1Sheeld Uses Your SmartPhone As An Arduino Accessory

October 29, 2013 by Adam Fabio 34 Comments

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The Arduino can be a bit of a gateway board. You start with an Uno, then a shield, then another. Before you know it, you have an entire collection of shields. This is the problem 1Sheeld wants to solve. 1Sheeld allows a you to use your cell phone as a sensor and I/O suite for your Arduino, replacing many existing shields. We think this will be a great idea, especially with all the older phones coming off contract these days. The sensor capabilities of the average smartphone, as well as the LCD and touchscreen I/O capabilities could make for an interesting pairing.

Currently the 1Sheeld page is just a sign up for an upcoming kickstarter, which leaves many details to the imagination. It appears that the 1Sheeld will be a bluetooth based board. A few questions do remain to be answered though – will the 1Sheeld use the Android ADK? The software is what we’re waiting to see. The software running in the 1Sheeld module bluetooth chip will be important, but the software running phone side will be the real make or break of this module. We would love to see more smartphones being used for hardware hacking rather than collecting dust once they’ve been replaced.

[Via TechCrunch]

Learn Wireless Sensor Networks With Nanode

October 25, 2013 by Adam Fabio 3 Comments

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Getting a device on the internet is great – but what if you want to monitor multiple wireless sensors? The [WickedDevice] crew have been publishing a tutorial series focusing on just that. Their weapon of choice is the Nanode, an Arduino based wireless sensor system we’ve seen a few times in the past. So far the first and second parts have been posted up. Part one starts with an explanation of the Arduino and Nanode platform, and takes us through connecting the Nanode to a wireless temperature sensor. Part two walks through the hardware and code changes to add multiple wireless sensors to the system. Part three will focus on getting the entire network up on the internet, and piping data onto the Xively data hosting site.

This tutorial does begin a bit on the basic side, covering the installation of the Arduino software environment. This may seem a bit simplistic for some of our readers, but we think this type of tutorial is necessary. It helps ‘newbies’ get started down what could otherwise be a difficult path. For more advanced readers, it’s easier to skip past steps you already know than it is to try to hunt down information that isn’t there.

Old Fax Machine Shows Signs Of Life

October 24, 2013 by Adam Fabio 5 Comments

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[Dmitry] is a Moscow based artist. He’s also a an avid circuit bender and hardware hacker. His latest project is entitled “signes de vie” or signs of life. [Dmitry] started with an Arduino and an old thermal fax machine. He removed the thermal print head and replaced it with a row of 10 LEDs. These old fax machines would use rolls of paper, cutting each sheet of as it was printed. [Dmitry] kept the roll system, but treated his paper with fluorescent dye. As the paper passes under the LEDs, it pauses for a moment and the LEDs are flashed. This causes a ghostly glow to remain on the paper for several minutes as the next rows are printed.

While [Dmitry] could have made this the world’s biggest tweet printer, he chose to go a more mathematical route. Each printed row of dots represents a generation of one-dimensional cellular automata. Cellular automation is a mathematical model of generations of cells. All cells exist on a grid, and can be alive or dead. The number of neighboring live cells determines if any given cell will live on to the next generation. One common implementation of cellular automation is Conway’s Game of Life. In [Dmitry’s] implementation, a bank of switches select which of the 256 common cellular automata rules controls the colony. A second bank selects how long each generation lasts – from 1 to 18 seconds.

We really like how the paper becomes a printed, yet temporary history of the colony. [Dmitry] doesn’t say if he’s using a single long strip of paper, or if he created a loop. We’re hoping for the latter. Finally a useful implementation of the old black fax loop prank.

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Arduino-Controlled Single-Leaf Shutter

October 23, 2013 by Phillip Ryals 4 Comments

[Kevin] has made an interesting camera shutter mechanism using an Arduino and a solenoid. To keep it extremely simple, he is only controlling a single leaf. In the linked video, you can see him take it through its paces from 1/125 seconds up to infinite. This is, of course, a proof of concept, and [Kevin] mentions using smaller components to make everything fit easily inside a Holga-like body. As he points out in the video’s comments, digitally controlling the flash would be a simple matter as well.

A basic camera is incredibly simple to make, and [Kevin’s] design certainly isn’t complicated. That said, if you look at the big picture, [Kevin] is demonstrating how feasible it could be to build an entirely custom camera with a standard microcontroller as the brain. We can’t help but think of all of the possibilities when you are able to control the entire photo taking process.

Interestingly, [Kevin] is also behind this twin lens reflex Kickstarter project from earlier in the year. It will be interesting to see what other camera-related hacks we will see from him.

HeartBeat Boombox Creates Bio Beats

October 22, 2013 by Adam Fabio 3 Comments

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If you happened to be wandering the hall of science during MakerFaire NY, you may have noticed a woman walking around with a rather odd boombox strapped around her neck. That was [Sophi Kravitz] with her HeartBeat Boombox. Thankfully [Sophi] lives within driving distance of Makerfaire, and didn’t attempt to get through airport security with her hardware. She started with three medical grade pulse oximeters. These oximeters output a “beep” for every beat of your heart. [Sophi] rolled her own AVR board running Arduino firmware to capture pulses on their way to the oximeter audio transducer. The AVR uses a sound board to convert the pulses into various percussion sounds. The pulse indicators also activate one of three LED strips.

[Sophi’s] biggest frustrations with the hack were the JST connectors on the LIPO batteries powering the entire system. She found that they fell apart rather easily. We’ve used JST connectors in the past with no problem, so we’re guessing she ended up with one of the many knock off connectors out there. [Sophi] tied the entire system together with a custom milled acrylic plate mounted to the front of the boombox.

The final result was very slick. With three people connected to the finger inputs of the pulse oximeters, some complex beats could be formed. We thought we were listening to dubstep when she first walked by. One feature we would like to see implemented would be the ability to record and play back some of the beats created by the boombox.

Easy-phi: An Open Source Platform For Experimenters

October 22, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 32 Comments

As a few of Hackaday readers may already know, my day job involves working with high speed electronics. For the last few months, my team at [Université de Genève] in Switzerland has been working on an open source platform (mostly) targeted for experimenters: the easy-phi project. The main idea is to build a simple, cheap but intelligent open hardware/software platform consisting of a 19″ frame (or smaller), which can house a big variety of electronic modules. Hobbyist would therefore only make/buy the modules that would suit their needs and control them through a web page / standalone application / Labview module.

I detailed in more depth on my website the technical aspects of the project. To give you a quick and simple overview, the rack is essentially a USB hub that connects all the modules to a Cubieboard. It also integrates a few synchronization signals, a clock and a monitoring system for voltages, temperatures, power consumption. The modules are made of template + module specific electronics. The template electronics are part of the ‘easy-phi standard’, they consist of the Arduino compatible SAM3X8E microcontroller and of a few other power related components. This ensures electrical and firmware compatibility between the rack and modules that you guys may develop. It is important to note that the modules are enumerated on the USB bus as composite CDC (communication device) and MSC (mass storage). The CDC is used to configure the module while the MSC allows you to grab its documentation, resources, and standalone application in case you use the module without the rack.

The chosen schematics / layout software is Kicad, and all current files can be found on our github. Others will be uploaded once we have tested the other modules currently in the pipe. As the ones we’re developing are physics oriented, we hope that enthusiasts will bring easy-phi to other domains. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any question or if you’d like to contribute.

Pet Water Warden

October 21, 2013 by James Hobson 42 Comments

This weekend’s Make project is a great one for pet owners — an automatic water bowl refilling device!

It’s a fairly simple build, utilizing an old water jug, an Arduino, an aquarium pump, and some home-made water sensors. As always, MAKE has a very thorough guide, and the estimated build time is only an hour or two. They even threw in the ability to Tweet it’s status, including when the reservoir is empty.

But are we over-complicating this? A gravity based water feeder using the jug could work just as well. Sure, you wouldn’t get Twitter updates, but we hope you’re around your pets long enough to know when they’re thirsty.

A more refined version of this could include a solenoid water valve tapped into your house, eliminating the need of the reservoir and making this project a bit more useful. But even that might be a bit much, do we really need the Arduino? What about a spring-loaded water bowl that breaks a contact when the bowl is empty? Hook that up to a 5 second timer relay controlling the water valve, and you’ve simplified the project quite a bit!

After the break, check out the video to get some more ideas!

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