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Arduino Archive: Arduino

February 9, 2010

Don't walk! Controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino

In this tutorial about controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino you can learn a few important things. #1 How to control relays with an Arduino, which is really useful for a ton of different projects. #2 How to use an IR remote to control your Arduino, another cool technique. #3 Never trust a crosswalk sign with an Arduino hanging out of it!

My latest project is controlling a pedestrian sign with an Arduino, so it will automatically step through the states of walk, flashing don't walk, and solid don't walk. In addition, I added infrared remote control support so I can use a remote control to turn the sign on and off, set it to a particular state, or start the cycle.

In the Maker Shed:

4305704184_65a99d4a42_b 2.jpg
The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

February 8, 2010

From typewriter to teleprinter

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user numist had a typerwriter that he wasn't using anymore, so he converted it into a teleprinter. What's that? It turns out that teleprinters are basically a printer and a keyboard put together in a single device, but not directly connected. Instead, both are connected to a remote computer using a serial connection. When you type on the keyboard, it gets interpreted by the computer, which then prints a response on the printer. They probably don't make much sense anymore, but before electronic displays were readily available, these were one of the main ways of programming mainframe computers.

To make his version, numist took an old electronic typewriter, and added some electronics between the keyboard and printer board. He used an Arduino microcontroller to read in each key press and relay it back over a serial port to his PC. When it receives characters back from the PC, the microcontroller emulates the keyboard to feed them into the original typewriter circuitry, causing the typewriter to print. Now, I'm not entirely sure what one could do with such a modernized typewriter, but I'll bet there are lots of potential projects there. Got any ideas?

Turning a motor into a sensor with the Peppermill

Peppermill

Tom Igoe got his hands on a Peppermill circuit board, and took it out for a spin:

Nicolas Villar sent me a sample of the PepperMill, a new sensor board he and Steve Hodges designed at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. It's a nifty little board. You attach a DC motor and the board can an output voltage when the motor is turned, and analog signals telling you the direction and speed of the motor. It turns a DC motor into a rotary encoder, of sorts.

Wiring is very simple. The motor connects to the two spring connectors at the top of the board. Direction and Speed pins connect to two analog inputs on your microcontroller. Ground connects to your microcontroller's ground. The motor generates voltage when you spin it.

Check out Tom's article for circuit diagrams, source code, and information on obtaining a Peppermill board to experiment with. Using PepperMill to turn a motor into a sensor

(Tom is a member of the Arduino team and the author of Making Things Talk).

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

In the Maker Shed: Open Heart kit V2.0

The Open Heart kit V2.0 is a matrix of individually addressable LEDs that allow you to create customizable animations when connected to your favorite micro controller. Attach it temporarily to fabrics with headers that you simply push through, or sew it into a project with conductive fabric for a more permanent setup.

February 6, 2010

Matt Cottam's talk on Heirloom Electronics at interaction10

Matt Cottam at interaction10

Matt Cottam, founder of Tellart, presented Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics at interaction10 yesterday. Here are my running notes on his discussions of sketching with tangible objects, physical interfaces to the iPhone, and heirloom technology.

February 5, 2010

Arduino package for Eagle

Ardeagle1
Ardeagle2
Arduino package for Eagle, I know ya'll are going to like this... now you can make shields and custom projects with ease (site and on github).

February 4, 2010

Tinker.it's TinkerKit unveiled at interaction10 in Savannah, Georgia

Massimo Banzi and Tom Igoe

interaction10 got underway today in Savannah, Georgia, and among the first workshops of the day was Arduino project co-founder Massimo Banzi's Tangible Interface Prototyping (Massimo, left, is pictured above with fellow Arduino team member Tom Igoe). Massimo's workshop featured the soon-to-be-released TinkerKit, a collection of pluggable sensor modules designed to work with the Arduino electronic prototyping platform.

February 3, 2010

Control your iPhone using an Arduino

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

When we last covered recotana's Open Sound Controller (OSC) library for Arduino (ardOSC), he had an Arduino talking to an iPhone using the OSC protocol. The project worked quite well, however you had to manually connect the two together by specifying their IP address. Now, by adding an implementation of Bonjour, the Arduino can link up to the iPhone automagically, allowing one to easily get on with their mixing.

Arduino powered laser trigger for your camera

You can make a camera trigger without a micro controller, but this system allows you to easily add sensors or variable timers, making it extremely flexible. [Thanks Haje]

There are loads of reasons for why you could want to trigger your camera remotely - to avoid camera shake, for example, or to be able to take a photograph of yourself without having to rely on a timer. If you want to build more ambitious projects, however, you may have to consider getting more exotic.

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Family
Make: Arduino

February 2, 2010

DIY watch winder

Mechanical watch enthusiast Jake Bordens wrote in to share his latest project, the Arduino Watch Winder. Wanting to keep his watches on display, he needed a solution that could automatically wind them so their time would be accurate. The (expensive) commercial device that he had worked well when he only had one watch, however it couldn't support winding two watches at different rates. Instead of purchasing a more complicated model, he decided to take matters into his own hands, and used an Arduino, Ardumoto motor driver shield, and RTC module to run the winding motors independently. It's a bit of an obscure problem, but a nice hack, and it could come in handy if you have a task that needs to be repeated each day at a specific time. Full source code and explanation is available at his site.

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Family

Make: Arduino

Easy multithreading on Arduino with Concurrency

Enjoy programming microcontrollers, but frustrated about how difficult it can be to get them to do more than one thing at a time? Well, then you might be interested in Concurrency, an open source programming language and environment specifically designed with multithreading in mind. That means you can write programs that do multiple things at the same time, without interfering with each other. Of course, you could achieve the same things using a stock Arduino with some crafty coding or timer interrupts, however using a purpose-built language such as this could be a great way to get your feet wet in threaded computing. Check out their website for source code and Creative Commons-licensed tutorials!

February 1, 2010

Android G1 serial to Arduino Instructable

This instructable will show you how to connect your Arduino to your Android G1 mobile over serial. The project assumes you've rooted your G1 and are comfortable using a terminal. [via hackaday]

This tutorial is intended to get you up and running to the point of being able to turn an LED on and off over wi-fi without needing an Arduino wi-fi or BlueTooth shield. The purpose of using the phone is to give your project wireless capabilities, a camera, mic, screen, speaker, and all of the other capabilities in your $400 cell phone. Connecting the G1 to an Arduino helps the phone connect with the outside world with locomotion and other inputs.

Together, the G1 and Arduino allow you to use inexpensive electronics such as simple servos and sensors, to build powerful devices such as robots, remote telepresence, or fun toys for kids.

January 30, 2010

The DIY Chip - The Atlantic (January/February 2010)

Robot-Art-Wide
MAKE pal and author William Gurstelle has an Arduino article in the Atlantic! The DIY Chip @ The Atlantic (January/February 2010)...

HYSICAL COMPUTERS AS populist devices may be the most momentous tech trend of the past five years that practically no one has heard about. Typically a small circuit board housed in a customized case, a physical computer is an easily programmable device that is aware of its surroundings. It is designed to interface with sensors that measure things around it—say, how fast an object is going, how close something is to it, the temperature around it. Based on that input, the computer takes action by moving switches and levers, displaying information, or otherwise controlling the environment.
For humans, connecting to computers via a mouse and keyboard has long been cheap and easy. For sensors, not so much. Now an inexpensive physical computer called the Arduino is changing all that. When the Arduino burst onto the do-it-yourself (“DIY” to devotees) scene in 2005, all manner of tinkerers seized on it as a device that could easily and cheaply run interactive projects.

Using an Arduino is fairly straightforward: buy a board (ranging from about $19 to $65) and attach it to a personal computer via a cable. Then load instructions into the Arduino’s processor via the personal computer. Once programmed, the Arduino makes decisions based on the information transmitted by whatever sensors you’ve hooked up, and does something corporeal, such as turn on or off the motors, displays, valves, and lights attached to it. For a few dollars, creative and motivated individuals—rather than just corporations or institutions—can make highly intelligent tools, perfectly customized for a particular need.

January 29, 2010

Alicia Gibb's art history thesis on Arduino

Alicia Gibb, NYC Resistor member, hacker, crafter and maker, just finished her art history master's thesis on Arduino. It's called "New Media Art, Design, and the Arduino Microcontroller: A Malleable Tool," and features a lot of familiar names and projects!

Above photo by Anthony Mattox.

January 27, 2010

Arduino & BlinkM music visualizer

This music visualizer project combines two of my favorite things, Arduino's & BlinkM's, with another one of my favorite things, music! In the video above, all the BlinkM's are mapped to display the same value, but they can be controlled individually with some modifications. Check out the link for complete build instructions and the Arduino source code. [via arduino.cc]

This project demonstrates using an Arduino, a LM386N opamp circuit and multiple BlinkM LED units to create an audio visualization device. The audio is not pass-through so it requires a dedicated mono input. In the video demo, the Arduino enclosure is connected to the tape-out of a DX052 mixer and powered by USB by my previous DX052 power hack.

In the Maker Shed:

The Maker Shed has Arduino's and BlinkM's!

January 26, 2010

Motorized quilt looks a bit restless …

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Osamu Iwasaki used a Lilypad Arduino + servo motor to create the Kinetic Quilt - an unusually lively bedspread. Hmmm … didn't this little guy make an appearance in one of the Harry Potter flicks? … or maybe Poltergeist?

January 25, 2010

The Nebulophone Arduino-based stylus synth

Yet still another sweet piece of kit debuted at Austin's monthly Handmade Music event - the Nebulophone from Bleep Labs incorporates a digital synth running on Arduino compatible hardware with a stylophone-like PCB keyboard. Additional features include a light-controlled analog filter, LFO, and IR-synced arpeggiator - want want! Code + schematics can be found over at Bleep Labs.

January 22, 2010

Morse code puzzle box

Lucas Fragomeni built a puzzle box that can only be opened if a specific morse code sequence is entered. His starting point was a Reverse Geocache Puzzle he'd read about on Hack a Day, where a person has to bring a box to specific coordinates to release the catch.

I was amazed by it, so I immediately decided to make one for a good friend as a birthday gift. As I thought it through an idea of doing a hangman-like-puzzle using Morse Code popped into my head, and that's what came out:

It's called "Buzzle". It's a locked box with a button on the front, a couple of LEDs on the top and a power plug on the back. When the button is pushed, it emits a 'beep'. The longer you hold the button longer the box beeps.

A random word is picked up by the box and the challenger's goal is to find it out, by telegraphing the right letters sequentially until the word is complete.

[via Hack a Day]

More:

Prepaid wireless remote car starter

It's beyond me why anyone would want to start a car before they got into it, but if you're looking for an interesting aftermarket mod for the next car show, this prepaid wireless remote car starter is just the thing. [via engadget]

January 21, 2010

Arduino sketch programs its peers

George wrote up an Arduino sketch that can detect and program other Arduinos connected through serial. He demonstrates the functionality above by writing a sort of serial-synchronized version of the well-known "Blink" sketch -

It is an implementation of the STK500 protocol within an Arduino sketch. STK500 is used by avrdude and the Arduino IDE to write sketches to AVR chips. A normal sketch ('BlinkSync' is used in the video) is first compiled and then converted from the Intel Hex format to a series of bytes written in C (by a Python script), which can be inserted into the Copier sketch as the data to be written to the destination Arduinos. Afterwards, the Copier sketch and the BlinkSync sketch are stuck together, resulting in a sketch that performs both the original task and the copying of that task to other boards.

Quite cool - reminds me a bit of the Illuminato X Machina project demo. Now we just need to get Arduino writing it's own code ;-]

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