EDuino – Arduino Or AVR Breakout?

September 19, 2009 by Mike Szczys 42 Comments

eduino-b_na_breadboard

We’ve had a lot of requests in the comments for more Arduino centered posts so we were happy when [Njay] told us about his EDuino board. This is a minimal Arduino clone that has a crystal and its capacitors, a pull-up resistor and button on the reset pin, and a detachable serial programming connection. He also has a breadboard-friendly version seen above with all the interface pins on one side of the board. This is certainly a useful project and we’re glad to see the board files available for download. This does get us thinking… is this an Arduino, or is it an AVR ATmega168 breakoutboard that happens to use the Arduino boot loader and programming language?

RepRap Milling Machine

September 19, 2009 by Jake W 18 Comments

three axis cnc robot with vacuum attachment

[Chris] liked Cartesian RepRap idea so much that he decided to design his master’s diploma project around it. Though it uses most of the same parts as the RepRap (even the PCBs), [Chris] has adapted it so it does milling rather than 3D printing. Most of the parts (such as the stepper motors) were harvested from old inkjet printers and typewriters. The thee-axis CNC machine can already etch and carve styrofoam at an impressively high resolution. To deal with all of the debris that comes with milling, a vacuum attachment (shown attached) was created. [Chris] is considering adapting it so it can work with wood and aluminum as well. Best of all, it uses standard G-code files, just like the RepRap. A publication by [Chris] on the project is also available through his website. No plans to release a kit have been announced yet, but we’ll wait and see. If any commenter knows of an open source CNC milling machine available as a kit, feel free to post a link to it below.

Arduino Command Interpreter Shell

September 17, 2009 by Matt Schulz 18 Comments

F77LQEPFYTCLILR.MEDIUM

A lot of people like fancy GUIs and nice graphics, but some of us just feel more at home in a command prompt. [nevdull] is one of those people. Instead of just using the Arduino dev tools that are available for download, he wanted the ability to shell into his Arduino, so he created AVR Shell. AVR Shell is a UNIX-like shell that allows you to “log in” to your Arduino/AVR and see what’s really going on; letting you read registers, scale the CPU speed, create/edit/delete variables, and even set up timers. The shell is even user-customizable! Those of you interested in Arduino shells might also check out bitlash, another open source CLI. Someone ought to hook this up to the Internet enabled Furby and get Flite compiled on there, letting us shell into a Furby from miles away to make it talk.

[Thanks Leesam]

Router/Twitter/Arduino Clock

September 16, 2009 by Jake W 56 Comments

[Kyle] decided to build the above LED clock for his church. Though it may look impressive enough, it is also hiding loads of features. [Kyle] wanted to make the clock as easy to control as possible, so rather than use buttons or dials to control what is being displayed, he used Twitter. The clock is connected to the internet through a Linksys WRT54GL. The router was hacked so not only does it supply the connection to Twitter, it also parses all of the replies the clock’s feed gets. The clock responds to commands to turn it on or off, run a countdown before service, display the number of viewers on the church’s live stream, and display a sequence of numbers. The time never needs to be set, as it is synched from the internet. The circuit for actually driving the display is based off a PIC, but it was changed to run off an Arduino.

Using MatchBox Cars As A Switch

September 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 78 Comments

cars

[atduskgreg] posted this interesting setup to flickr. He’s using two toy cars as a switch. He has wired into their metal undercarriages so when they collide, the circuit closes. We’ve seen some pretty nifty home made interface items, but usually they are posted with a clear purpose or a project. This one is a little puzzling. Does he intend to keep using the cars or was he just fooling around? Is he working on a toy that does something when they crash? Was he merely bored and wanted to see what he could attach to his Arduino. We may never know.

BBox MIDI Drum Sequencer

September 14, 2009 by Zach Banks 10 Comments

bbox

We’ve covered sequencers before, but reader [Johan] sent in his latest project that is much more minimalistic approach. Dubbed the BBox, he based his drum generator on an Arduino and an LCD display. Rather than synthesizing sound, the Arduino just outputs MIDI which is then interpreted by his Roland Juno-D. In building the device he used a favorite trick of ours to keep the interface clean. He then found an awesome banana box to use as a case. Although, the project may not be as functional as some of the others out there, it certainly has flair. Video of it in action after the break.

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How To Build A Life-sized Electronic Game

September 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

life_size_light_games

We’re very impressed with [Steve’s] Electronic Snowball Fight game. It consists of two life-sized players standing opposite of each other. Each can throw a snowball or duck, the object is to hit the other person and not get hit yourself. He’s utilized a lot of good building techniques that could be easily adapted to other types of game play. Continue reading “How To Build A Life-sized Electronic Game” →