Arduino Hacks

3076 Articles

The Basics Of Controlling An Arduino With PHP

March 17, 2011 by 23 Comments

You can easily add Internet-based control for your Arduino if it is close enough to your server to be connected via USB. This tutorial will give the basics you need to get it working.

The gist of this method involves a webpage that includes PHP elements. When one of those elements is manipulated, a command is sent via serial connection to the Arduino which then reacts based on what it received. This example uses an Ubuntu box that is running an Apache server. The Arduino sketch sets up the serial connection and then listens for incoming traffic. Whenever it receives a non-zero character an LED will blink. On the server side of things you’ll need to make sure that the system user that runs Apache (www-data) has permission to write to a serial port.

This base example may seem extremely simple, but there’s no end to what you can build on top of it. Different PHP events can be added to push new commands over the serial connection with matching test conditions added to the sketch.

[Thanks Jarryd]

Laser Light Show Features Full XY Control Via Homemade Galvanometers

March 16, 2011 by 14 Comments

[Rich] over at NothingLabs has put together a really cool laser light show that you really must see in an effort to win a laser cutter from Instructables.

His walkthrough discusses the mechanics of laser light shows – specifically how galvanometers are typically used to precisely aim mirrors in order to draw images and write text. Commercial galvanometers tend to be pretty expensive, so he opted to build his own, using relatively cheap and easy to find parts.

The galvanometers were constructed using a pair of old speaker woofers, a few Lego bricks, and some acrylic mirror squares. The mirrors were mounted on the speakers, which were then wired to an Arduino. He removed the batteries from a cheap red laser pointer and permanently wired it to the Arduino, which it now uses as a pulsed power source. Once he had everything built, he positioned the laser using a fog machine for guidance.

As you can see in the video below, the laser show is quite impressive. His homemade galvos provide a somewhat rough quality to the final projected image, and we like that a lot. It looks almost as if all of the text and images were hand drawn, which is a pretty cool effect.

Just as [Rich] mentions, we hope to see some cool hacks based off his work in the future.

If you are interested in some of our previous laser features, check these out.

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RoboTouch Adds Physical Game Controls To The IPad

March 16, 2011 by 11 Comments

robotouch

[ProtoDojo] wanted to play a racing game on his iPad, but he was not a big fan of using the touch interface for this particular title. Instead, he put together a pretty neat little hack that allows him to play games on his iPad using an old NES controller.

He built a set of custom conductive arms which he mounted on three micro servos. The servos were attached to the iPad screen using small suction cups in the locations where it expects to receive button presses. They are also wired to an Arduino that interprets button presses from the attached NES controller. When the Arduino senses that the D-pad or buttons have been pressed, it triggers the servos, which in turn press the virtual buttons on the screen.

In the video below, you can see that after adjusting the servo positions, the setup seems to work pretty well. You might expect to see some sort of lag with a setup like this, but we didn’t notice any. The [ProtoDojo] web site is currently down due to heavy traffic, but you should be able to find some more build details there, once it becomes functional again.

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Giving “sight” To The Visually Impaired With Kinect

March 16, 2011 by 27 Comments

NAVI

We have seen Kinect used in a variety of clever ways over the last few months, but some students at the [University of Konstanz] have taken Kinect hacking to a whole new level of usefulness. Rather than use it to control lightning or to kick around some boxes using Garry’s Mod, they are using it to develop Navigational Aids for the Visually Impaired, or NAVI for short.

A helmet-mounted Kinect sensor is placed on the subject’s head and connected to a laptop, which is stored in the user’s backpack. The Kinect is interfaced using custom software that utilizes depth information to generate a virtual map of the environment. The computer sends information to an Arduino board, which then relays those signals to one of three waist-belt mounted LilyPad Arduinos. The LilyPads control three motors, which vibrate in order to alert the user to obstacles. The group even added voice notifications via specialized markers, allowing them to prompt the user to the presence of doors and other specific items of note.

It really is a great use of the Kinect sensor, we can’t wait to see more projects like this in the future.

Stick around to see a quick video of NAVI in use.

[via Kinect-Hacks – thanks, Jared]

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Motorcycle Sound Effects

March 16, 2011 by 12 Comments

[Winfred] was thinking one day, of how the world would be a different place if everything we owned had little start up and shut down sounds like our computers. Historically computers would just beep after passing their power on self test, and many PC’s still do, but in the 1980’s as machines became more powerful and home users wanted more flexibility in their hardware, startup chimes started to creep into our lives. And why not extend that little moment of joy to other objects, like adding Windows XP startup and shutdown sounds to your motorcycle.

Electronically the bill of materials looks like hobby shop catalog, featuring a Freeduino (Arduino variant), Adafruit wave shield, marine speakers, and a cheap-o mp3 amplifier from ebay. While admittedly not the cheapest way to play an audio clip [Winfred] offers a few suggestions to help drop the 100$ price tag, including just skipping it all together and mimicking the sounds with your voice.

Its a fun idea, its sure to earn some odd looks from his neighbors, and it will probably make you chuckle a little too.

Weather Station Turned Data Logger

March 15, 2011 by 10 Comments

Home brewing the perfect beer (or root beer in this case) requires a watchful eye and stable temperature, but [Gregory] has a house that is 120 years old. While we are sure it is a beautiful home, it does have its usual historical issues including temperature fluctuations.

[Gregory] suspects this to be the reason why his root beer is not carbonating, but to be 100% sure he grabbed a weather station (and atomic clock) with a wireless remote thermometer and got hacking. After popping the station apart he was able to quickly isolate the radio receiver and figure out the signaling, a few connections to an arduino, and now he can keep track of the temperature as its logged on to his PC.

Hopefully he can find out if this is his issue or not. Join us after the break for a quick video.

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3D Modeling Out Of Thin Air

March 14, 2011 by 14 Comments

kinect_3d_modeling

It seems that with each passing day, the Kinect hacks that we see become exponentially more impressive. Take for instance this little number that was sent to us today.

[sonsofsol] has combined several open source software packages and a little electronics know-how to create one of the more useful Kinect hacks we have seen lately. His project enables him to manipulate 3D models in GEM simply by moving his hands about in front of his Kinect sensor. Using OpenNI and Ubuntu, all of his actions are tracked by the computer and translated into actions within the GEM 3D engine.

To make things easier on himself, he also constructed a pair of electronic gloves that interface with the system. Using an Arduino, the gloves send different complex commands to the 3D modeling software, just by touching different pairs of fingers together.

You really need to take a look at the video embedded below to get a feel for how complex [sonsofsol’s] “simple” mesh modeler really is.

Looking for more Kinect fun? Check out these previously featured stories.

[Thanks, Jared]

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