arduino

2946 Articles

Lucid Dreaming

March 6, 2010 by 28 Comments

When we saw [merkz] use of an Arduino to produce lucid dreaming we were quite shocked. Unlike typical setups that just flash a light through sleep, his system monitors eye movement through electrodes and is able to send the data to a computer for graphing and analyzing.  The only problem being we couldn’t find a circuit diagram or code.

Not ones to be shot down so quickly, a Google revealed this thread on making ‘Dream Goggles’, which was really a Brain-Wave Machine based on the parallel port. Some modifications of an ECG collector’s electrodes using sound cards, and you could have your own lucid dreaming.

[Thanks Phil]

RC Truck Source For Robotics Platform

March 5, 2010 by 15 Comments

[Michael] sent us a link to his RC robotic platform. He started with the same RC toy as the iPhone Robot (CAR) but ended up with a blank slate waiting for more features. What he has is an Arduino with a motor driver, three bump switches for the front and rear, and a XBee module.  On the other side of things he used a SparkFun USB to FTDI connector to interface another XBee module with a PC in order to use Processing.

In the clip after the break you can see the motor control needs to have more fine-tuning done so the beast isn’t just out of control when running. But there’s a ton of potential here. It should not be a problem to add at lease rudimentary video feedback from the device. The Arduino is currently only being used marginally, leaving plenty of space to add on-board sensing such as IR, proximity, or light.

It’s a clean start, we expect to see updates! Continue reading “RC Truck Source For Robotics Platform” →

Smart Flash Synchronization

March 2, 2010 by 7 Comments

[Max] designed this circuit to add smart flash synchronization to his photography arsenal. He did this because ‘dumb’ TTL based flashes won’t play nicely with more sophisticated systems like the Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting. By building a microcontroller into the mechanism, he’s added functionality for several different scenarios, ensuring that he’ll never again have problems with early flash triggering. Now that the kinks have been ironed out in the prototype, the code and hardware can be migrated over to whatever microcontroller suits you.

Bring The Crane Game Home

February 24, 2010 by 25 Comments

Everyone’s familiar with the quarter gobbling crane games. More often than not there’s a child nearby begging a parent for more quarters so they can try their hand at the toy-snatching claw. [Marc.Cryan] put his quarters to a better use by building a home version of the crane game.

[Marc] installed a gantry in an archway of his house.  The crane trolley rides on this gantry and uses a spool to raise or lower the tether for the claw. Winning copious style-points, he used the case of an old mouse to form the claw. An Arduino controls the different motors in the system and a toy was repurposed to act as the controller. As you can see after the break, it’s more fun than the cinema-lobby version of the game and your kids can play with it for free.

Continue reading “Bring The Crane Game Home” →

Reboot Life In A Heartbeat

February 18, 2010 by 18 Comments

This hoodie senses your heartbeat and uses it to control Life. Conway’s Game of Life, popular in all kinds of electronics projects, uses a grid of cells coupled with a set of rules to mimic the life and death of simple organisms. This iteration displays the game over your own heart, then taps into your heart rate, resetting the game at the beginning of each cardiac cycle. We guess you could say that Life goes on only if you do not.

The EKG circuit that detects the heartbeat is made up of an IR transmitter shining through the tip of your finger to a receiver. An ATmega168 running the Arduino bootloader controls the EKG circuit and resets an ATmega48 which is responsible for Life. [Joe] admits that this is overkill but he’s currently without an AVR programmer; he went this route to make it work. The stylishly-geeky hoodie is taken for a test run (er… test-hop?) after the break.

Continue reading “Reboot Life In A Heartbeat” →

Binary Clock Uses DS3232 RTC

February 17, 2010 by 24 Comments

[Kenneth Finnegan] quenches our clock-a-day compulsion with his Arduino based binary timepiece. The clock uses a 5×7 LED matrix as a display and shows month, day, and time. He sourced a DS3232 real-time clock which automatically compensates for temperature to achieve very accurate time keeping. We like the super-cap circuit he added to keep the RTC running if the power is cut.

Is an Arduino overkill here? Well, the code is certainly not filling the 16k available on the ATmega168. At $4.32, the $1-2 you could save by using a lower-grade chip is not worth having to rewrite the code developed during prototyping. [Kenneth] also mentions that these projects usually only hang around for a few weeks before they’re re-purposed for the next endeavor.

Take a look at [Kenneth’s] superb hardware walk through in the video after the break.  If you’re a fan of clean breadboarding, he’s also made a time-lapse of the circuit building process.

Continue reading “Binary Clock Uses DS3232 RTC” →

Ultimate Flame Bait: Liquid Cooled Arduino

February 16, 2010 by 156 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-cc_Qcf-w]

We do so many things around here  just because “we can”. Though this guy cites this as his reason, we somehow can’t help but wonder if he’s doing it just to troll the Arduino hating crowd. He has decided to overclock his Arduino by replacing the crystal and dropping it in some non conductive liquid coolant. Can you guess what sketch he’s running? That’s right, he’s blinking an LED.

Normally we would point out that we have no preference when it comes to Arduino. We simply post what is submitted. Though we are often accused of being Arduino lovers, it is simply just another tool to us. We sometimes delete obnoxious comments that get off topic, threatening, or vulgar because that’s just good house keeping. That being said, we know what to expect here. Go ahead, bash the Arduino. Get it out of your systems. Just keep it non offensive or it will be moderated.

[thanks jfreak09]