This giant LED thermometer scarf shows the temp outside

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With this scarf, you’ll never have to wonder how cold it is when you step outside.

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Winter is well underway in some parts of the country, and if you have to head out into the frigid air, you’ll probably want a comfy scarf around your neck. But what about an accessory that not only keeps you warm, but looks and functions as a giant thermometer as well? That’s exactly what Instructables user “caitlinsdad” has created using an Adafruit FLORA (ATmega32U4), humidity and temperature sensor modules to detect the weather conditions, a NeoPixel ring for the bulb, and an LED strip to reveal the temp in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

Protect your chickens with this automatic door

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Philip Verbeek has developed an automated, ATtiny84-powered door system to protect his chickens against fox at night. 

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As anyone who has a chicken coop knows, fox will not hesitate to go after your fowl for its next meal. In fact, a single red fox has been known to wipe out entire flocks in a single raid. These predators are not just relentless, but they are also patient and very smart. They will find all the cracks, openings, and weak points in your chicken runs and use those as entry points.

Knowing this, engineer Philip Verbeek decided to create an automatic door system to protect his chickens against the fox at night using an ATtiny84. The door position itself is dependent of the daylight intensity, and door will automatically close at sunset and then reopen at sunrise. (Due to their natural biorhythms, chickens will always go inside at dusk.)

A user can manually set the light value at which the system should trigger. This can simply be done by turning the potentiometer with a screwdriver. In Verbeek’s case, light intensity was measured by an LDR. This sensor should be activated for more than five minutes to start the system, thereby preventing it from being involuntarily actuated by somebody walking by.

The time for door closing is set by a timer and the door is lifted until an limit switch is pressed. This way, the system has a reference point.

“At the moment, I developed the system further into one casing (black box principle). So it is much more solid, easy to install and up and running in no time. The advantage over already existing kind of systems is that it is relatively inexpensive and adaptable to your own requirements,” Verbeek explains.

Need a new way to protect your coop? Check out the automatic door here, and see it in action below.

 

Tinylab is a tablet-sized, fully-integrated prototyping kit

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Tinylab provides Makers with a fully-integrated environment for the same price as an Arduino shield.

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Safe to say, there’s no shortage when it comes to open source prototyping boards like Arduino. In fact, recent studies suggest that the number of installed hardware dev kits will nearly double from 11 million units in 2014 to 21 million in 2020. But shouldn’t there be a more effective way to bring an idea to life? Between the breadboard, wires, cables and soldering, traditional processes can take a bit longer and become more complicated than desired for Makers. Not to mention, when employing Arduino shields, you generally can’t stack more than a few due to pin overlaps. This was something that Bosphorus Mechatronics looked to solve.

And so the Istanbul-based startup launched Tinylab — a tablet-sized, open source platform that contains everything you’d possibly need when developing a project. There’s an Arduino at the heart, along with over 20 I/O and all the necessary modules, circuits and components to streamline the prototyping phase.

To get started, simply open up its cap, plug in a USB cable and upload your Arduino sketch. Tinylab is built around the mighty ATmega32U4 — the same MCU found at core of the Arduino Leonardo — and features sockets for XBee, Bluetooth, ESP8266 and nRF24xx modules, in addition to an LCD screen, a microSD reader, a seven-segment display, a real-time clock, a relay, a potentiometer, external EEPROM, a piezo buzzer, a rotary encoder, a DC motor driver, a temperature sensor, a photoresistor, a few buttons, and LEDs.

“Combine all these things and make your own recipe easily. All of the things are onboard excluding wireless features. There are attachable modules. There are sockets for them on board. If there’s a need to communicate something, just attach and code it,” the team explains. “For all the other things that the board doesn’t include, there is a tiny breadboard”

As if that wasn’t enough, Tinylab is platform agnostic and can be programed in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It’s also compatible with today’s most popular environments, including Arduino IDE, Atmel Studio 7, Visual Studio, Scratch, Codebender and Eclipse. Designed with portability in mind, Tinylab can be thrown in your bag, taken wherever you need to go and is ready for use right out of the box.

“Arduino is our hero, we mostly design around it and we realized that we use some common components with it generally. Every time, we need to make same circuits to display, send or sense something,” founder Ahmet Sait Borlak tells TechCrunch. “Using a breadboard turns a torture and using stackable shields doesn’t serve the purpose generally. So we think the Tinylab can be the painkiller. So we designed it, used it and love it… Also, it’s perfect for education. Because it’s compatible with MIT’s Scratch we think it can take place in school laboratories.”

Intrigued? Tinylab is entirely open source, and its schematics and layouts can be found on GitHub. Bosphorus Mechatronics has launched the kit on Indiegogo, where the crew is currently seeking $25,000. The first batch of units is expected to ship early this summer.

This Maker built his own robot drinking buddy

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Bot-toms up!

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Let’s face it, there’s no fun in drinking alone. This is what inspired South Korean Maker Eunchan Park to develop a robot that can literally go shot for shot with him, albeit never actually consuming the alcohol. Although he may not be able to chat like some of your best buds, the slick device can accompany you if you feel like throwing back a few when no one else is around.

While there have been plenty of bots capable of preparing and mixing cocktails for you in the past, we’re not sure if we’ve ever seen one that actually drinks with you instead. Not only can the aptly named Robot Drinky cheers your glass, his cheeks emit a red light with every chug and he can even signal for a refill as well.

The idea for such a companion was conceived after experiencing a lonely holiday a few years back. As Park explains:

On Christmas in 2012, I drank Soju (Korean alcohol) alone because I had no girlfriend at that time. Drinking alone was definitely terrible! So I couldn’t drink anymore.
Lastly, I put an extra glass in front of me and poured Soju into it. And then, I cheered by myself with the glass of Soju, as though there was someone in front of me. Surprisingly, after that, the taste became totally to be changed!!!!!! WOW!!!

So, I could finally find the secret of taste of alcohol totally depends on existence of partner. This is why I made this robot.

There’s no word yet on whether the Maker has any future plans for Drinky, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find it on Kickstarter or at a CES in the near future. See him in action below!

Riots is a plug-and-play wireless network of sensors and controllers

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The Riots family is a low-cost, minimalistic and Arduino-compatible solution for remote sensing, monitoring and controlling your environment.

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It all began when propellerhead Samuli Stenudd fearlessly went to battle against the jumble of wires. He could not fathom how cumbersome and laborious it was to create a useful device out of a kit or components, nor why he had to always physically connect a wire to it in order to program updates. As any engineer would, he decided to roll up his sleeves and tackle these problems head-on. Stenudd set out to devise a new way to easily monitor his environment and smart gadgets in an inexpensive, effective and minimalistic manner. And so, Riots was born.

The Riots family consists of a “Mama” and several “Babies.” An individual Mama is the gateway to the Internet and can manage hundreds of uniquely tasked Babies, which are interconnected within a mesh network. These nodes can also communicate with one another without any external control.

Thus far, fully-functional prototypes include sensors for temperature, pressure, light and motion, capacitive touch buttons, DC control and USB connectors.

To get started, simply attach the Babies wherever desired. Connect the Mama to the Internet and add each node to your account. From there, you can remotely link, manage, monitor and even reprogram new tasks for all family members.

For example, say you wanted to keep tabs on the humidity level inside your bathroom. Place a Riots Air on the wall and another inside the vent, and hook the Mama up to the web. These Babies could then collect and visualize real-time information on your smartphone. Other applications include recording energy consumption, tracking belongings, ensuring doors are locked, and even being informed when a loved one arrives home, among many other things right from your Internet-enabled device.

At the heart of every unit lies a Riots Core, which is equipped with an ATmega328P, an RGB LED and an nRF24L01+ radio module. The real magic doesn’t happen, however, until it is joined with a Riots Base to make it an actual Riots Product. The mesh network itself is completely expandable, and the Riots family is entirely open source and Arduino-compatible.

Programming and data are globally accessible via the Riots Cloud or locally through private wireless networks. The Riots Cloud stores data from all the deployed Riots Products, provides management features and a basic user interface. Beyond that, remote development, over the air updates and debugging of individual Riots Products can be done through the cloud as well.

Looking for an easy, affordable and open source IoT solution? Head over to its page on Kickstarter, where Stenudd and the Riots Instruments team are currently seeking $30,000. Delivery is expected to get underway in May 2016.

 

CoDrone lets you program your own drone

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Robolink has developed a drone that anyone can learn to program and fly. 

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Not only do most drones these days seem to be centered around aerial photography, many require you to shell out a couple hundred bucks. However, Robolink is looking to do something a bit different: the San Diego-based team wants to help you learn how to code. CoDrone is an inexpensive, pint-sized flying electronics kit that can be programmed in under five minutes to do whatever you want — whether that’s tracking your movements, following you around, flying custom paths, navigating through a maze or engaging in laser battles.

CoDrone comes with a series of step-by-step video tutorials that enable you to bring all sorts of cool applications to life. Each kit includes a variety of sensors (air pressure, IR, gyroscope, accelerometer and optical flow for hovering), a controller set, a LiPo battery, a USB charger, a Bluetooth 4.0 module, a USB programming cable, and an ATmega32-based, Arduino-compatible board for its brain. With the ability for you to configure its behavior, the possibilities are truly endless.

Each CoDrone can be manually operated from a remote-control or programmed to perform various tasks. What’s more, it can even drive around using some convertible wheels.

The idea for such a product was conceived as a unique, more engaging way to introduce kids and adults to the worlds of coding, engineering and robotics. As Robolink CEO Hansol Hong puts it. “Programming can be tedious to learn. But when a few minutes of coding can put a drone in the sky, programming brings a smile to everyone’s face.”

Weighing in at just 37 grams, CoDrone boasts eight minutes of flight time on a single charge and a maximum distance of 160 feet. Not only is it easy to program, it’s even easier to afford as well. The kit will retail for $179 and only $139 during its crowdfunding campaign. Intrigued? Fly over to its Kickstarter page, where the Robolink crew is currently seeking $50,000. Delivery is slated for this spring.

1:1 interview with TinyArcade creator Ken Burns

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TinyArcade is the most adorable video game console you’ve ever seen.

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Recently, we had the chance to sit down with TinyCircuits founder Ken Burns, who just wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign for the TinyArcade. Here’s what he had to say…

Josh Marinacci: Hi Ken. I’m one of the original Kickstarter backers of TinyCircuits and I love it. Could you tell us a little bit about TinyCircuits, why you created it, where it’s based?

Ken Burns: Thanks! TinyCircuits started as a side project while I was working at a contract engineering company. We would help other companies (from one person startups to Fortune 500 companies), develop electronic products, and prototyping was always a huge part of what we did. However, to create working prototypes usually involved creating a custom PCB (somewhat expensive and time consuming), or hobbling together a number of different development boards to create the proto, which was always ugly and usually too big.

So that’s what started the idea of a small modular system with a number of different sensors and options, and around the same time Arduino was becoming very popular so I decided to base it around that, which was the birth of the TinyDuino system. At the time it was just me in a spare bedroom of my house in Akron, Ohio, working on this and prototyping it up, but I showed it to a number of people and got a lot of great feedback, and decided to launch it on Kickstarter in the fall of 2012. The initial TinyDuino Kickstarter campaign did great, enough to convince me there was potential to create a business around it, so I left my job and committed to TinyCircuits full-time.

Three years later we’re still going strong, with a staff of 8 people and our own electronics design and manufacturing operation here in Akron, Ohio.

JM: One of our talented engineers recently built a Bluetooth wearable smartwatch using TinyCircuits. Have you seen a lot of adoption in wearables? What things do people build with it?

KB: That’s definitely a great project! Wearables is definitely something people use our stuff for a lot, it’s very small, compact, and easy to use, which makes it perfect for wearable applications. We launched the TinyScreen last year, which is a small OLED display that fits onto the TinyDuino and allows users to create add a very cool compact display to their projects.

Jewelry is one that a number of people have done, and some friends of ours are actually building out a 3D printed jewelry product based around our TinyScreen that should be launching early next year. Others are using our circuitry for wearable sensors, like for athletic and healthcare monitoring. And an eight-year old launched his own smart watch, the O Watch, on Kickstarter to teach kids 3D printing and programing earlier this fall that is built around our stuff!

JM:Has anyone used your boards for a shipping product?

KB: A few small companies have used our products for very low volume items, but a few are designing products that integrate in the TinyScreen which will be higher volume. For low to mid volume items (one to a few hundred) it makes a lot of sense to buy products like ours to integrate with, since it saves the need to design a custom PCB and do the upfront engineering. After a certain volume it’s more cost effective to design a custom board, and we actually have helped a number of companies do that with our in-house design partner.

Josh: TinyArcade is absolutely the coolest thing ever. It’s a shame it won’t be ready in time for Christmas. Why did you decide to build this product, and why run it as a KickStarter instead of just selling it like your other boards?

Ken: Thanks! We would have loved to have it out by Christmas this year, but we needed to take our time over the summer to get the design right. The TinyArcade is really an outgrowth of the TinyScreen project we did last year, one of the things people really liked about it was that you could play games on it, and a number of our users started creating games for it, like Space Invaders, Outrun, Asteroids, etc.

In the spring we saw a really little arcade cabinet candy dispenser, and thought it would be cool to put a TinyScreen in it and play games, but the size wasn’t quite right. But the idea stuck with us, and we have a designer friend (Jason Bannister from mechanimal.com) design a 3D printed cabinet which came out looking incredible. We started showing this off at different shows, like Maker Faire Bay Area, and it was a huge hit, and people kept asking to buy it. So we decided to turn it into a product.

We redesigned the TinyScreen to bring the cost down and way crank up the performance, and add things like audio, joysticks, and an SD expansion slot. The 3D printed cabinet is also fairly complex and something that needs a commercial printer to make (it can’t be printed on a Makerbot), so the prints are expensive. So we came up with a laser cut enclosure that could be made for much less but still look like a cabinet, so we could offer this at a low price.

We’ve had great luck on Kickstarter in the past, and one of the big reasons we did this again is so we can buy the components in bulk. We’re still a small startup and cash flow is always an issue, so using Kickstarter lets us buy some of the major components (like the OLED, joysticks, etc) in volume to keep the cost down. If we did it without Kickstarter, the price per unit would have to be a lot more.

JM: Where did you find those tiny joysticks?

KB: Those are super cute, aren’t they?! We used some PSP type joysticks in the past for our joystick board, but these were too big for this. These joysticks are made by CTS and actually available at places like DigiKey, and work amazingly well. They’re great for very precise analog movements. They are one of the more expensive components in the TinyArcade, but definitely worth it.

The top of the joystick is actually a knob that we designed ourselves and is a high-res 3D print, using a resin printer, so we can make it just like an old style arcade joystick.

JM: Does the TinyArcade have room for expansion? I’d love to make one connected to the internet through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Will you support those options?

KB: It certainly does! This is still a TinyDuino type product and maintains expansion capability, and there is room to add another board in the cabinet. Bluetooth and Wi-Wi are the two that we definitely consider the most likely, and since the platform is completely open source, it’s really up to the user’s imagination as to what they want to add. Based on how well the Kickstarter goes, and if there is community support, we’d love to see the ability for some multiplayer games over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

JM: With a Wi-Fi board, is it possible to do OTA updates?

KB: Right now we don’t have that capability, it really comes down to support in the bootloader. However we do support loading games and videos off a microSD card if it’s present, so it would definitely be possible to create a program to download files over Wi-i and save them to the SD card to use.

JM: What’s next for TinyCircuits? Any new products in the pipeline?

KB: We have a huge list of things in the pipeline that we would like to do, we actually have about 15 new expansion boards designed that should be hitting production early in 2016. One of the big push is into micro-robotics, so tiny servo drivers and motor drivers, new radio options, an ESP-based Wi-Fi board, many more sensors, and of course rolling out the TinyScreen+ board and the TinyZero processor board (basically the Arduino Zero, 32-bit ARM platform) which brings a new level of horsepower to the platform.

JM: Tell us a little more about the Kickstarter campaign and when do you expect it to ship?

KB The TinyArcade Kickstarter (successfully) ended on December 17^th and we plan to start shipping in March 2016. The big reason for the delay is due to getting some of the key components in, like the raw OLEDs, this takes 8 – 12 weeks from our supplier, we plan to have the other items ready to go (the PCBs built, and the cases made), before then, so we can get shipping the moment they come in.

This interview originally appeared on PubNub’s blog. 

Build a rhythm LED lighting effect box

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Get the party started with this ATtiny45-based LED music box.

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If you’d like to measure sound for an interactive display, Ardumotive has you covered with a tutorial about how to “make your own music rhythm LED lighting effect box” with an ATtiny45.

One caveat to this method is that, according to the article, “It’s not the correct way to analyze sound signals, but it will flash LEDs in music rhythm.” In other words, it may not be appropriate for laboratory work or OSHA testing, but should be great for your next party!

The build itself is quite simple, and pipes analog audio data into the ATtiny45 via a 3.5mm audio jack. The voltage from this input is read by the chip, and outputs from zero to three LEDs based on the voltage level. While the circuit is based an tinyAVR MCU, it should also work on a standard Arduino development board, like the ubiquitous Uno.

Although this is an interesting experiment as a breadboard display, author Vasilakis Michalis decided to make it a little more interesting with simple three-segment light diffusing fixture, made with plexiglass and wood. Check it out in action in the video below!

For another excellent project from Ardumotive, why not check out this excellent plotter made from old optical drives?

This doormat welcomes guests with Star Wars tunes

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StarMAT is an interactive doormat that detects a footstep and plays Star Wars tunes and phrases.

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If you’ve ever dreamed of marching through a door to the sounds of Star Wars, you’re in luck. That’s because Maker Rohit Gupta has devised an interactive doormat that plays random audio clips from the film upon entering his room.

To coincide with the recent release of the latest box office hit, the DIY doormat detects a footstep using capacitive sensing and then emits either an iconic song (like the opening theme or Imperial March) or a famous phrase from the saga.

The current setup is temporarily breadboarded, and consists of an Arduino with an MP3 shield connected to a pair of desktop USB speakers. Meanwhile, there’s a capacitive wire loop hidden beneath the mat and a self-calibrating capacitive sensor tuned to the mat size wire. Once someone steps onto the mat, the sensor triggers the Arduino to sound the audio bit, which is stored on an SD card.

Ready for a doormat from a galaxy far, far away? Head over to the project’s page here, or see it in action above!

 

This machine plots the phantom Sandy Island

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The New Velocity is an Arduino-based project that plots the phantom Sandy Island digitally. 

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In 1876, the ship Velocity reported observing a series of sandy islands. As the practice of the day was to leave any potential navigational hazards on charts, these islands that are now officially “nonexistent” survived into the digital age and were not officially “undiscovered” until 2012. This seems like an interesting phenomenon in our age when it often seems that with satellites, and GPS information, we should at least know an accurate layout of the earth.

Luiz Zanotello of the University of the Arts Bremen created The New Velocity machine to explore this cartographic anomaly in the digital age. Black sand is poured onto a rotating platform, creating a miniature “island” on a table. A sensor is moved up and down in sinusoidal pattern, simulating the observation conditions of the original ship. This data on this false island is then recorded and put in a publicly-available dataset.

Per the project’s homepage, “Each set of datasets evidences the presence of an islet within the island’s range, and archives its survey readings on the islet’s coastline, water depth surroundings, topographical elevation and geotagged content.” Although the moral implications of digitally reviving a phantom island is an open question, as seen in the video below, the device is well-made and would look great as an art exhibit.

This project was brought to life using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) to handle motion and sensor data, working alongside a Raspberry Pi 2 for visual and mapping control.

[h/t Creative Applications]