Music Challenge Has You Flapping Your Wrist To Make Sounds

February 2, 2013 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

glove-based-music-challenge

This glove controller let you play a musical game. The challenge is to perform the correct wrist motions at the right tempo to play the intro to the song Where is my Mind by the Pixies. This is demonstrated in the video clip after the break.

We often see flex sensors used on the fingers of glove projects, but this one does it all with an accelerometer. That module, along with the Piezo buzzer used for playback are affixed to the small breadboard on the back side of his hand. Rubber bands connect the Arduino to his third and forth fingers. The tempo and rhythm are pre-programmed but the tone generated is based on the gravity reading at the start of each note. If you don’t have your hand positioned correctly the wrong tone will be played.

The code was published in link at the top. It would be fun to see this altered as a hacked Simon Says game.

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Heat-seeking Firebot Drowns Out The Flames

November 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

This robot can find and extinguish fires automatically. It is the culmination of an Embedded Design class project from last school year. [Dan] and his classmates developed a turret that holds both a spray nozzle and heat sensor which would be a fantastic building block for a real-life tower defense game.

The jewel of the sensor array is a TPA81 thermopile array. Note the use of the term ‘array’ in the name. This is more like eight temperature sensors aligned with each other. By monitoring them all, the direction from which the most heat is coming can be determined. Once it’s zeroed in on the fire getting water to the right place can be a difficult task. That’s where the other sensors come into play. An accelerometer allows the bot to determine the angle of the spray nozzle (a weed sprayer was used in this case). An ultrasonic range finder and few algorithms let the Arduino which drives it all make sure that the arc of the water lands on the hot spot. This is all shown quite clearly in the clip below the jump.

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LED Cyber Eyes; More Nerdy Than Just Taping Your Glasses

October 5, 2012 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Regular glasses are okay, but these light up and respond to your movement. [Dr. Iguana] is at it again, designing a very interestingly shaped PCB to augment your visual augmentation devices.

The circuit board has two thin curving wings which conform to the shape of a pair of glasses. In the middle there’s a larger area that holds most of the components but it’s still smaller than a common coin cell battery that powers the device. Over each eye there are a half dozen red LEDs which are driven by a PIC 12F1840. It can flash a bunch of patterns the but the interactivity is the real gem of the project. The doctor included an MMA8450 3-axis accelerometer. As you can see in the clip after the break, shaking your head this way and that will be reflected in the pattern of lights.

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Fantastic Programming Makes This Arduino Gaming Device Something Special

October 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

The hardware that went into this Arduino gaming console is just fine. But the coding that produced this game called Twisted SNAKE is beyond compare. [Rodot] has programmed several games for the hardware, which uses an Arduino, 160×168 TFT screen, a 3 axis accelerometer, and two input buttons. If you’re interested, there is a forum thread in which he talks a bit more about the hardware design. But you’re not going to want to pass up either of the two videos embedded after the break.

The first clip shows off a bouncing-ball platforming game. The accelerometer moves the ball back and forth, and the top scrolling level brings more ledges into play. This in itself is a great game. But the Twisted SNAKE game shown off in the second video makes our own ARM-based Snake game look like a 3-year-old programmed it. [Rodot] filled up all of the program memory of the ATmega328 chip to make this happen. There’s a menu system which allows for color themes and difficulty selection. The game play itself lets the snake travel anywhere it wishes with the tail following behind in graceful curves. Wow!

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Kalman Filter Keeps Your Bot Balanced

September 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

If you’re looking to improve the stability of your self balancing robot you might use a ~~simple~~ horrifying equation like this one. It’s part of the journey [Lauszus] took when developing a sensor filtering algorithm for his balancing robot. He’s not breaking ground on new mathematical ideas, but trying to make it a bit easier for the next guy to use a Kalman filter. It’s one method of suppressing noise and averaging data from the sensors commonly used in robotic applications.

His robot uses a gyroscope and accelerometer to keep itself upright on just two wheels. The combination of these sensors presents an interesting problem in that accelerometer input is most accurate when sampled over longer periods, and a gyroscope is the opposite. This filter takes those quirks into account, while also factoring out sensor noise. Despite the daunting diagram above, [Lauszus] did a pretty go job of breaking down the larger function and showing us where to get the data and how to use it in microcontroller code.

Monitoring A Clothes Washer With An Accelerometer

July 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Viktor’s] washing machine did a good job of cleaning his clothes, but it kept a bit too quiet about it. The machine doesn’t have an audible alert to let him know the cycle has finished. He decided to build his own alarm which can just be slapped on the side of the machine.

You can see that a couple of magnets hold the board to the metal housing of the washer. The board doesn’t actually connect to any of the machine’s circuitry so this should work about equally as well for any unit. The detection is based on motion, thanks to a Freescale MMA7361 3-axis accelerometer. When he starts a load of wash he flips the power switch for the board on. The PIC 12F683 that drives the device starts monitoring the accelerometer for changes. If it goes for more than about one minute without reading motion the piezo buzzer starts beeping. It’s a fun and easy solution along the same line of this oven pre-heat alarm add-on.

Printing And Programming A Self-balancer

June 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

The Hackaday staff isn’t in agreement on 3d printers. Some of us are very enthusiastic, some are indifferent, and some wonder what if they’re as widely useful as the hype makes them sound. But we think [Jason Dorweiler’s] self balancing robot is as strong a case as any that 3d printing should be for everyone!

Don’t get us wrong. We love the robot project just for being a cool self-balancer. Seeing the thing stand on its own (video after the break) using an Arduino with accelerometer and gyroscope sensors is pure win. But whenever we see these we always think of all the mechanical fabrication that goes into it. But look at the thing. It’s just printed parts and some wooden dowels! How easy is that?

Sure, sure, you’ve got to have access to the printer, it needs to be well calibrated, and then you’ve got to make the designs to be printed out. But these hurdles are getting easier to overcome every day. After all, there’s no shortage of people to befriend who want nothing more than to show off their Makerbot/RepRap/etc.

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