Go Back to the Future with these Maker projects

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“The future isn’t written. It can be changed. Anyone can MAKE their future whatever they want it to be.” — Doc Brown

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Unfortunately, not all of us are lucky enough to have a time-warping DeLorean that’ll let us travel into the future at warp speed. After watching Back to the Future II, it’s safe to assume that we’ve all been waiting 30 years for October 21, 2015 to finally come — also known as the day that Marty arrives! What better way to pay homage to the ingenuity of Doc — who happens to be a Maker himself — than by compiling a list of our favorite BttF-inspired projects?

2015? You mean we’re in the future?

For anyone who grew up in the ‘80s, this display panel should look incredibly familiar. It’s the time circuit, which Doc built into his 88 mph DeLoren machine. The brainchild of Phillip Burgess, the clock consists of LED displays housed inside a metal-painted acrylic enclosure, controlled a Teesny 2.0 (ATmega32U4) that was able to fit in places that an Arduino couldn’t.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a DeLorean drone!

Back in 2011, YouTuber Native118 decided to honor the cult classic by modding his quadcopter into a DeLorean drone. While it may not have been able to fly through time, it could however fly through the sky… and in style. Its stainless steel body was replaced with lightweight foamcore, and equipped with LED headlights and taillights. Although it even had a mini Mr. Fusion on its back, power was supplied through a LiPo battery. Aside from that, he employed a MultiWii for stabilization, a HobbyKing 12A BlueSeries speed controller and a batch of Turnigy 2204-14T motors for the engines.

Time circuit’s on! Flux capacitor, fluxing!

Just one of the many BttF props that Chris Fry hopes to replicate someday, the Maker recently devised a remote-controlled flux capacitor based on the Arduino Uno (ATmega328). The gadget features several audio tracks and lighting effects with varying modes (e.g. disco and reverse) at different speeds.

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!

With a love for the DeLorean DMC-12, one pair of Canadian Makers spent more than 600 hours creating a retro-chic BttF golf cart, which boasts speakers that emit phrases from the movie along with a capacitor controlled by an Adafruit Pro Trinket (ATmega328).

Playing the BttF theme with floppies

How do you honor the nostalgic tunes of BttF? Think McFly, think! With floppy music, of course! This is exactly what YouTuber Arganalth did. He attached a Raspberry Pi to a bunch of floppy and HDD drives, housed the entire system inside a suitcase and then programmed the drives’ mechanisms to play the famous songs. He employed a PC that sent the data to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), plus integrated some batteries for power and portability.

When this baby hits 88mph, you’re gonna see some serious…

In the parking lot at the mall, Doc uses a remote control to drive around his time-traveling car after putting his dog (Einstein) in the driver’s seat. Resembling the original Futaba FP-T8SGA-P, Maker Todd Jones designed a mock controller with an LED counter running an Arduino, along with a sound module that’s typically found inside singing birthday cards. With a flick of a few switches, the device turns on and the display begins to count upwards to the DeLorean’s necessary 88 mph while emitting the character’s legendary phrases.

Size adjusting – fit… Drying mode on. Jacket drying.

With a desire to make Marty McFly’s auto-adjusting jacket a reality, the Instructables crew took it upon themselves to take a glimpse into what a future with self-sizing garments would look like. The team of Makers developed jacket sleeves that start off too long and then go up as if they modify itself to the correct length. This was accomplished by using a 3D-printed pulley mechanism and micro gear motors. Whenever a button on the jacket hem is pushed, cables are wound around a pulley, drawing the sleeves up. These cables are threaded through a simple tube system built inside the jacket and sleeves.

Power laces, alright!

Aside from the DeLorean and hoverboard, there’s one other notable thing from BttF that has left us eagerly waiting to get our hands on feet in for decades. If your recall, Marty throws on a pair of Nike high-top sneakers that automatically lace and tighten by themselves. Tired of having to wait until 2015, Maker Hunter Scott chose to do his part and help make such footwear a reality with the help of Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328) and a few other widely available components. A force sensitive resistor taped beneath the heel of the insole lets the Arduino know when a wearer steps into the shoe, while a rotary encoder on the motor shaft ensures that all the power lace cycles are the same.

Maker builds his own self-lacing sneakers

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Footwear that’s just in time for Back to the Future Day! 

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Aside from a time-travelling DeLorean DMC-12 and hoverboard, there’s one other notable design from Back To The Future II that has left us eagerly waiting to get our hands on feet in for years. During the cult classic, Marty McFly puts on a pair of Nike high-top sneakers that automatically lace and tighten on their own. With October 21, 2015 finally upon us, Maker Hunter Scott decided to do his part and help make such footwear a reality.

Impressively, Scott didn’t even need Dr. Emmett Brown’s help to bring this idea to life. Instead, he ordered himself a pair of knockoff Nike Air Mag sneakers and gathered several widely available parts, including an Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328), a LiPo battery, a USB charger, a motor, a motor driver, a shaft coupler and a rotary encoder. He also incorporated a switch to turn the kicks on/off and a button to activate the system.

The BttF-inspired shoes came with removable strap which Scott ended up removing part of its velcro, allowing it to slide without catching. The Maker carved out a notch in the back to install the motor, shaft coupler and encoder, and used a little bit of fishing line to go around the top, providing the power behind the laces.

A force sensitive resistor taped beneath the heel of the insole lets the Arduino know when a wearer steps into the shoe, while a rotary encoder on the motor shaft ensures that all the power lace cycles are the same.

Admittedly, the DIY sneaks are not exactly likes the ones worn on the big screen. For one, they don’t loosen automatically — you’ll have to hit the button for that. Secondly, Scott points out that they pale in comparison to the speed of McFly’s kicks… for now anyway. Regardless, they’re pretty darn cool if you ask us! Intrigued? Check out the Maker’s entire project here, or watch them in action below.

This DIY railgun can blast projectiles at 560 mph

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Maker David Wirth has created the first-ever portable railgun with the help of 3D printing and Arduino.

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Most commonly associated with the military or NASA, railguns are electromagnetic projectile launchers based on similar principles to the homopolar motor. Instead of relying on gunpowder to propel ammunition, the futuristic blaster uses an electric circuit comprised of three parts: a power source, two parallel conducting rails and a sliding armature.

Well, David Wirth is neither a soldier or a rocket engineer. Instead, he’s simply a Maker who decided to create a Quake-like railgun with the help of 3D printing and some widely available components. The WXPR-1 houses six large capacitors, which weigh 20 pounds altogether, and an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) to monitor the capacitor voltage, amperage, temperature and battery voltage. The entire thing is powered by a 12V LiPo battery that’s stepped up to 1050V using a micro-inverter and a transformer.

What’s more, the WXPR-1 has pressure regulators in its handle. The system draws CO2 from a paintball gun tank into a compressed gas tank in the middle of the railgun. And while it may look like a Super Soaker, this is surely no toy. Wirth’s monstrous gadget is capable of blasting tungsten, aluminum, carbon and even Teflon/plasma at speeds of up to 559 mph, and firing with 1,800 joules of energy per shot. While such velocity can certainly do some damage, keep in mind that the ones being developed by the military can go upwards of 13,000 mph in a matter of 0.2 seconds.

Nevertheless, his demonstrations are pure awesomeness. In the first video, Wirth projects a piece of carbon toward a steel-backed plywood target three feet away, which seems to vaporize in thin air. In his next attempt, the Maker tested an aluminum slug whose impact was clearly visible, leaving a 1/2-inch deep indent.

Intrigued? Watch it in action below, as well as check out Wirth’s entire project here.

DIRO the Bear is a smart, Ted-like stuffed animal

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DIRO the Bear is like a next-generation Teddy Ruxpin with cloud-based artificial intelligence. 

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Back in the ‘80s, the world was introduced to an animatronic talking teddy bear that would go on to revolutionize bedtime storytelling for children everywhere. The toy’s mouth and eyes would move while “reading” tales that were played from a cassette deck in its back. Now 30 years later, Dmitry Tverdokhlebov is ready to debut a new Teddy Ruxbin for the smartphone-savvy world. Meet DIRO the Bear.

Unlike its predecessor, this smart stuffed animal is designed to serve as a child’s best friend, a household nanny, a parental assistant and even a tutor. Billed as the “first talking teddy bear robot with artificial intelligence,” DIRO is based on an ATmega328 along with a built-in gyroscope, touch sensors, a microphone, a speaker, an MP3 player and an LED light. Plus, thanks to its embedded Bluetooth functionality, it can even interact with users in a way that resembles Mark Wahlberg and Ted — without all of the profanity, of course.

DIRO can understand what you’re saying through its microphone, and be customized using a text-to-speech engine to speak back in any language or voice available. What really sets the bear apart from good ol’ Ruxpin, however, is its cloud-based A.I. which employs special algorithms to keep a conversation going, all while blinking his eyes and moving his eyebrows to convey various emotions.

Aside from being just a fluffy companion or a thunder buddy, DIRO can act as a morning alarm that wakes you up at preset time, a storyteller that reads downloadable audiobooks and a homework helper through an integrated educational app. And that’s not all. The bear can prove to be a valuable babysitting tool that enables parents to hear what’s going on in any room and double as a bedside monitor that can calm a child down if he or she wakes up in the middle of the night, while notifying mom or dad simultaneously.

Although DIRO the Bear is not yet available, Tverdokhlebov does have plans for an Indiegogo campaign later this year. Until then, you can head over to its official page here.

Capture timelapses with Adafruit’s motorized camera slider

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Adafruit upgrades its 3D-printed camera slider with motors and Bluetooth control.

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Our friends over at Adafruit love photography, so much so that they recently created a slick slider for their camera. This turned out to be just fine and dandy for hobbyist photographers, but why not take it one step further? Being the Makers that they are, the Ruiz Brothers decided to motorize their existing 3D-printed tool and to add wireless control. Whereas a similar product could run you a couple hundred dollars, this DIY mechanism is fun to build and for a fraction of the cost.

For this iteration, the low-profile slider is motorized using a single NEMA-17 stepper driven by the Adafruit Motor Shield ontop of an Arduino Uno (ATmega328). At its core, the project consists of 500mm slide rail, along with a GT2 timing pulley mounted to a stepper motor, a radial ball bearing and a timing belt that pulls the platform across. As for power, eight AA batteries supply the necessary 12V to the Arduino via a 2.1mm barrel jack.

Though designed with a GoPro or smartphone camera in mind, the slider itself is capable of pushing roughly three to four pounds of weight. This means your point-and-shoot, camcorders and webcams should all suffice, as long as they’re tightly mounted to the unit. The slider should work on any angle and in any position, and doesn’t require a flat surface. This can make for some pretty remarkable timelapses, especially on your iPhone!

“The slider performs the smoothest movement when the timing pulley on the stepper pulls the slider to it,” the Ruiz Brothers write. “Ideally, the platform should be homed when its closest to the radial ball bearing. When the platform slides across in the other direction, the timing pulley pushes the belt, which introduces a slight shake. The shake is noticable in our tests, so we recommend sliding one way.”

Meanwhile, an Adafruit Bluefruit SPI Friend enables you to remotely control the cinematic movement of your camera slider via the Adafruit Bluefruit LE Connect mobile app on any Android or iOS device, including your smartwatch. From the app, you can increase or decrease the speed, start or retract the camera motion, ease in and out, among many other things.

In terms of software, the system uses a controller motor shield Arduino sketch, which features several functions for moving the slider and setting the speed. This sketch calls for both the Adafruit Motor Shield V2 and Adafruit Adafruit BluefruitLE nRF51 libraries.

Intrigued? You can find an exhaustive tutorial of the build here, or simply watch a brief overview below!

Tinker Tie is a hackable LED bow-tie

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The Tinker Tie is a fully-programmable, Arduino-compatible LED bow-tie that can last over 20 hours on a single charge.

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Fred Astaire. Pee-Wee Herman. Bill Nye. Justin Timberlake. From celebs to businessmen, what’s not to love about the always classic look of the bow-tie? Although for years this ribbon of fabric has been made from silk, polyester, cotton or a mixture of materials, the Atom Computer crew is looking to bring the fashion accessory into the wearable tech era. Introducing the Tinker Tie.

The Tinker Tie is a colorful and customizable device with 28 RGB LEDs that’ll surely add a little pizazz to your prom tuxedo, EDM concert attire or Halloween costume. Based on an Adafruit Pro Trinket (ATmega328), the piece can be programmed using the Arduino IDE and Adafruit NeoPixel library to emit countless color changes and animations as you illuminate the night.

Data is received by the first LED, then sent through to the rest of the lights in a zig-zag pattern. Because of a special chip built into each LED, you can (magically) control an entire array of lights from only one data pin. Meanwhile, an integrated 500mAh LiPo battery pack provides over 20 hours of enjoyment on a single charge. Once it’s all drained out, simply plug in the Tinker Tie to your computer via USB and quickly refuel.

For its Kickstarter launch, the tie will ship in either fully assembled or kit form. And not only is it clearly an attention-grabbing fashion statement, it can be an excellent educational tool as well! Although the current PCB color for prototypes is green, the team hopes to upgrade to fancy black circuit boards in the very near future.

Want to stand out at your next party? Want to light up the stage? Want to turn some heads at Maker Faire? Whatever your desire, you can head over to Tinker Tie’s page here.

Maker builds a Mjölnir replica that only he can lift

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Watch as this magical, Arduino-powered hammer trick people on Venice Beach. 

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Inspired by Thor from The Avengers, engineer Allen Pan (known to the YouTube world as Sufficiently Advanced) has created his own real-life Mjölnir replica. Much like the comic book and movie, this magical hammer could only be wielded by “worthy” individuals, which in this case is anyone who could figure out that the object is impossible to lift as long as it’s on a metal surface. That is, of course, you have the YouTuber’s fingerprints.

Using a capacitive touch sensor connected to the large hammer’s handle, an Arduino Pro Mini (ATmega328), four 12V batteries, a solid-state relay as a switching device and an electromagnet taken from an old microwave transformer, Pan was able to build a Mjölnir that only he could pick up. This system works by creating an extremely strong magnetic pull, which is so strong that, it feels too heavy to lift when placed on a metal surface like a manhole cover.

Before taking his invention to the streets of Venice Beach, he registered his thumbprints to the embedded fingerprint scanner and proceeded to trick unsuspecting onlookers into trying to lift the mystical tool. Once someone grasps the handle, the electromagnets switch on, clinging the hammer to the metal. When the Maker moves his thumb over the sensor, it switches off again, allowing him to lift the Mjölnir with ease.

Creating a custom, self-learning TV remote

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Reminiscent of the seven-function remotes of yesterday, this Maker built a barebones controller for the elderly.

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While on the topic of slick remotes, we couldn’t help but share another one. This time, it’s not from a high-end brand of smart home devices; rather, it’s from no other than the Maker community. You see, Hari Wiguna’s 90-year-old father found himself having trouble pressing those darn little buttons on his TV clicker. So, doing what any DIY spirited individual would do, Wiguna decided to build his dad a custom controller with only a few key buttons.

To create this minimalistic unit, the Maker mounted an ATmega328 and several of its other components onto a stripboard, which he then housed inside a laser-cut acrylic case. The barebones gadget features an IR transmitter and receiver, an FTDI jack for reprogramming, a switch to select whether it’s in use or being programmed, an LED, and a beeper for additional feedback.

As eluded to above, the controller is equipped with only the buttons necessary for the most frequently used functions, including power, channel up and down, volume up and down, and a directional pad. Each one can be programmed by simply pointing an original remote to this DIY self-learning unit. Come to think of it, many old-school clickers only had seven buttons anyways.

Perhaps one of, if not, the most interesting aspects of the project was that Wiguna lived thousands of miles away from his father, so he didn’t have the original remote on hand to do the programming. Fortunately, he found an emulating Android app that allowed him to mimic his dad’s cable box and TV remote, basically giving him a duplicate copy right at home. This enabled the new remote to learn from the other remote, which this case was actually the smartphone.

Not only can you find a breakdown of the project along with its source code and schematics here, you can watch the Maker give a detailed overview in the video below!

This cyberpunk wearable projects video graffiti onto walls

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VIDEOBLΛST_R is a wearable projection device used for mapping eight prepared audiovisual pieces.

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Spray-painted graffiti is so 2014. Just ask media artist R▲, who has developed a wearable projection device that enables users to map eight prepared audiovisual pieces in dynamic outdoor conditions. And the best part, it doesn’t leave a mess nor any trace of vandalism whatsoever.

Dubbed VIDEOBLΛST_R, the entire system is mounted onto a rollerblade wrist guard which goes around the forearm to make for quite the cyberpunk fashion statement. The wearable is comprised of eight vector graphics animated with Processing, which are accompanied by sound samples from a Cwejman S1 modular synthesizer. According to R▲, some of the visuals involved 3D animation, analog signal degradation and data bending techniques.

This GIF-like artwork is triggered by pressing buttons on a Nintendo Wii Nunchuk controller, connected to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328). The button mappings are all processed with the ArduinoNunchuk library and transferred via USB Serial to a Raspberry Pi 2 running the Processing environment. From there, video and audio signal output is sent to a Optoma PK-320 projector via an HDMI cord and voilà! The images can then be displayed on a variety of objects and surfaces, ranging from the walls of buildings to the bottom of fire escapes. The entire gadget is powered by 5V DC battery housed inside an iPhone band worn on the upper arm.

Intrigued? Head over to the R▲’s official page here, and be sure to see it in action below!

This AVR powered device makes growing veggies at home easier

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Meet HUI! — the virtual garden assistant that’ll help your garden thrive with real-time environment condition updates and care instructions.

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In the movement towards a more green and sustainable future, urban farming has become a growing trend in cities. However, these environments differ greatly from that of farm land tended by skilled farmers, and not everyone has the green thumb when it comes to gardening and plant care. The team at Grow&Help sought to solve this problem by creating a smart device that would alleviate the headache of maintaining healthy plants.

GROW & HELP — a company that aims to promote urban farming and sustainable agriculture projects — acknowledged the difficult task of growing plants, and created a technology to inform people on what soil and temperature, and the amount of sunshine and water that certain plants need to thrive. With HUI!, short for Intelligent Urban Garden or “Huerto Urbano Inteligente,” urban farmers can skip the grocery store and grow their own produce for a price as low as $50.

HUI! is a weatherproof, intelligent device, with a minimalist design, that’s simply placed into the soil. Its accompanying mobile app will indicate which plant(s) you are growing, and will send you daily updates and best practices for care, (maximum/minimum temperatures, daylight hours, water, etc.) and alerts if the plant needs attention. As mentioned before, urban environments differ greatly, so HUI! can also identify what plants and vegetables thrive best in your area at different seasons of the year. Ideally, the gadget would be installed in the place where you want to grow (garden, planter box, or pot), and after 24 hours, it will precisely measure the environmental parameters and inform you in real-time.

At the heart of the unit lies an ATmega328 along with a series of light, temperature and soil moisture sensors. With its Wi-Fi integration and the app’s artificial intelligence techniques, HUI! utilizes the knowledge of farmers and other users’ input, and pulls from a database of information to better serve your urban garden. The device has been developed with Natural Language Processing algorithms to be a voice-controlled assistant that answers specific questions about growing vegetables. For example, you can ask HUI! how to cultivate vegetables ideal for your environmental conditions, or for it to show you vegetables to fit your preferred dietary needs. If you start to see discoloration in your plant’s leaves, HUI! can even diagnose the problem and present solutions.

Are you ready to take on urban gardening on your balcony, terrace or even inside your home? Head over to HUI!’s Kickstarter page, where the GROW & HELP team is currently seeking $3,134. Preorders will be delivered as soon as December 2015. Single units are available, as well as bundles if you want to plant vegetables at your restaurant, office or greenhouse.