Bus systems on campus can often be frustrating. You’re standing at the stop waiting and you don’t know if it would just be faster to walk. If you have a WaitLess tracking system at your stop, you can see exactly where the bus is and make that decision much easier. The unit is self contained, solar, and equipped with wireless internet. With an Arduino at it’s core, it displays the current location of the bus by lighting an LED on a map. You can see a video of it in action after the break.
[flickr video=3479713449]
This art display system was created by [Peter Sand]. It is called Plant Fasting and is comprised of a giant robot with interchangeable tools for various gardening tasks. Though the system is mostly automated, it can be controlled via a game pad. It has an Arduino as its brain and it looks like he’s done a completely custom setup for powering the interchangeable pieces.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has put out this nice tool. It’s a Zif socket for Arduino. If you’re doing a lot of flashing, this could be a nice addition to keep from having to pry your chip out every time. Plus, it looks cool in a soviet era technology kind of way.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pcAsEUOW9Q]
[Andy] wrote in to show us how he hacked his Pleo to be controlled by a Wii Nunchuck. He has installed Xbee units for the communication as well as written a “skit” that allows the Pleo to just stand there and wait for commands. He is using an Arduino to interpret the Nunchuck input and send it to the Pleo. It’s a pretty cool proof of concept, but the response time is pretty slow. This might be due to the Arduino’s slower serial communication rate. Yes, we said you might want to refrain from hacking them, due to their impending extinction, but did you expect us to stick to that? If you’re going to dig into one, you may also be interested in how to hack the Pleo for face recognition and remote control.
[vimeo=4038918]
[Steve] is in the MFA Design and Technology program at parsons, and as part of his studies, has built a couple really interesting projects. First, the Beat boxxx, as seen in the video above, is an 80’s retro looking portable beat looper. You create and loop your beats at the time of playing using simple hand gestures. The look is great, for those who enjoy cardboard and magic marker, though we think some tonal variation and possibly a wider pitch variation would really make this fun.
His second project is Speak to Me/Breathe. This project was meant to be a commentary on security in our daily information. He is visually displaying the braille symbols to spell out his emails. If any person were to spend the effort, they could decipher his emails. The finish on this project is quite nice, you can see a video of the display after the break.
Reader [Joe Saavedra] sent in his latest project: the spatialized umbrella. The base of each umbrella rib features an LED, speaker, and distance sensor. These are connected to an ATMega168 microcontroller running the Arduino environment. The IR sensor triggers a rain drop sound based on proximity. Shorter distances mean more droplets are played. The sounds are generated using a lookup table and the digital pins. You can see the demo video embedded below.
Using the Arduino environment without the associated board is part of another idea that [Joe] is working on. The MapDuino Project uses the standard Arduino hardware for programming, but then transfers the chip to a more barebones circuit in target project. They based their initial work on the ITP breadboard Arduino. Continue reading “Spatialized Umbrella”
[RazorConcepts] has built this cool automated turret. It is a home made frame with an airsoft gun, a Roboduino development board, a rangefinder, camera, and some servos. They programmed it to keep up constant random banter from the game as well as respond appropriately do different inputs. For example, it complains when you pick it up or knock it over as well as announcing if it has acquired a target. The range finder is mounted on its own servo which constantly sweeps back and forth, so the turret itself mainly sits still. You can see that the tracking is not so great in the video. [RazorConcepts] notes in the instructable that this is because the main focus was just to make it for “show”. We’ve seen our fair share of turrets before. We think he did a good job, but if it is just for show, maybe spend some more time on a nice body and smoother motion.
