convergence of making and baking in an attempt to create a cake festooned with working LEDs. The moral was that not every creative idea ends in victory, but we applauded the spirit it takes to post one’s goofs for the whole internet to see and to learn from.

[Craig]’s LED matrix proved unreliable…and the underlying cake didn’t fare much better, resembling that charred lump in the toaster oven in Time Bandits. The cakes-with-lights meme might have died right there if not for a fluke of association…

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