CDM points out this very sweet beat manipulator interface by Luca De Rosso. The project, better known as OTTO, makes use of an Arduino board, MAX/MSP software, and an array of LEDs + switches to create a very intuitive and approachable experience for musicians. -

OTTO is a new musical instrument for beat-slicing, the technique that allows to create complex and variegated rhythm sections by using just one rhythmic audio sample, cutting it into little pieces and rearranging them in time. OTTO provides a hardware solution with a strong visual feedback, to allow the musician to control the audio sample as if it was in his hands.

The New Ecology of Things Lab at Art Center's graduate Media Design Program has released a new version of their NETLab Toolkit. This is a system for more easily connecting microcontrollers to computers, especially targeted at those who may be new to hardware and programming. In this video, Professor Philip van Allen of the Media Design Program shows how you can use NETLab to easily connect a a sensor to an Arduino and to Flash on a desktop machine.

Here's the basic product description:

The NETLab Toolkit is a free set of software tools that enable designers to easily "sketch in hardware". With no programming at all and working in the familiar environment of Flash (or Processing or MAX/MSP), designers can hook up a physical sensor (e.g. a knob) and immediately get that knob to control a motor or a video projection. The toolkit works with a wide range of sensors, wireless sensors, input from the Wii Remote, controls motors and LEDs, communicates with MIDI devices, controls sound, graphics, and video in Flash, and communicates with DMX computer controlled lighting equipment, all with a simple drag-and-drop interface (of course, programming hooks are provided as well).

NETLab Toolkit

More about the Arduino Projects Pack

Morgellon posted steps on publishing Arduino sensor readings to the web via Pachube -

I recently discovered Pachube and have just fell in love with it.
This is a video of my first Pachube project and what I've been able to do. I connected two light sensors to an Arduino. One sensor measure light levels in my room, the other measures light levels outside.
The Arduino is connected to a computer running Processing, and it forwards the sensor data to Pachube.

Not since industrial noisemakers like Einsturzende Neubauten first miked a shopping cart... This is a decidedly more 21st version. The makers, Hogan Birney, Sean Kinberger, and David Plakon explain the design:

Touch and pressure are used to control the live manipulation of sound and image. The cart is equipped with a video projector, computer and battery making it portable and self contained. Using a microprocessor (Arduino) and custom software (max/msp/jitter) to sense the users touch and translate the pressure of the users touch, a real-time response is created both visually and sonically. The cart is used by MPG performers and the audience is also encouraged to play the cart as well.

More about the Mobile Performance Group

The Mega Lithium BackPack is an Open Source Hardware battery shield for the Arduino Mega that snaps to the back of the board, and provides around 15-27 hours of battery power to circuits built with the Arduino Mega (depending on the circuit). It gives a 3.3 volt, 5 volt, ground, and battery capacity testing signal that can be plugged into the Analog input port to test how much battery power is left.

The BackPack sells for $48.

Introducing the Mega BackPack, a battery for the Arduino Mega

More about the ScrewShield for Arduino

Chris Anderson demonstrates the systems of the BlimpDuino.

The Blimpduino kit is a very low cost, open source, autonomous blimp kit. It consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. Assembly is required, including soldering.

Anderson created the BlimpDuino with Jordi Munoz of DIY Drones. Their entry, shown in the video above, took first place in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition a few months ago.

If you want to build the BlimpDuino, the documentation is on the site and pretty good. Printing the build notes out and setting aside a few hours with the soldering iron should have you in pretty good shape.

I love this video that Andres Leon did with parts he got from adafruit. Limore writes:

Sometimes we wonder what folks do with the Xbees and kits we sell, and sometimes we get to see the fantastic project, like this one! Arduino-based laser controlled wireless automatic cat food dispenser.

Arduino-based laser controlled wireless automatic cat food dispenser

Gijs Gieskes introduces another intriguing musical machine, the opto-sensing multi-armed Servo Seq -

The frequency circles speed can be set with a pot on the controller. The arms can be sequenced with the three buttons on the controller, in combination with the joystick.. If the joystick is moved up, the volume will go up for the arm that is being controlled. Moving the joystick left and right will change the position of the arm. On the tip of the arm there is a line detector, that plays back the frequencys, but the arms can also hit objects placed next to the circle to make drum sounds.

knuckles904 writes [by way of adafruit]:

Ok so I, after much research, have been able to read the gyro data of the new Wii Motion Plus peripheral with the Arduino microcontroller. With this code and the code previously developed for the Wii Nunchuck, we are able to create a 6 DOF IMU for under $40. Thanks Nintendo! Best of all, everything is I2C so only 2 analog inputs (A4 and A5 needed for the wire library) are needed to read 6 sensors and no ADC conversion happens on the Arduino board.

Wii Motion Plus + Arduino = Love

Michael put some stepper motors to work playing back MIDI tracks by way of Arduino -

The data for the music is taken from a MIDI file I made. The code for interpreting the data and moving the motors was written by me over the course of a few days.

The sound you're hearing is coming entirely from the motors. The motors are screwed into some pieces of aluminum from an old project to help them resonate. I'm taking requests for other songs to play.

Currently, the information for the song is stored on the Arduino. Plans for implementing a realtime MIDI stream are underway. Eventually I'll be able to plug in a keyboard and play the motors as though I were playing piano.

I've looked at a ton of light up garments, El Wire, etc. This is one of the most tastefully- and artfully-done articles of clothing I've seen as of late. Instead of hiding the electronics, the graphic on the back integrates, even highlights the main board.

More about Soundie: Interactive hoodie

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

It has everything that Diecimila has (electrically) with more analog input pins and onboard +5V AREF jumper. Physically, it is missing power jack and power select jumper. Since the Nano is automatically sense and switch to the higher potential source of power, there is no need for the power select jumper.

More about the Arduino Nano board

Technology ... the electronic frontier.

These are the voltages of Arduino microcontroller.

It's 54 I/O pins ... to explore new circuitry, to bring forth new devices and experimentation.

To totally make tons of LEDs blink! -- WOOooosh - PEW! PEW! - BZzZTtT!

*ahem* (Arduino Mega via MakerShed, ScrewShield by Wingshield Industries)

MAKE subscriber Marcus created a neato embroidered badge for Arduiniacs out there. These stylin' little symbols of skill are available from Little Bird Electronics - no prior Arduino proficiency testing required.

Hey, I think this merit badge thing might be catching on eh? It would seem a bit of a roundup is in order -

Nerd merit badges

Soft circuit merit badge merits itself

Machine Project merit badges

What? no blogging badge? :(

Want to make your own Tweet-a-Watt or Botanicall that posts data to a Twitter account for you to follow? In this class, we'll play with the Arduino Ethernet Shield and look at how to connect to remote servers. We'll build a simple project that will take button press data and post it to a Twitter account from the Arduino device using HTTP. We'll go over the basics of Ethernet, TCP/IP, and the HTTP protocol.

Twitter client Arduino workshop with Ben Combee

Bug Labs

598 Broadway, 4th floor

NYC

More:

• HOW TO - Make your own Tweet-a-Watt
  
• Hey kids, Tweet-a-Watt kits!
  
• Botanicalls Twitter: flora tweets
  

This light-seeking Arduino mothbot builds on the SERB code, and the Instructable is very thorough. Beginning Arduino bot builders, rejoice and build!

More:

• Review: SERB Robot kit
  
• Adding bump sensors to your SERB
  
• SERB robot with Wii Nunchuck control
  

Equipment

• Soldering iron
• Hot glue gun (optional)

You'll need (parts):

• (2x) 470 ohm resistor (yellow-purple-brown)
• (1x) 220 ohm resistor (red-red-brown)
• (1x) Parallel port cable or parallel-to-serial adapter
• (2x) Three wire cables with female connectors on one end, unattached wires on the other

More about making a Parallel Port Programmer

In the Maker Shed:


More about the Arduino Mega in the Maker Shed

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a stellar article introducing you to serial communication with AVR microcontrollers. If you have a basic knowledge or Arduino and want to take it further, this is for you.

From the Arduino.cc forums, Bill writes -

This is still a prototype but it's functionally complete and works very well. It's messy because I hacked up a generalized arduino proto-shield to mount it but there's really not a lot to the hardware and now that it's working I can refine it to something much smaller and neater. The functions that are there at the moment are speedo, tach, and gear indicator the speedo and tach are dead accurate and the gear indicator responds very crisply to shifting up or down.

The intercom temporarily disconnects premises telephones from the Telco line, and rings them with a distinctive cadence. After a suitable ringing period, pick up your phone and wait for someone to answer. When you take your phone off hook, (or someone else on premises goes off hook,) the intercom stops ringing and supplies premises phones with talk current. All off-hook parties can converse. When all premises phones go back on hook, the intercom re-connects them to the Telco line.

More about the Arduino based telephone Intercom [Arduino forums]

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

Guillermo Iao sent us a link to this project where he recycled a hard drive case into a bottom and a top for an Arduino-based DAC (digital analog converter) used as a preamp.

Reusing Hard Disk Parts for the Case

Just ran across this post on CiboMahto's blog detailing how to control an inexpensive analog clock mechanism with an Arduino.

The mechanical bit is quite simple. The clock functions in a similar fashion to a stepper motor, in the sense that you charge an electric coil to get the mechanical bit to move forward a precise amount. In this case, each firing moves the second hand one second position forward (and makes the familiar tick noise). To ‘fire’ the electric coil, you simply put a voltage across it. The only complicated bit is that you actually have to reverse this voltage to advance the clock to the next step.

My friend and yours, Gareth Branwyn, heard I was testing the Epilog Zing laser cutter and asked if I could cut him the parts for a 4Volt Jansen Walker. Gar is a robot master and a steampunk to the core (check out his Lost Knowledge issue of MAKE magazine for more proof) so I figured clear acrylic wouldn't do it. He needed a wooden walker! I'm going to convince him to purchase brass nuts and bolts for the build, and maybe he can use small steam engines instead of servos and swap in a Babbage Machine for the Arduino...

I downloaded the parts files from Thingiverse, pulled them into Corel Draw, prepped them on a single 16" x 12" page, and fired it off. After about 20 minutes of cutting (OK, I was just sipping a cocktail watching it cut) the parts were all done. If you look closely there are some strange curves that became segmented or non-tangent. It turns out a single bolt in the laser optics assembly had wiggled loose. I paused the cutting, tightened the bolt, and the remaining cuts were perfect. I kind of hope these anomalies will enhance the organic nature of the design.

We'll have to bug Gar to pick up the story from here once I ship the parts to him!

Here's the original, inspiring, wonderful, otherworldly Jansen Walker that inspired Mr. 4Volt.

More about the Advanced Arduino Starter Kit

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

More about the Getting Started with Arduino Kit

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

Libelium, a European distributor of Arduino and Arduino accessories, holds an annual project contest. Winners are picked based on "novelty, ease of replication, and level of documentation." Check out this year's winners at the Arduino blog. The video above is by Francisco Reinoso, who took first place.

BBC News' Tech department highlights a collection of Arduino projects, introducing the platform to a a broad audience in the process. This is some very bigtime recognition for the lil' blue board and its users - and hey its about time! =) [via Arduino Blog]

Update: Some were curious as to where the above vid was shot - Brock mentions on his blog that it was the offices of Tinker.it

Instructables user pstretz made this Arduino-based simple soft tone generator for another user (carmitsu) who wrote:

I teach music in elementary school. We play a lot of recorder music. i.e. the kids play little flutes...... I have several special needs kids who can are using these black poster boards with circles that have the name of the note on them. These students push on the circles with notes names at the same time the rest of the students are playing a song..... Most of the special needs kids can do this fairly well and in time with the music.

What I am looking to to is build a very simple sound generator so that these kids could play the same pitch as those being played by the students on their recorders. I would only be a few pitches. I thought I could attach some kind of small button to the bottom of their round circles so that when they push on them the sound would come out of a small speaker, loud enough so they could hear.

And that's just what this is, a simple tone generating soft circuit. It's a great simple project to make, and it warms my heart to see makers helping teachers helping kids.