arduino

2947 Articles

Browsing The Web One Step At A Time

August 23, 2013 by 15 Comments

After modifying his new manual treadmill to fit under his standing desk, [Brian Peiris] found a way to let him stroll all over the internet.

After removing the treadmill’s original time/distance display, [Peiris] reverse engineered the speed sensor to send data to an Arduino and his PC.  We’ve seen a number of projects that interface treadmills with virtual worlds, but what really makes this project stand out is a simple script using the Throxy Python library which allows the treadmill to throttle his machine’s internet connection.

The end result is a browsing experience that reacts to how fast the user runs.  In the demonstration video, you can see Peiris tiptoe through images or jog through YouTube videos.  A minimum bandwidth setting keeps the connection live, so if you can’t make it all the way through that HD Netflix movie, taking a breather won’t time out the connection.

It’s certainly a great way to get in shape, or at the very least, it’ll make your ISP’s bandwidth cap feel a lot bigger.

Video after the jump.

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Unplayable Holophonor Replica Is Unplayable

August 22, 2013 by 31 Comments

holophonor

You won’t find all that many props or homemade replica builds here at Hackaday, but [Harrison Krix’s] work is second to none, and his Futurama Holophonor replica is worth drooling over. [Harrison] sourced an old (and apparently grimy) clarinet from a local thrift store, which he strips clean of its keys and attachments. The body itself receives some subtle modifications from the lathe and epoxy to plug some holes. Custom-spun plastic pieces complete the rest of the body, including the meticulously crafted bell which houses 54 LEDs.

[Harrison] also whips up a breakout board for a mini Arduino Pro with 4 fading and 4 blinking channels, and some custom power supply options for the Holophonor’s base: a scratch-built fiberglass AAA battery holder and optional AC adapter jack. As an added bonus, he’s fitted the Holophonor’s stand with a set of Robot Devil hands that hold it in place. The only video is an illumination test, but it sure is pretty. You can see it below! It looks perfect, but alas is unplayable which actually makes it even more authentic.

The Holophonor is the latest in a slew of work from Volpin Props. You probably remember [Harrison’s] first Daft Punk helmet from a few years back, or the second one that followed shortly after.

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Twitter Knitter Combines 40 Year Old Hardware With Modern Social Media

August 20, 2013 by 12 Comments

When presented with a vintage Empisal Knitmaster knitting machine, members of the TOG Dublin Hackerspace worked together to not only bring it back from the dead but to also add some custom hardware that allows for computer generated patterns.

At first the Knitmaster was in fairly bad shape requiring a few custom machined parts just to function.  It was originally designed to feed in special punch cards that mechanically directed the many moving parts of the machine (called “dibblers”) to knit patterns in yarn.  Using an Arduino, a number of servos, and a microswitch to detect when the knitting carriage is pulled across, this card-read system was replaced with a computer controlled mechanism that can direct the machine to print out images one row at a time.

Of course, you don’t get too many opportunities to name your project something as cute as “The Twitter Knitter”, so once the system was working, it was only a matter of writing some code to snatch tweets from the web and generate images out of the text.  Visitors of the Dublin Mini Maker Faire got to watch it in action as they posted tweets with a particular hashtag which the machine happily printed in yarn (as long as they weren’t too long).

Video demo after the jump.

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Building An Entire Pinball Machine From Just The Playfield

August 19, 2013 by 9 Comments

It all started  when [Iancole] bought a Fireball Home edition playfield on some famous auction website for $135. Originally, he had the intent of lighting the lamps with an Arduino, framing it, and hanging it on the wall of his office — which often happens with old pinball parts. But then his boys asked if he “could make it play”.

[Iancole] managed to find the pinball schematics online and started designing the electronics required by the many LEDs, solenoids and switches. As the LEDs and switches are on the same matrix, he chose a simple Arduino to cycle through them, giving the player the impression that the lights are constantly on. [Iancole] originally planned on using his raspberry Pi to control the solenoids, but he later switched to another Arduino because of the precise timing required.

Therefore, his Pi was used as the heart of the machine. It is interfaced to the two Arduinos to read states and send commands while running the game program, displaying HD graphics on a 24″ screen, playing music and game event sounds. All the electronics are proudly displayed on the backbox, and many developments are planned for it. Also, the machine will be on display at the Orlando Mini Maker Faire on October 5th!

Hackaday Links: August 18, 2013

August 18, 2013 by 16 Comments

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Let’s start off with some lock picking. Can you be prosecuted if it was your bird that broke into something? Here’s video of a Cockatoo breaking into a puzzle box as part of an Oxford University study. [Thanks Ferdinand via Endandit]

[Augybendogy] needed a vacuum pump. He headed off to his local TechShop and machined a fitting for his air compressor. It uses the Venturi Effect to generate a vacuum.

Build your own Arduino cluster using this shield designed by [Bertus Kruger]. Each shield has its own ATmega328. Many can be stacked on top of an Arduino board, using I2C for communications.

[Bunnie Huang] has been publishing articles a few articles on Medium called “Exit Reviews”. As a treasured piece of personal electronics is retired he pulls it apart to see what kind of abuse it stood up to over its life. We found his recent article on his Galaxy S II quite interesting. There’s chips in the glass, scuffs on the bezel, cracks on the case, and pervasive gunk on the internals.

We’d love to see how this this paper airplane folder and launcher is put together. If you know of a post that shares more details please let us know.

Squeezing the most out of a tiny microcontroller was a challenge. But [Jacques] reports that he managed to get a PIC 10F322 to play a game of Pong (translated). It even generates an NTSC composite video signal! Watch the demo video here.

Bow Tie Kindly Suggests That You Back Off

August 15, 2013 by 18 Comments

personalSpaceBowtie

Everyone’s had their “personal space bubble” burst. You just wanted a friendly conversation, but now some overzealous blockhead is standing on your shoes and breathing in your face, making you guess what he had for lunch. Fortunately, [Grissini] has created this sylish bowtie solution. Stand too close (within 19 inches) and the LEDs come to life, flashing a warning that indicates a personal space violation. [Grissini’s] tie is 3D printed to accommodate most of the electronics, which snugly snap into place. The rest of the wiring appears to run through the neck strap and connect up to a battery pack hidden elsewhere. You can check out a brief description and demonstration in a video after the break.

We’ve seen this hack for the ladies: [Jeri’s] dress performs a similar function. We’re unsure, however, if these LEDs can deter your average socially-awkward space invader. What we’d really like to see is someone take these hacks to their logical conclusion and make a wearable out of the non-lethal dazzler clone…hopefully the victim would back up a step or two before they spewed.

If you’re lonely and want to encourage people to come closer, maybe this LED bow tie will help. Or, who knows, maybe it’s yet another way to scare people off.

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The RPC: A Stand-alone MIDI Workstation

August 14, 2013 by 11 Comments

raspiMidiRPC

Not just another pretty enclosure, this shiny little red box is [Lauri’s] stand-alone MIDI workstation. The build uses an Arduino Mega 2560 to handle the MIDI inputs and outputs. It communicates via serial with a Raspberry Pi that acts as a sequencer and oversees all user interactions. The Pi’s SD card offers convenient storage for your work, though we wish it was easily ejectable from the front of the box and not trapped under the hood. [Lauri’s] RPC also squeezes in the necessary USB hub for the RasPi and an HDMI-to-VGA converter. As an all-in-one solution, this is a sleek little box that–once paired with some software for arpeggiators, chord harmonies, and scales–will be a handy MIDI sequencer with robust control ready to be conveniently mounted on your rack.

Now all you’ll need is something to plug in. Why not check out the custom MIDI recorder we featured last week, or the organ-to-MIDI keyboard conversion for inspiration.

[Thanks Teemu]