Maker 3D prints a fully-functioning, Planck-inspired mechanical keyboard

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Why go to Staples for a keyboard when you can print your own?

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The Planck is a compact (40%) Ortholinear keyboard designed with ergomnomic thumb placement. For those unfamiliar the kits, the plate layouts are relatively the same as a traditional keyboard with the exception that the keys are all the same size. Recently, Maker Adam Forland 3D-printed and assembled a fully-functioning Planck-inspired mechanical keyboard.

“I just got into mechanical KBs a month ago but I was immediately drawn to the idea of a [DIY] keyboard. The plate, feet and key caps are all 3D-printed on my desktop printer,” Forland writes.

As you will notice, upon first glance, the keyboard may appear to be just like the ones you use regularly. However, this gadget omits an elongated space bar, and instead, uses a series of five yellow keys along the bottom to serve as navigation arrows and a function button.

To bring this idea to life, Forland employed his Lulzbot Mini 3D printer. The Maker notes that he needed to divide the main case of the device into two sections in order to accommodate its size, which measures approximately 9cm x 25cm x 3cm. Using a 0.5mm nozzle, he printed the board at a 0.3mm layer height and the actual keys at a 0.18mm layer height using ABS thermoplastic.

The keyboard itself is powered by a Teensy 2.0 USB dev board (ATmega32U4) and programmed with a few different custom layouts. Beyond that, the project is equipped with some 20-gauge copper wire, 1N4148 doides and 48 Cherry MX green switches.

Interested in a 3D-printed mechanical keyboard of your own? You can download all of its design files on Thingiverse here.

Widerun is bringing virtual reality to indoor cycling

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This interactive bike trainer is designed to deliver engaging fitness sessions through VR headsets. 

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Let’s face it, stationary biking can be boring. But what if, during your workout, you were suddenly immersed in an intense uphill battle in the Tour de France, a leisurely ride along the picturesque Pacific Coast Highway, or a thrilling escape from zombies in a Walking Dead-like post-apolocayptic world? That may soon be a reality thanks to one Italian startup that has debuted on Kickstarter.

While turbo trainers that allow avid cycling enthusiasts to use their actual bike indoors is fairly common, Widerun is a smart bike trainer designed to connect to virtual reality head-mounted units. At the moment, the system offers support for Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, as well as other mobile VR displays. Widerun pairs to either a PC or smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy with a theoretical distance over 100 meters.

Everything on the bike functions as it would had you actually been riding in these various settings. Meaning, when you switch gears to cycle faster or slower, Widerun transmits the real-world changes caused by the cyclist into the virtual world. As a true plug-and-play system, users don’t need a special bike to enjoy an immersive VR cycling experience. Instead, Widerun accommodates any piece of equipment with a wheel radius between 26″ to 29” — no adjustments necessary.

What’s more, Widerun features real-time, coherent feedback between your movement and your reaction in the VR world.

“One of the crucial aspects into delivering the best immersive virtual reality biking experience is the possibility to regulate the resistance and the inertia on the rear wheel according to the position in the 3D VR world,” the team writes. In other words, a rider will feel as if they are climbing mountains, breezing through forests or descending steep hills, as the trainer will automatically regulate its resistance.

Beyond that, Widerun also offers gamification and community elements that encourage users to choose among various VR settings to ride, engage with other cyclists, locate people to challenge, and monitor their performance history.

In order to create the most optimal VR biking experience possible, the team designed Widerun with two components: the trainer itself and a steering part that appears to be based on an Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4). An embedded MCU receives inputs from both the game environment and the bike trainer to regulate back the electrical signals to match the virtual experience the user is having, such as steering degree, speed magnitude and ground resistance.

Widerun hopes to get other VR software developers onboard in the coming months. The team notes, “We believe that there are many amazing wizards in game design and development out there able to create even better 3D environments where to bike through Widerun. We decided to include with any type of pledge the complete SDK to let you build and (if you like) upload your own VR worlds! We’re looking forward to bike in your VR creations!”

Interested? Head over to its official Kickstarter page, where the Widerun team is currently seeking £30,000. Shipment is expected to begin early next year. 

Creating an open-source quartz crystal microbalance with Arduino

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openQCM is a highly-sensitive microbalance with a wide-range of applications in chemistry, biology and material science.

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Created by a group of Italian physicists, openQCM is a fully open-source quartz crystal microbalance project built around the versatile Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4). Impressively, the gadget is capable of weighing mass deposition down to one billionth of gram.

For those unfamiliar with the piezoelectric devices, a QCM is an extremely sensitive mass sensor capable of measuring mass changes in the nanograms. When an object is placed on the sensor’s surface, the fluctuations in the crystal’s resonant frequency are detected and used to determine its mass in a variety of experimental conditions. In this case, the openQCM was designed for use in air, liquid and vacuum, and features a sensitivity of 700 picograms.

Novaetech S.r.l. initially developed openQCM with the emergent principles of the open-source hardware movement in mind. Team member Marco Mauro notes that while open hardware has already made an impact across a wide-range of segments, when it comes to scientific applications, its potential is even greater.

“openQCM is the first open hardware quartz crystal microbalance with applications in a wide range of scientific fields, such as chemical and biological sensing, material science,” the team writes.

openQCM is based on an Arduino Micro and is powered via USB connection. This enables users to hack the timer counter on the on-board ATmega32U4 to measure the quartz crystal frequency variations using its 16Mhz processor clock. Its creators also designed an Arduino Micro shield with an embedded quartz crystal oscillator driver circuit and a temperature sensor. As noted, this plays an integral role in checking the thermal stabilization of the device. The output of the driver is relayed to the Arduino timer counter, while the analog value of the temperature sensor is fed to the board’s analog pin. This configuration allows researchers to measure quartz crystal frequency with a resolution of 1Hz.

In an effort to reduce costs without sacrificing quality, the team decided to 3D print the openQCM prototypes using the SLS process. Embodying true Maker spirit, this lets everyone modify and print their own enclosure.

“openQCM belongs to a new generation of innovative smart sensor which boast high resolution and ultra high mass sensitivity. The open source strategy made the creation of openQCM available at low cost which represents a bit fraction of the cost of similar scientific products,” the team concludes.

Despite its affordability and ease-of-use, its creators assure its accuracy and stability is fully comparable with most common scientific devices available on the market today. Interested in learning more? Head over to openQCM’s official page here.

Teaching your dog to send selfies with an Arduino Yún

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One Maker used the combination of an Arduino Yún, Twilio and a big red button to train his puppy to send selfies. 

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Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen Makers use the combination of Twilio and Arduino to create a bunch of unexpected yet innovative things. Most recently, Greg Baugues paired the powers of this tandem with man’s best friend by training his new pup to take a selfie.

After teaching his dog to turn on a light by pressing buttons, Baugues began wondering if he could use the same mechanisms to teach Kaira to also send selfies. Well, evidently you can using an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) and a big red button. This was accomplished by housing the Arduino board inside an empty cigar box along with a massive arcade LED button from Adafruit. Meanwhile, a second box was employed as a stand for a webcam that was connected to the Yún.

“The Wi-Fi enabled Arduino Yún has two microprocessors: one does all the pin interaction you typically associate with an Arduino. The second runs a stripped down version of Linux called OpenWRT which can run programs in your favorite scripting language (Python comes pre-installed, but you could put Ruby or Node on there if you so please),” Baugues writes. “This project has one program running on each processor. Together, they are less than 60 lines of code.”

The Arduino sketch simply waits for the button to be pressed, runs a shell command to snap a picture and then executes a Python script to upload the picture to Dropbox and send the MMS. The Python script uses the Dropbox SDK and Twilio helper library to upload the picture to Dropbox, get a publicly accessible url for the picture, and use that URL to send an MMS via Twilio. Each of those codes can be found here.

“What’s most exciting to me about this project, aside from the sheer novelty of my dog sending selfies, is how simple each component is. The button press is literally the second example from Massimo Banzi’s Getting Started with Arduino. The Python script is practically cut-and-paste from the Dropbox and Twilio getting started guides,” he concludes.

Intrigued? You can find a detailed breakdown of the project here.

Creating an NFC door lock with the Qduino Mini

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Have you ever wanted to unlock your front door with just your bus pass, a tag or an old hotel room key? Now you can.

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In today’s world, convenience is a huge factor. From mass transit to hotels, more and more devices are becoming enabled with contactless technology to expedite our days. Wouldn’t it be great to do the same at home? After all, having to search through your bag to find your keys can often times be a daunting task, and time-consuming nevertheless. Just imagine how easy it could be to unlock your front door using nothing but that bus pass, that old hotel room key, or any other item embedded with an NFC tag. Thanks to Maker Quin Etnyre, now you can. Even better, the entire project costs less than $100!

As its name would imply, the NFC Door Lock is a compact, Qduino Mini-powered door lock that senses when there is an NFC tag present, unlocks your door using a servo motor and multiple 3D-printed parts, and makes absolutely no modifications to your current door accessory. In other words, you can take it apart if needed in just a few minutes.

“This is super useful and I hope to put it on all doors of my house — it’s a relatively easy build in a few hours for an advanced user or a great weekend project for beginners,” the 14-year-old Maker explains.

Fresh on the heels of a super successful Kickstarter campaign, the Qduino Mini is ideally suited for this project. For those unfamiliar with it, the Arduino-compatible board is equipped with a built-in battery charger and fuel gauge that can notify a user whenever a LiPo needs a little extra juice. However, since the Qduino Minis won’t be readily available until this summer, Etynre suggests using a SparkFun Pro Micro (ATmega32U4), a LiPo battery charger, and a LiPo battery fuel gauge.

Using his ATmega2560 based Bukito 3D printer, the Maker went on to create a couple of parts for the lock, including its round mounting plate, servo head, servo mounting blocks, as well as the housing for its electronics. All of these components can be completed in a matter of two-three hours.

Etnyre then acquired hookup wire, an Adafruit NFC Shield, the Qduino Mini and some right angle male headers, before splitting off three pins from the block of male headers, and soldering them to one edge of the proto space on the NFC Shield. Throw in some cutting between the IRQ and D2 on the NFC Shield, along with a little coding using the Adafruit PN532 NFC library, and you’re well on your way to finishing the smart lock.

Next, the Maker removed the inside face of his deadbolt and mounted the servo head onto the door. He placed the entire assembly of the Qduino Mini and NFC Shield inside the 3D-printed box, attached the servo cable to its connector and ran the cable through the designated hole in the lower lefthand corner of the housing. From there, the lock is affixed to the door.

Want to add an NFC Door Lock to your home? Head over to Etnyre’s entire project page here. Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out the Qduino Mini here.

This 3D-printed, Arduino-powered device can treat hypothermia

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A team of students has created a portable heated IV device for extreme climate situations and high-altitude climbers.

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Hypothermia is a serious danger to high-altitude climbers. When a patient suffering from hypothermia is brought to a hospital for medical assistance, a doctor typically begins treating the patient through the use of a heated IV. Injecting warm saline solution into the body raises the patient’s core temperature along with properly hydrating them. However, often times those suffering from hypothermia don’t have immediate access to medical assistance.

Cognizant of this, a team of students at NuVu Studio have created a portable heated IV for extreme climate situations and high-altitude climbers suffering from hypothermia, or dehydration for that matter. This product, which they call Backcountry IV, is not supposed to heal a person completely; instead, it is intended to serve as a temporary aid to prolong the user’s life until they can receive actual medical help.

The students were able to bring the idea to fruition, which resembles that of a mini flashlight and lantern, through the use of 3D printing. The device works by purifying water using a 3D-printed cap with built-in UV lights, which connects to another compartment containing ceramic resistors that heat the liquid between 104-106°F.  Once this is done, the water flows through the IV tubing until it reaches the needle that is clipped onto the specialized, 3D-printed cuff resting on a hiker’s forearm. The canister also holds several other necessary parts like a salt tablet and an infrared light vein finder.

“The importance of the product is clear — it could be the defying factor of a high altitude climber’s survival. Without the Portable Warm IV, a person could possibly die of hypothermia on the mountain but with the IV, the chance of his or her core body temperature warming enough to prolong the survival long enough to receive medical assistance is likely. There are no existing products that are capable of helping high altitude mountaineers let alone in extreme conditions return their body to a normal temperature. Since hypothermia is such a serious threat to the lives of mountaineers, it is crucial to have a device that would keep them alive at high altitudes and dangerously cold temperatures. The portable warm IV would bring the user fundamental and pragmatic medical attention immediately, making it a life-changing product… Literally,” the team writes.

The students constructed each part of this device using an ATmega2560 powered MakerGear 3D printer, with the exception of the actual IV and electronic panel, where the Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4) sits.

“This process began by simply hooking a 3.9 ohm resistor up to the Arduino and attaching the resistor up to the temperature sensor in order to read the heat that the resistor was giving off. Initially there was not enough power to make the resistor heat up to the optimal heat. Many alterations were then made over a span of three days. The result was four resistors soldered in series hooked up to an 11 volt lithium polymer battery. This battery provided the correct amount of power in order to heat the resistors up to the correct temperature.”

Interested in learning more? Check out the team’s entire build log here. This is just one of many Atmel based projects that are ‘making’ a difference in the world. Have a similar idea? Be sure to submit it for a chance to win The Hackaday Prize!

This littleBits device alerts roommates to stop hogging the bathroom

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“Time’s Up” was designed to solve an age-old problem that has plagued roommates, siblings and spouses for years. 

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Have you ever been in a rush to get up and out in the morning only to find one of your roommates hogging the bathroom for too long? Thanks to Makers Mu-Ti Huang, Douglas Tran and Yun Zhou, you may soon be able to use a little device that will serve as a friendly reminder for the occupiers.

The aptly-named Time’s Up system is comprised of a littleBits cloudBit, an Arduino module (ATmega32U4), an IR transmitter (ATtiny25), an MP3 player (ATmega168), an AC converter, a bright LED, as well as some wire and USB power adapter.

By using a cloudBit module, the user is able to wirelessly express their discontent to whoever is in the bathroom by pressing a button on their smartphone. This triggers the device to begin playing an annoying song to alert the person that he or she has been in there for way too long. When the song stops, the DIY system turns off the bathroom lights.

Does this situation sound all too familiar? Then you’ll want to check out the entire project on littleBits here.

This device lets you send encrypted messages using social networks

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Project Cuckoo looks at our interactions with intercepted social networks and how alternative ways of communicating might change them.

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A new project from one Berlin-based designer has set out to explore our interactions with intercepted social networks and how alternative ways of communicating might change them. Created by Jochen Maria Weber, Cuckoo is a device that uses social media as a means of private communication, and encrypts messages into randomly generated words, meanings and noise in order to scatter them over multiple networks simultaneously.

The idea was conceived back in 2011 after Icelandic politician and activist spokesperson Birgitta Jónsdóttir was notified by Twitter that it had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice demanding information around all her tweets since November 2009.

“Heavy data collection, surveillance and control became normal and more important, increasingly legal on most internet communication platforms,”  Weber writes. “What if we used social networks but hiding our actual information? What if we could use their infrastructure without divulging privacy?”

With Cuckoo, each letter of an original message is immediately translated into complex forms of certain length forming new sentences, which are then posted to their respective social channel, next to randomly generated noise-sentences for distraction. The device also enables the encryption method to be changed with every new message. Any receiving unit following the respective social network accounts can filter and decrypt the important posts according to their encryption method and timestamp. Cuckoo combines these social networks to build a hidden one on top of their infrastructure, or as the designer puts it, “an egg in the others’ nests.”

The project was brought to life using the combination of Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) and Temboo, along with Twitter, Skype and Tumblr APIs. Interested in learning more? Head over to its official page here. Meanwhile, be sure to check it out in action below.

Hackaball is a smart ball that children can program to invent and play games

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Make it. Hack it. Play it. 

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Nowadays, it seems like kids are more apt to be fixated on the screen of their mobile gadgets than playing outside with one another. Cognizant of this, a new London-based collaborative is looking to converge both modern-day technology with old-school fun to develop what they’re calling Hackaball.

Launched on Kickstarter by innovation startup Made by Many and design company Map, the teched-out ball is packed with a number of electronic components including a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a vibration motor, nine LEDs, a speaker, a microphone, a rechargeable battery, and an Arduino.

“Our early versions of the ball worked with the Arduino Uno (ATmega328) board, progressing to a breadboard Arduino and then making our own SMD designs with the Uno. In the latest prototypes, we used the Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4) and our current version runs on the Arduino Mega (ATmega2560). Our production version will run on an ARM chip,” the team revealed.

In an effort to let “kids be kids,” the hardware is housed in a pair of rubber and silicone membraned halves that serve as a shock absorber to protect it from bounces, throws, drops and other harsh elements it will inevitably be put through.

Using its companion mobile app, the ball allows kids to imagine and create their own games in an IFTTT-like system. The Hackaball can be programmed to illuminate lighting effects, emit sounds and make rumble patterns in response to various actions like shaking, dropping and bouncing.

The Hackaball is geared towards the six to 10-year-old demographic and grows the more they play, rewarding kids with unlockable features and challenges them with broken games to fix. In fact, the spherical device arrives “broken,” encouraging its users to get it working through the accompanying iPad app.

Hackaball provides kids with a wide range of uses, whether that’s appearing as a prop in plays, serving as a magic 8-ball, waking them up as an alarm clock in the morning, or even pranking parents by making it a whoopee cushion. What’s more, the device offers users the ability to learn the basics of programming and how technology works in a much more interactive, engaging manner.

“We wanted to make Hackaball tough and beautiful at the same time. We’ve built many prototypes and tested them with the toughest audience – children – to get this right, designing a form that’s robust and tactile but flexible and responsive too,” the team writes. “Hackaball started as an intern project with the simple brief — play! We wanted to give children a new way to understand technology and put them in control.”

Interested in one of your own? Then head over to its official Kickstarter page, where Hackaball is currently seeking has successfully garnered well over $100,000. After having surpassed several of its stretch goals, the team revealed that the gadget will come in two differently colored jackets, soon be hackable through Arduino, and will be available on iOS — meaning users can invent on their iPad or Macs. In the coming months, they also hope to unveil an Android app as well. The product is expected to ship in December 2015 — just in time for the holidays!

This littleBits box makes environment-specific music in real-time

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This interactive sculpture generates ambient tunes in response to shadows.

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Designed by Caselden Studios, Sounding Box #11 is an interactive acoustic sculpture that generates ambient sound, and allows viewers to make environment-specific music in real-time through motion and changes in light. As viewers approach the sculpture and wave their hands to cast shadows, the instrument responds by vibrating strings to create harmonic tunes.

According to Maker MJ Caselden, the sculpture was intended to provide a creative, calming experience for participants. Viewers can improvise, producing ambient sounds for their surrounding environment.

Inspired by traditional Western stringed instruments, Sounding Box #11 uses electromagnets to vibrate strings and produce sound, acting as a natural amplifier. To achieve this, the team programmed a pair of Arduino bits (ATmega32U4) so that every time a light sensor is triggered, an electromagnet begins to generate a magnetic field that pushes and pulls the strings, creating standing waves. The installation was configured so that every sensor activates a different string.

“I wanted to give people the experience of designing their own sound in real-time in a real space. I wanted to give them the control to induce that kind of ambiance and to hear it, and to experience it directly,” Caselden explains.

Intrigued? Head over to its official littleBits project page here, and be sure to see it in action below!