Custom Car Door Keypad

June 30, 2009 by Zach Banks 25 Comments

carkeypad

[Michael] has a keypad in his previous car’s door and he missed it enough to hack one into his Dodge Caliber. He bought a Ford keypad and mounted it inside his door with some custom electronics. He started with an Arduino nano to receive and authenticate button presses. This then splices into wires in the door that control the door lock. The program has a 5-digit code to unlock the door, but simply pressing 1 twice will lock the doors. He also implemented a lockout feature to prevent people from brute-forcing the combination. Although it isn’t wireless, it’s significantly simpler.

[thanks Michael]

OTTO, Beat Slicing Interface

June 29, 2009 by Eliot 12 Comments

otto

Create Digital Music has a great post on [Luca De Rosso]’s OTTO. Built as part of his masters’ thesis, it’s a unique tangible music interface. You load a sample into the software which displays it on the instrument surface. The user can then manipulate the sample using various hardware inputs while watching the LED representation. The device uses just one Arduino for the display and inputs. It works with Max/MSP and is designed to give the performer only the information they truly need. You can find more pictures of the device on Flickr and a picture of the guts on CDM. Embedded below is the ‘Getting Started’ video that shows it in use.

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Barbie’s Web Rover

June 29, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrb58Pcuos0]

[Hunter, Kyle, and Dylan] sent us some information on their Barbie Web Rover. It’s an old barbie power wheels jeep that’s been converted to a web enabled remote control car. They ripped out the old drive train and tore out the steering system. The rear tires are now independently driven for steering. It’s using an Arduino to control the motors and an Acer Aspire loaded with linux for the higher functions. It’s cool that they mention the farthest test being over 1600 miles away, but when it’s web enabled, does distance really matter?

They mention that the coolness factor is proportionate to the size and we have to agree, as long as they keep it small enough to not cause any real damage. You can build a web enabled rover with a little more effort from just a router, if you don’t want to give up your laptop.

Wireless Arduino Cat Food Dispenser

June 24, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee 14 Comments

catfooddispenser

Reader, [Andres Leon], has two adorable cats with very specific dietary needs. Instead of altering his schedule, he donned his hacking hat and designed a very solid cat food dispenser. The dispenser consists of a rotating drum with a slot in it and a PVC pipe Y-fitting to distribute the food evenly. The brains of the machine is an Arduino Deumillanove and an XBee module. The unit can be controlled by a web interface or it can run completely standalone. [Andres] ran into a problem where the drum’s resistance to turning varied based on how much food was inside. He solved this with a clever laser position indicator. A piece of plywood is lined up with the slot at the top so that whenever the slot is facing up it keeps the laser from shining on a photoresistor. The cats were afraid of the servo noise at first, but now they run to their bowls whenever they hear it.

Lexlrie

June 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

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

Lexlrie is basically a feed display. It can connect to twitter, facebook and we feel fine for its updates. What makes this project different is that it is supposed to alter its lighting based on the mood of the updates. The system looks for words like “better” and “sorry” and displays color patterns based on those. We have no idea what “better” should look like, but it’s a cool idea. You can get more details of its construction here. This project vaguely reminds of Pulse, which intended to show the emotion of blogger.com updates.

Wii MotionPlus + Arduino

June 23, 2009 by Zach Banks 13 Comments

wiimoteplus

[knuckles904] was able to use the new Wii MotionPlus with an Arduino. Nintendo has released the WM+ in order to detect the motion of the controller better. The Wiimote only detects acceleration, whereas the WM+ detects rotation along 3 axes. The Arduino communicates with it over I2C, the same protocol that is used with the Nunchuk. To connect the two devices, he used jumper wires, but breakout boards are also available. He was able to create some example code with help from wiibrew.org. When paired with a Nunchuk, which contains a 3-axis accelerometer, you can have a 6 degrees-of-freedom IMU for under $40, perfect for controlling your robots or logging data.

[via adafruit]

Arduino Nixie Shield

June 22, 2009 by Zach Banks 8 Comments

AN_Board_FirstBuild2

Reader [Bradley] sent in his ArduiNIX project, an Arduino shield designed for driving nixie tubes. The shield allows the Arduino to drive and multiplex nixie tubes without any additional hardware. These antique-looking displays are commonly hacked into clocks. It takes 9 volts from a wall wart and steps it up to over 200V in order to drive the displays. The shield is capable of multiplexing up to 80 individual elements. He has example code for driving a 6-digit display and a clock on his site. He is selling kits and completed shields too.

Related: Victorian nixie tube clock

[thanks Bradley!]