Controlling Halloween props with an ATmega328

Devising electronics with an Arduino is fun, but using one to scare the heck out of trick-or-treaters is just downright awesome. Published on MAKE Magazine, Jason Poel Smith has shared a video tutorial on how to create choreographed Halloween props using an ATmega328 based Uno.

“Animated Halloween props are a lot of fun, but the props that you buy at the store have some major limitations.”

With the Arduino, a Maker can now control when and how each prop will turn on and off.

Interested in this spook-tacular project? Head over to MAKE’s step-by-step breakdown here.

Maker dad creates LED Minnie Mouse costume for daughter

Back in 2013, a Maker dad named Royce Hutain documented his daughter Zoey’s first LED Halloween costume in a brief YouTube video, which collected over 22 million views and later inspired a business of glowing stickman costumes. This year, he has upped his game by creating a Disney-inspired getup, aptly dubbed “Version 2.0 Minnie Mouse Edition,” that uses digitally addressable LED strips hooked up to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

Aside from being responsive to sound, the new ATmega328 based costume features a pair of potentiometers, a button in the back of one of the ears for control, and a hidden microphone in the front. According to Hutain, the entire wardrobe is equipped with 12 modes and a total of 372 LEDs.

“I never had any plans turning it into a business until the requests started coming in,” Hutain writes.

Safe to say that the future looks bright for this Maker dad! Once the Halloween rush comes to an end, Hutain is looking to launch LED suits that are “designed for more rigorous movements like nighttime 5K runs and festivals. These suits will have features that sync with music or respond to your pulse.”

Never miss an episode with smart Homer Simpson

While the terms “smart” and Homer Simpson don’t often share the same sentence, this design from Thomas Amberg truly warrants the phrase. The web-enabled TV puppet remote is capable of turning on your tube whenever The Simpsons is playing.

Homer Simpson’s burgeoning belly is embedded with an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), which acts as a web server. Upon recording his television’s infrared signal (with help from this Adafruit tutorial), Amberg programmed his megaAVR based board to output the TV’s signal to turn it on. He then placed a set of IR LEDs into Homer’s vacant eyes.

“As Homer is too lazy to browse the web himself, a script in the cloud checks the online TV program for him. If Simpsons is on, the script triggers the Arduino web service in Homer’s belly to activate his infrared eyes. No brain involved,” the Maker writes.

Whenever an RSS feed notifies that The Simpsons is playing, Homer triggers the television to turn on and watch his own antics.

Amberg describes the cloud script saying, “Why is a cloud script needed at all? Fetching RSS right from the Arduino is an option, but as the feed contains starting times rather than triggers, the Arduino would have to keep track of the current time.”

After making the enhancements to the puppet, Amberg had himself a web-enabled, Duff-drinking, donut-eating remote ready for use. Want a Homer remote of your own? Click on over to the project’s Instructables post here.

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.

 

 

Re-imagining the radio interface with wood, fabric and Arduino

Audio broadcasting radios have been around since the 1920s. In fact, their control interface share many similarities — knobs, sliders and switches — with those designed by our ancestors nearly 100 years ago. Now, what if we could re-imagine the entire radio control experience to create a more meaningful relationship between the user and the artifact?

Seeking to do just that, Carnegie Mellon University design student Yaakov Lyubetsky has developed a fully-functional prototype of his latest The Experimental Form Radio using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

The project features an ATmega328 based board along with a custom circuit comprised of three independent layers of conductive fabric and thread. Touching together the two layers of conductive fabric completes one of twelve circuits that then either change the radio station or the volume.

“When The Experimental Form Radio is laying on a tabletop, it is off. To turn the radio on, you pick it up and slot it onto a wall mount. The radio leverages the elastic qualities of fabric to control stations and volume,” Lyubetsky explains. “To change stations you press lightly and slide your finger along the fabric surface. To change the volume you press firmly into the fabric, and then slide your finger along the deeper cavity in the radio.”

As the Maker points out, the visual and auditory feedback allows the user to have a clear understanding of the system state.

“The soft and stretchy material qualities of fabric create a control system that is inviting and pleasurable for the user. The strength of the user’s push as well as the cast shadow on the fabric creates tangible feedback for the user to have better control of the tuning and volume.”

To explore Lyubetsky’s efforts to re-imagine the way we interact with radios, you can tune-in to his project page here.

Visualizing the invisible landscape of a networked city with Arduino

In today’s culture, GPS is an essential tool to each of our livelihoods. We can simply plug an address into our phone and Siri will magically guide us there step-by-step. A team of Makers, Einar Sneve Martinussen, Jørn Knutsen and Timo Arnall, have developed a project to put this unseen phenomenon on full display right before our eyes.

There is no hiding the fact that our cities are becoming more technologically capable by the day. The cloud is becoming a larger and larger hub for data transactions, while the Internet of Things is bringing unprecedented connectivity to society.

With a highly impressive film as their chosen venue of dissemination, the Makers used their lights to demonstrate how strong or weak GPS signals were in various locations across a networked city. To visualize the invisible technology, the team devised lamps embedded with GPS receivers, each of which are connected to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328). A wireless signal analyzes the GPS data, then emits the corresponding light levels within the orb. The stronger the signal, the brighter the glow.

“GPS is widely used yet it’s invisible and few of us really have any idea of how it works or how it inhabits our everyday environments,” the team writes.

Therefore, they created a series of lamps that change brightness according to the accuracy of received GPS signals, which are then photographed as time-lapse films. Using this collected information they, “start to get a picture of how these signals behave in actual urban spaces.”

To the uninitiated, the word “smart city” or “networked city” may be somewhat ambiguous. Using technology like this, innovators can clearly show how our cities are evolving and advancing on a daily basis.

According to the Makers, Satellite Lamps is a part of their ongoing research into making technologies visible and interpreting their presence in each of our daily lives. The team explains, “As designers we typically shape how technologies like GPS are being used, but with Satellite Lamps we use our practice to address how they can be understood.”

Watch  the team’s video below, which was submitted as part of their Yourban research project at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

This Chameleon-like jacket changes colors based on its environment

Designed by Oslo, Norway design firm Drap go Design, the Interacket is an ATmega328 powered jacket that lets a wearer interact with the objects around them by mimicking their color.

The garment uses a built-in sensor on its sleeve to detect nearby objects, adjusting the color of its LED strips to blend in to its surroundings like a chameleon. According to the firm, the jacket is just one of a many new products inspired by animal powers.

“Many animals got cool ‘powers’ but few of these can be translated directly to humans. We are not be able to use a sonar the way the bat does and we can’t see all the colors the shrimp does, it is physically impossible for our eyes to see more then the colors we already do,” the Makers noted on their Hackaday page.

“Our goal was not to replicate the powers of the animals as exact as we could. We wanted to give the users the idea and the concept of the interaction animals have. We would abstract interactions and change input and output based on how we best could interpret powers from the animals and give it to the users.”

In order to enable these interactions, the Interacket is equipped with a pair of Arduino Uno (ATmega328), Adafruit NeoPixel LED strips and Adafruit color sensors, all of which powered by a single 9V battery. The jacket itself is comprised of reflective foil and diffusive fabric to enable the piece of clothing to prominently display the colors picked up by the sensors.

While the Interacket prototype may have limited real-world potential, the next version of this hue-morphing jacket (which is currently in the works) will change that.

Although it may not be effective as camouflage like its lizard inspiration, potential applications could range from enhanced safety during nighttime activities such as biking or walking to a pretty vibrant outfit for the club scene.

The Drap go Design creation can be found on Hackaday, while those interested in having color-changing powers may also take a look at the Makerrific piece of outerwear in the video below.

Drawing a MIDI controller with conductive ink

Maker Daniel Sanz has put together this funky MIDI controller that employs conductive ink and a few capacitive sensors to produce sounds. The DIY nature of this design makes the possibilities for musical creation endless!

Sanz is a member Music Technology Group (MTG) at University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona and devised this project for his Interactive Music Systems Design Course.

The device allows Bare Conductive Electric Paint drawings to be used as MIDI input push buttons. An internal Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and two capacitive sensors enable the unit to determine whether each individual buttons is being pushed or not.

This model allows for custom templates to be created for the MIDI controller itself. This is ideal for children to experiment with, as it is also incredibly inexpensive compared to consumer level MIDI controllers.

Sanz breaks down his machine in his detailed Instructables post, “The push-buttons are connected with conductive ink to the case, where the Arduino and the sensors are.” He goes on, “The case has 20 small metallic sheets, where each of the buttons are connected. The capacitive sensor is managed by an [Atmel based] Arduino, and it charges and discharges every pin continuously to measure its capacity and check if there is a human body touching it.”

You can read more about the Maker’s ATmega328 based design over at Draw It Yourself’s official Instructables page.

 

TinyScreen is a thumb-sized color display

With much of the tech community is abuzz about larger screen sizes, the TinyScreen is here to show customers just how adaptable a miniscule display can be in a world overrun by massive screens.

Led by Maker Ken Burns, TinyCircuits has successfully launched and funded its TinyScreen on Kickstarter. To say the immediate response was a positive one would surely be an understatement, as the device well exceeded its original $15,000 goal. (Garnered over $128,000!)

Generally speaking, form factor will dictate just the overall size of your project, and for those looking small, the thumb-size TinyScreen is certainly a go-to choice. In fact, there are a wide-range of uses for TinyScreen, ranging from DIY wearables like smart watches and glasses to gaming screens and joystick RC controls.

The screen itself is only 1.02″ x 0.98″, with a 0.96” viewable area that features 96×64 OLED display and 16-bit color depth. The device is built to be customized and programmed by the clever user base, both novice and expert. The team champions its one-click ability to download new programs and run them with little interuption. Even better, the TinyScreen comes with some incredibly useful programs, such as a clock display, already loaded onto the unit out of the box.

Customization is made possible thanks to the Atmel ATmega328P powered TinyDuino platform — also developed by the TinyCircuits team. According to its creators, TinyDuino is essentially a full-blown Arduino shrunk down to the size of a quarter, which not only is equipped with the same processor as the incredibly popular Arduino Uno but now includes an onboard Lithium battery charger and battery connector. “All of the shield signals are supported, so all of your existing Arduino sketches will work as is,” a company rep writes.

The TinyShields allow for unprecedented adaptability for these microscopic machines. “The platform is comprised of a TinyDuino processor board and multiple TinyShields which add special functions, like sensors, communications and display options,” the TinyCircuits team notes.

At the moment, there are over 25 TinyShields with more coming out every month — these are sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, 9-Axis IMU, ambient light sensor), output boards (motor drivers, audio output, displays), storage (SRAM, EEPROM, microSD card), communication (USB, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, WiFi, 433MHz,802.15.4, Ethernet) and breakout boards to connect to external sensors and circuitry.

Recent shields released by the company comprise of a USB connector, a joystick as well as a Bluetooth LE transmitter. Good news Makers! TinyCircuits has also included 3D-printed watch enclosures which are readily available for those looking to download and print themselves.

TinyCircuits is currently seeking funding to expand production of the TinyScreen and have recognized that there may be an issue procuring enough OLED screens to meet customer demand. For more information about the TinyScreen or the TinyDuino platform, head over to the TinyCircuits home page or its recently-funded Kickstarter page here.

Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock with Arduino

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Bazinga!

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Sam Kass and Karen Bryla knew each other too well to keep playing traditional games of rock, paper, scissors. As a result, the duo devised a geeky adaption to satisfy their needs for competition and amuse their inner sci-fi fanatic.

Unknowingly though, their game would be referenced on the CBS hit show The Big Bang Theory! After learning of the game, Maker Paul Swider put together his own visual representation of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock using an Arduino-based schematic.

http://vimeo.com/105693409

Swider’s device utilizes an Anarduino kit along with an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) to allow for various programmed win conditions to occur. The user inputs their choice for the game with a button press, and the computer AI counters with a graphically displayed decision. The various graphical representations are shown upon an 8 x 8 Matrix LED.

Now, let’s watch Sheldon explain the rules of the game for us…

So, the next time you find yourself looking to settle a dispute at home or around the office, head over to the project’s official Instructables page to learn how to build your own rendition of the game.