MicroGame is a pocket-sized, Arduino-compatible gaming platform

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If there are two things we love: It’s tiny boards and even tinier 8-bit gaming consoles.

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Devised by the Maker Oscar Gonzalez, the newly-revealed MicroGame joins a growing list of impressive, uber-mini devices like the Gamebuino, Microduino-Joypad, Ardubracelet and Joy Gamer. Powered on an ATmega32U4, the Arduino-compatible MicroGame board enables Makers to customize and play their very own game on the platform’s monochrome 128×64 OLED display. According to its creators, the project is entirely open-source with all of the necessary hardware design and codes available for download — good news for Makers seeking a pocket-sized console!

The device, which measures 8cm x 4cm in size, features a USB port that allows for a simple battery recharge and programming within the Arduino IDE. In addition, the gamepad sports some LEDs and buttons, which resemble that of a miniaturized Nintendo NES controller. The MicroGame is quipped with four scroll buttons for directional movement, as well as two that handle in-game commands (think “A” and “B” controls).

“This is a project that [I have] found very interesting and has made me [want] to learn a lot of things about conducting plates with surface components (SMD) and at the level of the necessary software and requirements for loading a bootloader that makes support Arduino environment and avoid the use of an external programmer,” Gonzalez writes.

When playing retro games like Galaxian, the highest score is permanently stored in the device’s internal EEPROM and displayed each time the board illuminates. This was accomplished using Adafruit’s GFX Graphics Library, the Maker explains. While still a prototype, you can learn all about the project on its official page here, and watch it in action below.

Both friendships and flowers flourish with Air Garden

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Gardening + Arduino = Garduino?

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City dwellers immersed in the daily hustle and bustle seem all too often tend to overlook interacting with neighbors. Drawing on urban gardening practices and the space limitations of community housing, a team of Makers from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design recently created Air Garden as an innovative way to form bonds among nearby tenants.

“We seek to introduce a space efficient environment, a give and take system that nurtures people to emotionally connect to their living spaces. Air Garden aims to foster indirect communication between tenants with the hope of creating a platform for connections and chance encounters,” Maker Amalia Goutaki writes.

How the system works is pretty simple. The edible plants move vertically along a column outside an apartment complex’s windows. Participating inhabitants can summon the plants to their window, pick from them, and assume responsibility for watering.

In order to bring this idea to life, the team created a pulley system based on a pair of Arduino boards: an Uno (ATmega328) for the pulley and a Yún (ATmega32U4) for the interactive portion of the plant. Buttons were placed on the side of its wooden structure, corresponding to each floor of the building. This enables a tenant to call upon the plant. The Arduino Uno is responsible for deciphering the plant’s distance from the ground and translates that information into either “tenant1,” “tenant2” or “tenant3,” depending on from where it is summoned.

The plant is equipped with two screws in its soil, which are connected by wires to the ATmega32U4 based Yún. According to its creators, values such as “watered,” “needs water” or “overwatered,” are then relayed to recipients. Once water is poured, the soil becomes more conductive, causing the values and messages to change accordingly. Both the apartment dweller’s floor and water condition are displayed on the pot’s easy-to-read LCD screen.

Interested in learning more? Head over to the project’s official page here. In the meantime, you can watch the Air Garden system in action below!

Modding a vintage Morse code keyer with ATmega32U4

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Maker repurposes an old-school Morse code into a wireless connected device.

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Dating back to the mid-1800s, Morse code refers to a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The code was originally developed so that operators could translate the indentations marked on the paper tape into text messages. Recently, Maker Kevin Mitchell put a new spin on the old-school form of communication.

After scoring a 1920s Signal Electric Company code keyer/sounder unit on eBay, the Maker retrofitted the antique machine with an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) to transform it into a wireless, web-connected Morse code keyer.

The Yún, which was mounted under the keyer, uses an open-source Morsel API, which enables the vintage device to send and receive messages with other Morsel users. According to Mitchell, when a message is keyed in, the Yún publishes it to the API. When another keyer queries the API for incoming messages, the Yún downloads the Morse sequence and replays it on the sounder. Keeping true to the keyer’s original design, Mitchell added copper electrodes that serve as capacitve buttons connected to the Arduino. The left button plays back the last received message, while the right button sets the replay speed.

Interested in learning more? You can watch the Maker walk through the project above, or head over to Hackaday’s recent write-up here.

Playing the littleBits Waving Piano

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This is what you get when you add a whammy bar to a piano.

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Created by Maker Gonçalo Silva, the littleBits Waving Piano is an ATmega32U4 based keyboard that was programmed to behave as an oscillator.

How it works is relatively simple: As keys are pressed on the board, they are read by the Arduino module and mapped to the corresponding pitch, as you would hear on a real piano. Meanwhile, the slide is used to “wave” the output pitch just like a guitar’s whammy bar.

Ready to make your own musical piece? Get started by heading over to littleBits’ project page for a step-by-step breakdown. In the meantime, watch it in action below!

 

These synth stairs can play Swedish House Mafia

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If there’s one thing both Tom Hanks in “Big” and Dance Dance Revolution have taught us, it’s that people like stomping on things to a particular beat.

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With the advent of DIY platforms like MaKey MaKey and Bare Conductive, Makers are now finding innovative ways to turn steps into sound. One Maker in particular, Barnaby Stacey, recently transformed his steps into a synth staircase that played tunes from Swedish House Mafia using ATmega32U4 based MaKey MaKey hardware, Logic Pro, VMPK software and a whole heck of a lot of tin foil. The rail was used as an earth point, while each stair (and rail ball) served as a musical note. As you can see from the video below, Stacey was able to piece together different notes by keymapping the steps separately for each melodic part.

Device captures colors and turns them into sounds

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Ever wonder what the color blue sounds like? Or, how about green?

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The Colour Sucker was created by a group of Makers — Johanna Mahonen, Jonathan Simsch, Tomas Gatial and Midas Nouewens — as an exploration into the world of colors through vision and sound. Equipped with a color-detecting sensor, the device can capture colors by pulling its side lever and replay a sound associated to its stored tones by pushing it. Different colors emit their own instruments — blue for piano, green for flute and red for oboe — which are determined by their hue value. Meanwhile, corresponding chords are performed after each other and the brightness of the color denotes the pitch of the sound.

It should be noted that the mapping between color and sound is based on previous studies and connected to the colors’ HSL values. The system itself is comprised of a mobile phone that registers each color through its camera, a Pure Data application running on a PC, several LEDs, and of course, an Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4).

Intrigued? Be sure to watch the detailed clip below to learn more about the Colour Sucker and see it action.

Quirkbot lets Makers build robots with drinking straws

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A hackable toy that makes toys! 

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Last January, Strawbees made its debut on Kickstarter. At the time, it was a construction kit that enabled Makers of all ages to create toys by simply connecting drinking straws and pieces of cardboard together. Now a year later, a spinoff project has emerged. The team behind the aptly named Quirkbot is working together with Strawbees to explore a whole new world of robotic creatures.

Using the new DIY platform, young Makers will have the ability to build and program quirky robots, blinking outfits and weird sounding “Qreatures” out of ordinary drinking straws, LEDs and hobby servo motors. Quirkbot itself is based on an ATmega32U4 MCU with an Arduino-compatible bootloader that can be made part of a Strawbees creation without any soldering or breadboarding.

The open-source, hackable tool allows Makers to easily program the bot directly from its website via USB. Quirkbot’s unique drag-and-drop components also enable users to connect and upload their toys with just a click of the mouse.

“Any child or grownup can do it. Let your creations express themselves and interact with their environment through sound, light and motion. Standalone or connected to computers, tablets or musical instruments. You’ll quickly see the potential in learning how to program something physical — the magic of connecting online and offline worlds,” the team shares.

At its most basic level, Quirkbot kits include dual-color LEDs, light sensors, a servo and backpack, as well as a USB cable. Meanwhile, more advanced users can obtain backpack extension sets that feature distance and sound sensors, along with speakers and MIDI capabilities. Adding these components to a project are done through what the team calls “squeeze on electronics.” Just like it sounds, Makers effortlessly squeeze the parts onto the toy’s legs using ordinary drinking straws. So, whether it’s devising a bot that hulas, sweeps, crawls, or rocks out, Makers are only limited by their own imagination.

“The Quirkbot has two ways of doing touch sensing already built-in to make almost anything into an interface. Loop touching for bigger things with water in them like humans and other fruits and capacitive sensing for metallic things. When plugged to a computer, the Quirkbot can work like a keyboard or mouse input. This makes it very easy to program the Quirkbot into a controller for any game or application,” its creators add. “The Quirkbot can also act as a MIDI-device, so it can play with music programs and you can even use it with an iPad.”

Interested in making your own robots with drinking straws? Learn more about and back Quirkbot on its official Kickstarter page, where the team is currently seeking $55,000. If all goes to plan, the first batch of shipments is slated for August 2015.

Joy Gamer is a palm-sized, programmable gaming machine

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Display bitmap images, play games and morph faces using this DIY handheld gadget. 

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Created by the LucidTronix crew, the Joy Gamer is a handheld, programmable gaming machine. Powered by an Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4), the portable device is equipped with a joystick, an SD card slot, a built-in accelerometer, a full-color LCD screen, and a rechargeable lithium battery — all enclosed in a 3D-printed case.

“What’s even cooler is that the JoyGamer shows up to your computer like an Arduino Leonardo so you can run any Arduino code you like on the Joy Gamer.” This enables Makers to program their own applications and load them using a microUSB, ranging from interactive mini picture frames and drawing tools to gesture-based game consoles and fully-functional keyboards.

Most recently, the team demonstrated its capabilities by using the ATmega32U4 based, palm-sized device to mash up two different headshots. This was accomplished by using a weighted average in each color channel (red, green and blue) of each pixel in the images, while moving the joystick shifted the weight between the two photos.

“So, if the joystick is all the way to the right then the right image dominates, if the joystick is in the middle the two images have equal weight and when the joystick is all the way left the left image’s pixels are weighted 1.0 and the right image’s pixels are weighted 0.0. This means we will only see the left image. If the joystick is untouched and resting in the cente then the wieghts will 0.5 and 0.5 and image displayed will be an even mix of the two pictures.”

Interested? Learn all about the Joy Gamer and its wide range of uses here.

Charlie and Billy are cute, smartphone-controlled bots

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An Israeli engineer designs a pair of bio-inspired, 3D-printed hexapod robots. 

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If you’ve ever stopped by one of our Maker Faire booths, then you surely know our love for hexapod robots. Just ask “Wizard of Make” Bob Martin. Inspired by UC-Berkeley’s recent STAR project, Israel-based Maker Jonathan Spitz recently created a 3D-printed, blue beetle-like bot named Billy.

The proof-of-concept is not only comprised of 3D-printed parts, but is powered by an an Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4), a pair of LiPo batteries and dual DC motors. Billy can be controlled using a joystick smartphone app via a built-in Bluetooth module, while his two different sets of legs — straight and spiral — allow him to navigate any terrain.

Shortly after the success of his first build, Spitz decided to develop a second working prototype. Charlie is 3D-printed, cricket-esque hexapod robot that can also be controlled via a mobile device. Impressively, Billy’s smaller and smarter sibling is capable of walking upside down (if he ever flips), climbing over objects of his size, as well as maneuvering up slopes as steep as 45 degrees. The latest iteration of the bot is driven by an Arduino Micro, which receives commands through Bluetooth. The ATmega32U4 based board relays signals to two “baby orangutan” microprocessors that control Charlie’s four motors, which of course, are used for strolling and sprawling.

While Billy consists of 20 parts, Charlie’s 38 different components will require a little longer to assemble. Interested in learning more about the bot brothers? Head on over to their official page here. Meanwhile, watch them in action above!

Internet of Trees: Making smart birdhouses with Arduino

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If we can have smart homes, why can’t birds? 

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In collaboration with a pair of fellow students, Maker Valentina Chinnici recently devised a project entitled “Internet of Trees” during a recent workshop led by Arduino’s Massimo Banzi in Boisbuchet, France.

The connected birdhouse features a pair of Arduino Yùn (ATmega32U4), an Adafruit NeoPixel strip, a makeshift infrared weight sensor, two nests, and of course, some remote Wi-Fi.

According to Chinnici, the idea was to redesign a traditional object — such as an outdoor wooden birdhouse — and connect it to an indoor nest-shaped lamp. In the event that a bird entered the house, it would communicate to the ATmega32U4 embedded lamp via Wi-Fi. Moments later, the bird’s presence would be denoted by an illuminated light (red, yellow or green) based on its size and weight.

While she had worked with Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and Leonardo (ATmega32u4) boards prior to this project, this was Chinnici’s first time using a Yún, which was a requisite in the “Internet of Trees” course.

In order to build a weight sensor, Chinnici attached an infrared sensor at the base of the birdhouse. Additionally, the Maker constructed a scale of sorts using a second wood base held up by four cork mini bases mounted with springs, which were placed into each of the corners.

“The concept was to create connected devices to bridge nature and humans. The first [few] days were dedicated to the basics of Arduino, and the last days to the development of the connected devices. We came up with the idea of building a birdhouse, so we split into smaller sub-groups and started to work on our projects collaboratively,” Chinnici explained.

Interested in learning more about the “Internet of Trees?” You can access the entire breakdown of the build here. In the meantime, the project is currently a finalist for Postscapes’ #IoT Awards.