Twilio Adds Touch Tone Telephone Control For Arduino

May 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

An Arduino with an Ethernet shield, nothing new right? Not quite, [Chris] is showing us how to use Twilio to control an Arduino via a touch tone telephone. We saw Twilio used before in a cellphone video game but this time around an audio menu system comes into play. You can make your own menus whose options will be read by the WOPR (see the demo after the break) when you call the Twilio number. This application just turns an LED on and off but once you’ve got access to the Arduino the sky’s the limit. Most immediately this is an easy implementation for all those cellphone door lock systems we’ve seen. We also envision some classic home automation such as feed the cats or turn on the lights.

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XKCD Takes A Swipe At The Arduino

May 8, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 97 Comments

This XKCD comic takes a playful swipe and almost everything, including the Arduino. We’ve heard people claim that we have some sort of favoritism toward Arduino, and we don’t. People just submit a LOT of projects with them. But there is one point that we’ve seen a few times that should be addressed. In our categories we have an “Arduino hacks” section. That will not be going away, again, because we get so many submitted. However, shouldn’t we also add some categories for other stuff? Should there be a “pic hacks” category, or maybe just “microcontroller hacks” category?

Let’s not making this an Arduino bashing thread. Instead, give us some good ideas on other categories you would like to see for sorting.

[via littlebirdceo]

Automated Chicken Coop Door

May 3, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 42 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUKIlZIZDqc]

Here’s a pretty cool implementation of an automated door, built for a chicken coop. The electronics are fairly standard, an Arduino and a used cordless drill. The end product will be not only wireless, but automated based off of ambient light as well. We also found the locking mechanism quite elegant. He also supplied a link to another automated chicken coop door which has a decent writeup with schematics and such. Next, he’ll have to automate their feeding as well.

[Thanks Jeri]

Adding Reset To An FTDI Cable

April 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Hackaday alum [Adam Harris] hacked an FTDI cable to use for programming his Arduino. After cracking open the plastic case he found the FTDI chip used is the same as the one in the SparkFun programmer. The only real difference was that his cable wasn’t resetting the Arduino, he had to do that manually. The solution was to reroute the RTS wire so that it connected up to the DTR pin. This proved difficult because of the tiny footprint of the chip, but after many tries he managed to get a piece of wire wrap soldered in place.

Optiboot Makes Your Arduino Faster, Sleeker

April 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

Tired of waiting for that Arduino sketch to upload? Find yourself limited by code space? Optiboot eases both of these problems. The package is an alternative bootloader that runs at a higher baud rate (115200 versus 57600) and it takes up 1.5 KB less space than the stock version. This means your sketches can be larger without upgrading to a beefier chip and they will take less time to upload, a lot less.

This fully compatible alternative to the Arduino bootloader requires an AVR ISP programmer to burn it to the chip on your Arduino. If you have an extra AVR lying around you could use the Arduino as a programmer and then physically swap the chips.

[Thanks Peter]

Punching Accelerometers

April 15, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 16 Comments

Shortly after finishing his Makiwara punching bag, [Abieneman] wired and programmed an Arduino to an accelerometer to find out just how much acceleration (and with some math, force) is behind his punches. The project is simple and would be quick to reproduce for your own measuring and experiments: all that he used included an Arduino, accelerometer (with A/D converter), LED displays (and shift register). We were a little disappointed to learn of how much static the accelerometer produced, so measuring things such as impulse, energy, and pretty much anything not kinematic is nullified. But it makes us wonder, how much static would be in say, a Wii Remote punching bag?

Mind Controlled TV

April 11, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 31 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mVxY2IJXBg]

Finally, a good use for those EEG headsets. [Andrew] has set up a system that will turn his TV on and off if he focuses hard enough. He’s got the software set to trigger an IR LED when the “strength” gets high enough. When the action starts, around 4:30 in the video, you can see that when he raises his arm the meter on the screen begins to raise and the TV turns on. Though not immediately useful, we can’t help but get a little excited seeing him literally turn his TV on with a thought.