Autonomous Game Controllers

January 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

[vimeo=2727246]

On the off chance that you want to program a microcontroller to play your games for you, you should check this out. Near Future Laboratories has made a dongle that can allow an Arduino to operate as a PS2 or PS3 controller. You can see the Arduino running a random path generator in Katamari Damacy in the video above. They wanted to see how long it would take to clear a room. It managed to get almost all of them in about 70 minutes, only missing those that you have to cross a narrow bridge for. Actually, this could be quite useful in allowing people to create alternative input methods. You may recall reading about their early progress back in June 2008.

RepRap Motherboard

December 24, 2008 by Eliot 11 Comments

reprapmb-1

When the RepRap team found themselves pushing the limits of the Arduino, they started looking for alternatives. They found it in the ATMega644P. It has four times the memory and four times the RAM compared to the ATMega168 used in the standard Arduino. It also has 32 I/O pins. They ported the Arduino software to the microcontroller and started producing Sanguino boards. Now that the base design is nailed down, they’ve begun expanding it to their specific purpose. Pictured above is a prototype RepRap motherboard. While the Sanguino is barebones, this board has onboard connectors for all of the RepRap’s motors, so you can just plug it in. It is also designed to support the future Generation 3 electronics. Probably the most interesting feature is the SD card slot. The goal is to eventually have a board that can run the RepRap without a host computer if necessary; it will manufacture designs directly from the flash card.

Wii Nunchuck Controlled Servo Bot

December 17, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlukl5fLi7s]

[Stuart.Mcfarlan] is back. This time he has added Wii Nunchuck control to his servo bot. You may recall servo bot, or SERB, from a few weeks ago. Now the little bot can be controlled by either the joystick, or the gyroscope in the Nunchuck. Too bad its wired though, wireless is the next step right?

Baby Twitters Via Kicks

December 12, 2008 by Eliot 30 Comments

[Corey Menscher] built the Kickbee while attending ITP this Fall. It monitors his pregnant wife’s belly and updates Twitter, a microblogging service, every time the baby kicks. The device makes everyone aware of the baby’s movement, not just the expectant mother. It can also log the baby’s activity to monitor development. The sensors are piezos held in place with an elastic band. They’re connected to an Arduino Mini which connects to a host computer using a BlueSMIRF bluetooth module. The host Mac does the logging and twittering.

This is one of the many projects on display at the ITP Winter Show.

[Thanks, @readiness via Boing Boing]

Multitouch Pinball Instrument

December 9, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

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

This is an interesting twist on multi touch input. [s9lucas] is using a simple multitouch system as an instrument that uses solenoids and pinballs to make music. He has taken the basic multitouch tutorial and combined it with an Arduino bell tower. The end result is possibly more fun to watch than it is to listen to, but that’s fine.

Nintendo Keyless Entry

December 8, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm7daf36Mk]

The Nintendo keyless entry system will vigilantly guard your door from intruders. Enter the right code and you get access, enter the wrong code and it will deny you and take your picture. [action_owl] did a fantastic job on this lock, using mainly recycled parts like an old CDRom and an Arduino. It works both with or without the computer. If you choose not to use the computer, you don’t get pictures of the people who entered the code wrong.

We like this project, but we feel it needs to be pointed out that this lock is pretty useless. Everyone already knows the code to get in is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A.

Arduino Shield Scaffold

December 6, 2008 by Eliot 11 Comments

arduinoshield

[Garrett] from macetech has been prototyping shields for the Arduino development platform. Arduino’s have an inexplicable nonstandard spacing between two of the banks of output pins. This means that you can’t use regular perfboard with them. To make the design process quicker, [Garrett] has put together an Eagle file that just includes the male header pins. The file also has a line indicating the tall lower board components so you can avoid creating shorts.