Building a ‘My Little Pony’ donation box with Arduino

---

One hackerspace has created an over-the-top, extremely awesome donation box with a wind tunnel, LED matrix and dollar bill-triggered tunes. 

---

As the vice president of the Los Angeles-based, non-profit hackerspace CRASH Space, software engineer Michelle Leonhart knows a thing or two about donations. At each of their events, the group will typically leave out a little jar for people to contribute to their cause. Up until now, however, that jar was nothing more than an old Cheezy-Poofs container with a small hole cut into its lid.

But shouldn’t a place oozing with innovative projects and dynamic Makers have a collections basket that properly reflected their creativity? Being one of the more whimsical hackerspaces out there, CRASH Space’s mascot is a soldering unicorn named Sparkles. With this in mind, Leonhart decided to go about giving the donation box a My Little Pony makeover.

The top slot in the donation box is equipped with a distance sensor mounted right beneath it in hot pink acrylic hearts. Whenever someone slips in a dollar bill, the sensor detects a change in distance and cues the donation box to react. At this point, the words “THANK YOU” scroll across an RGB LED matrix while emitting the My Little Pony theme song, and two fans begin to toss the bills around as if it were one of those money blowing machines.

The LED matrix is driven by an Arduino Nano (ATmega328), while the sound system consists of a robertsonics MP3 trigger board, SPST relays, a 5V power adapter, as well as a speaker and amp, of course. All of the electronics are housed inside an upcycled, clear acrylic box.

“The robertsonics MP3 board is designed to play an MP3 file every time a trigger is closed. To close a trigger, you just need to close the circuit between the two pins in the trigger. Notice that this board has 15 triggers, and therefore can support up to 15 different sound files,” Leonhart explains. “Right now mine only plays the My Little Pony song, but this leaves room for future upgrades… to play up to 15 different My Little Pony songs.”

Intrigued? Leonhart has provided an excellent tutorial on how to go about constructing a donation box of your own along with all the necessary files, code and everything else you could possibly need. See it in action below!

[s/o Samy Kamkar for sending us the tip!]

What time is it? The TimeDock Sleepeasy will tell you

---

This interactive docking station allows your Pebble Time smartwatch to talk to you with a wave of your hand.

---

Picture this. You’re in bed, wondering how much time has gone by since you haven’t been able to fall asleep. What if there was a device that could tell you the time so you didn’t need to put your glasses on to find out? At the Pebble Rocks Boulder Hackathon, one team devised a gadget to solve that specific problem.

The TimeDock Sleepeasy is an interactive docking station for your Pebble Time smart watch. The gramophone-like unit allows you to find out what time it is, without having to turn on a light, press buttons or touch the Pebble while it’s on the dock charging. Even better, the device will read the time and talk to you, so you don’t need to do anything except wave your hand.

Inspired by the old-fashioned gramophone, the team created a 3D-printed mount embedded with an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) inside. The 3D design enabled the sound to be amplified mechanically, resulting in a gramophone look-a-like. The Arduino then communicates with the Pebble and leverages a sensor to respond and tell you the time.

The group figured out how to get the Arduino talking to the Pebble, and they used an ultrasound sensor so that users can wave their hand at the TimeDock and learn the time. To open communication between the Arduino and the Pebble, the team configured the ATmega328 board to send a request to the Pebble for the time, then programmed the Pebble to reply with the time and a request to say it. Its creators loaded .WAV files on the Arduino for a range of other notifications programmed on the Pebble — when the Arduino gathers information on the notification, it plays the corresponding .WAV file.

“TimeDock was developed as a charging station for the Pebble Time and Time Steel, and was a successful Kickstarter campaign. For this hackathon, we wanted to see if we could make TimeDock do more than charging. The TimeDocks that you see in use in this article have been modified to allow connection to the smart strap serial data port on the Pebble Time,” the team explains.

Mission accomplished! You can read all about the 48-hour build process on its Hackster.io page here.

This pocket-sized, modular synthesizer is based on Arduino

---

The NS1nanosynth is a modern, analog/digital synthesizer that fits in the palm of your hand.

---

Back in the 1970s, modular synthesizers were often bulky and expensive. Reproducing an exact patch was not only difficult, but virtually impossible. Throughout the years, these devices began to be largely supplanted in pop music by highly integrated keyboard synths, racks of MIDI-connected gear and samplers. Fast forward a few decades and products like littleBits’ synth kit have made piecing together a modular machine just as simple as interlocking LEGO bricks, not to mention tiny enough that it could fit in the palm of your hand.

Taking that one step further is Italian startup Soundmachines, who has pulled out all the stops with their latest DIY kit dubbed the NS1nanosynth. The all-in-one unit allows you to have fun by mixing together new and exciting combinations from over 20 different building blocks. These include a voltage-controlled oscillator, two low-frequency oscillators, an ASDR (attack, sustain, decay and release) envelope, lowpass and bandpass filters, a voltage-controlled amplifier, as well as an assortment of “micro” modules like mixers and multiples, sample and hold, sum/sub blocks, inverters, analog dividers, clock dividers, fixed voltage generators and sensors.

And that’s not all. Designed with the Maker crowd in mind, the NS1nanosynth is built around the Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4) and features both MIDI and USB support. The handheld synthesizer measures just 220mm x 85mm in size, enabling it to fit just about anywhere from your bag to your back pocket. What’s more, 5V/400mA of power is supplied either through the classic 5.5mm jack or via microUSB.

“You can, of course, get rid of everything and write whatever you want on a perfectly formed standard Arduino platform. It’s up to you to use your standard or custom libraries and do modulations, connect to wireless stuff, use the on-board dual DAC and quad digital potentiometer,” the Soundmachines crew writes.

Intrigued? Read all about the NS1nanosynth on its official page here, or watch its demo reels below!

Sensing the atmosphere with an Arduino-based high-altitude balloon

---

Titan 1 is a high-altitude balloon sensing the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field.

---

The brainchild of Emanuel Bombasaro, Titan 1 is a high-altitude balloon (HAB) tasked with sensing the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field of an altitude up to 35 ,393 meters (116,118 feet).

Launched on August 21, 2015 in Denmark, the system is comprised of a helium-filled latex balloon, a payload box housing its flight computer, various sensors and a parachute. A GoPro camcorder is also mounted inside the payload to capture an image every second while up in the air.

The flight computer is based on an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560) and a HABduino shield, which logs the position, pressure, temperature, humidity, luminosity, magnetic field and acceleration — all measured by the embedded sensors. The global position of the HAB is determined by a MAX-M8 series GPS module and the data is transmitted via a Radiometrix MTX2 434MHz radio module.

Among the other sensors connected to the Arduino aboard Titan 1 include: a DS18B20 temperature sensor on the HABduino to show the flight computer compartment’s temperature, a MCP9808 maximum accuracy digital temperature sensor to monitor air temperature, a HTU21DF temperature and humidity sensor to track temperature and relative humidity of the air, a MPL3115A2 precision altimeter to keep tabs on atmospheric pressure, a TSL2561 light to digital converter, a BST-BMP180 pressure sensor, a L3GD20 3D gyroscope, a LSM303DLHC 3D accelerometer and 3D magnetometer module. Meanwhile, power is supplied through a LSH20 Saft LSH 20 lithium battery and feeds into the low input voltage synchronous boost converter on the HABuino shield.

Intrigued? You can read all about the mission in its detailed paper here, and watch its maiden flight for yourself in the video below!

Disney researchers found a way for devices to communicate using LEDs

---

Visible Light Communication enables the interaction between objects using only LEDs.

---

If devices are going to communicate with one other, more times than not it’s going to be done through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. However, wireless networks aren’t always available and Bluetooth can drain battery life. Knowing this, a Disney Research team has come up with an alternative way for Internet of Things objects to ‘talk.’ How, you ask? Through LED lights.

Unlike incandescent or fluorescent bulbs, the brightness of LEDs can be controlled with extreme precision. Meaning, they can be turned on and off at very high frequencies that are faster than the human eye can detect. Aside from that, LEDs can even be used as receivers just like photodiodes.

Similar to how two ships passing in the night can communicate via Morse code, a couple of IoT gadgets can now secretly converse through the visible light generated by an LED — a method that the team calls Visible Light Communication, or VLC. Not only can it illuminate a room, but the MCU inside each bulb is capable of transmitting and receiving data.

“VLC creates opportunities for low-cost, safe, and environmentally friendly wireless communication solutions. We focus on connected toys and light bulb networks,” the team writes. “Our work targets a full system design that spans from hardware prototypes to communication protocols, and applications.”

Though the concept of “Li-Fi” has been around for a while, as expected, it would appear that many of VLC’s initial examples are focused primarily on toys. (It is Disney, after all!) Among them included a toy car that can turn on its own lights and come to life when placed near a lamp, as well as a princess dress whose embedded LEDs are activated whenever a wand with its own light comes near.

“LED-to-LED Visible Light Communication allows interaction between toys by only using LEDs. No dedicated hardware is required. When multiple devices are networked with each other, we organize the communication with our software protocols,” the researchers add.

However, the technology has other potential applications as well, with an adapter connected to the headphone jack of a smartphone or tablet to receive signals from overhead lights operating at wavelengths unnoticeable by the human eye. This, for instance, opens the door for LED emitters to be placed around a store to beam notifications to the smartphones of shoppers.

Using a simple mobile app on the device, the lightbulb data can be used to tell a story and visualize both pictures and text. When off, no data is transmitted. When switched back on, the storytelling continues.

As you can see in the photo above, the researchers employed various Arduino Uno boards (ATmega328) as part of the study’s testbed. Read all about the project here.

Building a 3D-printed, Arduino-powered dog feeder

---

Maker creates an over-engineered, automated treat feeder for his pup using Arduino and his Ultimaker 2. 

---

We’ve seen some pretty sweet pet projects as of late, and this recent one from JonPaul Laskis surely doesn’t disappoint. The Maker has designed an over-engineered DIY solution to feed his pup a treat after every meal.

Upon finishing his dinner, Laskis would always give his dog a Dentastix treat to help maintain his oral hygiene. However, the treat wasn’t always delivered at the same time, which as any pet owner knows, isn’t something our furry friends enjoy. This inspired him to build an automated machine that would dispense a treat for his impatient pup without requiring his assistance.

How it works is pretty straightforward: The dog places its paw on a lever, which activates the machine. From there, the device will decide if a treat will be granted or not. (The machine is programmed to only dispense one every eight hours.) When not in operation, it will remain off to conserve battery. The feeder is able to keep track of the appropriate times and the amount of treats remaining in the tube before rotation by storing these values in the EEPROM of an embedded Arduino Uno (ATmega328). These values reset after each treat.

Laskis designed his project in SolidWorks and 3D printed each of its plastic components in lime green PLA with his AVR powered Ultimaker 2. In addition to these parts, the automatic feeder is comprised of a dozen six-inch-ling clear acrylic tubes and a laser-cut sheet metal base.

Want to make one of your own? Head over to the Maker’s Thingiverse page to get started. Meanwhile, you can see it in action below!

Defend your personal space with this wearable device

---

Maker builds an over-sized, electro-mechanical backpack with a shoulder-mounted, self-firing Super Soaker. 

---

Don’t you hate when people invade your personal space and get up in your business? What better way to send a message than by squirting them with a water gun? However, having to manually target people with your soaker of choice can be a tedious task, especially if there is an entire army of time-wasting, close-talking friends or colleagues approaching you. Luckily, there’s an automated solution that will do the trick. Introducing the Personal Space Defense System (PSDS). 

The brainchild of DJ from Instructables, the system is described as an “over-sized, electro-mechanical backpack with a shoulder-mounted, self-firing water gun.” While this isn’t the first robotic buffer zone defender, it’s perhaps one of the coolest — and most applicable nevertheless. (Anouk Wipprecht’s Spider Dress is still pretty sweet, too!)

How it works is pretty straightforward: If someone encroaches upon your personal space, an embedded sensor pendant will detect the invader and the Super Soaker Electro Storm will blast a few shots of water towards them.

Aside from the stripped-down water gun, the Maker employed several electronic components to make the project a reality. These included an Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4), an IR distance sensor, a PIR motion sensor, a laser diode, a power switch, an illuminated switch, a 2200mAh 7.4V LiPo battery, a voltage regulator, a MOSFET, a bunch of resistors, a transistor and a capacitor, as well as a number of other off-the-shelf supplies.

The PSDS is comprised of three main parts: a shoulder-mounted water gun, a sensor-laden necklace and a trigger mechanism. As AJ explains, pressing the power button activates system while pushing the trigger button will toggle between armed and disarmed modes. Once the system is armed, the gun will flip up and the attached laser diode will power on.

What’s more, he removed the original case of the Super Soaker to reduce the weight and allow for easy direct electrical control. This enabled him to wedge the water gun and reservoir into a channel bracket and actuate it by a geared servo.

“For ease of mounting and added comfort, I designed the system to be mounted to a regular backpack. The pack provides a sturdy mounting point for the main tube and proto-board for the electronics,” AJ adds. “The gun assembly is a bit hefty, so to balance out its inherently wobbly nature, I created a counterweight that has a mount for a camera. I ended up attaching a GoPro.” (This will surely capture some hilarious clips!)

The program running the PSDS is a basic Arduino sketch, which the Maker has made available, along with the Bounce library that will need to be installed. Those wishing to build a personal space defending wearable of their own can head over to AJ’s Instructables page, where you’ll find a detailed breakdown of the project.

Sort your Skittles with this 3D-printed, Arduino-powered machine

---

Sort the rainbow! 

---

Not a fan of yellow Skittles? Only enjoy the purple ones? Why waste your time sorting through the candy when there’s an automated machine that can do it for you?

That’s exactly what Nathan Peterson has done. The Maker has created a 3D-printed device that can detect the color of each Skittle and then spit them out in different repositories for easy picking. Powered by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), the sorting machine uses a Zitrades color-sensing module to identify the various shades of candy as they make their way through the dispenser.

Beyond that, the project consists of photo interrupters, three DC motors, a photo resistor and an Adafruit motor shield. Peterson employed a small LED to illuminate the Skittle and accurately read its color. From there, the gears rotate, the sorter begins to move, and the candy is released into its respective bin.

While it works for Skittles, the mechanism isn’t quite suitable for M&M’s, though. The reason? “Because M&Ms are a bit smaller and get jammed easier. Also M&Ms have six colors, and this machine is only designed to sort five,” the Maker reveals.

Peterson details the entire process, along with some thoughts on what would have worked better, on his Hackaday.io page here. In the meantime, watch it in action below!

Connecting an Arduino to an old alarm panel

---

By adding an Arduino and Ethernet board to his existing alarm panel, one Maker was able to set up his own security alert system that notified him of events via text message. 

---

Like many of us, Doug Powers is the owner of a new home. Upon moving into his recently-purchased abode, he happened to stumble upon a pre-existing alarm panel mounted to the wall. Rather than having to deal with all of the time, costs and unnecessary headaches associated with setting up the system, he decided to channel his inner DIY spirit and interface it with an Arduino.

By connecting an Uno (ATmega328) and an Ethernet breakout board to the DSC PC1550 panel, Powers was able to emulate the keypad and configure his own monitoring/alerting system that notifies him via text message whenever the alarm is triggered, armed or disarmed. The Arduino itself is directly powered by the unit’s control board, which feeds it roughly 12V. There is also a backup battery supply should the electricity ever go out.

The new hardware is linked to the existing control board in two ways: analog pins to read and write signals for the keypad and a programable output from the control board that the Arduino uses to determine the state of the alarm.

Do you have an old DSC 1550 alarm system? Powers has made all of the source code and accompanying library available on GitHub, as well as shared a detailed overview of the project in the video below!

Watch a LEGO band cover Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’

---

Billed as “the world’s first robotic LEGO band,” each member of Toa Mata is made of Bionicle pieces and powered by Arduino.

---

Last year at this time, Italian sound artist Giuseppe Acito caught our attention with his innovative take on Depeche Mode’s anthemic 1983 single “Everything Counts.” What made it so different, you ask? The rearranged tune wasn’t performed by him, but instead by his entirely LEGO-based, ATmega328 powered band that he calls Toa Mata.

Billed as the world’s first LEGO robotic group, the Toa Mata Band is controlled by Arduino Uno hooked up to a MIDI sequencer. For his latest project, Acito wired the Bionicle bunch to several servos, each driven by the Arduino.

With a little programming via MIDI, the band was able to play Daft Punk’s hit song “Da Funk” using a range of instruments and synthesizers including Fender Jazz Bass, Ableton Push/Live, Coron Drum, Korg DS10 synth, Finger BassLine, Boss HC-2, Moog Animoog, and a Nintendo DS.

Pretty cool, right? Watch Acito’s Toa Mata Band recreate Daft Punk’s legendary track below! Meanwhile, you can browse some of his other work here.