A Video Game With Custom LCD Characters

July 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

LCD

[Nakul] wanted to build a video game, and with a few projects worth of Arduino experience decided he could finally attain his goal. He used a character LCD display to make his game, and instead of a text-based adventure, he went with a graphical side scroller.

The display for this space-based side scroller isn’t a graphical display like a CRT or a graphic LCD. Instead, [Nakul] is using the ubiquitous Hitachi HD44780 character LCD display. Normally these are used to display text, but they all have the ability to display custom 5 by 8 pixel characters. The code puts these custom characters – a spaceship, missile, and barrier – into the display’s memory and uses them as the sprites for the video game.

You can grab [Nakul]’s code over on his git or check out the action videos below.

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Fun With LED Matrix And Mouse

July 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

fun-with-LED-matrix-and-mouse

[Brad] just acquired a 32×32 RGB LED matrix and he jumped right into the deep end with his first project. To try out his skills on the device he used an Arduino to drive a slew of pixels with bouncing-ball physics.

The demo starts off with a hail storm of multi-colored falling pixels. In the center of the storm is the cursor, which he controls with a PS2 mouse. That happens to be a ball mouse which makes sense as we don’t remember having seen any optical mice as of late that weren’t USB. The PS2 protocol is easy to read using a microcontroller; more about that in [Brad’s] project write up.

By holding down the left mouse button he can draw persistent pixels on the screen. The falling balls then interact by bouncing off of the obstacles. The image above shows a frame on three sides of the screen which has trapped the pixels near the bottom. He can also erase pixels, which has the effect of draining the trapped balls like a hole in a bucket of water. Neat!

Bouncing ball physics are fun to experiment with. Here’s one being driven by an analog computer.

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[Massimo] Talks About Arduino Clones

July 15, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 60 Comments

pick one

Back in 2005, the Arduino was just a twinkle in they eyes of [Massimo Banzi] and the other core developers. Since then, you can’t go to any electronics site without hitting something beginning with ‘ard~’ or ending with ‘~duino’. The platform has become so popular, people everywhere are piggybacking on the name to the point of trademark infringement or simply outright counterfeiting one of the many official Arduino boards. Now [Massimo] has something to say about these clones, ripoffs, derivatives, and ‘duino-compatible boards.

On the list of things bad for the open source ecosystem, [Massimo] points to direct clones of existing Arduino boards. While these boards are electrically identical to officially licensed boards, they simply don’t support the Arduino project financially and usually don’t contribute to the existing libraries and code. Even worse are counterfeits; these boards copy the trademarks of the Arduino project – sometimes terribly given the three examples above (guess which one is the real one) – and directly profit off of the Arduino project without giving any support in return.

There are other veins of Arduino that [Massimo] considers more acceptable. Arduino-compatible boards, seen by the dozen over on Kickstarter, usually add something of their own, be it a radio chip, or an entirely different microcontroller. Derivatives, like Teensy and Adafruit’s Flora actually bring new things to the table with improved hardware and new and interesting libraries.

As far as counterfeits and clones go, we can’t agree more with what [Massimo] has to say. You have to admire the folks in the Arduino project being so open about their creations and admiring the Arduino derivatives that bring some new hardware to the table. Then again, that’s the lesson of the Arduino project; you can make hardware open source and still be outrageously popular.

DIY Airbag, Explosions Included

July 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

AnAirbagSavedMyLife

Your car’s airbag is one of the major engineering accomplishments of the auto industry. In an accident, a whole host of processes must take place in sequence to keep your face from slamming into the steering wheel, and everything must happen in just a fraction of a second. [Steve] over at Make thought it would be a cool idea to discover what actually goes in to saving a life with an airbag and decided to build his own.

The electronics of the build consisted of an accelerometer and an Arduino. A lot of research, development, and experimentation has gone into the algorithms that trigger airbags, but [Steve] decided to keep things simple: when a sudden acceleration is detected, set off a small charge of black powder.

The airbag itself is ripstop nylon reinforced with canvas, contained in a small wooded box fitted with hinged doors. All these components are put on wheeled aluminum test rig, manned with a honeydew melon crash test dummy, and pulled into a short wall at a few miles per hour.

Despite [Steve] not putting hundreds of thousands of man hours into the development of his airbag – unlike the ones you’ll find in your steering column – his device actually worked pretty well. While not a complete success, he did manage to come up with something that both looks and acts like the familiar device that has saved countless lives.

Animating A Lamp With The Leap Motion

July 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

leap

The Leap Motion is a very cool device, but so far we haven’t seen many applications of interacting with physical devices. [Xavier] wanted to control a cute servo animated desk lamp with his hands, and with the help of a Leap and an Arduino he was able to do just that.

The Leap Motion API has a handy feature that will output all its data over a websocket. It’s a very easy way to transfer hand positions with a minimum amount of overhead, and with just a little bit of Node.js, it’s only two lines of code to connect the Leap to a websocket server.

With the Leap data on a web server, the only thing left to do is pulling it down to an Arduino. Again, [Xavier] used Node.js, this time in the form of johnny five, a Javascript-based Arduino framework. After that, it was a simple matter of mapping the data from the Leap to servo movements in [Xavier]’s Pixar-inspired lamp.

Video of the build below.

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3D Printed Dispenser Flings Treats At Your Pets

July 10, 2013 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

internet-connected-dog-treat-dispenser

If you’re stuck in the virtual world like [Kevin Flynn] you can still make sure your pup is rewarded for good behavior. Just follow [Jwarp’s] design for this Internet connect dog treat dispenser.

We were actually a bit surprised by the demo video. It shows that the compact unit is more than capable of reliably dispensing one treat at a time. It started as a wood prototype which allowed him to tweak how the servo motors worked before laying out all of the 3D parts in Sketch Up. Two motors cooperate to get the job done. The first allows one treat to exit that shoot coming from the center of the hopper. The other stirs the remaining inventory to both position the next treat and loosen any jams.

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