arduino

2943 Articles

Football Hero

October 27, 2009 by 17 Comments

footie

For Kasabian’s new single Underdog, they decided to do something original. After dreaming up a Guitar Hero style controller powered by soccer football players, they set out to make it happen. Using 5 wall mounted pressure sensors connected to a microcontroller, they hooked up the rig to a computer running Frets on Fire (an open source Guitar Hero clone) with a custom version of their single. After an afternoon of practice, the team was able to 5 star the song, and while this isnt the only or most complex Guitar Hero hack, we would love to have this in our house.

Video after the break.

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Halloween Props: Servo Eyes

October 26, 2009 by 13 Comments

[flickr video =http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/3991211183/]

If you’re wanting to spice up a Jack-o-lantern, why not give it some spooky eyes that will look around? [todbot] shows us how to set this up using an Arduino and 3 servos. His rig uses a hobby servo to control the entire head’s orientation and a smaller servo for each eye’s movement. Their motion is random, but quite convincing. He has them all stuck together with  popsicle sticks, but you would probably move the location of the large servo to rotate the entire pumpkin, or whatever other prop you put it all in. You can download the Arduino sketch and give it a try your self. We might suggest building a simple rack and pinion rig to rotate both eyeballs with  a single servo.

[via HackedGadgets]

Brain Control For The Arduino

October 20, 2009 by 20 Comments

brain-controlled-arduino

When we hear about a brain controlled Arduino project we immediately think about a coding nightmare. As always, the simple hacks are the best hacks. [Joel] and [Akshay] used hardware from a kid’s game as a brain interface for an Arduino.

We came across the video (embedded after the break) of their work and asked for more info on what we thought was an incredibly difficult hack. It turns out they purchased Uncle Milton’s Force Trainer which uses a headset to measure brain waves and has a base unit that reacts to these measurements. Hacking into this device didn’t require reverse engineering of anything. They took the easy route, and tapped into the five LEDs on the base unit. As the game measures greater levels of concentration, it lights up more LEDs.

So far tapping into the game is just a proof of concept. It’s up to you to implement a brain controlled beer bot.

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Reverse Geocache Puzzle

October 19, 2009 by 32 Comments

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[Mikal] wanted to create an awesome electronic wedding gift for his friend who was moving to France. After experimenting with a few things, he settled on creating a puzzle box that would only open in a certain location. Since his friend introduced him to the Arduino, he fittingly used one in the design, along with a serial GPS module and a mini character LCD. The box itself is locked using a servo-controlled chopstick, which could theoretically be snapped if [Mikal] really screwed something up. To save battery life, he used a small Pololu module to provide power that uses only 0.01 microamps in standby, and can be shut off by the Arduino.

The box was designed to be mysterious yet self-explanatory. When the button on the front is pushed, the box comes to life for 3 minutes, displaying the distance away from secret location. Additionally, it warns how many tries are left: the button can only be pushed 50 times before it is sealed “forever”. In order to open the box, you have to be within 2km of the destination. Theoretically, you can narrow down the location to one of 2 points after 2 readings, but a less scientific approach would probably be a lot more fun.

This seems like an amazing gift, and the same concept could be repurposed into hundreds of other devices. For extra fun, he could have placed it at a geocache location.

3D Magnetometer Mouse In Processing

October 18, 2009 by 22 Comments

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[etgalim] works in Solidworks extensively and wanted a more intuitive way of rotating objects onscreen. To do this, he created a mouse that responds to rotation. He put a 3D compass module inside an old mouse and wired it up to an Arduino. The Arduino then relays the I2C sensor data to the computer. So far, he has a Processing script that uses the mouse to rotate a cube, but eventually he wants to write a Solidworks plugin. It’s a bit shaky, and we think it would be a bit smoother (and cheaper) if he used gyros like the jedipad. Video after the jump.

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RFID-enabled Robot…mood…tail…thingy.

October 16, 2009 by 38 Comments

moodtail

Furries: is there nothing they cannot do? Well okay, “shower” remains an elusive concept, but wearable technology seems to be in, as evidenced by this robotic mood tail. [Wei-Chieh Tseng]’s adorable Arduino-driven fashion accessory operates either via Wii Nunchuk or a set of RFID cards tagged with specific emotions to depict.

Details are scant. It appears to have been a project for a physical computing or design class. One thing’s for certain: Halloween is going to be awesome.

[via Engadget]

Turntable Sequencer Scratches With Coins

October 15, 2009 by 10 Comments

scratching-with-arduino

[tvst] has an interesting take on a sequencer. His design uses coins on a turn table to trigger midi events in a loop. There are four tracks available, each having its own sensor above the spinning platform. The sensors consist of an IR transmitter and receiver setup as a voltage divider. When something passes below the IR transmitter and reflects the infrared waves back up to the receiver, the output of the sensor moves to digital high. The four sensors are connected to an Arduino which is used in conjunction with ttymidi, which converts the Arduino data into midi events.

We like projects that provide a more tangible interface for the user. Coins work well for this setup. They reflect infrared enough to trigger the sensors, and they’re easy to pick up and move without upsetting the rest of the tracks. It would be great if this could be expanded to differentiate between coins (pennies versus dimes, etc.) in order to increase the resolution from four different events to eight or more. Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Turntable Sequencer Scratches With Coins” →