arduino

2947 Articles

Snoozy The Sloth

May 18, 2009 by 25 Comments

[vimeo = 4703152]

Snoozy the Sloth clings to you and sleeps. While this may sound easily done, the maker wanted the sloth to actually simulate breathing with exhaled breath to add to the realism. To do this, they had to build a “respiratory system” out of a rubber glove, a solenoid, and a couple pumps.  This kind of toy can be very beneficial to special needs children. The lifelike and calm behavior helps the child connect to the toy. The pumps and solenoid are said to not be too distracting, but we are curious just how loud they are. This seems well executed, and much more sloth like than slothra, another sloth toy from last week. Were these guys in an Arduino powered sloth making class together?

Peggy 2 Super Pixels

May 6, 2009 by 15 Comments

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[Windell] from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories took one of their Peggy 2 kits and gave it a little upgrade. The Peggy 2 is a programmable 25×25 LED display. It’s Arduino compatible and can accommodate big 10mm LEDs. Most people assemble them using just one color, but [Windell] decided to create giant RGB pixels by placing discrete red, green, blue, and white LEDs next to each other in the board. This creates a 12.5×12.5 grid of full color pixels. It’s an interesting effect and you should definitely check out the video embedded below which shows how the transition can be smoothed using a diffuser. Continue reading “Peggy 2 Super Pixels” →

Twittering Toilet

May 5, 2009 by 38 Comments

We wouldn’t want to let a week slip by without something new being made to twitter would we?  This time it is a toilet. Don’t worry, they are sparing us the graphic details, it pretty much tweets every time it is flushed. As you can see in the picture above, they’re using an Arduino for the toilet/PC connection. If you really want to make something twitter, this might be a good starting point. It’s basically twittering every time a button is pushed. You can download the source code on the site as well as find a tutorial on Arduino basics.

[via astera]

Guitar Hero Macro Board

May 3, 2009 by 13 Comments

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Doesn’t look like the Guitar Hero hacks will be slowing up any time soon. In this recent installment, [Thunderhammer3000] built a board to record Guitar Hero “songs”. It is wired inline with with the fret buttons and strum bar and records each of the key presses. Songs can be recorded at slow speed in practice mode and replayed at full speed. The board is Arduino compatible and has two optoisolator chips for collecting the button presses plus a small EEPROM for storage. The board fits easily inside the guitar body.

Plant Fasting: Robotic Gardening

April 27, 2009 by 37 Comments

[flickr video=3479713449]

This art display system was created by [Peter Sand]. It is called Plant Fasting and is comprised of a giant robot with interchangeable tools for various gardening tasks. Though the system is mostly automated, it can be controlled via a game pad. It has an Arduino as its brain and it looks like he’s done a completely custom setup for powering the interchangeable pieces.

Wii Nunchuck Controlled Pleo

April 24, 2009 by 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pcAsEUOW9Q]

[Andy] wrote in to show us how he hacked his Pleo to be controlled by a Wii Nunchuck. He has installed Xbee units for the communication as well as written a “skit” that allows the Pleo to just stand there and wait for commands. He is using an Arduino to interpret the Nunchuck input and send it to the Pleo. It’s a pretty cool proof of concept, but the response time is pretty slow. This might be due to the Arduino’s slower serial communication rate.  Yes, we said you might want to refrain from hacking them, due to their impending extinction, but did you expect us to stick to that? If you’re going to dig into one, you may also be interested in how to hack the Pleo for face recognition and remote control.