This small stick can turn any TV into a desktop PC.
Personal computing just got more compact and affordable with HardWhere 2.0, a PC-on-a-stick that plugs into any TV with an HDMI port. This tiny computer offers the same desktop experience without the hassle of long power cables, bulky equipment and loud, overheating fans. You can take all your computing needs anywhere in your pocket!
HardWhere comes from three Italian Makers based in the little town of Treviso. Andrea Cescon, Marco Crosera and Stefano Artuso have proven that big ideas can come from small places. HardWhere boasts a multi-user experience, with everything from its Ubuntu Linux-based operating system to user files and apps saved on a removable microSD card. To change the user, you just need to replace the microSD; ensuring privacy for each individual.
Despite its sized, its capabilities are hardly minimized. HardWhere still has the full PC experience, with cloud sync and storage, complete web browsing, HD video streaming (VLC, Netflix, YouTube, etc.), OpenOffice, as well as the Linux app market. This minicomputer even runs Android on the internal Flash memory, giving you access to more apps.
As the team touts, “many lives, one HardWhere.” This device can be useful in many situations beyond a personal computer. It can act as a family PC with each member having their own microSD; as a small server for peer-to-peer downloading and uploading; as a presentation companion that can plug to an HDMI projector; or as an entertainment where you can stream your videos, play your songs, or scroll through photos.
HardWhere’s hardware includes a quad-core ARM-based processor, 2GB of RAM and a GPU Mali-400. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and comes with two micro- and full-sized USB ports for power, a microSD card reader and an HDMI 1.4 connector. What’s more, HardWhere was designed with Makers in mind. The pocketable PC enables user to code and upload sketches to their Arduino, and even control a variety of 3D printers.
A British inventor living in Japan has decided to spread Christmas cheer in a rather unusual way this year. Dressed up as a Christmas tree, complete with flashing lights and decorations, Joseph Tame is turning more than just a couple heads throughout Tokyo’s streets, sidewalks, stores, train stations, and even in the back of its pulled rickshaws.
The aptly namedRunning Christmas Treecostumeconsists of an aluminum frame wrapped with a pair of backpacks, each stuffed with branches from two fake trees. The attention-grabbing getup — which took two months to build — is equipped with 99 batteries, 1,500 LEDs, 100 feet of wiring, nine microcontrollers (a combination of Arduino and Raspberry Pis), three onboard cameras, as well as a built-in library of 153 Christmas songs. From the looks of the video below, he is even wearing some slick Adafruit Firewalker-like kicks.
Tame says he is taking bookings for personal appearances in the suit, which he is billing as an “Uber for illuminations.”
“The tree is available on-demand via your smartphone using the links below, and from Dec 26th 2015 via our new iOS app. The tree can come to you wherever you are in the world, but please note that depending on your location it may take a bit of time to reach you; with a combined weight of 93kg (68kg of Joseph + 25kg of Tree) it is currently too heavy for delivery by drone, and is not yet available from Amazon Prime due to there only being one of him,” its creator explains.
Drive your family cuckoo with this awesome, ATtiny85-powered Christmas bell!
Last summer, Philip Verbeek visited Philadelphia. And what would a trip to the City of Brotherly Love be without a stop at the Liberty Bell? While there, he bought his own little replica as a souvenir, which he planned to throw on his Christmas tree this year.
However, being the Maker that he is, Verbeek felt that wasn’t enough. Instead, he wanted to take it one step further by having it ring automatically. To accomplish this, he used a servo motor with a small hammer at the end. An ATtiny85 in combination with an RTC mini-breakout board is tasked with ringing the bell.
At the top of every hour, the clock rings the number of the current hour and once at every half hour. (Think of it as a cuckoo clock for your tree.) As an extra feature, Verbeek even included a push button for manual control and an RGB LED on top that illuminates as the bell chimes.
This Maker hacked his washing machine with an Arduino to reduce costs and add convenience.
Depending on where you live, you may or not be familiar with time-based pricing for power consumption. Basically, this refers to a system where power is priced not only by how much of it you use, but at what time the consumption takes place. Simon Jowett lives in an area of Australia where “peak” power, from 2 PM to 8 PM on weekdays, is charged at 51 cents (Australian) per kilowatt hour (kWh). The “off peak” rate, from 10 PM to 7 AM, is only 11 cents per kilowatt hour. In other words, where he lives if you’re willing to use power when most people are asleep, it costs less than a quarter of what it would during the most expensive times.
In order to take advantage of this pricing scheme without disturbing his sleep, Jowett squeezed an Arduino into his washing machine’s control panel, along with several relays to act as a delay timer. As he notes in step 2, “Mains electricity is dangerous” so you shouldn’t attempt this if you’re not “confident and or competent.” Additionally, as he puts it later when trying to find DC power to run his Arduino from the machine, “There is a risk here of really mucking things up.”
Warnings aside, his delay-enabled machine seems to work quite well, and, as seen in the video below, has a very usable display and interface. Now he can set up the machine to wash, go to bed, and his laundry will be washed when he wakes up in the morning! Intrigued? Head over to the project’s page here.
Bring this classic power-up to life as part of your Christmas decor.
Super Stars (also referred to as Starmen) can be found in a plethora of Mario Bros. games, including the original and the Mario Kart series. One place you’d typically not find them, however, is on top of a Christmas tree. That was until now.
In the game, when a player gets a star, they become temporarily invulnerable to all damage. This enables them to defeat anything and rack up points, except to hazards that would normally be fatal regardless of power-ups. Well, John Edgar Park has decided to swap out invincibility for some sparkling decor.
The Super Mario fan has built his own 8-bit tree topper using an Arduino, LEDs and a few other off-the-shelf tools. Starduino — a name that was coined by yours truly — is a fairly straightforward project. It consists of an Arduino GEMMA (ATtiny85) that drives an Adafruit NeoPixel ring housed inside a 3D-printed blocky star. Meanwhile, power is supplied by a USB cable plugged either into a wall adapter or a battery.
Sequencers are an interesting type of electronic instrument, capable of playing a selectable beat over and over. These devices can take many forms, but the GRIDI (“Grid plus MIDI”) is likely one of the largest. It takes the form of a table with a 16 x 16 grid of lights embedded in it. Each of these lights, along with a sensor, are placed at the bottom of a small round recession on this table. When in operation, a line of these lights light up, travels in a set rhythm to the other side of the table, then reappears at the beginning to start the loop over again.
As entertaining as this is by itself, if a marker is placed in a dimple, then when the line of lights passes over it, the instrument signified by that position is played. As there are 16 positions that the line passes over, this allows for 16 virtual instruments to be sequenced at each line position.
The brainchild of musician Yuvi Gerstein, this contraption is inspired by Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings, which can be seen on display behind the sequencer in the video below. Control is accomplished by an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560), along with a Macbook Pro. As you might suspect, although the build looks very clean, there is a lot of wiring behind the scenes that makes this electronic instrument work!
Over the last couple of years, the Maker Movement has ushered in a new wave of low-cost hardware that enables anyone of any age and skill level to begin tinkering. Easy-to-use boards like the Arduino continue to lower the barriers to entry, while simplifying the prototyping process. Ultimately, this allows kids to explore basic electronics, learn coding, pursue STEM-related disciplines, and in some cases, even start their own business.
Here are a few young Makers from 2015 that prove age is just a number when it comes to innovation…
Omkar Govil-Nair (O Watch)
Do you recall what you were doing back in the summer of fourth grade? Chances are you weren’t creating a programmable, SAM D21-based smartwatch like eight-year-old Omkar Govil-Nair, let alone launching a successful crowdfunding campaign.
Quin Etnyre (Qtechknow)
Quin Etnyre already has quite the resume for a 15-year-old. After discovering his passion for tech, the self-taught whiz-kid has created his own company Qtechknow, taught classes at MIT, been invited to the White House and garnered over $40,000 on Kickstarter all within three years. Most recently, he introduced a tiny Arduino-compatible board complete with a built-in battery charger and fuel gauge.
Jordan Fung (Pedosa Glass)
What do you do when you’re a 13-year-old app developer who doesn’t have the money to shell out for a new pair of Google Glass? You build your own, of course! Hong Kong resident Jordan Fung devised a smart glasses attachment powered by an Arduino Nano (ATmega328) that shows him data and control information via a tiny FLCoS display.
Shubham Banerjee (Braigo Labs)
Eighth grader Shubham Banerjee constructed a braille printer entirely out of LEGO as a way to improve access and literacy for the visually impaired. More impressively, his startup Braigo Labs received venture capital funding from Intel late last year.
John Wall (WΛLLTΞCH)
17-year-old John Wall loves crafting his own open source wearable gadgetry. From OLED watches to Bluetooth/NFC bone-conduction audio headsets, the future Stanford grad has done it all.
Chase Freedman (Brick Sound Kit)
“What if there was a way to record our own sounds and play them back whenever we flew our LEGO spaceship?” This was the simple question that prompted eight-year-old Chase Freedman to explore his imagination and develop an attachable, Arduino-friendly device that lets kids record or download sounds to enhance their playtime experience.
Sahar Khashayar (Wildfire Warning System)
Jimmy Fallon welcomed 14-year-old Sahar Khashayar onto his show earlier this year. The ninth grade student had the chance to demonstrate her inexpensive device capable of detecting wildfires (and house fires, too) and sending a text alert to emergency personnel before flames rage out of control.
Nick Anglin (Strikey Sensors)
During a Maker Camp last summer, 13-year-old Nick Anglin noticed that there was a void in the market for Little Leaguers looking to learn how to pitch accurately. Whereas most middle schoolers would simply draw a rectangular box out of chalk on a brick or concrete wall and then proceed to throw the ball at the makeshift strike zone, this Maker decided to take a much more high-tech route with the help of lasers and Arduino.
Nilay Mehta (Low-Cost Robotic Arm)
With the help of 3D printing and Arduino, Nilay Mehta was able to build an inexpensive, voice-controlled robotic arm. The Irvine, California high school student programmed the unit to mimic the movements of an actual human hand, such as pinching, grabbing or holding a utensil. Using voice commands through a two prong microphone attached to the limb, the arm can carry out specific actions at the request of its wearer.
Aidan Fay (Cockpit Simulator)
What do you do if you’re a 17-year-old whose aspirations of flying an airplane have been grounded by the FAA due to a pre-existing medical condition? Having been interested in aviation for quite some time and still determined to one day earn his Class 3 pilot’s license, Aidan Fay decided to design a full-scale Cessna 172 simulator right in his bedroom. And unlike other computer programs and video games available today, the San Diego-based Maker wanted a system that would take his training to whole new heights. His life-size cockpit includes everything from pedals that control actual airplane rudders and brakes, to a steering yoke, to an Oculus Rift running Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D software for a truly immersive experience.
Emmett White (PineDuino)
As seen at the Westport Maker Faire, second grader Emmett White came up with a Pinewood Derby car that uses an Arduino Nano, an accelerometer and an LED display to collect and display information as it travels.
Guillaume Rolland (SensorWake)
Wake up and smell the coffee, literally. This is what Guillaume Rolland, an 18-year-old French entrepreneur, set out to accomplish with the world’s first olfactory alarm clock. The unit awakens its user with a scent rather than an abrupt audio alarm.
Maker builds a 3D-printed, Arduino-based social quadruped that can wander freely or be controlled via Bluetooth.
The Makecourse at the University of South Florida teaches the basic skills for engineering design projects, and, unlike most classes of this type, is open to all USF students with no prerequisites. For his part in it, Chomba Waihenya decided to build a quadruped robot. The bot can be controlled via a Bluetooth connection (including a phone app that he wrote), or it can be set free to wander about, avoiding obstacles using an ultrasonic range finder.
The first design for the quadruped involved three servos, or three degrees of freedom (DOF), per leg, but after initial testing he decided to go with a simpler two servo/DOF design. The robot takes advantage of a sliding gait to move, as shown in the videos below. The outer servo makes the leg either stretch out or contract, affecting the amount that it grips the smooth floor. Depending on how these two servos are positioned and moved, this allows the ‘bot to move forward, backward, left, or right. Additionally, it can lie down on command, as well as do a friendly wave with either of its front appendages, making it a “social” quadruped.
Control is accomplished via an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) with a Bluetooth module, with an Arduino V5 sensor shield for simplified wiring. As eight servos plug into the shield in this application, the term “sensor shield” probably doesn’t give its abilities enough credit!
There’s just something very appealing about taking a childhood toy and giving it electronic controls.
Many of us have memories of using an Etch A Sketch as a child and being frustrated that our drawing skills with it weren’t really up-to-par. Sure, there are a few people that are able to manipulate these devices to an artistic level, but for those that are instead well-versed in electromechanical arts, the other option is to create a machine to draw for you.
Instructables user “GeekMomProjects” did just that, and outlined how to replicate her device in a very detailed write-up. Her machine uses three servos controlled by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) with a stepper driver. Two steppers to spin the knobs in a coherent fashion another tips it over when a new drawing needs to be started. This function is also useful for defining where the “pen” should start, which can certainly be frustrating for amateur ‘Sketch artists.
The mechanical frame is cut out very nicely with a laser cutter, and simply bolts together. According to the article, “There is no glue, cutting, drilling or soldering required. Anyone with a basic knowledge of breadboard wiring and Arduino programming can construct and run it.”
You do apparently need access to a laser cutter (or possibly another type of cutting tool), but given the mechanism’s excellent capabilities shown in the videos below, it might be worth it to have the components cut out!
In addition to the functions shown, it also has the ability to draw either raster or vector images from a computer, though it’s better suited to produce vector graphics (graphics composed of lines). Code and mechanical designs are available on GitHub, which should allow things to be updated as improvements come.
An aerial cinematographer has created an R2-D2 drone that not only beeps and whistles, but can capture footage through its camera eye.
Just when we thought we’ve seen it all, we happened to stumble upon this impressive Star Wars project from a Makerspace in a galaxy far, far away. Meet Arturo, the world’s first R2-D2 drone. And with The Force Awakens now in theaters, the timing couldn’t be better.
Equipped with four propellers, Arturo features a moving head, LED jetpack lights on his feet and a speaker that emits R2-D2’s appropriate beeps and whistles. Aside from that, the drone includes a DJI GPS autopilot navigation system and a CCD camera installed in its eye.
The brainchild of aerial cinematographer Don Melara, the quadcopter made its debut only days before the much-anticipated launch of the blockbuster flick at the International Drone Expo in Los Angeles.
The build itself took just over a week to complete and the result is awesome. Not to mention, it’s even more amazing to watch fly through the sky at dusk. See for yourself below!
