Part of the draw of Arduino development is that it is open-source and cross-platform. It is hard to believe that it took this long but OpenSolaris can be added to the list of operating systems that love to work with Arduino. Although not officially supported, the device drivers for were added in build 113 of the OS and a patched version of the toolchain is available for download.
[Thanks Alexander]
The Remote Bike project, caught our eye today. Inspired by “cliff hangers” on the tv show “The Price Is Right”, [atduskgreg] has built his own version. In this version, the bike on the mountain makes progress, or slides back down the mountain based on the speed you pedal. If you maintain your target speed long enough, you make it to the top of the mountain and win. The RPMs are gathered from a stationary bike using a hall effect sensor, then piped to an Arduino that controls the bike via a stepper motor and string. That seems fun, and a decent alternative to biking through google maps or something. We have to wonder how long this would be amusing though. Then again, when you’re on a stationary bike you are usually just using a timer or a heart rate monitor anyway, so this is pretty cool.
[via flickr]
[drj113] wrote back to let us know his latest version of the infamous Word Clock, now in Arduino flavor. You may remember when we originally showed you the Word Clock back in September, while much hasn’t changed, he’s added and modified a few things to make it more user-friendly. Most notably is the use of Arduino instead of PIC, while some commentators will complain this as a waste of an Arduino, it is extending the project towards those who are less technically inclined. Other changes include a new case, dedicated time changing buttons, and blue LEDs (and who doesn’t love blue).
We would also like to give [Alex], one of our commentators, a shout out with is QlockTwo. Same Word Clock concept, but used acrylic, paper sheet, and stickers to produce a much smoother look.
Update: It would appear we’ve made a slight mistake, the original creator of the QlockTwo is actually [Ruud Burger], not [Alex]. Thanks [Ruud] for clearing that up.
While this is most likely overkill for a gas gauge, we do thank [VadimS] for sharing the information. He shows us how to build a capacitive liquid sensor using an Arduino, some foil and some wire. He’s basically detecting the difference in capacitance between the foil sheets. As he gets more water in the bottle, the capacitance goes up. At least we think thats what is going on. He has included the source code for the Arduino, both for handling the sensor and running the LCD display shown in the picture above. When completed, this will be used in his dune buggy for a gas gauge.
Nunk on Droise is an art installation where noise is made depending on how drunk you are. In a configuration that could be called a cthoilet, the sensors shown above are alcohol sensors. Though we initially thought this would be testing urine, the description states that it tests the breath of the participant. Unfortunately there aren’t any schematics or code, though you can see how it is all assembled from the flickr pool. You can also see a video demonstration of the prototype.
[flickr video=http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmillerid/4055251585/]
On rare occasion, the celestial bodies that control engineering and design awesomeness move into alignment and cast their blessed star dust upon a hacker. Today, we can witness the glorious outcome of such an alignment. Although almost unheard of, it’s a good omen that such a blessed hacker also be adorned with a wickedly furry face.
[Joel] wanted to up the ante for a yearly work gathering. He set out with the concept of Crushtoberfest, a test-your-strength game where a stake is hit with a mallet and the resulting force rings a bell. But bell ringing is for normal projects, [Joel’s] muse required LEDs and fire as a reward for success. In fact, Tom Selleck (god of all things mustache) becomes angry at successful contestants to the point that his eyes will flash red and flames shoot out of his ears.
The mechanical input is a clever design. The stake used as the target is a 6×6 block with some old tire tread affixed to the top of them. The stake rests on a piece of radiator hose that is sealed on one end and connected to a pressure sensor on the other. Radiator hose is resilient, so it takes quite a blow to cause much compression, which is then translated into a value by an Arduino via the pressure sensor. [Joel’s] gone to the effort of building gravitational deceleration into the progress tracker of the vertical string of LEDS. Too bad he didn’t have access to an addressable LED rope to make this easier, but he did pull it off nicely. He also goes into detail about prototyping and building some fireball modules.
Go now and read his blog (oldest at the top, newest at the bottom). We can call the experience nothing short of delightful.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmLU4GS7zAI]
This looks like a fun little project. [Chris] has built a tank that he is controlling using his iPhone. Constructed mainly of off the shelf parts, like an Arduino and an Xbee wireless unit, the tank is controlled via processing. You can see that it is fairly responsive as he changes the speed of the motors. You don’t need an iPhone for this, really to do exactly what he’s doing any multi-touch input would work. You can download the code for it from his site.
We’re a bit curious about the solar charging. How much power does this use? Doesn’t that panel look a bit small? How long does it take to charge?
[via HacknMod]
