The Arduboy Gets A Crank Mod

July 2, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

You’ve seen VR headsets and wearable video game controllers and flight yokes and every other type and kind of video game controller, but a crank? Yes, the Arduboy now has a crank modification in tribute to (or blatant ripoff of) the PlayDate, a video game console created by Panic and Teenage Engineering.

The basis for this build is the Arduboy, a miniature game system the size of a credit card. This game console features candy-like buttons, compatibility with the Arduino IDE, and a community that has produced dozens of games already. Where there’s software developers there’s inevitably a few hardware engineers waiting in the wings, and this is no exception. [bateske] created a crank mod for the Arduboy that gives this miniature, toy-like game console a crank. Ready to write a bass fishing simulator? This is your shot.

The hardware for this build consists of a 360° rotary encoder for the internals of the device. For the handle, [bateske] found an interesting ‘premium grinder for herbs and spices’ on Amazon. Shockingly, this crank handle just sort of works with the rotary encoder.

As for games, this is a brand new user interface for the Arduboy game console, so of course there are some interesting possibilities. There’s a fishing simulator that’s more interesting than real fishing and something like Flappy Bird only instead of flapping it’s bouncing over bottomless pits. You can check out this crank console out below.

Continue reading “The Arduboy Gets A Crank Mod” →

School’s In Session With Arduboy Curriculum

July 1, 2019 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

It’s hard not to be impressed by the Arduboy. In just a few short years, [Kevin Bates] went from proof of concept to a successful commercial product without compromising on his original open source goals. Today, anyone can develop a game for the Arduboy and have it distributed to owners all over the world for free. If you’ve ever dreamt of being a game developer, the Arduboy community is for you.

Realizing the low-cost hardware and open source software of the Arduboy makes it an excellent way to learn programming, [Kevin] is now trying to turn his creation into a legitimate teaching tool. He’s kicking off this new chapter in the Arduboy’s life with a generous offer: giving out free hardware to educators all over the world. Anyone who wants to be considered for the program just needs to write-up a few paragraphs on how they’d utilize the handheld game system in their class.

[Kevin] already knows the Arduboy has been used to teach programming, but those have all been one-off endeavours. They relied on a teacher that was passionate enough about the Arduboy to put in their own time and effort to create a lesson plan around it. So one of the main goals right now is getting an official curriculum put together so educators won’t have to start from scratch. The community has already developed 16 free lessons, but they’re looking for help in creating more and translating them into other languages.

While the details are still up in the air, [Kevin] also plans to travel to schools personally and help them get their Arduboy classes off the ground. He’s especially interested in developing countries and other areas that are disadvantaged educationally. Believing that the Arduboy is as much a way to teach effective leadership and teambuilding as it is programming, he thinks this program can truly make a difference.

Since [Kevin] first Rickrolled us with his prototype in 2014, we’ve seen the Arduboy project spread like wildfire through the hacker community. From figuring out how to play its games on other gadgets to developing an expansion cartridge for the real thing, the Arduboy has already done its fair share of inspiring. Here’s hoping it has just as much of an impact on the next generation of hackers once they get their hands on it.

Blisteringly Fast Machine Learning On An Arduino Uno

June 30, 2019 by Pat Whetman 23 Comments

Even though machine learning AKA ‘deep learning’ / ‘artificial intelligence’ has been around for several decades now, it’s only recently that computing power has become fast enough to do anything useful with the science.

However, to fully understand how a neural network (NN) works, [Dimitris Tassopoulos] has stripped the concept down to pretty much the simplest example possible – a 3 input, 1 output network – and run inference on a number of MCUs, including the humble Arduino Uno. Miraculously, the Uno processed the network in an impressively fast prediction time of 114.4 μsec!

Whilst we did not test the code on an MCU, we just happened to have Jupyter Notebook installed so ran the same code on a Raspberry Pi directly from [Dimitris’s] bitbucket repo.

He explains in the project pages that now that the hype about AI has died down a bit that it’s the right time for engineers to get into the nitty-gritty of the theory and start using some of the ‘tools’ such as Keras, which have now matured into something fairly useful.

In part 2 of the project, we get to see the guts of a more complicated NN with 3-inputs, a hidden layer with 32 nodes and 1-output, which runs on an Uno at a much slower speed of 5600 μsec.

This exploration of ML in the embedded world is NOT ‘high level’ research stuff that tends to be inaccessible and hard to understand. We have covered Machine Learning On Tiny Platforms Like Raspberry Pi And Arduino before, but not with such an easy and thoroughly practical example.

Scripting Language Rapidly Develops A Clock

June 27, 2019 by Al Williams 17 Comments

In the past, you might very well have started programming in Basic. It wasn’t very powerful language and it was difficult to build big projects with, but it was simple to learn, easy to use, and the interpreter made it easy to try things out without a big investment of time. Today you are more likely to get started using something like an Arduino, but it is easy to miss the accessible language and immediate feedback when you are doing simple projects. Annex WiFi RDS (Rapid Development Suite) is a scripting language for the ESP8266 that isn’t quite Basic, but it shares a lot of the same attributes. One example project from [cicciocb] is a scrolling dot matrix LED clock.

Continue reading “Scripting Language Rapidly Develops A Clock” →

Magnetic Attraction Of Microduino MCookie Modules

June 27, 2019 by Roger Cheng 8 Comments

We’ve seen countless different robot kits promoted for STEM education, every one of which can perform the robotic “Hello World” task of line following. Many were in attendance at Maker Faire Bay Area 2019 toiling in their endless loops. Walking past one such display by Microduino, Inc. our attention was caught by a demonstration of their mCookie modules in action: installing a peripheral module took less than a second with a “click” of magnets finding each other.

Many Arduino projects draw from an ecosystem of Arduino shields. Following that established path, Microduino had offered tiny Arduino-compatible boards and peripherals which connected with pins and headers just like their full-sized counterparts. Unfortunately their tiny size also meant their risk of pin misalignment and corresponding damage would be higher as well. mCookie addresses this challenge by using pogo pins for electrical contacts, and magnets to ensure proper alignment. Now even children with not-quite-there-yet dexterity can assemble these modules, opening up a market to a younger audience.

Spring loaded electric connections are a popular choice for programming jigs, and we’ve seen them combined with magnets for ideas like modular keyboards, and there are also LittleBits for building simple circuits. When packaged with bright colorful LEGO-compatible plastic mounts, we have the foundation of an interesting option for introductory electronics and programming. Microduino’s focus at Maker Faire was promoting their Itty Bitty Buggy, which at $60 USD is a significantly more affordable entry point to intelligent LEGO creations than LEGO’s own $300 USD Mindstorm EV3. It’ll be interesting to see if these nifty mCookie modules will help Microduino differentiate themselves from other LEGO compatible electronic kits following a similar playbook.

Smart Bike Helmet Is Wireless

June 26, 2019 by Al Williams 16 Comments

If you ride a bike, you probably share the road with a lot of cars. Unfortunately, they don’t always share the road very well with you. [Mech Tools] took a helmet, a few Arduinos, and some wireless transceivers and made headgear that shows when you stop and also shows turn signals. We were a little surprised, though, that the bike in question looks like a motorcycle. In most countries, motorcycle helmets meet strict safety standards and modifying them is probably not a good idea. However, it wasn’t exactly clear how the extra gear attached to the helmet, so it is hard to say if the project is very practical or not.

In particular, it looks as though the first version had the electronics just stuck to the outside of the helmet. The final one had things mounted internally and almost certainly had cuts or holes made for the lights. We aren’t sure which of those would be more likely to be a problem in the case of an accident.

Continue reading “Smart Bike Helmet Is Wireless” →

A Work Of Art That Also Receives AM And SSB

June 26, 2019 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

Over the winter, [Michael LeBlanc] thought a good way to spend his time during those long dark nights would be to scratch build his own direct conversion receiver. He was able to find plans for such a project easily enough online, but where’s the fun in following instructions? The final result incorporates what he found online with his own unique tweaks and artistic style.

[Michael] based his receiver on a modified approach to the DC40 created by [Ashhar Farhan], a name likely familiar to readers involved in amatuer radio. He further modified the design by swapping out the audio amplifier for a TDA2003A, and bolted on a digital tuner by way of an Arduino and a Si5351 clock generator. There’s a small OLED to show the current frequency, which is adjusted with a high-quality Bourns EM14 optical encoder so he can surf the airwaves in the comfort and style.

The digital tuner mated to the analog DC40 receiver gives the radio an interesting duality, which [Michael] really embraces with his enclosure design. From a practical standpoint he wanted to keep the two halves of the system in their own boxes to minimize any interference, but the 3D printed case exaggerates that practical consideration into a fascinating conversation piece.

The analog and digital compartments are askew, and their rotary controls are on opposite sides. The radio looks like it might topple over if it wasn’t for the fact that the whole thing is bolted together, complete with brass inserts for the printed parts. The integrated carry handle at the top somehow manages to make it look vintage and ultra-modern at the same time. Rarely do you see a printed enclosure that’s both meticulously designed inside and aesthetically pleasing externally. [Michael] earned his 3D Printing Merit Badge for sure with this one.

Continue reading “A Work Of Art That Also Receives AM And SSB” →