Meggy Jr RGB Portable Game Platform

November 12, 2008 by Joshua Wright 7 Comments

meggy

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have just announced the release of the Meggy Jr RGB, a fully programmable handheld console with an 8×8 RGB LED matrix display. Like its big sisters Peggy and Peggy 2.0, the Meggy Jr is driven by an ATmega168 microcontroller and is made up of a bank of fully addressable LEDs. Unlike its siblings, the device boasts six buttons and the ability to be mounted inside of a custom case (or “handle set”) constructed from plastic or wood, drastically altering the look of the console. Using the popular open-souce Arduino environment, users are able to write custom software for the device. While it works great as a game console, of the many possible configurations and suggested uses, we think “disco floor for your Lego minifigurines” is the most amusing.

Autonomous Cookie Monster

November 10, 2008 by Eliot 8 Comments

cookie_monster

[DJ Sures], who built the autonomous Wall-E, is back with another creation. His new autonomous Cookie Monster is certainly an interesting build. He had the cookie monster plush toy already so the first step was to flay the blue beast and insert a skeleton. He used another robot for that. There are two servos for the wheels plus one for each arm and one for the neck. There’s a distance sensor in the mouth. He built a custom board for the PIC18F4685 microcontroller which is running the same 2D mapping code as his previous bot. Check out the video of it in action below. Continue reading “Autonomous Cookie Monster” →

Hexbug Brain Transplant

October 31, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

The Hex Bug, at $10, proves to be a perfect platform for building your own droid. Out of the box, it has pretty limited functionality. It walks forward until its antennae bump something, then it backs up and turns left. Applied inspirations shows us how you can replace the bug’s brains with a microcontroller to give it much more life. Instead of hacking into the existing electronics, they chose to completely replace the board. The final result, though still only able to turn one direction, is much more robust. They discuss the ability to add numerous sensors as well as pre program different behaviours and personalities.

Adafruit Arduino Sale

October 26, 2008 by Eliot 19 Comments

With the release of the Arduino Duemilanove, Adafruit is trying to shift out some old stock Arduino Diecimila by offering 10% off. [amk] noted that the new Duemilanove is not so much an upgrade as an Arduino with a new hat. The only changes were autoselecting power and a cutable reset line. The best part about the Adafruit sale is they’re offering Atmega328s preloaded with the Arduino bootloader as a $5 upgrade. The Atmega328 gives you twice the flash memory, twice the RAM, and twice the EEPROM than the original Atmega168.

Orientation Aware Camera

October 23, 2008 by Eliot 27 Comments

[Andrew Magill] just added his Orientation Aware Camera to the Hack a Day Flickr Pool. It uses a 3-axis magnetometer and 3-axis accelerometer. He didn’t want to spend too much effort on the USB side so he picked up USBMicro’s U421. It’s a fairly well documented preprogrammed microcontroller for USB. He later regretted this; his final sample rate was only 5Hz because of all the overhead. Using the positional data the, webcam image can be corrected for any sort of shaking. [Andrew] took this one step further by using OpenGL and stitching all of the video frames together live into a full panorama. Be sure to watch his excellent video demo embedded below. Continue reading “Orientation Aware Camera” →

Microcontroller-powered Missile Launch Controller

October 14, 2008 by Joshua Wright 37 Comments

[Josef Jahn] has posted a detailed guide on building a microcontroller-based launch box. Constructed from an Atmel ATMega168 and powered by a 12V rechargable lead gel battery, the launch box is fully portable and includes a number of safety features. Going the extra mile on what could essentially be a simple push button launcher, he added three safety switches, a sixty second after-launch timer and a beautiful (not to mention rare) PLED display complete with dramatic status messages. Check out a video of the launcher in action after the break.

Continue reading “Microcontroller-powered Missile Launch Controller” →

PICBASIC Complex LED Matrix

September 30, 2008 by Jason Rollette 13 Comments

This PICBASIC complex LED matrix solution was developed by [Olivier de Broqueville] to drive a matrix of LEDs. Using some cheap transistors, common red LEDs, and a PIC16F628, he is able to drive a 6×6 LED matrix. This project is very well documented and has everything available including: circuit board layouts, schematics, PICBASIC source, VB computer interface program, and parts list.