This DIY sonar-assisted wearable helps the blind navigate

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Students design a new wearable to help the blind get around, serving as a supplement to aids like canes or guide dogs.

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While Batman may rely on projections in the night’s sky to get around, actual bats refer to echolocation to hear and communicate with one another. This concept inspired a team from Wake Forest University to devise a slick sonar device to help the visually-impaired navigate around much more easily.

Led by professors William Conner and Paul Pauca, the Makers created an Arduino LilyPad (ATmega168V) powered wrist-worn device, aptly named HELP (the Human Echo Location Partner), that would help those who are blind get around, serving as a supplement to commonplace aids like canes or guide dogs.

Based on the e-textile Arduino platform, the wearable device runs JAVA-like code, and features sonar distance sensors responsible for measuring the distance of objects and relaying this data to two smartphone vibrating motors. The frequency of vibrations is proportional to the distance from the detected object. In other words, the closer the detected object, the faster the motors vibrate.

In order to test their prototype, the team turned to a fellow student, who happens to be blind and walks about campus with a guide dog by her side. After initial use, the sophomore classmate found that it was very useful in helping her to determine whether the doors of buildings and classrooms were open or closed.

Seeing as it is still only in the proof-of-concept phase, next steps for the team include fine-tuning the device to make it smaller, more attractive, and of course, affordable. In fact, all of their parts and materials cost less than $60!

It’s certainly exciting to see how HELP impressively converged the natural GPS of bats with next-gen, Atmel based technology, all for a great cause. That’s what we call making a difference!

Cast your ballot using the Arduino Vote-O-Matic

In the spirit of today’s midterm elections, what better time to to highlight this nifty little project? A group of Makers recently decided to turn an ordinary box into an interactive, web-enabled vote counter using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

The contraption is comprised of three individual tracks from a children’s marble run toy, each equipped with its own light sensor wired into the Arduino via some Sugru and a cocktail straw. To begin, an individual simply drops a marble into the cut-out mouth of the candidate he or she would like to cast a vote.

The team programmed the ATmega328 unit to check every half a second for a change in the light sensor’s value. When the dropped marble passes through, the Arduino records the change for that analog input connection and a vote is counted for the respective candidate.

Once it has gone by the sensor, the marble is fed into a common funnel where it is collected and reused.

In addition, the Makers also affixed three LED lights to the breadboard as a bit of a debugger to notify its users when a sensor had been tripped.

While it may not be used for the next presidential election, this project can certainly be a welcomed addition for your school’s next student counsel contest! Read more about the build here.

Creating an automatic cat laser with Arduino

When it comes to cats, one thing is for certain: They love countless hours of laser chasing. Unfortunately, as a pet owner, there is only so much time in the day to spend twirling around a pointer catering to its innate prey drive. That is why a Maker by the name of Joe recently devised the CatBot, an automated cat laser.

Equipped with a pair of servos, an inexpensive laser and an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), the DIY toy will be an immediate hit with your feline friend.

Cat lovers with not enough time on your hands, feel free to thank Joe. Now, watch the device Laser Zeppelin glory below!

Interested in creating one of your own? Head on over to Joe’s official Instructables page in laser-like speed!

 

Homebrewing a DIY pulse monitor

A 15-year-old Maker by the name of Angelo has designed a homebrew pulse monitor using an Atmel based Arduino board, a grippy clothes hanger, clear/bright red LED and a light dependent resistor (LDR).

The project — which can be found on Instructables — was inspired by MAKE Magazine’s homemade pulse monitor.

“Movies look cool with those EKG (electrocardiogram), the one that beeps and detects heart activities. A few months ago, we had to shoot a hospital scene for our school project. We needed an EKG instrument,” Angelo explains.

“To keep the movie authentic, we didn’t want to fake the readings so we made the next best thing, a pulse monitor. This project works and can actually monitor your pulse. [However], due to the lack of research and experimentation, the homebrew pulse monitor cannot be used for medical purposes.”

Have a friend or foe who continuously tells fibs? Good news! According to Angelo, the homebrew device can even be used as a rudimentary lie detector.

“When a person lies, you’ll notice a sudden change on the [pulse] graph,” he said.

On the software side, Angelo employs Processing 2 for graphing, along with a specially coded Arduino IDE sketch. Both are required to run the homebrew project.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official page here.

Hack the world: How the Maker Movement is impacting innovation

In March 2011, an earthquake and following tsunami rocked Japan, culminating in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. While the government focused on stabilizing the situation, the people of Japan were terrified of radiation, unaware whether it was safe for their families to stay in their homes.

(Source: Sean Bonner)

A group of Makers out of Tokyo Hackerspace found a quick solution to lack of information by building a cheap and easy-to-use pocket radiation detector using an Arduino (a pint-size computer that’s relatively easy for anyone to program). They began making them, and most importantly, sharing the instructions online for anyone to reproduce. Through a partnership with Safecast, they were able to get the radiation data off of people’s phones and onto an online platform. Within a month, thousands of data points had been picked up, and people could determine whether they should evacuate. Even today, people all over the world are building these radiation detectors, iterating on the original design for new purposes. Fikra Space, a hacker group in Baghdad, has amended the design to track Depleted Uranium pollution in their region.

I use this anecdote as an example frequently as a glimpse into the power of the Maker Movement. A term that’s been widely popularized by technologists as of late, Makers are not necessarily persons with huge engineering prowess. Neither are they hackers with malicious intent. Instead, the term Maker defines a movement combining simple technology with the right culture of innovation and collaboration, to have impact at a scale that most startup founders, corporate innovators, and city legislatures only dream of.

What is a Maker?

Makers represent a subculture of tinkerers, artists, and engineers. It’s a culture that is akin to punks and Goths – it represents not just a style, but a lifestyle. It has crossed decades and countries effortlessly. It is an ethos: a fundamental belief that the world is made better by building, and taking things apart.

(Source: Kyle Cothern)

Makers thrive on several things:

1. Finding novel applications of existing technology

They are interested in breaking or hacking things to make them better, more efficient, or just more fun. ArcAttack is a band of musicians using massive Tesla Coils, alongside live and robotic musicians to create a spectacular show of musical prowess and technological innovation. Anouk Wipprecht, fashion designer and former Autodesk Artists in Residence created a Faraday Cage dress for this past Maker Faire in San Mateo, and people watched in awe as she performed alongside ArcAttack as bolts of lightning struck her on all sides without doing any harm.

2. Exploring the intersections between seemingly separate domains

Because the barrier-to-entry to be a Maker is so low (read: nonexistent), new domains of expertise and collaborations are the process on which they thrive. 3D printers, once an expensive technology allowed for the elite few companies that required them and those who knew how to operate them, is now at a price point and skill level that many can afford. Similarly, this technology is being used for everything from printing clothing to live organs and skin. The opportunities are endless.

3. Curiosity and voracious appetite for continued education and Do-It-Yourself

Why buy something when you can build it? Why not learn how to solder? (Think of the possibilities!) These are the fundamental questions that drive Makers. From craftsmanship to electronics, Makers build things that are inherently valuable to them at that moment, whether it’s building a smart coffee maker to building a table. The pride that you feel from learning a musical instrument or a new language is the high that drives Makers to learn more, and do more.

Community (Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, FabLabs, Oh My!)

(Source: Mitch Altman)

Makers rarely work alone. Instead, they interact with an ever growing global community of hackerspaces, makerspaces, fablabs, and other collaborative spaces to share ideas and resources. Makerspaces have cropped up all over the world to give people access to tools, education and collaboration normally reserved for universities and corporate environments. These membership-based organizations range in size and structure, but share common tools such as 3D printers, CNC machines, electronics components, and more. These gyms for your brain have grown from several hundred to over 2,000 globally in a few short years.

(Source: MakerBot)

Makers in collaboration can lead to some advantageous financial results. In 2008, Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer and Zach Smith schemed up a small, inexpensive and easy-to-use 3D printer within New York’s hackerspace, NYC Resistor. Later that year, they released their first version for consumers. 6 years later, MakerBot has sold over 44,000 printers, built a leading brand, and was recently acquired by Stratasys for $403M. A company born out of the Maker Movement, MakerBot has ushered in a new industrial revolution, characterized by collaboration and open-source culture. They’re not alone in this endeavor, companies like Adafruit Industries, Arduino, and countless others are blurring the line between play and profit.

The Art of Playfulness (or, How to Fail Often)

When communities are built on resource-sharing and experimentation, there is considerably less stigma around failing. You simply try again, plus some well-earned knowledge and battle (soldering) scars, along with the thousands of others within the community.

The Power Racing Series understands all too well the educational benefits of failure and have embraced it with a friendly competition. Power Racing Series was schemed up at Chicago Hackerspace Pumping Station: One by Maker and designer Jim Burke. The challenge: build a working electric vehicle, starting with a kids Power Wheels and $500. Race it against a dozen others at Maker Faires all over the country, and compete for both technical prowess and “moxie” points awarded by the crowd for the most creative and ridiculous teams. Chassis’ fly off, cars catch on fire, and general, hilarious mayhem ensues.

(Source: Anne Peterson)

This race has gained tremendous traction as a friendly competition between makerspaces all over the globe , as a learning tool for engineering and imagination. Makers have competed from i3 Detroit, NIMBY, and even MIT. While the teams are competing against one another, they also share knowledge, tools and tech between one another during the race. Currently the races are held at 7 Maker Faires in the US, and they are opening up a high school league to encourage use of the races as a STEM education platform for students.

Companies like Power Racing Series have grown organically from embracing the inherent silliness that is a result of constant, quick-fire iteration. They also understand that it offers a unique hands-on way to learn engineering sans classroom or textbooks. Similarly, littleBits has found a way to teach the basics of electrical engineering with magnetic Lego-like blocks that can produce anything from musical instruments to internet of things devices with a few snaps. Sugru has made an entire business out of fixing broken things with a fun new material with the texture of Play-Dough that fixes everything from soldering irons to motorcycle windshields.

Impact (Produce Locally, Share Globally)

Makers think big. They don’t think in terms of revenue or projected growth, they think in terms of impact. Unburdened by fear of failure or lack of resources, they make things because they are useful, or present a unique challenge. Because of this, and ingrained roots stemming from the open-source software movement, the technology created has the ability to be adapted and used all over the world, outside the bounds of traditional gatekeepers.

(Source: Eric Hersman)

Makerspaces have permeated every corner of the globe, from Nairobi to Nicaragua, allowing access to shared resources not just within their individual spaces, but across borders. Just as Bre Pettis and team sought to solve the problem of expensive 3D printers, Makers are building things that are equally useful to them, and their communities.

BioCurious, a community of biohackers (yes, that’s a thing) in the Bay Area has found a way to make real vegan cheese by engineering yeast, raising over $37k on Indiegogo to fund the project. Two years prior, 4 girls in Lagos debuted a urine-powered generator at Maker Faire Africa, which provides 6 hours of electricity for every Liter of urine. While both projects are prototypes, both are reactions to clear, yet strikingly different needs of the individuals and communities involved.

Arduino, the pint-sized computer from Italy, is a tool for making an open-source micro-controller board and development environment that was inexpensive, cross-platform, and easy-to-use. Founder Massimo Banzi has succeeded in this endeavor, as Arduino boards have become the micro-controller of choice for Makers, and are used to power a variety of devices, from the previously mentioned bGeigie Nano to a variety of internet-of-things devices. The fact that Arduino is open-source allows anyone to iterate on the boards, whether creating smaller versions for wearables, or printing your own on paper.

DIY Drones, a website started by former Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson, sought a way to bring UAVS (Unmanned Arial Vehicles) from military to hobbyists. In a few years he’s been able to bring together an impressive community of Makers building drones and drone parts for a variety of purposes. Matternet has taken this movement and applied it to a very specific problem: the 1 billion people in the world that do not have access to all-season roads. This means, even though many of them have advanced telecommunications infrastructure, they cannot get food of medicine during an emergency. Founder Andreas Ratopolous saw the potential in UAVs far beyond what was being explored by hobbyist and has turned it into a viable business with massive impact.

What’s Next for the Maker Movement?

The Maker Movement has garnered a lot of attention over the last 5 years, but it’s not without it’s flaws. Hackerspaces and makerspaces, though great places to learn and innovate are difficult to scale, and can come with a host of organizational and cultural problems. Though there are a whole host of success stories of profitable business by Makers, most of the innovation is still culturally insulated and doesn’t ever make it to a business. Large brands have been attempting to leverage the Maker community to encourage internal innovation, but with little success. Why? By being exactly what the Maker moment loathes: large, secretive, and profit-driven.

The Maker Movement needs bridges, people who are passionate about everything that is at the core of the culture who are able to connect Makers to each other, and to the resources to translate ideas into tangible products.

As humans, we’re made to make stuff. It’s a fundamental part of our survival. The Maker Movement has built a culture on that core belief, and the creativity that it has unleashed has massive potential for the future of innovation across all domains, turning anyone from an engineer to a large organization into an entity capable of astronomical innovative potential.

Written by Madelynn Martiniere, this article was previously published on October 27, 2014 on Medium. 

Hackerspaces: A prelude to the Maker Movement and today’s Maker culture

So, what exactly is the Maker Movement? Do you remember that ever so distant yet memorable quote by Michelangelo? “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” 

Now, to further set this, [white fuzz] the channel just switched, we are tuned. Things will change right? They have changed. We have the Internet; we will have one layer more, eventually the arrow of technology will continue. There is one congruent dataset, which manifests all things to a new exponent. It’s the pulses and signals resulting from the exterior world meshed with the existing datasets of infrastructure, enterprise, and the consumer. Let’s speak of this layer. It will be filled with sensors, microcontrollers, and code. Already, we learned this from the app revolution and we are not going to remain in just this stage right? The code will be leaner and smarter. Coupled by the signal readings from millions of device upon device, node to nodes, nodes to node, the true power of distribution and networks will again marry now with other application recorded data in a mosaic of diversified integrations resulting from the intersection of data easily bridged from the cloud apps. Yes, the ones we are already familiar today touching from screen to screen to anticipate the next arriving notification.

The arrival of this integration of data will help filter and augment the world before us. Let’s reset to the modern era, thread modern computing to this notion, [for technology’s sake] we have also seen the Gartner quote by Jim Tully stating, “By 2018, 50% of the Internet of Things solutions will be provided by startups which are less than 3 years old”.

The Digital Renaissance and the Maker Movement

Together with the accessibility and progress of open source and availability of community and embedded development boards [specifically wider use of Arduino Maker class boards], the times have certainly changed. A great deal of the complexities of these development boards are relaxed with onboard abstraction layers to loosen the programmatic rigidness of “hardware,” combined with the collective tuning of the community toward its development software.

Arduino IDE is now quite anchored into well-received feedback/contribution loops supported by the open source model — crowdsource progress and joint development roadmaps. Let’s not forget all the risky and obviously passionate Makers out there doing and bringing ideas to the forefront. The timing is right — found in the appetite to feed the market, the maturing cloud, the developed community, parity in prototyping, and the global production.

Globalization of Hackerspaces and the Maker Movement | Photo Credit: Mitch Altman

As a whole, and to its sum of its parts, all community members are participants in the evolution of the ecosystem and community effort of “Making” with ease. At all aspects of the innovation engine cycle, the open source community couples quite well with hackerspaces, where one can congregate to surface ideas and mature them to fruition.

Open Source Community and Hackerspaces | Photo Credit: Mitch Altman

This is especially true where it applies to the mere process of creating a product. In fact, it’s now true to building things that 10 years ago you needed to be in a big company to make innovating things, but now it truly possible from an individual. Made possible to said horizon, there are the hackerspaces. It’s a place that shows signs of innovation and development, infusing wider spread of technology and community across all economic classes or cultures. In these facilities, these are technical and creative social clubs facilitating activities that include tinkering, machine tooling, 3-D printing, coding, open source, collaboration, and sharing. Some hackerspaces market themselves under the more benign-sounding label of “maker space”. More bluntly, this is really drawing attention as private incubators such as hardware accelerators fueling entrepreneurship and startups [an emulation of an innovation success formula taken from the original hackerspaces.

There is something about hackerspaces that brings people together that are made of some pretty awesome stuff. Call it “Voltron” if you will, why not? With drones rising and Maker Faires (or similar) blooming all around us, it all seems like the perfect unison of having people interlock together. As the notion of building robots continued to unwind, one fellow by the name of Chris Anderson saw that it would be much easier to have robots fly first than walk bipedal. More simply, it just felt and saw it to be much easier. Perhaps, something even more achievable and widespread adopted as the next step to bring about the age of drones.

But still, wait, there’s even more to how this started. We also owe the spawning of drones to a unique origin where a group of people, hive together pursuing one ultimate quest.

Call it social science and synergy if you will. Something happens when a group gets “too large” and suddenly it all transforms from a conversation into a cacophony and a team into a mob then something incorporated too soon begins may wield the ugly cues of politics. Yet, going it alone is usually impossible if the task at hand is at all sometimes complicated [maybe the next best thing for technology]. Assembling IKEA furniture is probably best done as an individual, but things like raising a family, having a stand-up meeting, or shipping a meaningful product is definitely a team sport…

For hackerspaces, one of these unique values is in having opportunities to meet different people from all sorts of backgrounds. Combined in a common pursuit of sharing and making, there is a common thread of being willing to be giving their time and talents to others. Note, it was in what’s said as “giving” as the common notion in hackerspaces are the more you give, the more you get back, helping to change the course of things to come [individual pairing of ideas to the intellectual hackerspace benefit of networking ingenuity]. It’s all about the community. This is the hallmark of the Internet. The Internet started as a community in its deeper past with ARPANET. We are all reaping those originally rooted benefits today [first operational packet switching networks implementing TCP/IP] creating layer upon layer new industries, service models, and ecosystems (ie Apps, Cloud, M2M, IoT, etc). Now what we are seeing today sprout from city to city are hackerspaces. In fact, we may begin to see every community in a city drawing upon good reason to incubate and nest new hackerspaces. Perhaps, it’s a progenitor to something more in the next trend of innovation.

The digital life now is a result of the collision of software and hardware. Technology is fashion. Fashion is Technology. Both are now intertwined together in the speed and making of culture. Have you ever tried leaving your home without the mobile touch screen device or everyone has out grown to wearing the old flip analog/cdma phones of the past. Digital influence upon culture and self move along prevalently—the desire for hackerspaces are becoming more acquainted in many metropolitans.

There’s a secret sauce to the structure of the hackerspaces. Unravel this structure. From within, it reveals a true community based packed with peer-to-peer involvements. People with skills converge in distinct trades upon others with other skills. Combined, they make this union, transforming their once ideate policy of making, broadening their abilities coupled by a giving and sharing of others to expand the design envelope of possibilities.

Surely, one may see it as a digital and hardware renaissance, comparatively from the distant spark of the past. The foundries of artistry in Florence and Rome once prevailed, urging communities of artist to congregate and make creative expression toward emulating realism via sculpture, oil and canvas. Well, now it’s about achieving a more meaningful product. The canvas has changed, coalescing digital and hardware. Giving rise to an idea where the ideas mature into a minimal valuable product that is mapped to some form of developed connectivity. This some form of developed connectivity is what we call the Internet of Things or many of the products sprouting from emergent crowdfunding rooted by makerspaces or hackerspaces.

A common construct. Make Ideas, Make Genuis, and Make Things | Photo Credit: Mitch Altman

Now, let us imagine a place where people get together without a common construct or preconceived established code, they then converse, and collaborate. It is filled to the brim with entrepreneurs and inventors of all types working on projects that they hope will change the world or at least convinced to usher an adoption to things making what we usually do more easier or enhanced.

Many of them are on laptops or standalone computers frantically typing business plans or hacking out code; others are making phone calls while trying to set up connections wherever they can.

Hackerspaces have an environmental core that keep ideas flowing | Photo Credit: Mitch Altman

As all the chaos goes about, one can see that in this space is an environmental core that keeps the magic flowing around innovation. It is the center foundation of what the area will turn into. While the outer linings are being fine-tuned and polished, the inner workings remain relatively unchanged. The concrete has been laid; the electrical wires have been strung throughout the wooden frames and the insulation and drywall is mostly there, all while a wireless network is hangs throughout the air. Projects can begin even if the air conditioning isn’t hooked up yet.

As long as there is a good foundation, people can get stuff done. The rest of the work on the outer edges will always be changing. Paint will cover the walls in different shades and dust will always need to be cleaned up. However as time goes on and unless a major change happens, all the people running the space will need to do is adjust the dials of the environment (when needed) and continue progressing the community. Once the foundation is done first, the rest will fall into place.

Next up, read the 1:1 interview with Mitch Altman, co-founder of Noisebridge San Francisco as we dive deeper into hackerspaces, the Maker Movement and more…

 

 

16-year-old Maker creates an Arduino-compatible, open-source smartwatch

Four months ago, 16-year-old John Wall had introduced the prototype of his Atmel powered OLED smartwatch. Now, the Maker has revealed that the design was completed and functioning on its own power.

Drum roll please…………..My BT 4.0 arduino compatible smart watch is on its own power! My prototype is complete! pic.twitter.com/JY1XrwCO32

— John Wall (@walltechOSHW) October 12, 2014

“After all my hard work, soldering iron burns, panic moments, unforeseen delays, and small victories, my smart watch finally exists,” he revealed on the WΛLLTΞCH blog.

Version 6.1 of his open-source watch — described as a Bluetooth 4.0 fitness-tracking device for Android and iOS with a 1.5-inch color OLED display — is built around the IMUduinoBTLE, which features an ATmega32u4 MCU (bootloaded as an Arduino Leonardo).

The Maker had been cataloguing his build over on Hackaday for quite some time now as an entrant in the competitive Hackaday Prize.

“You may have seen any of the smartwatches on the market today and thought, ‘That’s way too expensive,’ or ‘I wish this feature was customizable,’ or ‘Darn, I need an Android phone for that,'” Wall writes.

Sound familiar? Luckily for the do-it-yourselfers out there, not only is this device more cost-effective, it is also equipped with a microSD slot, QI charging, NFC technology, an altimeter, a thermometer, a compass, a gyroscope, an accelerometer,a pedometer, and of course, BLE which enables phone notifications.

In true Maker fashion, Wall stresses that his Arduino-compatible watch can be customized to the core and can even fit the imaginative needs of any wearer. Why Arduino? MAKE Magazine recently reported that it all began when Wall impulse-bought an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and used it to build a bedside clock. It was his first exposure to making and soldering.

“I didn’t really have any hobbies before this — probably Lego when I was a kid — and I think I saw it on the internet one day that someone had made something, like a little robot, so I looked into it a bit and thought, well, people are making some really cool stuff with this,” Wall explained.

At the center of this open-source design sits an ATmega32u4 that handles just about anything you can throw at it. Surrounding the inner components is a new 3D-printed case sourced from Sculpteo.com that slims the new design by 0.5mm. Wall also was able to remove the screen he had been using for testing and permanently assemble the design.

Though the watch is fully-functional, the 16-year-old Maker still plans on updating its wireless charging capabilities. He notes that once he makes a few aesthetic changes to the outer shell, he’ll adhere the QI wireless charging receiver to its base. “I’ll be able to just place it down on my charging base and it will begin charging wirelessly and by itself.”

While Wall was a bit disappointed not to have been named a finalist in the Hackaday Prize contest, he is beginning to polish the accompanying mobile application for his DIY watch.

“I’ll complete the operating system to use the communication standards I created in the app and add the fancy animations and features that will make this the coolest smart watch out there,” he concludes.

 

 

(AT)tiny solution for a big backpack problem

A computer science student at UW-Milwaukee going by the handle of “bergerab” has devised another helpful tool using an Atmel ATtiny85 MCU. (If you recall, we previously highlighted his Helping Eyes visual aid.)

With on-campus backpack thefts on the rise, the Maker decided to take matters into his own hands and devise an anti-theft alarm to help ease his mind as well as those of fellow students.

The creation utilizes an ultrasonic range sensor to denote when a backpack has been lifted a certain distance off the floor. Once it has been moved from a resting location, the alarm will sound notifying those in the immediate surroundings of a possible theft. This is ideal for locations, like libraries or classrooms, where backpacks may be left unattended for extended periods of times.

The alarm itself can only be shut off with the input of a five digit binary code that is analyzed using 5 SPDT switches. In regards to the switches, bergerab writes, “Single Pole Double Throw switches have two positions and connects the center terminal to either the upper or lower terminal. This switch is perfect for our purposes.”

To boot, a buzzer has been linked to the ultrasonic sensor and ATtiny85 to scare off any possible thieves. The alarm will hopefully shock backpack looters enough that they will drop the bag.

Once the switch was soldered and the code uploaded to the device, bergerab’s next goal was to successfully mount and test it. He attached the device to his own backpack with a simple strap, but believes velcro or hot glue could be more secure options.

Have you been a victim of backpack theft? Worried about the safety of your possessions? Then, head over to bergerab’s Instructables page to protect your own belongings with a Maker twist!

Gamebuino is a credit card-sized gaming console powered by ATmega328

Developed by National Engineering School of Saint-Etienne student Aurélien Rodot, Gamebuino is a retro-inspired, pocket-sized game console built around an ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU). No larger than a credit card, the successfully crowdfunded device gives a whole new meaning to portable gaming. With its metallic and vintage appearance, it will surely spark up some technostalgia of the Gameboy Advance of the early 2000s.

As its site explains, Gamebuino is a true turnkey solution that enables Makers of all ages to begin creating their own 8-bit games, even with very little programming knowledge. For those advanced users, Rodot has made it open-source, hackable and expandable.

“That’s what I love about Gamebuino, it’s easy enough for beginners to start playing with immediately but restrictive enough to provide a decent challenge to those willing to push the hardware to its limit,” Rodot writes. “Because everybody doesn’t know electronics and C++, explained examples of increasing complexity will help you to learn seamlessly.”

“To make things even easier, a full library to help you develop games is included. You want to display a keyboard? Simply use keyboard()! You wanna rock out a fancy 4-channel music in the background while blasting and dashing through your level? Just call play(tetris)!”

The project’s library allows a Maker to start programming their game in minutes, while the console is shipped ready-to-operate right out of the box. However, for those with an innovative side, the device’s extension ports offer complete customization by adding modules or connecting several Gamebuino consoles to play against your friends.

“You can use you Gamebuino as an interface for any electronic system: as a controller, a monitor, a data-logger, a console, or whatever. Connect it with your computer, your 3D printer, or your last robotic project… the only limit is your imagination!”

Aside from Atmel’s ATmega328 MCU, key project specs include:

• 84*48px monochrome display + auto backlight
• Magnetic speaker, four channels
• Arrows + A B C buttons (input)
• 1x micro USB, 1x micro SD card, 2x I2C
• 24h life, 240mAh LiPo battery, charged via USB

Rodot also noted that Gamebuino supports multiplayer gaming via daisy-chaining (I2C ports), as well as accelerometers, wireless communication and additional outputs with plug-in modules. “Gamebuino is compatible with any I2C module. You can find some of them from Seeed Studio’s Grove System or Tinkerkit. They even have the right connector,” Rodot added.

As you can imagine, the handheld device was a hit on Indiegogo back in April 2014. The engineering student had garnered well over his original crowdfunding goal of €3,141 — raising 10 times the amount! Now for only €35, the initial batch of consoles are selling like hotcakes, with more than 1,000 customers worldwide spanning from North America to Europe.

Interested in learning more or ordering your very own Gamebuino? Hurry on over out the project’s official page here.

 

Students design a hybrid exploration robot with Arduino

A team of mechanical engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a search and rescue robot that overcomes many limitations seen in many modern designs using an ATmega32U4 based Arduino unit. The Hybrid Exploration Robot for Air and Land Deployment (H.E.R.A.L.D.) combines a quadroter and a robotic snake to enable movement both through and over obstacles while also surveying them from the skies.

With guidance from their professor, Dr. Mark Yim, the team set out to build a search and rescue robot that would “be able to traverse uneven and unstable terrain, avoid damaging obstacles and fit through narrow spaces.” All while being able to communicate with the user and be light enough for the average human to carry. Also, with saving lives a major goal, the robot needed to possess the ability to move at a speed that would not hinder the search and rescue process.

The team integrated the two robotic designs to limit the flaws of each individual construct. While quadrotors are known to have short battery life, the team’s system “allows for the quadrotor to be carried by two snakes while not in use, providing increased battery life without sacrificing mobility.” The snake itself would also be limited as to what kind of terrain it could climb, therefore the quadrotor is equipped to carry the snake over large obstacles or debris.

In order achieve this high degree of maneuverability, the snake was designed with seven degrees of freedom: two vertically actuated (pitch) servos, two horizontally actuated (yaw) servos, and three drive motors. As its creators reveal, these motors are incorporated into a mainly 3D-printed design that aims to optimize structural integrity while minimizing weight.

“Integrated treads on the wheel rims prevent excessive slip and provide edge-catching capability for obstacle clearance. The servo coupling arm acts as a bracket between the two steering actuators while providing a docking interface between the snake and quadrotor.”

A custom-made PCB, designed in Eagle, commands the snake via an Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4) and wirelessly communicates to the user over XBee radio. As for software, the team writes, “On each snake robot, we have an Arduino microcontroller running custom-written software in C++.” The team further details, “This low-level embedded software takes motor commands from a serial packet and outputs to the snake’s motors.”

The quadrotor itself runs on ArduPilot, an open-source Arduino-based system for operating DIY flying vehicles. After tweaking a few aspects of the software, the team was able to get their desired flight time of approximately 20 minutes. Using a series of magnets, the quadrotor can also carry the snakes for up to 10 minutes.

The team will continue to further develop the search and rescue implementations for the H.E.R.A.L.D. but this combination proves that we have barely scratched the surface of robotic design possibilities. Interested in learning more? The UPenn students’ entire project breakdown can be found here.