Laser Cut Drum Kit

May 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

drums

[Segwaymonkey] picked up an arduino based drumkit circuit and needed a kit to place it on. He worked up a pretty cool design and had it laser cut out of acrylic. The cool part of the design is how he delt with the head motion of the drum. Each head has 4 “springs” that were also cut from the acrylic. The Arduino based drum circuit sits on a little pedestal in the middle, as though it were on display. We really like the design, but we have to wonder if a little noise dampening on the heads might be a good idea. He hasn’t released the plans, but says he might once he gets it perfect.

Snoozy The Sloth

May 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[vimeo = 4703152]

Snoozy the Sloth clings to you and sleeps. While this may sound easily done, the maker wanted the sloth to actually simulate breathing with exhaled breath to add to the realism. To do this, they had to build a “respiratory system” out of a rubber glove, a solenoid, and a couple pumps. This kind of toy can be very beneficial to special needs children. The lifelike and calm behavior helps the child connect to the toy. The pumps and solenoid are said to not be too distracting, but we are curious just how loud they are. This seems well executed, and much more sloth like than slothra, another sloth toy from last week. Were these guys in an Arduino powered sloth making class together?

Slothra, Arduino Powered Plushy Sloth

May 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 32 Comments

slothra

[Daniel] sent in this project. He tells us it’s an Arduino powered kid’s toy that “furiously swings his arms” when you squeeze his chest. As you can see in the video on the site, furious is up for interpretation. It is a sloth though, maybe that’s sloth furious. While it is cute and we do applaud the effort, anyone with children will agree that this is a step down in destruction for a 3 year old. You’re going to have to spice it up a bit, or give it a timer and make it free standing, make it roar or something to make it more appealing. What recommendations do you guys have to improve this toy?

Antique Phone Doorbell

May 13, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

doorbell

[Bryan] sent in this cool doorbell he made out of an antique phone. After seeing similar phones for $150 to $399, he picked one up on ebay for $10. After some cleaning and polishing, it was looking fantastic, but fairly useless. At this point, he broke it open and started hacking to turn it into a wireless doorbell. He picked up a cheap wireless doorbell and proceeded to gut it. The transmitter side got an aesthetic overhaul, a big fancy button and nice LED in a 50’s style were added. The receiver side got hacked up as well. It was incapable of pushing the required voltage to ring the phone’s bell, so he had to do some searching for a better circuit. Since his knowledge of electronics was limited, he was looking for something that could be plugged in and work without much modification. Eventually, he found the Silvercom AG1170-s5. At $7, he swiped it up quick. It may be a bit of overkill, but he’s using an arduino to trigger the whole thing when it receives the signal. You can download the Arduino sketch on the site.

Peggy 2 Super Pixels

May 6, 2009 by Eliot 15 Comments

rgb

[Windell] from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories took one of their Peggy 2 kits and gave it a little upgrade. The Peggy 2 is a programmable 25×25 LED display. It’s Arduino compatible and can accommodate big 10mm LEDs. Most people assemble them using just one color, but [Windell] decided to create giant RGB pixels by placing discrete red, green, blue, and white LEDs next to each other in the board. This creates a 12.5×12.5 grid of full color pixels. It’s an interesting effect and you should definitely check out the video embedded below which shows how the transition can be smoothed using a diffuser. Continue reading “Peggy 2 Super Pixels” →

Twittering Toilet

May 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 38 Comments

We wouldn’t want to let a week slip by without something new being made to twitter would we? This time it is a toilet. Don’t worry, they are sparing us the graphic details, it pretty much tweets every time it is flushed. As you can see in the picture above, they’re using an Arduino for the toilet/PC connection. If you really want to make something twitter, this might be a good starting point. It’s basically twittering every time a button is pushed. You can download the source code on the site as well as find a tutorial on Arduino basics.

[via astera]

Guitar Hero Macro Board

May 3, 2009 by Eliot 13 Comments

guitarheromacro

Doesn’t look like the Guitar Hero hacks will be slowing up any time soon. In this recent installment, [Thunderhammer3000] built a board to record Guitar Hero “songs”. It is wired inline with with the fret buttons and strum bar and records each of the key presses. Songs can be recorded at slow speed in practice mode and replayed at full speed. The board is Arduino compatible and has two optoisolator chips for collecting the button presses plus a small EEPROM for storage. The board fits easily inside the guitar body.