RFID Lock Keeps Your Bike Safe

April 17, 2016 by Al Williams 30 Comments

What do you do with an RFID chip implanted in your body? If you are [gmendez3], you build a bike lock that responds to your chip. The prototype uses MDF to create a rear wheel immobilizer. However, [gmendez3] plans on building a version using aluminum.

For the electronics, of course, there’s an Arduino. There’s also an RC522 RFID reader. We couldn’t help but think of the Keyduino for this application. When the system is locked, the Arduino drives a servo to engage the immobilizer. To free your rear wheel, simply read your implanted chip. The Arduino then commands the servo to disengage the immobilizer. You can see the system in operation in the video below.

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Minions Turn Your Keyboard Into A Bluetooth Keyboard

April 14, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

Evil geniuses usually have the help of some anonymous henchmen or other accomplices, but for the rest of us these resources are usually out of reach. [Evan], on the other hand, is on his way to a helpful army of minions that will do his bidding: he recently built a USB-powered minion that turns a regular PS/2 mouse and keyboard into a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

[Evan] found his minion at a McDonald’s and took out essentially everything inside of it, using the minion as a case for all of the interesting bits. First he scavenged a PS/2 port from an old motherboard. An Arduino Nano is wired to an HC-05 Bluetooth chip to translate the signals from the PS/2 peripherals into Bluetooth. The HC-05 chip is a cheaper alternative to most other Bluetooth chips at around $3 vs. $40 for more traditional ones. The programming here is worth mentioning: [Evan] wrote a non-interrupt based and non-blocking PS/2 library for the Arduino that he open sourced which is the real jewel of this project.

Once all the wiring and programming is done [Evan] can turn essentially any old keyboard and mouse into something that’ll work on any modern device. He also put an NFC tag into the minion’s head so that all he has to do to connect the keyboard and mouse is to swipe his tablet or phone past the minion.

If you’re looking for an interesting case for your next project, this McDonald’s Minion toy seems to be pretty popular. PS/2 keyboards are apparently still everywhere, too, despite their obsolescence due to USB. But there are lots of other ways to get more use out of those, too.

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Open Source Robotics With WireBeings

April 13, 2016 by Adam Fabio 9 Comments

Everyone needs a cute robotic buddy, right? [Matthew Hallberg] created WireBeings, an open source 3D printed robotic platform. Looking like a cross between Wall-E and Danbo, WireBeings is designed around the Arduino platform. We do mean the entire platform. You can fit anything from an Arduino micro to a Mega2560 stacked with 3 shields in its oversized head. There’s plenty of room for breadboards and custom circuits.

WireBeings is designed to be 3D printed. All the non-printable parts are commonly available. Gear motors, wheels, the ubiquitous HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, and a few other parts are all that is needed to bring this robot to life. Sketches are downloaded via USB. Once running, WireBeings can communicate via an HC-06 Bluetooth module. If the Arduino isn’t enough power for whatever project you’re working on, no problem. [Matt] designed WireBeings to carry a smartphone. Just connect the robot and phone via Bluetooth, and let the phone’s processor do all the heavy lifting. What if you don’t have a spare phone? Check our report on hacks using prepaid Android Smartphones.

We could see WireBeings as the centerpiece for a “learn Arduino” class at a hackerspace. Start with the classic blinky sketch on one of the robot’s eyes. Build from there until the students have a fully functioning robot.

There is definitely room for improvement on the WireBeings project. [Matt] made the rookie mistake of going with a single 9-volt battery to power his creation. While a 9V is fine for the Arduino, those motors will quickly drain it. [Matt’s] planning on moving to a LiPo in the future. Why not stop by the project page and give him a hand?

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Arduino Comes To The Raspberry Pi, Linux ARM Devices

April 12, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 67 Comments

Arduino is the perfect introduction to microcontrollers and electronics. The recent trend of powerful, cheap, ARM-based single board Linux computers is the perfect introduction to computer science, programming, and general Linux wizardry. Until now, though, Arduino and these tiny ARM computers have been in two different worlds. Now, finally, there are nightly builds of Arduino IDE on the Raspberry Pi and other single board Linux computers.

The latest Arduino build for ARM Linux popped up on the arduino.cc downloads page early this week. This is the result of an incredible amount of work from dozens of open source developers across the Arduino project. Now, with just a simple download and typing ‘install’ into a terminal, the Arduino IDE is available on just about every single board Linux computer without having to build the IDE from source. Of course, Arduino has been available on the Raspberry Pi for a very long time with sudo apt-get install arduino, but this was an older version that cannot work with newer Arduino boards.

Is this distribution of the Arduino IDE the same you would find on OS X and Windows? Yep, everything is the same:

While this is really just arduino.cc improving their automated build process and putting a link up on their downloads page, it does make it exceptionally easy for anyone to set up a high school electronics lab. The Raspberry Pi is almost a disposable computing device, and combining it with Arduino makes for a great portable electronics lab.

Colorful Fan And LED Controller For 3D Printer

April 11, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 5 Comments

[Dave] just couldn’t take the ambient noise from his Lulzbot Mini anymore, so he built a fancy fan controller for it.

He measured some points on the printer’s Rambo controller board to see what actually got hot during a print. The hottest components were the motor drivers, so he taped a thermistor to them. He also placed one in the printer’s power supply. He replaced the main fan with a low noise model from Noctua (which have the most insanely fancy packaging you could imagine for a computer fan). The software on an Arduino Nano now idles the fan at an inaudible 650RPM, if an unacceptable temperature increase is detected, it increases the fan speed for a period, keeping everything nice and quietly cool.

The graphics display was added because, “why not?” A classic reason. The graphics runs on a hacked version of Adafruit’s library. It took him quite a while to get the graphics coded, but they add that extra bit of high-tech flair to keep the cool factor of the 3d printer up before they become as ubiquitous as toasters in the home. The code, fritzing board layout, 3D models, and a full build log is available at his site.

Brazillian Class Creates Digital Board Game

April 10, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 10 Comments

A class in Brazil was given the assignment to make a board game. [Marcelo], presumably, heard his son lamenting how lame it was going to be if the board was just cardboard with some drawings on, and came to the rescue.

fusion between Operation and one of those disease transmitters at the doctors office — A match meant to be.

Working with the class, they came up with the rules of the game. We’re not certain what those are, but it involves a regular game board, a flashing light circle with numbers, and a fusion between Operation and one of those disease transmitters commonly found at the doctor’s office. You can try to puzzle them out from the video after the break.

The brains of the board is an Arduino with an external EEPROM for all the sound effects and other data needed for this construction. Everything is laid out on a beautifully done home etched PCB. It’s too bad the other side of the board isn’t visible.

We’re sure the kids learned a lot working with [Marcelo]. It would have been nice if a traveling wizard came to some of our earlier classes in school and showed us just how much cool stuff you can do if you know electronics.

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The Most Immersive Pinball Machine: Project Supernova

April 8, 2016 by Moritz Walter 30 Comments

Over at [Truthlabs], a 30 year old pinball machine was diagnosed with a major flaw in its game design: It could only entertain one person at a time. [Dan] and his colleagues set out to change this, transforming the ol’ pinball legend “Firepower” into a spectacular, immersive gaming experience worthy of the 21st century.

A major limitation they wanted to overcome was screen size. A projector mounted to the ceiling should turn the entire wall behind the machine into a massive 15-foot playfield for anyone in the room to enjoy.

With so much space to fill, the team assembled a visual concept tailored to blend seamlessly with the original storyline of the arcade classic, studying the machine’s artwork and digging deep into the sci-fi archives. They then translated their ideas into 3D graphics utilizing Cinema4D and WebGL along with the usual designer’s toolbox. Lasers and explosions were added, ready to be triggered by game interactions on the machine.

To hook the augmentation into the pinball machine’s own game progress, they elaborated an elegant solution, incorporating OpenCV and OCR, to read all five of the machine’s 7 segment displays from a single webcam. An Arduino inside the machine taps into the numerous mechanical switches and indicator lamps, keeping a Node.js server updated about pressed buttons, hits, the “Lange Change” and plunged balls.

The result is the impressive demonstration of both passion and skill you can see in the video below. We really like the custom shader effects. How could we ever play pinball without them?

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