Scratch Duino is an open-source magnetic robot on wheels

Scratch Duino — which recently made its Kickstarter debut — is an incredibly customizable and accessible robot-building platform that any Maker will find helpful in their tinkering endeavors.

Scratch Duino is an educational tool at heart. The ease of use will help foster the robot design process for Makers young and old. The team describes the device as, “a complete solution, which combines both hardware and software in a single extendable setup.” Once perusing the inner components, it is hard to argue with that statement!

Featuring plastic encased parts designed for extended durability and kid resiliency, the kit includes two light sensors, two contact sensors, two reflective object sensors, and an infrared eye. At the heart of the project lies an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) programmed with the Scratch language, which was developed by MIT.

One component of the platform that enhances ease-of-use and facilitates speedy configuration is that the sensor modules attach to the robot base magnetically — up to 5 sensors can be attached to the platform simultaneously.

“Right out of the box our robot is ready to collect data and process it according to a piece of code you design with Scratch. This makes our robots flexible and interactive,” a company rep notes.

Now, there are plenty of robot kits out there on the market, but the Scratch Duino sports a little style in a sometimes-bland market. The unit comes in three distinct finishes: plywood, transparent plastic and colored plastic. Each finish can add a sense of character to a particular robotic creation.

While some of the aspects of the Scratch Duino may be introductory, seasoned Makers can utilize the Arduino IDE to hack into the inner workings of the kit and assemble intricate robotic systems.

The team behind the Scratch Duino is currently seeking $105,000 in funding to streamline their assembly process and increase sales volume. At the moment, the robots are manufactured at Fablabs and makerspaces to continue spurring global community development. Whether you’re ready to tinker or interested in backing this latest Atmel powered Kickstarter project, head over to their official  page here.

Dude, there’s your car! A GPS tracking device for your ride

There is no feeling that rivals the hopelessness you possess when returning to where your car was parked and it is nowhere to be found. The crew over at Cooking Hacks has developed their own tracking device to prevent this dire situation from ever happening again using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

Using a cleverly concealed Arduino, a GPRS+GPS SIM908 Quadband Module and a GPS antenna, the team has devised a way to track a vehicle in real-time, no matter who is in the driver’s seat. Quite similar to the Atmel based bicycle lock recently featured on Bits & Pieces, the device’s GPS communication capabilities will transmit coordinates to a paired smartphone whenever a theft occurs.

“It’s very simple: a GPS module to get position data and the 3G module that sends the HTTP request with the coordinates of the car. It starts to send the HTTP request every few seconds with data of the position,” the Cooking Hacks team explains.

“First of all you have to call the police of course, but you can help them a lot. If your car is not parked where do you think, something is wrong… Call immediately to your Arduino, hidden in your car, and it will send you an SMS with the location, longitude and latitude at the moment, and it also sends GPS data to a web server with the real-time position (Google Maps).”

The GPS+GPRS shield is programmed to only recognize the user’s number and only will relay the whereabouts when correct. Along with their communication program, the team suggests various spaces within a car to hide this tracker from potential thieves — these include the trunk, glove compartment or even spare tire area.

Writing for MAKE Magazine, Cabe Atwell notes that the device is powered by a 9V alkaline battery, making it quite small yet not small enough to plant on someone’s body undetected. “But, perhaps you are aware – keeping track of the kids for example. The device is great for those living in high-crime areas where vehicle theft is rampant as well as keeping tabs on your significant other. Jealous boyfriends are already placing orders…”

If you are worried about your own car’s security or simply want to bolster your ride’s protection, head over to Cooking Hacks for a step-by-step tutorial.

Recreating the UK Color Clock with Arduino

The Color Clock website endeared the online community just a short time ago, and with this inspiration in mind, a Maker by the name of Sound Guy decided to develop his own. With some leftover project parts in hand, Sound Guy constructed his own version that included some extra bells and whistles.

The Color Clock idea revolves around a computer converting the time into a hex value. Then, this data is used to provide a background color that corresponds with that exact moment in time. As the time changes, so does the background and mood of your clock.

Sound Guy had an extra Arduino Uno R3 (ATmega328) and Adafruit 1.8” Color TFT Shield he was looking to repurpose. He went on to solder the Arduino Uno and the TFT Shield together and then looked to attach a Real Time Clock (RTC) module. “To attach the RTC module I happened to have some jumper cables with Dupont connectors, female on one end and male on the other. These are great for connecting to peripherals or breadboards,” Sound Guy writes.

Once completed, he moved onto the coding process. While many of the sketches came directly from the TFT and RTC module, Sound Guy included his own coding and has shared it within his Instructables post.

To make his project stand out from the rest, Sound Guy even incorporated a joystick that allows him to navigate a simple menu. The menu can provide controls for color and screen brightness.

For a full tutorial on how to create your own Color Clock, feel free to explore Sound Guy’s awesome Instructable’s guide here.

Simplicity is key with the DUO Light

Maker Jack Eisenmann has developed a lightweight, single board computer that can connect to an SD card, a composite video monitor and a keyboard, and provide a low-level computer programming experience.

Eisenmann’s vision of the DUO Light was to serve as an alternative to the Atmel based Arduino Uno, as his design features an additional RAM chip. The DUO Light still utilizes an ATmega328 at its core, which connects to a variety of peripheral devices, including a composite video monitor and SD card, PS/2 keyboard, and general purpose I/O ports; however, unlike the Uno, the board sports a 64 KB serial SRAM, which is also attached to the ATmega328.

Combining the best of both worlds, the Arduino Uno-Raspberry Pi hybrid even costs less than each of the two boards. Eisenmann provides much of the coding for the DUO Light on his website and notes that, “Each DUO Light is preinstalled with an interpreter for DUO Light bytecode (DLBC), a proprietary binary language.” The DLBC programs are loaded from files on the SD card and executed in SRAM. DLBC features over 90 opcodes and a robust argument system.

In his already successful Kickstarter campaign, Eisenmann states he created the DUO Light as a low cost platform for hobbyists to create fun and useful software. “The DUO Light is ideal for anyone who wants a low power computer with video output and keyboard input,” the Maker writes.

Eisenmann hopes that after achieving his Kickstarter goal, he will now be able to fund a large-scale shipment of his device to customers. For more information on DUO Light, check out the project’s official site here.

The Arduweenie is shining bright for Maker Faire

This is the tell-all guide to #Arduweenie, a bewitching Maker project brought to you by Tenaya Hurst of Rogue Making and dog hunter LLC.

My project is a wire frame in the shape of a dachshund dog wrapped with a 5-meter long RGB LED strip which I program. That’s all he is, and yet, loved by so many children and Maker Faire attendees alike. It all started one cold rainy day…

I was teaching and facilitating a class with Workshop Weekend at Tech Liminal in Oakland, CA. We provide a weekend for Makers to consult with electrical engineers, software engineers, and teachers like me, to better understand electronics. One of our makers was leading a class in LED strips and I was immediately enthralled. We had a big five meter strip going down the middle of our long table and we saw all the demonstrations of the way we could change the patterns using Arduino IDE – a programming environment.

I couldn’t wait to show my students at Galileo’s Tech Summer Camps at the Tech Museum of Innovation. I teach three classes there – Circuits & Electronics, Wearable Tech, and Maker Studio. The problem I faced was how to display the LED strip to effectively show off the patterns, but also make the display portable. When I was a little kid, I played with Light Bright, so this would be a 3D programmable version!

Also since I was a kid, I’ve loved dachshunds or wiener dogs. They’re simply the best. Sure, I have been sad that I can’t bring my dog, Woodchuck, to my various workshops. Obviously, I want to be focused on making and teaching, not my dog, but I still feel bad that he must be left at home. So that influenced the solution to my problem. I wanted something that would remind me of Woodchuck and some way to display my LED strip… the ideas were swirling!

At the same time, a friend of mine was designing his garden and started getting into topiary shapes. Also, I happen to just see the amazing documentary “A Man Named Pearl” about a very inspiring artist who happens to use trees and shrubs as his medium. Finally, I happened upon Etsy and found the answer – exactly what I needed!  A topiary shape of a dachshund, custom made by Gina Moll of Hollywood, Florida.

The RGB LED strip fits perfectly around the little dachshund allowing for fun rainbow patterns, color chasing functions, Cheshire cat swirls, and more. I tooled around with #Arduweenie for months and he made a few appearances in my classrooms. It wasn’t until an Open Make event at the Tech Museum of Innovation in April 2014, that #Arduweenie made the leap to true Twitter fame. A photo taken by Rebekah and tweeted by Prinda got the attention of Atmel’s VP of Marketing, Sander Arts. After all, nearly all Arduinos feature an Atmel chip, ranging from the ATmega32u4 to SAM3X8E. The #Arduweenie features an Arduino Uno (ATmega328).

Last April, I hosted The Tech Challenge, a large scale engineering challenge. Sander Arts was a special guest, but I didn’t get to meet him that day – as host I was on stage the entire event introducing the teams. It later all came together at Maker Faire San Mateo 2014 when my Linino.org exhibition booth was adjacent to the Atmel-Arduino installation. Sander was very kind and came to meet me in person with his team. I was so graciously included in three photos on Atmel’s blog about the Maker Faire – and #Arduweenie made it in two photos as well!

Since becoming famous, #Arduweenie has delighted students in my classrooms from San Jose to Oakland, Santa Rosa to San Francisco.

Side note: For those of you who may not know, we love making chippy puns to hit tunes from both yesterday and today. (Right, Sir Mix-A-Lot?) And, with her rendition of Katy Perry’s “Birthday,” Tenaya’s “Happy Making” doesn’t disappoint. Happy Maker Week, everyone! 

The clock to end all clocks is powered by ATmega328

With Maker Brett Oliver’s new Master Clock MK2, you will never doubt the correct time again. This clock was built to do one thing, display the precise time — no matter the conditions!

Oliver’s clock is timed off of the DCF77 atomic clock in Germany, located in Mainflingen near Frankfurt. An ATmega328 processor interacts with Udo Klein’s new DCF77 library that insures incredibly exact time.

The Maker selected the Atmel ATmega328 because “it seemed tailor made for my basic programming skills as most of the complicated work is done by the people who design and then share the libraries.” He further noted, “Arduino is very well supported hardware-wise and many complete parts can be purchased ready built as building block for projects.” No doubt, Brett!

Using an antique oak casing and a simple green LED screen, the Master Clock was assembled. Wait, there’s more! Brett even built in a fail safe to his device. In the event that a signal to the Atomic Clock is lost, the DCF77 library “auto tunes the quartz crystal so in the rare event the signal can’t be decoded the clock remains accurate within 1 sec over a number of days.” Talk about precision!

To save battery life, a passive infrared sensor was also installed to only display the time when someone enters the Master Clock MK2’s domain. This clock really is capable of doing it all, whether you want it to drive other slave clocks or chime whenever you please, trust us, it can do it!

For an expansive overview of the Master Clock MK2, it’s time to head on over to the project’s official page.

Control magnetic liquid with your mind

While we have featured some brilliant brain-controlled projects before, none may have been as mystifying as the Solaris endeavor from ::vtol::. Gaining inspiration from the swirling scenery of the 2002 film of the same name, this team has developed a system that allows the user to control magnetic liquids with merely their minds.

With the help of an Emotiv Epoc, the team enables a user to control a motorized magnet below a pool of gleaming green liquid. Within the liquid lies a magnetic substance that is purely governed by thought. Just don’t drink that green goo, or you might wake up as a Ninja Turtle!

Once the Epoc reads the wearer’s thoughts, a computer deciphers the focus and strength of the brainwaves, while an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) then translates these levels to the mobile magnet.

The team surveyed various social groups and generations to observe who would maintain the strongest control over the viscous liquid. People who spent a plenty of time with the object managed to influence the dynamic and direction of the liquids on the unconsciousness level, the Makers noted.

The unity between mind and control that the team discovered was intriguing. ::vtol:: writes that the whole experiment “visualizes the temperament of the person. The object copies your mental organization and echoes it on the liquid’s surface. The object becomes a part of the participant.”

Check out the video below to gain some insight into the minds of the team behind the Solaris. Still can’t get enough? Head over to the official Solaris blog to find out more about the inspiration behind this pool of green goo!

Swipe right with this 3D-printed Tinder hack

With reports stating that 38% of single adults have used an online dating app, it comes as little surprise that a device like Tinder-O-Matic has been created by the Maker community.

A Maker by the name of Andrew Sink had previously built an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) powered InMoov finger and noticed it collecting dust on his desk. He soon thereafter began brainstorming ideas as to how he could increase the utility of this project he worked so arduously on. One day, Sink noticed a friend furiously swiping at his smartphone. He inquired about his friend’s actions, and his friend then broke down the dynamics of the dating app Tinder. Poof! The Tinder-O-Matic was born.

For those unfamiliar with the network, Tinder is a mobile dating application that uses a simple ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ dichotomy to create possible romantic matches. Once reading a person’s profile and perusing their pictures (sourced solely from Facebook, mind you) a user swipes to the left to discard the possible match, or to the right to ‘like’ the individual. If two users both swipe to the right, they then ‘match’ and can begin a text conversation.

Some users, like Sink’s friend, do not care about assessing possible matches and look to game the system and maximize their matches by swiping all accounts to the right. As you can imagine, that can become quite the tedious task. Subsequently, a 3D-printed finger and an ATmega328 powered servo motor, the Tinder-O-Matic can ‘like’ a new profile every four seconds, which leads to the possibility of liking 10,000 accounts in a 12-hour span. That is some serious speed dating!

For more information about the Tinder-O-Matic, you can access Andrew’s SinkHacks blog here.

Qtechknow is on a roll with this Robot Obstacle Course

As we’re sure you already know, 13-year-old CEO and whizkid Quin Etnyre has already become quite an accomplished Maker changing the world — one Atmel powered board at a time. During Maker Faire Bay Area 2014, the young Maker hosted the “Qtechknow Olympics” robotic challenge featuring Arduino, XBee and of course, his award-winning FuzzBots. Quin’s latest project, an obstacle course that aspires to educate others around NFC, RFID and Arduino, has since then been published on Instructables.

The obstacle course is a culmination of his original FuzzBot design, a Pololu ZumoBot chassis kit, a SparkFun NFC Shield, XBee Series 1 wireless modules, and some Adafruit NeoPixel sticks and rings. Quin’s build features three parts:

• The Hacked FuzzBot: An adaptation of a fully-autonomous, Arduino Uno (ATmega328) powered “Mini Roomba,” the robot is comprised of an XBee module, NeoPixel stock, and a hacked NFC shield.
• The Controller: Created with an open source Bukobo 3D printer, the enclosure (whose design can be found here) houses an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), another XBee shield, a joystick and a NeoPixel ring, giving it the “full effect” with a flashing LEDs.
• NFC tags: These are affixed throughout the course.

As you’ve seen in the Atmel booth at a number of Maker Faires — Bay Area, Washington, D.C. and soon New York — the impressive project has won a number of Editor’s Choice Awards, not to mention the Maker of Merit Award at the White House Maker Faire.

Quin’s primary goal was to create a fun game that had recorded the number of times a robot drove over a series of NFC tags laid across a flat surface, i.e. a table. Points are shown in the form of blinking lights that illuminate when the device goes over the sensors, keeping track of the score.

As with all DIY projects, there is always some degree of trial-and-error. Quin highlights some of this latest challenges and modifications event-by-event on his page, but says it “works perfect now!” For a step-by-step breakdown on how to create your own robotic obstacle course, you can visit Qtechknow’s official Instructables post here.

A World Maker Faire calls for a world-record breaker. Think you’re up for the challenge? Be sure to swing by our booth and see if you can beat 24 points in 30 seconds.

During a recent interview with Quin, he expressed, “To be a Maker, you have to think outside of the box, and come up with new ideas on your own.” His new robot obstacle course is certainly a testament to that.

Through his latest and greatest innovations, the 13-year-old continues to open up many doors in the Maker community, while meeting a number of influential people — including the likes of Will.i.a.m., Bill Nye the Science Guy and Massimo Banzi.

Don’t forget to join the Atmel team in Queens later this month for the 5th Annual World Maker Faire. Undoubtedly, this year will be amazing as an expected 750+ Makers and 85,000+ attendees head to the New York Hall of Science to see the latest DIY gizmos and gadgets, as well as AVR Man in the flesh. Once again a Silversmith Sponsor of the event, Atmel will put the spotlight on Arduino and Arduino-related projects. See you soon!

Control your window shade with your smartphone

This development from RCGuy out of ALP Electronic Innovation takes us one step closer to complete DIY home automation. No longer is there a need to mess around with those fussy window blinds, just swipe your way to perfect lighting!

Using an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), this device hosts a simple wiring schematic that enables a smartphone app to control a motor driven window shade. A Bluetooth connection is used to establish a connection between the Arduino Uno and the smartphone of choice. From there, a DC motor controls the shade track — allowing in light to wake you up or blocking out the rays to let you catch a few extra minutes of shut-eye!

For easy identification, a series of LED lights notifies the user of the shade’s current status. Now this project may not be as refined as the Homey or as large as these automated blinds, but this project is a true Maker endeavor. The ease of this build almost leaves no excuse as to why your windows aren’t automatically controlled. For those interested in installing a set of connected blinds into their living room, a step-by-step tutorial of the build can be seen below or  on the Maker’s original lnstructables guide.