‘Sup Brow? Send a message to your friend by making a muscle

---

Text a friend by lifting your eyebrow using a MyoWare muscle sensor and an Adafruit Bluefruit Feather board. 

---

In today’s world, there are all kinds of ways to message one another. There’s texting, emailing, Skyping, Snapchatting, and countless other forms of communication. But what if you could send a message to your friend by simply raising your eyebrow?

This was something Adafruit’s Becky Stern and Kate Hartman wanted to make a reality in their recent wearables project, ’Sup Brows. To bring this idea to life, the duo employed a MyoWare muscle sensor along with a Feather Bluefruit 32U4 LE (ATmega32U4) microcontroller to transmit a signal through the phone to Adafruit IO and then IFTTT to trigger an SMS.

“It’s really neat to use non-verbal communication like facial expressions as an interface for electronics,” Hartman explains.

As cool of a project as this may be, ‘Sup Brows is simply the beginning. Since it’s connected to IFTTT, the possibilities of what you can accomplish by creating a recipe and just raising your eyebrows are endless. Similarly, Stern and Hartman note that it can also be hooked up to a variety of other muscles to have activities prompted by other facial expressions, gestures and actions.

So whether it’s booking an appointment with your cosmetic surgeon when your Botox wears off or getting yourself out of a date with a butt dial, everything is fair game. Intrigued? Head over to Adafruit’s tutorial page to get started.

 

Meet the drone that flies, floats and swims underwater

---

The Loon Copter looks like something out of James Bond.

---

It’s in our nature to be curious, so it comes with no surprise that there have been a lot of excitement surrounding commercial drones. Drones open up the skies for ordinary people to explore the land from above and if the history of human innovation has taught us anything, it’s that we have the tendency take something great and make it even better. Researchers from Oakland University’s Embedded Systems Research Laboratory have done just with Loon Copter, the first aerial and underwater drone.

Fittingly named after the aquatic bird, the Loon Copter is a multi-rotor platform capable of traditional aerial flight, on-water surface operation and sub aquatic diving. The Michigan-based research team of Dr. Osamah Rawashdeh, Sean Simpson, Hamzeh Alzubi and Iyad Mansour started this project in 2014 and demonstrated successful operation in early 2015.

The Loon Copter has the body of a conventional quadcopter, but the cylinder that hangs below the air frame is what truly gives it the unique capabilities. The cylinder, when filled with air, changes the drone’s bouyancy so it can transition from flight to floating on water. The cylinder also can fill up with water and sink, allowing the drone to dive. The four propellers used for flying in the air, is also for navigating in the water. The drone can seamlessly return to flight by pumping out the water. Sounds like something out of a James Bond movie right? It’s not too far-fetched as the Loon Copter’s design can be adapted for search and rescue applications, or marine research.

The Loon Copter is one of the 10 international semifinalists in the 2016 Drones for Good competition, which received 1,017 entries from 165 countries. Dr. Rawashdeh and his team will be in Dubai from February 4-6, 2016 competing for the grand prize of $1 million. Learn more about the Loon Copter and the team’s work by visiting their website.

Fabulous Beasts is like Jenga with an IoT twist

---

Fabulous Beasts is a game of strategy and balance in which you build a tower of animals on your tabletop, then help them evolve in a connected digital world.

---

Video games have come a long way in the past several years, yet they’ve also increased children’s fascination with screened devices. And unfortunately, alternatives like board and card games seem to lack the high-tech pizzazz kids are looking for these days. This was a problem London-based studio Sensible Object wanted to solve.

Fabulous Beasts is the startup’s first game, which combines the physical interaction of old-school fun with today’s digital savviness. Inspired by the Internet of Things, players take turns in constructing a Jenga-like tower by balancing multi-colored, animal-shaped blocks on top of each other.

Similar to popular games like Disney Infinity and Skylanders, Fabulous Beasts is hoping to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds, all while creating a deeper and more dynamic experience for the younger generation.

The game itself is made for one to five players, each of whom become “gods” ruling over an app-connected world, visible on any phone or tablet over Bluetooth. Before each turn, players scan their RFID-embedded game pieces, also known as “Beast Artefacts,” via a reader and then place them atop the stack. As this happens, the animals will appear on the mobile device, and evolve and augment in interesting ways.

As time goes on, the tower becomes taller and more complex, and consequently worth more points. The objective is get the highest score (or fabulousness) before the tower eventually falls down. Once this occurs, just like Jenga, the game comes to an end.

What’s more, Fabulous Beasts is a fine example of a project that has transcended from beyond the MakerSpace and into the MarketPlace, having originally prototyped with 3D printing and Arduino. The studio is now launching a crowdfunding campaign to draw attention from the public.

Sound like a game for you and your children? Head over to its Kickstarter campaign, where the Sensible Object crew is currently seeking $214,582. Delivery is expected to get underway in November 2016.

This Maker built an Arduino attachment for his stationary bike that let him pedal through a virtual world

---

For $40, you can add a virtual reality experience to your boring stationary bike.

---

As great of a calorie-burning exercise as it may be, riding a stationary bike is typically pretty boring. To add a little more excitement to the relatively dull workout, Paul Yan decided to enhance it with the help of virtual reality. The best part? Unlike commercial products that can cost upwards of a few hundred dollars, the Maker was able to create an “Arduino thingamajig” for just $40.

The unit attaches to a bike and wirelessly communicates with an accompanying mobile device over Bluetooth Low Energy. It is equipped with an optical tachometer that’s responsible for measuring the revolution of a wheel; meaning, it can monitor the movement and speed of any stationary cycle or piece of exercise equipment with a rotating part.

“I’m using a mountain bike on an indoor trainer but the beauty of this non-invasive approach is that you could use it with treadmills, ellipticals, rowing machines, or anything that has a looping/revolving surface,” Yan explains.

The attachment is placed next to the rear wheel, where it detects a paper strip on the tire as its starting point. Each time the wheel goes around, the Arduino sends a wireless message to the paired phone.

Using a custom app and a pre-fab virtual environment powered by the Unity 3D game engine, the smartphone is placed inside a VR viewer strapped to the cyclist’s face. Now instead of staring at the wall or TV while pedaling away, the wearer can immerse themselves in a 3D city. The virtual bike will only nudge forward whenever the app receives a message from the Arduino reporting that the physical bike’s wheel has made a complete rotation.

“We are effectively mapping the physical action of pedaling to movement in the virtual space to make an oversized gaming controller,” the Maker adds.

The headset that Yan used only cost $10, and is compatible with Google Cardboard. He does advise those looking to build something similar that, “It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to have the physical bike steer the direction of the virtual bike. Why not give the player total freedom to explore?”

When all is said and done, Yan’s project is certainly a fun and more engaging way of turning a mundane activity into something a lot more exciting — without breaking the bank or overcomplicating things. See it in action below!

Maker creates his own life-size BB-8

---

17-year-old Angelo Casimiro decided to build a fully-functional, smartphone-controlled BB-8.

---

Until Episode VII came out, if you were a true Star Wars fan, building a working R2-D2 replica would seem like the thing to do. With the emergence of BB-8, R2 now has competition for the coolest robot in the galaxy, and for which droid you should recreate.

At first glance the BB-8, with its continuously-rotating body and a head that always stays nearly upright, looks like something that could only be made with computer graphics on a movie set. 17-year-old Maker Angelo Casimiro, however, proves that isn’t the case with his life-size, phone-controlled toy. The best part of it all? According to his exhaustive tutorial, the project should cost only around $120 — a little less than Sphero’s miniature device.

The physics student from De La Salle University in the Philippines was able to purchase most of the items from a hardware store while recycling pretty much everything else, like a Christmas ball for its eye, an old Wi-Fi router antenna, and roll-on deodorant balls for the mechanism of the droid’s head to keep it upright. BB-8’s head is made from styrofoam, and the body is a beach ball reinforced with papier-mâché.

The secret to his BB-8 build is that inside the sphere is a two-wheeled vehicle. When it moves, this vehicle rolls around inside, changing the ball’s center of gravity and causing it to go across the floor. (Think of it like a giant hamster ball.) The head, in turn, is stuck to the top of the spherical body via a structure inside of the ball made out of wood and magnets. Control is accomplished using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) with a motor shield and a Bluetooth module, which allows it to take signals from a smartphone via the “Arduino Bluetooth RC Car” app. There’s even an MP3 module and speaker that enables it to beep and talk just like in the film.

Though the concept of this bot is likely simpler than what you would have thought it would take to produce one of these, it still took a lot of work from several people to get things perfect! If you’d like to try it yourself, Casimiro has provided a detailed overview video, as well as a 47-step tutorial over on Instructables.

Touch the banana, get the Wi-Fi password

---

Bet your office doesn’t share wireless network credentials like this… 

---

Turns out, bananas aren’t just an excellent source of potassium, they’re also an excellent source of wireless network credentials. Just ask Danish Reddit user and network administrator “Sysvival” who recently decided to use the fruit as a unique way to distribute Wi-Fi passwords to guests at his workplace.

The idea originated after Sysvival was asked to set up a captive portal for his office, like those seen in most hotel chains and coffee shops. The administrator decided to generate a pool of 5,000 passwords, each of which were valid for eight hours of access. These temporary codes are stored on a Raspberry Pi, which is connected to a Makey Makey GO (ATmega32U4) via a USB cable. The Makey Makey forms the a connection between the banana and Pi.

Now, whenever a visitor needs to get onto the Wi-Fi network, all he or she has to do is touch the banana, which triggers the Raspberry Pi to spit out a password on an attached display. When contact is established, the capacitance of the banana drops. The Makey Makey detects this change and interprets it as the press of a key, therefore sending the signal to the Pi that it needs to hand out a password voucher.

Why go through such lengths? According to Sysvival, “It’s fun, it’ll make people smile, it beats a static WPA password in funniness, and when people leave our office, they can’t access our Wi-Fi because there’s no banana to touch.” Intrigued? You can check out the entire project on its Reddit thread here.

Watch a robot solve a Rubik’s Cube in one second

---

This Arduino-driven robot will unfix a Rubik’s Cube before you could even finish reading this sentence.  

---

Last November, 14-year-old Lucas Etter set a new world record for the fastest time to solve a Rubik’s Cube, becoming the first person to ever break the five-second barrier for unravel the iconic 3 x 3 x 3 puzzle. As impressive as that may be, nothing may compare to this duo’s latest project. That’s because software engineers Jay Flatland and Paul Rose have devised an automated mechanism that can crack it in just over a second.

With an Atmel chip at its heart, the system is comprised of stepper motors, some 3D-printed parts and four webcams all connected to a Linux-based computer. The software engineers used the Kociemba algorithm to solve the puzzle, and have modified the Rubik’s Cube by drilling four holes into the middle of each of its six sides so the robot could manipulate it. Since the robot needs the cameras in order to function, the webcams are covered with a piece of paper until the cube is properly scrambled.

The team is now in the process of applying for the Guinness World Record. Pending all goes to plan, the robot will crush the current record holder’s time of 3.253 seconds.

Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi combines a SAM D21 and ATWINC1500

---

Oh my, an Adafruit Feather with Wi-Fi! 

---

Makers, meet the Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi. As its name would suggest, the all-new board is Adafruit’s latest take on an Arduino-compatible, ‘all-in-one’ platform with high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity, USB support and a built-in battery charger.

Equipped with an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 and ATWINC1500 SoC at its core, Makers will find it super simple to connect their Feathers to the Internet. The 802.11bgn-capable Wi-Fi module is the ideal add-on to existing MCU solutions bringing wireless and network capabilities through UART or SPI-to-Wi-Fi interface.

“This module works with 802.11b, g, or n networks and supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption,” Adafruit writes. “The datasheet says it can do Soft-AP mode but we don’t have any code to actually use that. You can clock it as fast as 12MHz for speedy, reliable packet streaming. And scanning/connecting to networks is very fast, a few seconds.”

The ATSAMD21G18 Cortex-M0+ processor at its heart — which is the same chip used in the new Arduino Zero — is clocked at 48MHz and at 3.3V logic. It boasts a whopping 256K of Flash (eight times more than the Atmega328 or 32u4) and 32K of RAM (16 times as much). The MCU comes with native USB, as well as a USB bootloader and serial port debugging.

With portability in mind, Adafruit has included a connector for any 3.7V LiPo battery along with an integrated charger. Even without a battery, it will run just fine via microUSB. The Feather will even automatically switch over to USB power when it’s available.

“We also tied the battery through a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to detect when you need a recharge,” Adafruit writes.

The ‘M0 WiFi features a similar form factor as many of its other Feathers, measuring 2.1″ x 0.9″ x 0.3” in size and weighing 6.1 grams. (Note, however, that it is 0.1″ longer than its siblings.) Beyond that, the board has 20 GPIO pins with eight PWM pins, 10 analog inputs, a single analog output, a power/enable pin, four mounting holes and a reset button. Plus, there are a couple of LEDs and is compatible with a wide range of FeatherWings, including OLED, NeoPixels, servos, relays, seven-segment displays, etc.

Have any more questions? Watch below as Lady Ada herself unveils the Feather M0 WiFi, or stay tuned on its page here.

 

21 smart crowdfunding campaigns you may want to back this week

---

Every Friday, we take a look at some of the smartest, most innovative projects that caught our attention on Kickstarter and Indiegogo over the last seven days. 

---

ComfyLight

This bulb simulates how you and your family move around the house, giving the impression of a lived-in home. ComfyLight is currently seeking $54,407 on Kickstarter.

SmartyPans

This intelligent skillet can track nutrition in real-time, while teaching you how to cook. SmartyPans is currently seeking $40,000 on Indiegogo.

SprayPrinter

This wireless device converts images from your smartphone into Banksy-like wall art. SprayPrinter is currently seeking $20,000 on Indiegogo.

Smartbe

This connected stroller offers more than 10 safety, security, comfort and convenience-enhancing functions, all managed by your smartphone or smartwatch. Smartbe is currently seeking $80,000 on Indiegogo.

DreamScreen

This set of colored LEDs attach to the back of your TV and react to the color pixels on your screen to enhance movies, games and shows. Rakesh and Kate Reddy have already well surpassed their goal of $25,000 on Kickstarter.

ALEX

This wearable gadget discreetly sits on the back of your neck to correct your posture. NAMU is currently seeking $50,000 on Kickstarter.

OneCook

This robotic chef streamlines the entire cooking process, and can adapt its style to your personal preferences. Team TNL is currently seeking $100,000 on Kickstarter.

Spritely

This wake-up system uses a special sensor and an accompanying mobile app to guarantee you get out of bed in the morning. Dylan Brodsky is currently seeking $100,000 on Indiegogo.

ACTREK

This wearable monitors your favorite exercises and fitness status, logs your daily nutrition, and improves your sleep quality. Entanti is currently seeking $100,000 on Kickstarter.

Intrvl Band

This personal training band comes with programmed interval timing functions to optimize your exercise routines. Intrvl Band is currently seeking $12,000 on Kickstarter.

Pavilion

This wireless speaker features a concrete base, a copper spiral bass port and an American white oak top with capacitive touch-enabled controls. Hult Design is currently seeking $1,000 on Indiegogo.

AllerGuarder

This Bluetooth wristband can help the 1-in-13 children with food allergies. Avram Weissman is currently seeking $25,000 on Kickstarter.

SCIO

This device is designed to teach you how to program objects for the IoT, with no experience necessary. MakerThreads is currently seeking $50,000 on Kickstarter.

EVO

This ultimate keychain gadget combines all the essentials you could possibly need for your smartphone — charger, battery, remote, storage and much more. Team Evolu2ion is currently $44,761 on Kickstarter.

Torch

This rechargeable heater fits right inside your coat to keep you warm. Anthony DeVito and  Luke Cesarz are currently seeking $20,000 on Indiegogo.

SmartCharge 2.0

This LED bulb continues to work up to four hours during a power outage. SmartCharge Light is currently seeking $50,000 on Indiegogo.

REDS.box

This box safely stores your data at home, while you enjoy all the benefits of the cloud. Flowy Apps is currently seeking $54,474 on Kickstarter.

Noah

This small unit connects to your 3D printer and controls slicing, filament disruption, queue management, power outages and more. Kentstrapper is currently seeking $49,112 on Kickstarter.

eBlocker

This plug-and-play solution anonymizes your online behavior by blocking all ads, stopping all trackers and hiding your IP for true privacy. Christian Bennefeld is currently seeking $81,700 on Kickstarter.

Pomocup

This simple yet practical device for ski mountaineers measures data that matters, providing real-time feedback during ascent and analytics back at home. Pomocup is currently seeking $49,905 on Kickstarter.

Did you happen to miss last week’s notable campaigns? If so, you can check them out here.

This tennis racquet grunts like Sharapova (and others) when you swing it

---

A racquet that makes quite the racket.

---

Conventional wisdom says that tennis players grunt because it helps them apply the maximal force when they strike the ball. However, don’t be fooled, these noises are totally unnecessary and downright annoying. In fact, there are top names in the game like Maria Sharapova whose screams routinely top 100 decibels. This has led many, including the legendary Martina Navratilova, to call into question whether or not the behavior is actually a form of cheating.

Cognizant of this, Maker Seiya Kobayashi has come up with a hilarious solution for this problem: a racquet that does the grunting for you. You simply select one of four notable noisemakers — Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal — and the aptly named Grunting Racket will take care of the rest.

This allows you to focus on your footwork and hitting the ball, while the combination of an Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328), an accelerometer and speaker emits the obnoxious sounds. Additional components include a LiPo battery, an Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board and a button on the grip that lets you choose the player. These electronics are all housed inside the racquet’s handle. Kobayashi employed both Arduino and Processing sketches along the way to prototype his idea.

How it works is fairly simple: When a value from the accelerometer exceeds a particular threshold, the sound board will play one of the four tones. You can see (and hear) it action below!

[s/o to fellow tennis players Artie Beavis and David Scheltema]