[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uXIqQxarYI]
[atduskgreg] posted this cool looking rig. That’s a batting glove, chopped up and equipped with a flex sensor and a pressure sensor. The end goal was to create a new method of drawing. You can see he’s interfaced with the servos decently. It seems fairly responsive and intuitive. Looking at his results though, make us wonder if all that effort was worth it. We would probably apply this rig to some kind of animatronics.
[Limor] of Adafruit Industries and the Ice Tube Clock has made her own open source non-lethal weapon: The Bedazzler. After attending a conference by the DHS where she saw the big-budget Dazzler, she decided to make her own. Thirty-six LEDs, six switching FETs, a Boarduino, and a former flashlight later, the Bedazzler makes a better rave toy than a weapon. It doesn’t work as-is, but we figure it will only be a matter of time before someone hacks this to make people… umm hack. See the video after the break.
[Steve] sent in a tip to show us his Thermography scanner. Constructed from an Arduino, two servos, a thermal sensor and a little bit of code, it is fairly simple. The results aren’t groundbreaking. You can see his examples are fairly low resolution and took about 30 seconds to capture. It isn’t bad for a quick project though. The source code is available on his site.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IObPkUFq0hg]
(Thanks to [Aaron] for the tip) As a promo for [Calvin Harris], some of the creative minds at Sony Music have put together an Arduino-based sythesizer composed of 15 bikini clad babes. By analyzing which circuits are closed, the Arduino Mega is able to tell a sequencer which sample to play. The only innovation happens to be that the circuits are painted onto the aforementioned girls with a conductive body paint known as Bare.
Developed by students at the Royal College of Art, the paint is not available for purchase, but they are willing to mix a batch up for art installations or performances. Technical stats (such as resistance) have not been released, but for a washable paint it seems to be performing quite well.
How was the whole project set up? The video below reveals all:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up1wraRnriI]
[Dennis] has created a well-documented and very beautiful clock in his latest project. This clock stands out from the other clock projects we have covered with its unique display. The seven segment LED displays mounted on a sled that moves them back and forth behind an array of fiber optic lenses, effectively taking the display out of focus at certain points. Currently, a Dorkboard controls the sled, moving it at random intervals. The case is machined and polished aluminium, the top buttons are ball bearings.
As cigar aficionados will tell you, cigars should be stored in climate controlled humidors to keep them in best condition for smoking. Most of the time a humidor is just a simple air-tight box with a hygrometer attached, which measures the relative humidity inside the box. Feeling as though he needed more control over the environment he kept his cigars in, [Justin] created the Tweetidor, a humidor that tweets its current temperature and humidity. Yes, you guessed it; the project is built around an Arduino. It’s a simple, useful project that is well documented and would be fun to recreate if you’re into cigars (and not tired of Twitter or Arduinos yet.) Combine this with the laser lighter and you’ve got a pretty nice setup.
Clocks made from blinking LEDs always make for fun projects. [Earthshine] built a clock that displays time abstractly using an 8×8 RGB LED matrix. The video embedded after the break illustrates how to read the time but here’s the gist of it: One LED is illuminated in the outside box of LEDs and moved in a clockwise motion to approximate seconds. Inside of this, there are four quadrants; upper left indicates hour-tens digit, upper right hour-ones, lower left minute-tens, and lower right minute-ones. This certainly makes for an interesting conversation piece!
There is no schematic and no code available but it’s really the concept that we’re interested in. If you must know, [Earthshine] bases this build around an Arduino. A DS1307 real time clock keeps the time, while four 74HC595 shift registers are utilized to control the three LED colors and the multiplexing.
