Looking Toward Christmas Decor By Learning About DMX

November 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

So Halloween finally arrived, we hope you had enough time to pull off your frightening feats in the way you had originally envisioned. Now it’s time again to look to the future and start planning this year’s Christmas decorations. Lights are always a popular theme, and this year you might want to look into DMX lighting controls and decide if that’s a route you want to take. [Akiba] has your back, he just put together a set of videos explaining the DMX lighting protocol and how to use it with an Arduino.

The thought here is that the Arduino can be used as a sort of DMX hub that is connected directly to a computer running open source controller hardware. It can send commands which the Arduino decodes, deciding whether to just pass them on to DMX compatible devices, or to do what it does best and control other hardware that is not normally accessible through the lighting command protocol. To the control program your four-dollar strand of LED lights looks no different from a thousand dollar stage light, making it cheap and easy to build your own entertaining holiday show right in your front yard. See the second video in this series after the break where [Akibo] details the hardware setup for his system. The other parts are available at the link above.

Be careful, this can be a consuming endeavor. Don’t believe us? Just look around and you’ll find no shortage of large DMX builds just for Christmas lights.

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Wine-o-Meter Quantifies Your Bachelor Party Bad Behavior

October 31, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

wine_o_meter

[Phil] had a bunch of Shiftbrite modules set aside for an LED table project, but before he could get around to it, he decided to use them to build a prop for his friend’s bachelor party. Expecting plenty of drunken revelry, he constructed the Arduino Wine-o-Meter – a carnival “Test your strength” style breathalyzer.

The 25 Shiftbrite modules are lined up in a column, which is connected to an Arduino tucked away in a cardboard box. The Arduino takes readings from an MQ-3 Gas/Alcohol sensor was salvaged from another breathalyzer build [Phil] put together. While it has been noted in the past that this sensor is pretty inaccurate, it seems to serve his purposes quite well. Since his game is based on measuring the players’ blood alcohol content in relation to one another rather than obtaining an exact BAC reading, the poor calibration of the device should affect everyone equally.

It looks pretty cool, and we imagine that it will ensure that the party stays lively throughout the wee hours of the night. Check out the video below to see [Phil] walk you through a demo of his Wine-o-Meter.

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Salvaged Flight Stick Controls A/V System, Triggers “Emergency Party System”

October 31, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

av_controller_party_switch

After seeing a writeup online that demonstrated how to build an “Emergency Party Button”, [spikec] knew that he had to have one of his own. He happened to have a USAF B-8 stick grip from an A-10A aircraft laying around, and figured it would be perfect for controlling the A/V system in his basement.

The control stick was mounted to the top of a cheap cigar humidor, and crammed full of any electronic component he could get his hands on. It contains not one, but two Arduinos. The first is tasked with reading the flight stick’s inputs and the IR control of his various appliances, while another triggers the overhead lighting in his bar along with the X10 controlled Emergency Party System. He contemplated combining all of the functionality into one device, but splitting the tasks in two was easier for this self-declared electronics novice.

The various buttons on the control stick can be used to power all of his A/V appliances on and off, control volume levels, and select which songs stream from his digital jukebox. If the action ever starts to wind down, a quick turn of his “arming” key and the flick of a switch sends his basement into full-on party mode, which includes more lighting and lasers than any one person should be allowed to own.

[spikec] says that his wife’s eyes were rolling like “uncaged gyros” when he unveiled his controller for the first time – a sign of a job well done. Don’t take our word for it though, check out a video of his control stick and Emergency Party System in action after the jump.

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Automated CD Ripper Build From Lego And Other Parts

October 31, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Paul Rea] decided it was finally time to get rid his CD and DVD library by ripping the data onto a hard drive. He has a rather extensive collection of discs and didn’t relish the thought of ripping them one at a time. So he set to work building his own automatic CD ripper/duplicator.

Right off the bat he had several specifications for the build. He wanted it to be platform independent, reliable, and cheap to build. We think he really hit the mark, but he does mention that he’s got a second duplicator build in mind already. This version makes heavy use of Lego parts for the arm and gearing. The base has a stepper motor which swings the arm in an arc which reaches the input pile, the optical drive try, and the output bin. The arm itself has a two-part wooden gripper that is positioned over a CD and uses a limiting switch to sense when the vertical orientation is at the proper point for gripping a disc. We enjoyed reading his log as he discusses the various building challenges he encountered and how each was overcome.

We’ve seen a few other builds like this before. One of our favorites is from way back.

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Arduino Controlled Four Socket Outlet

October 31, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

Never get between a man and his salami. [Mike] needed a way to control temperature, humidity and airflow with his meat curing setup. Of course he could modify a refrigerator and humidifier to be controlled separately, but [Mike] decided the best course of action would be to control line voltage with an Arduino.

[Mike] started his build with a four socket wall housing he picked up at Home Depot for a few dollars. After wiring up each outlet so it can be controlled independently, he set out designing a four port relay board. This was a pretty simple build – four 10 Amp relays and a few terminal blocks. The PCB was designed in Eagle as a single-side board for ease of manufacturing.

The relay board is meant to fit inside the blue box along with the four sockets, so a few holes were drilled for the power and control wires. The entire assemblage was put together and tested out. [Mike] posted a video of his controllable outlet flashing a light bulb at 10 Hz. Check out that light switch rave after the break.

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Ball Of Dub Has Lots Of Wub

October 29, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

[Lizzie] from LustLab sent in her Ball of Dub that turns a few accelerometer and a digital audio workstation and turns everything into an aural experience of wubs and dubs. The Ball of Dub can turn just about anything into dubstep, and does so with a fairly interesting user interface.

There isn’t a build log for the Ball of Dub, but the folks at LustLab did send in a basic overview of her project. Inside the ball, there’s a Razor IMU from Sparkfun that is attached to the ever-popular XBee wireless transceiver. A tiny program on an Arduino calibrates the gyroscope and accelerometer and sends that data to the DAW at 50Hz.

The host computer is running Renoise, a very popular tracker that can accept MIDI and OSC input. A Processing app parses the ball spin, free fall and impact, averages them over a period of time, and pipes that into the OSC input of Renoise. In [Lizzie]’s video, the ball spin is sent to a low-pass filter on the baseline track, and the average impact is applied to the vocal track.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen some fairly strange ways to modulate wub; we saw real instruments covering Skrillex earlier this month. The Ball of Dub wins in the simplicity department, though.

Wii Remote Controling The Vehicle You’re Riding In

October 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Make sure your health insurance premiums are all paid up; if you decide to replicate this project you may need it. [Corey], [Kris], and [Jess] built their own go cart which is controlled with a Wii remote. The website has a poor navigation scheme, but if you hover over the horizontal menu bar you can get quite a bit of information about the build.

The cart has two motors which use a chain to drive each of the rear wheels. A pair of H-bridge controllers let the Arduino interface with them. It’s also has a Bluetooth module that makes it a snap to pull accelerometer data from the Wii remote. The front end looks like it uses rack and pinion steering, but you won’t find a pinion or a steering column. Instead, a linear actuator is mounted parallel to the rack, moving it back and forth at the command of the Arduino.

We can’t help but think back to silent movies where the steering wheel comes loose in the middle of a car chase. See if you get the same image while watching the demo after the break. This doesn’t seem quite as dangerous as adding remote control to a full-sized automobile, but we’ve played MarioKart Wii before and know how lousy the accelerator performance can be. Hopefully the firmware kills the motors if the batteries in the controller die.

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