The game Super Hexagon was released on iOS in September of 2012, and later ported to Windows, OS X, Android, BlackBerry and Linux. It was not, however, ported for play on a… fan until 2015.
Alejandro J. Cura, with help from friends Jorge Crowe and Cristian Martinez, decided to use an Arduino Nano (ATmega328), literally attached to a fan blade, to display a version of this game in a more “circular” format.
The Nano controls a series of LED lights mounted to a custom printed circuit board, so when they are spun in a circle, they appear to draw bent solid lines around the middle of the fan. This type of display is known as persistence of vision (POV), and tricks the eye into seeing a quickly moving point as a solid line. For the game gaps in these lines are made by carefully timing when the lights go on and off, using a hall effect sensor to measure rotational speed (similar to how a bike speedometer works).
Cura’s device made its successful world premeire in Buenos Aires, Argentina at Casa Abasto, the home of his local hackersapce. If you’d like to build your own, the source code and schematics are posted here. What’s more, the Maker has plans for future improvements on the design itself, as well as plans to expand the documentation. Until then, see it in action below!
The Multistruder will turn plastic into filament for your 3D printer.
For most Makers, having to continually purchase 3D printing filament can be quite the expense. But what if, instead of having to purchase spools of PLA and ABS and wait for them to arrive, you could turn raw materials into 3D-printable filament right at home? This is the idea behind one San Jose-based startup’s open source and expandable fabrication tool called the Multistruder.
Developed by The Green Engineers, Multistruder is a plastic extruder that transforms either virgin resin pellets or recycled scrap plastic into different shapes that can be used in your 3D printer.
With a little research, creator Steven Mosbrucker discovered that making your own 3D-printable materials from pellets is around 2.2 to 4.3 times less expensive than buying readymade filament. The greater quantities of pellets you buy, the cheaper it gets as well. Not to mention, using scrap plastic such as plastic bottles is totally free!
The Multistruder itself is made entirely out of rigid pipe, and sits upright to optimize space. It comes with a stand that can be mounted to a desk or hung from a wall, depending on a Maker’s preference.
In terms of hardware, the device is based on Arduino Uno (ATmega328) that provides its accuracy and expandability. With an Arduino for its brain, the unit is incredibly user-friendly and can be easily controlled via a TFT color touchscreen. Beyond that, the Multistruder’s drive motor control precisely handles the extrusion speed, capable of achieving speeds up to three feet per minute. Meaning, the tool can extrude a 1kg spool in less than eight hours.
Looking ahead, Mosbrucker and his team are developing an automated spooler expansion module for the Multistruder. This will automatically roll up the filament as it’s extruded onto a standard spool.
“The module will use motors controlled by the Multistruder Arduino board. The speed will be (manually) set to hold constant tension onto the filament to get more consistent filament diameter thus better performance,” Mosbrucker adds.
An additional dimension control module will enable the Multistruder to even detect the diameter of the filament and automatically set the speed of the spooler motor to hold the tension for optimal results.
As its creators explain, “Instead of having a PID controller (which the prototype uses and a lot of other filament makers use) and buying a microcontroller for everything else, why not just have a Arduino do all of it?”
This Star Wars fan transformed an old toy from the ‘80s into a remote-controlled AT-AT Walker with Arduino.
What do you get when you combine an Arduino, an Adafruit Servo Shield, an Xbox 360 controller and a 1981 AT-AT Walker? A toy that Star Wars fans like Dave Stein have always dreamed about as kids.
“If you played with this toy growing up you will probably remember how clumsy it was and difficult to move around,” the software engineer by day, tinkerer by night writes.
With hopes of changing this, Stein decided to take his beat-up AT-AT, embed it with an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), and allow it to clumsily walk and perform other functions similar to those seen in the film.
Admittedly, there were some obstacles that the Maker had to first overcome, such as quadrupedal movement, learning how to program an Arduino, and not damaging the Kenner toy’s plastic components.
For control, Stein configured an Xbox 360 gamepad that interfaces with a computer and relays a signal to the Uno. This enables the modded AT-AT Walker to wander left and right, forwards and backwards, and even move its head horizontally.
As a kid, there was always that one game — besides Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam and Street Fighter, of course — that seemed to captivate everyone’s attention while inside an arcade. Air hockey! Originally invented by a group of Brunswick Billiards engineers back in 1969, the two-player game features a puck, two goals and a frictionless surface.
However, there was always those times when you couldn’t find anyone else around to compete against. Fortunately, Maker Jose Julio recently decided to take it upon himself to alleviate that problem by creating an air hockey-playing robot using some readily available RepRap 3D printer parts, including an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560) and RAMPS 1.4 board.
Additional key specs included a PS3 camera, NEMA17 stepper motors, motor drivers, belts, bearings and rods, along with some 3D-printed brackets, paddles and pucks, obviously. Meanwhile, the table itself was built from scratch with off-the-shelf wood and two standard 90mm PC fans to produce the necessary air pressure to lift the puck.
Julio used a three-motor design (two for the Y-axis, one for the X), and replaced the X-axis rods on the RepRap with carbon tubes, which seemed to work quite well on PLA-printed bushings and made the system lighter.
“I started studying the code of Marlin (typical RepRap firmware) software but I decided to start from scratch, first because I don’t need a G-code interpreter, and second, because the software of a 3D printer have a motion planning algorithm and this is not the way the Air Hockey robot must work,” the Maker explains. “3D printers plan movements for smooth paths through all the points. The Air Hockey Robot should move inmediately with every new command canceling the previous one, because what we need is that the robot moves as quickly as possible to the new position.”
How the robot works is fairly straightforward. fThe system employs a PS3 camera mounted above the table to monitor the puck, determine its trajectory and stop shots from an opponent. The PS3 Eye is also adjustable, which allows a user to determine the robot’s speed, acceleration and strategy algorithms. (That’s good news for sore losers, you can rig the game to guarantee the win…) This was made possible by connecting the camera to a PC running a vision system that he wrote using OpenCV libraries. This way, once the puck is detected, the location is sent to the Arduino by serial port.
Beyond that, Julio devised a trajectory prediction system and the robot’s air hockey strategy with the Arduino.
“Once we have detected the puck in two consecutive frames we can calculate the trajectory. The trajectory prediction takes into account that the puck can rebound against a side wall. All these calculations are accesible to the strategy subsystem that decides what the robot will do: defense, defense+attack, and preparing for a new attack,” he writes.
Birchbox is to beauty as Thimble is to DIY electronics. Build a new device every month!
The Maker Movement has taken off and diversified the past few years, igniting creativity and innovation in a community of people. For those new to it and interested in getting involved, it can be a bit daunting at first. There’s so much you can build, hack and tinker with, so where do you even start? Makers David Brenner and Oscar Pedroso saw this need, and created a solution to help guide and engage future makers without them feeling intimidated.
After meeting on Hacker News in December 2014, David and Oscar wanted to share their passion for the DIY crowd by finding a way to engage kids and adults in electronics. A year later, Thimblewas conceived.
Thimble is a DIY kit accompanied by a learning app, which allows you to build a new electronic device each month. The team has developed a series of monthly kits that teaches users the fundamentals of electronics and how hardware and software come together, so they can innovate and invent from the comfort of their own home.
The first kit is a Wi-Fi-enabled robot, controlled by phone, tablet or laptop. The robot arrives with all the components needed to build the project and step-by-step tutorials on the learning app to guide you through the construction process. Additionally, the app provides a community of other Makers to share knowledge and best practices. By the time you finish making your Wi-Fi bot, you will have learned how to create an Android/iOS app that can move things, understand how electricity, motors and microcontrollers work, and have enough knowledge to try out your own ideas to improve the robot. You can achieve this regardless of your age or background knowledge.
At the heart of the robot is an Arduino. You can program its firmware to talk to the Wi-Fi module that comes with the kit. With it, the robot can receive commands over your wireless network and control the motors. Additional parts included in the kit are a printed circuit board, breadboard, wheels, battery holder, cable, terminal blocks, jumpers and more.
Looking ahead, other projects you could receive range from drones, to alarm clocks, to LED cubes, to light control devices for your home. If monthly shipments are too frequent, or you just want to try the first kit out, Thimble can deliver kits whenever you’d like them instead.
Ready to jumpstart your future as a Maker? Head over to the Thimble Kickstarter page, where David, Oscar and the team are seeking $25,000. You can expect to start building and tinkering when the first batch of units goes out for delivery on April 2016.
This Santa-like beard uses sensors to gently zap your face as a reminder to turn that frown upside down.
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, the JöLLY Trackeris why. Truth be told, the holiday season can be a stressful one. Between deciding what to get loved ones to navigating your way through crowded malls, sometimes all that happiness can get lost in the hustle and bustle.
Developed by creative ad agency McKinney, the JöLLY Tracker is a wearable of a different kind. It’s not a fitness tracker. It’s not a smartwatch. It’s not even a hat. It’s an embedded Santa Claus beard that has one job, and one job only: to monitor how much you smile. Should you frown, it’ll emit a friendly little reminder in the form of an electric shock to your face. Ho, ho, how about that?
A team of creatives and hackers wanted to devise a wearable concept that would skip the normal metric tracking and go straight to helping spread some cheer.
“We wear devices on our wrists, pin them to our clothes, carry them in our pockets, each one sending us data about our well-being in hope of improving our lives,” McKinney’s ECD Peter Nicholson explains. “JöLLY is a spoof on our obsession with wearables and data. It is, simply, a joyful reminder that the holidays are the happiest time of the year.”
The setup is fairly simple, and resembles that of a recent project from our good pal Simone Giertz. A set of five electrodes are attached to the wearer’s face: two to monitor muscle movement, two to give off the shock, and most importantly, one for ground.
Hidden behind the white facial hair lies an Arduino, a Muscle SpikerShield, a battery pack and a TENS unit that gently jolts the nerves in your face. The JöLLY Tracker is controlled by an accompanying Android app that communicates with the beard over Bluetooth. It counts how many times a minute your smiling, measures the intensity of your smile and displays real-time changes in jolliness over preset intervals. If you’re too grumpy, JöLLY will send electric pulses to your cheeks and jaw. Safe to say, you’ll turn that frown upside down in no time — albeit nervously.
So in the words of Clark Griswold, just “press on and have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny ****** Kaye.”
This three-axis, joypad-controlled robotic arm is tincredible!
If you’d like a robotic arm to help you with everyday tasks, such as picking up and putting down cylinders, but don’t have $50,000 or more lying around for an industrial model, this simple gripper might be a good place to start. Maker “AleksandarT2” constructed his three-axis robot arm (four if you count the gripper) using four hobby servos and an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), as well as glue, tape, cardboard and a coffee tin!
“This is meant to be a beginner’s guide to how to build an Arduino robotic arm. It’s concept is to be cheap and easy to build,” the Maker explains.
Given his simple materials, the device works quite well — as shown in the videos below. It’s programmed with a modified game controller, then it can repeat the movements from memory. Impressively, in the second video the arm is able to pick up and put down a cylinder twice in a row with no apparent human interaction!
Code for this gadget is provided, as well as an overview of how to modify the game controller used as a “teach pendant.” As impressive as this ‘bot is, especially given the cardboard end-of-arm tooling (EOAT), it would be a great place to start even if one intended to use better mechanical components.
The World’s Largest Arduino Maker Challenge will award 1,000 finalists with the newly-announced MKR1000 boards.
Well, the Arduino/Genuino family has just gained another member. Everyone, meet the MKR1000. MKR1000, meet the ever-growing Maker community.
This MKR1000 is a powerful board that combines the functionality of the Zero (Atmel | SMART SAM D21) and the connectivity of the Wi-Fi Shield. It is based on the ATSAMW25 — an Atmel SmartConnect edge node module specifically geared towards IoT — and offers the ideal solution for Makers seeking Wi-Fi connectivity with minimal previous experience in networking.
The combination of 32-bit computational power like the Zero, the usual rich set of I/O interfaces, low-power Wi-Fi with a CryptoAuthentication chip for secure communication, and the ease of use of the Arduino IDE make this board the perfect choice for emerging IoT battery-powered projects in a compact form factor. It should be noted, however, that unlike most Arduino and Genuinos, the MKR1000 runs at 3.3V.
The newly-revealed board will be available for purchase beginning in February 2016; however, you can be one of the first 1,000 people to lay their hands on the MKR1000 by participating in the World’s Largest Arduino Maker Challenge, a collaboration between Hackster.IO, Microsoft, Adafruit and Atmel.
This contest is designed to celebrate the burgeoning Maker community with exclusive prizes. Inventors, artists, hobbyists, professionals and developers alike are encouraged to create an innovative and original IoT application, ranging from environmental sensors to gaming, to augmented reality, to robotics or drones using the power of Arduino.cc boards and Windows 10.
The 1,000 Makers who submit the best project ideas will receive the brand-spanking new Arduino MKR1000 (U.S. only) and Genuino MKR1000 (outside the U.S.) boards. Earn bonus points by tapping into the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud to capture, analyze and visualize your data with Azure IoT Suite, Azure IoT Hub, Stream Analytics and Machine Learning.
From there, three finalists submitting the best completed projects will be awarded with a fully-funded trip to either Maker Faire Shenzhen, New York or Rome, a chance to present their creation at the Microsoft and the Arduino and Genuino booths, a professional video production of the project, as well as a whopping $500 gift certificate to Adafruit.
This Maker added more battery, more range and LED underlighting to his electric longboard.
Boosted boards are electric skateboards that when used by Andrew Rossignol got about seven miles of range out of the box. This worked great when he lived in New York City, but after moving to Silicon Valley, Rossignol needed more range to reach his office, now 10 miles away.
Naturally, the Maker didn’t accept this limitation and added 288Wh of high-discharge lithium-ion batteries to the 99Wh of batteries that came with the board. With this extra power, he was able to travel over 13 miles on his first ride, ending with a “fuel gauge” that still read 20%.
This would have been impressive enough, especially given his great explanation of his battery choice and wiring scheme, but he didn’t stop there. Instead, he decided to add LED lighting controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328) in the form of programmable strips. These were attached to the sides and front of his board.
For the color, he came up with what he calls “Boosted Orange” to match his board, also known “#FF1900” in more specific terms. For now he only has one animation programmed for the strips, but has plans to make more, and is even considering adding an inertial measurement unit. This would allow the board to sense motion and sync the lighting accordingly. That certainly sounds like an amazing effect, so hopefully he’ll be able to make that modification!
This Maker built a simple, Wi-Fi-enabled alarm system with Arduino.
For those of you tired of your roommate using your things, colleagues taking snacks from your cubicle or classmates stealing stuff from your locker, Stefano Guglielmetti has come up with the perfect solution. That’s because the Maker has developed an Arduino-based alarm system, aptly dubbed You Can’t Touch This!
With an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) at its core, the system is comprised of a PIR sensor, a camera, speakers, a microSD card and an optional USB hub. The idea is pretty straightforward: You discreetly place the device around whatever it is that you’d like to monitor. When movement is detected, the alarm will emit a siren and then proceed to take a picture and email it to you. What’s more, you can shame the thief by automatically posting their photo to friends on Facebook or Twitter via a simple IFTTT recipe.
Even better, the entire project is made up of only a handful of steps. These include configuring the Arduino, installing the camera and sound card, snapping a test pic, running an email script, building the circuit and finally uploading the Sketch to the Yún. Lucky for you, Guglielmetti has shared the entire process on MAKE:, including its code and schematics.
Let’s just say, install this alarm in your room, apartment or cubicle, and no one will take your belongings again.
