Open Source Weapon Makes You Puke

September 28, 2009 by Devlin Thyne 44 Comments

[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.

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Arduino Thermoscanner

September 25, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

thermoscanner2

[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.

Arduino-human Synthesizer

September 23, 2009 by Jake W 45 Comments

[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]

Defocusing LED Clock

September 21, 2009 by Devlin Thyne 25 Comments

[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.

Tweetidor, The Tweeting Humidor

September 21, 2009 by Matt Schulz 20 Comments

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.

BlokClok – Abstract Time Display

September 21, 2009 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

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.

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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?