Tag Archives: Arduino Uno

This book will refuse to open if you’re too judgmental

Have you ever judged a book by its cover? What if the tables were turned?

Have you ever judged a book by its cover? Well, Amsterdam creative studio Moore is turning the tables on the old-school idiom by designing a sleeve equipped with an integrated camera and facial-recognition technology that scans the face of whoever comes near.

The idea behind the aptly named Cover That Judges You was to create a book cover that is human and approachable-hi-tech. According to its creators, if someone conveys too much emotion – whether overexcitement or under-enthusiasm — the book will remain locked. However, if their expression is free of judgement, the system will send an audio-pulse to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and the book will unlock itself.

“I often worry about my scepticism and judgement getting in my way of amazement and Judgement should never hinder relentless enthusiasm of seeing things for the first time,” Moore’s Thijs Biersteker explains.

The built-in camera is positioned at the top of the book’s sleeve, above a screen that feeds back the image when it detects a face in close proximity. Artwork featuring abstract facial features is displayed on the cover so that the user can line up their eyes, nose and mouth in the optimum position. Once the correct alignment is obtained, the screen turns green and a signal is relayed to the ATmega328 based board that opens the metal lock.

Interested in learning more? Head over to the project’s official page here. Meanwhile, you may want to check out these two interactive pieces: a story that lets you feel what the character is feeling and an embedded coffee table book for Apple aficionados.

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Build a Hot Wheels track timer with Arduino

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Maker creates a race car track for his son’s birthday using an Arduino, lasers, 3D printing and some junk from the trash.

Maybe it’s the Throwback Thursday spirit, or perhaps it was our recent blog post on 3DRacers, whatever the reason, we couldn’t pass up this awesome project. Who could forget those good ol’ days of playing hours on end with their Hot Wheels sets? Inspired by those nostalgic times, a Maker by the name of “apachexmd” has created a Pinewood Derby-like track timer for his three-year-old son’s birthday party using both electronics and 3D printing.

The track timer is comprised of two parts: a starting gate and finish line. Since each of the cars needed to leave the gate simultaneously, the Maker turned an electronically-controlled system. “Apachexmd” connected a servo to a hinge with four machine screws, one for each toy car. When the servo is rotated, the hinge pushes the screws out through holes in the track. This keeps the cars waiting still at the starting line. Once the “big green button” is pressed, the screws are pulled back and the Hot Wheels are sent speeding down the ramp.

As the toy cars make their way down the slope, a winner is decided at the finish line using another electronic system, which emulates that of a laser trip wire alarm. Beneath the track lie four laser diodes shining upwards through a series of drilled holes drilled into the track. The Maker then mounted four phototransistors that would take care of detecting when a laser beam is broken by a car.

Those looking for a rematch are in luck, the gate automatically resets after each race. Meanwhile, the system is equipped with eight 7-segment displays that reveal the order in which the Hot Wheels cross the finish line. Impressively, a majority of the project was crafted out of items found in his trash, custom 3D-printed components such as spacers and hinges, and powered by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), a switching voltage regulator and a 2S LiPo battery.

So, was it a success? “The three year olds at the birthday party had a blast! But I think the adults (me included) had even more fun,” the Maker concludes.

Looking to devise your own race track? Get started by racing over to the Maker’s project log here.

Video: Wobbl is an Arduino-powered conversation table

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This project encourages you to put down that phone and enjoy the presence of someone else.

While we may not yet have flying cars, one thing that Back to the Future II foresee was the fact that one day, we’d all be consumed with technology at the dinner table. It seems that in our constantly-connected world, we’re in front of some sort of screen 24/7. Admit it, at one point or another, you have been so immersed in your phone that you’ve failed to acknowledge the person sitting across from you at the table — albeit a friend, family member or significant other. Well, in an effort to spur engagement between two people, a team of Carnegie Mellon University students have developed what they call a conversation table.

Powered by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), Wobbl is a conceptual approach to how an environment can respond to your decisions with polite commentary. How it works is relatively simple. Users set specific conversation time, say over dinner. If and when someone picks up their smartphone in that timeframe, it will cause the other person’s end of the table to wobble, and vice versa.

The Conversation Table uses analog infrared distance sensors that are capable of recognizing when a phone is in its designated slot. This will then trigger either side of the table to shake via two medium-sized continuous rotation servos. These motors drive a bolt into a nut inside of a stationary leg, thereby creating a makeshift linear actuator. The table itself is constructed out of laster-cut and hand-stained plywood.

“Sometimes, we want to have a conversation with someone that isn’t about reading facts off of Wikipedia, or checking to see what time movies are playing on a theater’s mobile site. Sometimes we just want to talk to the person across from us about them, rather than hear about the person they were texting or be so distracted from your own phone you miss out on what the person is saying. We also want to know that they’re engaged with us whether we’re talking or listening,” the team writes.

Interested in learning more? Head over to the team’s official project page here.

Wake up and smell the bacon with this DIY alarm clock

3D printing robots will soon build structures anywhere

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The future has arrived. These autonomous 3D printing robots act like a colony of ants to create a structure with materials it finds.

Led by Jason Kelly Johnson and Michael Shiloh, a team of students at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco have developed autonomous, Arduino-powered robots capable of 3D printing in hostile environments. The two-monthlong project was conducted in the college’s Creative Architecture Machines studio, which was designed to assist aspiring architects bring their ideas to life, rather than simply relying on pre-existing CAD software and other technologies.

Aptly named Swarmscapers, the small bots are equipped to traverse rough terrain, while working solely with on-site materials to build inhabitable structures — something that will certainly come in handy when traditional construction equipment may not be readily available or in a setting where it would have trouble operating.

“Extreme heat and the abundance of raw materials in the desert make it an ideal testing bed for the robotic swarm to operate, creating emergent seed buildings for future habitations that are ready for human occupancy over the course of multiple decades,” its creators write.

Each member of the “swarm” is programmed with a rule-set to complete one specific task while working in unison with one another. The Swarmscrapers also come loaded with a binding agent, which allows them to turn nearly any granular material — like sand, salt, rice and sawdust (which was used in tests conducted at CCA) — into intricate shapes.

“The robot works by driving on top of the sawdust based on a tool-path defined in the computer, and dropping a binding agent on the material, hardening it in place. It does this repeatedly, layer by layer until the object is complete.”

When devising the robots, the team 3D-printed each of its parts right down to the cogs for the wheels. The chassis and frame had to be assembled using a number of metal parts, washers and nuts, along with some aluminum sleeves and zip ties. On the hardware side, there are two stacks: a power module that supplies 7V to the drive motors and the pump motor, and a control module responsible for driving the motors and communicating to the computer.

Based on an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), the latter stack was comprised of an Adafruit battery shield and LiPo battery, two XBee 802.15.4 units, an XBee shield as well as a USB adapter, which enables the robots to be controlled via PC. In addition, an H-bridge motor controller and MOSFET transistor were employed to power the peristaltic pump.

“We believe that the potential of autonomous mobile 3D printing is enormous, and with enough time and research, that this is a viable method for 3d printing actual buildings in the future. There is of course, much more work to be done,” the team concludes. “The concept of autonomous machines constructing architecture in bottom up ways will require a huge amount of research into sensory systems, communication systems, advanced machine vision, as well as machine learning.”

Interested in learning more? You can head over to the project’s official page here, or watch it in action below.

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Build a simple snow monitoring scale with Arduino

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Arduino, meet Juno.

By now, you’ve heard about the forecast plaguing the northeastern United States. Tens of millions of people are hunkered down and bracing for what will surely be a historic blizzard that will bring Boston and New York City to a standstill. Typically speaking, snowfall is often measured by its depth in inches (or centimeters).

However, Jason Poel Smith has noted that there are a number of other factors to be considered, such as weight, density, temperature and shape. Each of these elements can greatly affect how its behaves when trying to sculpt snowmen, snowballs, or most likely, shoveling. Therefore, the Maker decided to devise a simple scale that can accurately measure these properties without having to leave your warm house — something that will come in handy as winter storm Juno approaches.

Smith’s build consisted of tearing down a small digital scale, separating its load cell and monitoring circuit, and mounting the parts in two different enclosures. The Maker connected the wires from the load cell to the pins on the circuit board using extension wires. Once completed, Smith sealed the casings and mounted a bowl to the scale’s plate to catch the snow. The display can then be placed somewhere inside, such as the kitchen window, while the scale itself outside in the snowy yard.

Those who wish not to use the device’s original monitoring circuit also have option of using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) instead. In fact, Smith notes that Makers will find that an Arduino provides several more options in tracking and processing the snowfall. This can be accomplished by wiring a simple strain gauge in series with a fixed resistor and utilizing the Arduino’s AnalogRead function to measure the voltage of the center pin. In the event that the load cell outputs series data, that can be read directly with the serial read function.

Looking for a project to work on while snowed in? Head over to the Maker’s official log here to get started.

An Arduino At Heart prototyping board you can DIY

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NEWTC lets Makers assemble and solder their own Arduino Uno-like prototyping board.

Recently launched by our friends at Arduino, the Arduino At Heart program is specifically designed for Makers and companies with products based on the open-source board that would like to be clearly identified as supporters of the versatile platform. The program is currently available for any device that includes a processor that is currently supported by the Arduino Development environment, including the following Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs):

Joining a number of other boards such as Bare Conductive’s Touch Board and ReadBearLab’s Blend Micro, NEWTC has become the latest member of the family with a set of new ATmega328P based products. The Arduino Uno-like Prototyping Board by NEWTC comes in a variety of models: DIY version that requires assembly and soldering, an assembled version ready for use out-of-the-box, as well as a USB to Serial uploader.

Interested in learning more about the Prototyping Board? Head over to NEWTC’s official page here.

Learning how to play the guitar the Maker way

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L.E.D. Zeppelin, anyone?

Learning to play the guitar is pretty hard and pretty expensive, too. And for those looking to tech themselves, deciding how to get started can be a daunting task. Luckily, Maker Mushfiq Mahmud has designed a DIY way to learn the guitar with the aptly dubbed Digital Chord Chart.

As its name suggests, the project is comprised of a 3D-printed guitar neck, a matrix of LEDs and an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) that controls the lights along the fretboard. Similar to the gTar which we recently featured on Bits & Pieces, lights corresponding to the correct chord illuminate in sync with a song, ensuring an aspiring Carlos Santana can easily follow along.

According to Mahmud, the Digital Chord Chart can be programmed to play just about any song using TAB files, which include chords and stylized note representations. So, are you ready to rock out to some L.E.D. Zeppelin? Head on over to the project’s official Instructables page here.

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