11 ways Makers are turning trash into treasure with Arduino

up·cy·cle

verb

1. reuse (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of a higher quality or value than the original.

What remains truly fascinating around the Maker Movement is do-it-yourselfers’ abilities to upcycle items that might otherwise be seen as trash, and transform them into fully-functional treasures — a majority of which rely upon an Atmel-based Arduino board for its second lease on life.

Making music with outdated computer parts

A group of Illinois-based Makers hailing from Makerspace Urbana have unveiled a way to take outdated technology and turn them into pieces of musical instruments. The Electric Waste Orchestra project strives to “manipulate the voltage flowing through circuit boards and use those signals to make music” out of components that would’ve otherwise ended up at the dump. As seen below, the Makers recently transformed an old keyboard number pad, six hard-drives, an Arduino and some software into a fully-functioning guitar jamming along with a modular synthesizer.

Turning trash into treasure with 3D printer built from e-waste 

Afate Gnikou led a team of West African Makers who developed a fully-functional 3D printer, the W. Afate. The printer removes spare electronic parts from dumps and transforms them into something useable. Gnikou uses the scraps from scanners, computers and printers and assembles them into the frame of a Prusa style RepRap printer that can then be hooked up to an Arduino board.

Transforming a broken umbrella into a stylish bag

Maker Agy had a broken umbrella that she was looking to repurpose. She used the waterproof material from the umbrella and an Arduino LilyPad (ATmega328V) to create a fashionable yet functional tote bag. With some smart sewing techniques, she was able to install a sensor on the outside of the bag that would power a bright LED in dark situations.

Making poetry from e-mail spam

This project steers away from the environmental world and takes the digital realm into account. The SpamPoetry machine was created by Varvara Guljajva and Mar Canet Sola to transform SPAM e-mail messages into snarky poetry. They used an Arduino aided sewing machine to run an algorithm that would turn unwanted e-mail waste into amusing poetry.

Upcycling broken wheelchairs into a $40 robot

A Maker by the name of Dark Light used three broken down wheelchairs to develop one fully-functional, remote-controlled robot. With an Arduino Mega 2560 (ATmega2560) hacking the chair’s controls, the robot unit can be manipulated at will and the forward facing camera provides location details. Along with Wi-Fi connectivity, the creation features six ultrasonic sensors that allow for basic obstacle avoidance. This is one smart robot!

Converting an old hard drive into a binary desk clock 

A Maker named x2Jiggy had an extra hard drive enclosure taking up space on his desk and he decided to turn it into something of value! He took a few ATmega328 chips and mocked up a clock design to match his brand new binary watch. The microcontrollers receive the time from a RTC module, which supposedly has a battery that will last ten years. Talk about sustainability!

Bringing that old ride into the modern day

Take a drive through any neighborhood; you will probably see a few yards littered with sedentary cars that the owner plans to “fix up one day.” A DIYer by the name of MiDri has found the motivation to bring his beat up Nissan 280z back to life. Using an Arduino Duemilanove (ATmega168) board to control the sports car’s brain, MiDri has adapted much of the old-school analog controls to be governed by an Android tablet.

Cutting vinyl with an obsolete printer

Vinyl cutters are typically used to make stickers, signs and graphics. In short, they are quite handy for Makers to have around, which is why a Maker by the name of LiquidHandWash decided to upcycle an old printer by transforming it into a DIY vinyl cutter using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

Designing a coffee roaster from an old popcorn machine

Brenn10 modified an ordinary air popcorn popper by transforming the device into a slick Arduino-based controllable coffee roaster.

Turning an IBM Selectric into a printer

One Maker wanted his own typewriter terminal, so he took apart an IBM Selectric II and got to work. Instead of an electronic keyboard, the IBM Selectric II uses and electromechanical keyboard to tilt and rotate the Selectric’s typeball. In normal operation, a series of shafts underneath the keyboard are engaged. As Hackaday explains, the Maker added parts of an erector set to those levers and tied each one to one of 16 solenoids. With a set of solenoids able to print any key with the help of an Arduino, he had a fully automated typewriter from the early 1970s.

Making a robotic arm from recycled bike parts

Recently published on MAKE Magazine, Art-Bot is a robotic arm controlled by arcade machine-like buttons whose components were all salvaged from old bicycle parts. For the controlling part of the arm, Maker Morgan Rauscher used an Atmel-based Arduino, servos and actuators so that Art-Bot could maneuver without any trouble.

If you know of any other useful projects that apply Arduino to the art of upcycling, share with us below. We’ll be happy to blog about it!

Electronic component art sculptures

My pal Phil Sittner sent a link to this picture of a rock band made out of electronic components. You have to love the title: L.E.D. Zeppelin.

Apparently that picture inspired this mom to make her own art:

All this creativity is near and dear to my heart, since my dear departed analog pal Jim Williams was also a lover of electronic art. One nice feature of Jim’s art was that it often functioned as a real working circuit as well as being a free-form sculpture.

So if you have an artistic bent, think about soldering up some items from your junk box to make something beautiful and fascinating.

Transmit tunes anywhere in your house with Arduino

Thanks to one Maker’s ingenious thinking, you will no longer need to strategically place separate iPod docks throughout your house. In a recent Instructables post, Kameo3155 has devised a multi-zone audio system that be controlled by any device with a web browser.

“This system solves the seemingly ubiquitous problem of being able to listen to your music from anywhere in your house,” the Maker noted. An extensive materials list was required to assemble this device, yet still only costs a fraction of what a typical house-wide audio system would to install. Our Maker details the key components below:

• Speaker wire run from a centralized location
• Speakers of your choosing for each zone
• 6 channel amp or multiple small 2 channel
• Power supply for the amp
• Spare 3 prong AC power cable
• SPST Relay
• Arduino Uno (ATmega328) with Ethernet Shield
• Male to female jumper wires
• Custom PCB for the PT2258
• The PT2258 IC
• 10uF Capacitors
• 100 kOhm resistors
• 5mm through hole jacks
• Male .1″ spaced headers
• A microSD card
• Google Chromecast
• HDMI audio extractor (I used this one)
• RCA to 3.5mm cables

Kameo3155 began by soldering the PT2258 board and then connecting it to the Atmel-based Arduino Uno. Once the wires were attached and the Uno was hooked up to a home Ethernet connection, the Maker set out to install the code that would enable the machine to pipe music throughout his home speaker setup. “This is where the magic happens,” the Maker describes the integral step.

Once the code was installed, a system to control the actual music was required. This Maker thought a Google Chromecast would be an ideal technology to utilize in order to obtain the desired results. “This allows us to take the audio the Chromecast outputs and plug it into our PT2258 control board,” he believed. “We can simply cast our favorite Pandora station or music from Google Play Music to the Chromecast and control the volume from our Arduino.”

To read through the full tutorial for this cost-effective home audio control unit, check out the original Instructables post here.

Maker Movement making a mark

With the World Maker Faire just 42 days away, the Maker Movement continues to create headlines across the globe. The drive to customize, create and innovate is becoming a modern mindset adopted by everyone, ranging from students and startups to celebrities and Fortune 500 brands.

“The next industrial revolution is right around the corner, and it’s going to be bigger than the Internet — or so says a growing army of hackers, designers, artists and entrepreneurs.” Writing for USA Today, Tyler Wells penned a piece detailing the rise of DIY culture, contributing its emergence to the low-cost, high-imagination level of makerspaces popping up across the country. “These massive fabrication facilities are like a cross between a business incubator and a manufacturing plant, with sprinklings of academia and community spirit thrown in for good measure.”

The convergence of various forces — a growing community, enhanced visualization, new applications, greater access to tools and increased connectivity — is fueling Makers to create gizmos and gadgets never before conceived, many of which are appearing on display at Maker Faire events throughout the world and crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. This new mindset is enabling everyone to embrace their inner tinkerer. Today, the everyday Maker has the ability to turn any ordinary object into an Internet-connected device with platforms, such as littleBits’ recently-unveiled cloudBit kit.

“With the right motivation and time on your hands, you can now go through your own personal industrial revolution in 90 days, and can launch a company or product within those 90 days,” explained TechShop CEO Mark Hatch. Furthering the Techshop CEO’s belief, Gartner’s Jim Tully recently projected that by 2018, nearly 50% of the Internet of Things solutions would be provided by startups which are less than three years old.

The speed at which today’s Maker’s can go from idea to prototype is absolutely thrilling. “The skill level required to produce a usable prototype or usable object has dropped precipitously just in the last five years,” Hatch added. Even more so, the shared makerspace is enabling for innovation to occur at an incredibly low cost. Wells elaborates upon Hatch’s comments around the movement, writing that “most entrepreneurs are able to cut their development costs by 98% through use of a shared space platform.”

Though, it must be said that the Maker Movement would not be garnering so much attention without the loyal and devoted DIY community. Hatch tells USA Today that the Maker Movement was a “community on steroids,” and the devotion to the ideal is something to behold. Of course, this bond between creator and craft will be on full display at next month’s World Maker Faire in New York City.

“The catalog of success stories is proof enough: The Square credit card reader, Pebble smartwatch, Coin all-in-one credit card and the MakerBot 3-D printer all came from makerspaces in different parts of the country.” The thing that makes the Maker Movement a real revolution, not just a passing fad, is the confluence of cheap manufacturing, cultural entrepreneurship and simple economics.

“Collectively, these forces are democratizing innovation,” the USA Today article notes. This convergence has paved the way for a number of Atmel-powered gizmos and gadgets to hit the market, several of which have even been successfully funded on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In addition, the market has seen the emergence of lesser-known projects, ranging from battery-powered skateboards and low-cost irrigation systems for impoverished farmers to DIY smartphones and 3D printing pens.

But it’s not just about startup costs. Innovation itself is undergoing a fundamental shift, as major corporations like Disney, GE, Ford and even Atmel are now sponsoring Maker Faire events, collaborating with existing makerspaces or building their own to cultivate new ideas. In addition, a number of universities and government agencies are also getting into the action, which was evident by this year’s White House Maker Faire.

To further attempt to ingrain the Maker Movement within society, Noha El-Ghobashy of Fast Company believes the Maker Movement is reenergizing our youth to enter into the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The author writes that newfound “curiosity about how the world works and an appreciation of how determination and excitement can help solve real-world challenges.”

Lo’ and behold, the Maker Movement is clearly beginning to take hold within certain portions of our culture. With a creative and determined mindset, the possibilities for invention are boundless. Mark Hatch concludes that the Maker Movement community is making a serious impact and, “we’ve only just started.”

Smart hoodie lets wearers send discrete messages

From watches to glasses, you may have thought you’ve seen it all when it came to wearable technology. In an attempt to demonstrate that wearables don’t necessarily need to be confined to the wrist or face, two students at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) explored innovative ways fabric could be used with electronics. Using an Atmel based Arduino and an Arduino GSM shield, the pair designed what they call the “Smart Hoodie,” a hooded sweatshirt that can respond to various gestures — touching the hood, touching a sleeve and rolling up a sleeve, each of which send a different text message to a pre-programmed contact.

“The future of communication is in our hands… or arms not just our fingers,” the Makers suggest. As demonstrated in the video below, though the Smart Hoodie may currently be used for texting friends and family, there are several other obvious uses, such as texting in the event of an emergency.

“The concept of putting the technology behind a cell phone into something truly wearable and everyday is what this project stands to represent.”

As chips continue to get smaller and cheaper, we can expect to see more and more of our clothing (like hoodies) become smarter in the years to come. “There are already tons of products available that have technology embedded into them. Fashion offers people a chance to communicate their personality with the outside world. Mobile phones customization is an example of fashion blending into technology. So why can’t technology interactions blend with fashion? Tech and fashion needs to come together in a way that the user will want to wear technology and not have to,” the Makers recently told PSFK.

Interested in having a Smart Hoodie of your own? Sign up here.

On the road from Makers to consumers

It’s time to break with conventional thinking. For decades, the measure of success for semiconductors has been OEM design wins. Most consumers haven’t known, or cared, about what is inside their electronic gadgets, as long as they work. That may be about to change, because a new intermediary is finding its voice – and being heard in high places.

Intel and Apple, in different ways, began challenging the norm by pursuing consumer branding and developing pull-through demand for their parts as drivers of the overall experience. Coupling what people “feel” about their devices with the technology powering them creates an almost unbreakable bond, akin to a religious response. Reaching billions of people has required billions of dollars and high profile advertising campaigns – out of the question for most embedded semiconductor companies.

A new road is being carved across the landscape, paved not with gigantic chips packing billions of transistors delivering a cascade of social chatter and streaming entertainment content. This road is built with ideas carried on small boards and open source software, and a sense of wonder about how the world works, and what we can do to shape it.

Somewhere on that road right now is a big truck, captured in pixels at a stop in June 2014 that may go down as a turning point in the annals of semiconductor evolution.

Overstated? The truck tour is a tried-and-true mechanism for reaching industrial OEMs, taking hands-on demonstrations to cities far from the sources of silicon and software innovation. If we were only talking about embedded design and the industrial IoT, it’d be business as usual, and this would be just another truck with a fancy paint job and a couple of FAEs inside.

But, it’s not. The industrial IoT is wonderful and welcome, however by and of itself it won’t generate the billions of units needed to drive a recovery and restart growth in semiconductors and the economy at-large. That will only come from reaching and capturing consumers with IoT technology, in a big way.

And that, so far, has proven difficult. After all, even industry experts are feverishly debating the name IoT, questioning what applications really fall under the moniker, or what exactly it means. Much like “smart grid” and “mHealth” before it, the term IoT means something in the developer community, but not so much to consumers who don’t yet see a connection between the Internet and how they use everyday things.

A recent SOASTA survey suggests 73% of the US has never heard of the IoT, at least until an interviewer explains it to them. (I’m curious why that number always seems to be 73% no matter the topic, but let’s just say 3 out of 4 – I believe it.) When hearing oral arguments in the Aereo case earlier this year, several US Supreme Court justices issued queries indicating a limited grasp of technology. (Cut to Keyrock: “I’m just a caveman … your modern ways frighten and confuse me.”)

This isn’t a lack of intelligence on their part; it’s a lack of generating the needed visibility on our part. These are the people we all must reach if we have a hope to succeed. Who is going to reach them? Makers, armed with our tools and their ideas. Atmel and other tech firms reaching Washington and the first-ever White House Maker Faire, side by side with people like the star of Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show, was a milestone in delivering the message to the masses. This goes way beyond the T and E in STEM; remember, the social transformation was driven by youth, and young makers are going to drive the uptake of the consumer IoT.

Why? Well, frankly speaking, they don’t think like engineers – they think like actual, real-life users. I made the comment recently that we need to be careful, the people we are trying to reach can drive smartphones, not (name of other popular maker module redacted … sorry, Arduino didn’t rhyme.) Don’t be distracted by a 17-foot tall mechatronic giraffe with lava lamps for ears and a penchant for partying, or by the Obama crack about we don’t spell “fair” with an ‘e’ in this country. These are people designing things they, and people like them, want to use. More importantly, they will provide the translation of what the new technology can do, renarrating the story from the language of semiconductor companies to the wants of the average consumer.

Makers are the people we need to win with. That idea isn’t lost on Chrysler, who has co-opted the maker movement as their idea in 2014 commercials. Makers care about what is inside, and they are choosing Atmel in droves – in part because Atmel has redirected technological and social media energy into nurturing them, away from just talking to the button-down, risk-adverse, safety-is-job-one industrial community. Intel and other chip suppliers are feverishly trying to catch the wave with makers, moving away from the “e2e” stance that only takes us so far in this next phase.

It’s not for the faint of heart, or the impatient. The industrial IoT is safe, somewhat predictable ground for experienced firms, whereas the consumer IoT still borders on bubble in many minds. The maker movement is now what the university programs were back when to semiconductor firms, taken to the next level and reaching an even wider audience. Design wins with makers now likely won’t show up in the volume shipments column right away – but, they will show up as consumers get the IoT over time.

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Don Dingee is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on June 19, 2014.

This smart umbrella tracks air pollution

What if your umbrella could help protect the world from air pollution while it protected you from rain? Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design students Saurabh Datta, Akarsh Sanghi, and Simon Herzog recently debuted an umbrella capable of just that. Appropriately dubbed “Sensing Umbrella,” the smart device has the ability to collect air pollution data during a nice stroll through the park or en route to work.

In order to bring the project to life, the team collaborated with Arduino Co-Founder Massimo Banzi. Created in conjunction with Giorgio Olivero of ToDo Design, the smart umbrella equipped with an Arduino Yún (ATmega32u4 MCU) is tasked with measuring local carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide pollution levels.

According to Co.Design’s Carey Dunne, the umbrella then visualizes this data in real-time through a sparkling LED light display on its surface. “Firefly-like lights change their color and rhythm in response to local pollution levels, spreading awareness of the air quality to city dwellers,” Dunne explained.

“This timestamped and geolocated data gets uploaded to the Cloud–to pollution databases–to be analyzed.”

With the emergence of the latest and greatest ’smart’ designs, this is rare piece of tech that aspires to do greater social good than just quantify and improve our individual selves. “As designers, we wanted to embrace this ongoing revolution of ‘The Internet of Things’ with a clear mission: to actively care for the people who use these connected devices,” Maker Akarsh Sanghi tells Co.Design.

In the long term, the Institute of Interaction Design students hope to generate local maps of air pollution hosted on an openly available web-based platform. “This project is entirely based on open-source hardware and software,” Sanghi says. Though the team doesn’t plan to monetize the project or open a company based on the concept, they do hope to create a worldwide event, or movement, in which crowdsourcing data via umbrella turns every person in society into a node in a larger network.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the Sensing Umbrella’s official page here or watch it in action below.

Making space available to everyone

I’m Brian and one of the Founders of Infinity Aerospace. In 2012, our company developed and marketed an Arduino powered platform for easily conducting custom experiments autonomously on board the International Space Station. We called it Ardulab and it was well received in the space industry. In essence, the Ardulab is a small microcontroller with an Atmel chip as the brain that’s enclosed by a space ready aluminum chassis. The Ardulab is an Atmel powered machine that’s won the faith of organizations like NASA and Stanford because of its advanced capabilities in a small form factor and its reliability.

Brian Rieger, Co-Founder of Ardulab (Source: Infinity Aerospace)

The microcontroller is heavily modified from a basic Arduino to be compatible with the Space Station computers, and the chassis adheres to a compliant form factor (10cm cube). The microcontroller only uses about 10% of the internal volume of the chassis, leaving the rest for an experiment to be installed.

Powering your Ardulab up for the first time, then get to know all the features and functions. (Source: Ardulab.com)

Fast forward to present day; Ardulab users include prominent space organizations like NASA-JPL, NanoRacks, and Stanford University. In addition, the overseer organization of the International Space Stations’ National Lab, CASIS, created a program called the National Design Challenge that funds k-12 schools to use Ardulabs in their science classrooms to build an experiment and then launch them to the Space Station. We couldn’t be more proud that the Ardulab product has catalyzed so many positive activities within the space community.

The Ardulab Chassis. (Source: Ardulab.com)

Up until today, the Ardulab had a minimum purchase price of $2,000 and was sold directly from us. This allowed us to recuperate the cost of design and development of the Ardulab as well as the incremental manufacturing cost of each unit. Unfortunately, this limited who could use the Ardulab and gain access to its features – features that make it very easy to conduct experiments autonomously on the Space Station. We realized this was a departure from the fundamental philosophy behind Ardulab; to give as many people as possible the tools and information they need to be successful in space.

The overseer organization of International Space Stations’ National Lab, CASIS, created a program called the National Design Challenge that funds k-12 schools to use Ardulabs in their science classrooms to build an experiment and then launch them to the Space Station. (Source: Wikipedia)

We are so excited to share that the Ardulab is now completely open-source. To support this, we’ve launched a brand new website (www.ardulab.com) where anyone can learn about Ardulab, download the plans with a click of a button, and follow the provided guidance that will take anyone from idea to space experiment. A middle school class in Houston Texas used the Ardulab to create a space ready experiment in 6 months, I can only imagine what the space community at large will create with full access to the Ardulab technology.

Interested? You can explore Ardulab in more depth on its official website.

 

Infinity Aerospace completes open-sourcing of Ardulab

Last week, our friends at Infinity Aerospace announced the complete open-sourcing of ArduLab, an ATmega2560-powered platform that enables streamlined NASA-approved experimentation to the critical mass. 

Previously costing space researchers, students and experimenters anywhere between $2,000 and $3,500 per kit, the low-cost, plug-n-play electronics platform allows anyone to now devise and launch an out-of-the-box, space-certifiable experiment.

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, ArduLab’s maiden voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) took place last September onboard an Antares Rocket/Cygnus spacecraft at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

When it was originally conceived back in 2012, the fundamental idea behind Ardulab was to provide as many people as possible the tools and information they need to be successful in space. Making Ardulab a completely open-source platform allows for all of the intellectual property to be used to its full extent. Capable of being programmed just like an Arduino, ArduLab comes equipped with all of the necessary features and interfaces for use on the ISS. As a result, Ardulab has already been used to create and perform experiments by elementary school students and NASA-JPL researchers alike.

“There are multiple [reasons] why we’re doing exactly what we’re doing [with ArduLab]. One is that space is usually not inclusive of all the people around the world,” ArduLab Co-Founder Manu Sharma told DIY Space Exploration last year. “I wanted to create products that enabled people across the globe… [to] make cool experiments and do anything they want. That was the real reason why we went to open hardware because it allows us to go beyond borders and find people to work on it very easily.”

“Open sourcing the hardware and software is only part of this, we’re also going to share all of the information and resources we’ve collected as a company going through this process over the past couple of years-what works and what doesn’t. We hope to build towards an ecosystem much like Arduino where people collaborate and share around a common platform to help each other achieve their respective goals in space,” ArduLab Co-Founder Brian Rieger explained in the company’s latest press release. Riegers adds, “The Ardulab is an Atmel powered machine that’s won the faith of organizations like NASA and Stanford because of its advanced capabilities in a small form factor and its reliability.”

James Pura, President & Director of Space Frontier Foundation, noted that Infinity Aerospace has the same ideals and goals as Space Frontier Foundation, which is to make space accessible to the widest and most diverse audience possible. “In this respect, we are proud to support them in this endeavor and excited to see how people use this technology and information to benefit their space endeavors.”

Space Frontier Foundation and Infinity Aerospace believe that space settlement will only be achieved when space is cheap and widely accessible to everyone, and this is one huge step in the right direction.

Atmel’s Tom Vu recently had the pleasure of going 1:1 with the ArduLab’s Manu Sharma. You can catch the entire interview here.

Building an electric go-kart with Arduino

A 15-year-old Maker going by the name of Gizzmotronics has built an astonishing four-wheeled contraption controlled by an Atmel-based Arduino board. The young Maker detailed the build process of this road-worthy device in a recent Instructables post.

Though the creation utilizes the frame of a gas-powered go-kart, our Maker installed an electronic motor for this project. Upon removing its existing gas engine, Gizzmotronics selected a Hobbywing Xerun 150A brushless electronic speed controller and Savox BSM5065 450Kv motor to control his new whip, which can achieve a top speed of around 30 MPH. 3 LiPo batteries that regularly supply 19-20V power the device. Zipping around at a moderate 15 MPH will yield about 30 minutes of driving before needing to be recharged, Hackaday‘s Rich Bremer reveals.

Aside from throttle control, the Arduino is responsible for other operational aspects of the makeshift vehicle such as controlling the LED lights that serve as headlights, tail lights, turn signals, brake lights and even backup light. There is also an LCD display mounted to the center of the steering wheel, which too is powered by the Arduino and displays the throttle value, status of the lights and the voltage of the battery. There is a potentiometer mounted to the steering wheel for controlling the go-kart’s speed; the value of the potentiometer is read by the Arduino board, which in turn sends the appropriate PWM signal to the ESC. The headlights have 3 brightnesses, each controlled via PWM signal provided by the microcontroller.

To assure against any false starts, the Maker has installed a personal security measure. “The throttle is only functional while the right joystick (2-axis) is held down, as a safety measure,” he noted.

If you want to learn more about Gizzmotronics’ creation, the full Instructables post can be found here. To find more Arduino-powered, you can always browse our archives here at Bits & Pieces.