The Opal is a countertop nugget ice maker for your home

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A new ice age is upon us! The Opal lets you create a pound of crunchy nugget ice in an hour, right from home.

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Contrary to what you may believe, ice is no longer just for chilling drinks, preserving meats and treating sprains. In areas like the South, it’s become a munchable snack for extremely hot summer days. Called nugget ice, this particular form of frozen H2O is soft and easy to chew, however outside of chain restaurants like Sonic and your local convenience store, it’s hard to come by. That was until now, at least.

FirstBuild — a co-creation space founded by GE and Local Motors — will let you satisfy your nugget cravings from right inside your own home with an affordable countertop maker. And while similar machines may already be on the market today, their price tag keeps them out of reach from most everyday consumers who aren’t looking to shell out upwards of two to three thousand dollars. Instead, Opal can soon be yours for a mere fraction of the cost ($499).

Having had the chance to see it firsthand at Maker Faire Bay Area, Opal boasts a sleek, aesthetically-pleasing design that will surely match the decor of any kitchen. The stainless steel device plugs into an electrical outlet and holds three pounds of ice, which is about as much as a typical refrigerator. Opal produces its first nuggets in 15 minutes, and can create a pound of ice each hour. The unit, which measures 16.5” x 10.5” x 14”, includes a crystal-clear, removable bin that easily slides out and tilts forward for access to the ice, as well as a capacitive touch interface for control. And you know what makes it even cooler (no pun intended)? It has an Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4) driving its indicator light!

What’s more, the Opal can be plugged into any standard 120V outlet and doesn’t require a dedicated water line to operate. The machine works by packing together small ice crystals, forming nuggets of soft yet crunchy ice. Not only do they cool down beverages like your coffee or soda faster than conventional cubes, the air pockets in each nugget absorb the flavor of the drink as it drops in temp, leaving a chewable and tasty refreshment for those who enjoy snacking on the ice when the liquid is gone.

For those unfamiliar with the community, FirstBuild is a new model of manufacturing that challenges Makers from around the world to dream up home appliance innovations. Earlier this year, Atmel had the opportunity to sponsor its inaugural 33-hour mega hackathon that brought together more than 200 DIYers, designers and engineers at its microfactory in Louisville to mod and build sci-fi-like equipment for the smart house of tomorrow. Evident by the sheer volume of ingenuity from that weekend, the crowdsourced design of Opal is just the beginning of real IoT applications generated by the Maker community.

Want one for your kitchen? The wait is almost over, as Opal made its debut on Indiegogo on July 28th — a date that also marked the one-year anniversary of FirstBuild. Keep in mind, this isn’t the co-creation community’s first crowdfunding effort either. Back in January, the team garnered over $316,000 for its Paragon Induction Cooktop, and the nugget ice maker has well surpassed its sibling’s success. The Opal ranks ninth on Indiegogo’s top 10 list of campaigns that have raised the most funds in 24 hours, and the 13^th fastest to reach the half million dollar mark.

The initial batch of units is expected to begin shipping in July 2016 — right in time to help keep cool next summer!

This LED t-shirt visualizes your body movements

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Digi-Weirdo is a wearable project that explores the convergence of identity and guiding communication.

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Zhen Liu just loves data. So much so that it has inspired several innovations, namely her latest project Digi-Weirdo. Created as part of a class assignment at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the interactive t-shirt was designed as a way to give clothing other roles than merely covering your body and helping to establish your personal identity. Instead, the Maker hopes one day such garments can be used to convey real-time emotions and enhance communication between one another by visualizing body movements through an LED matrix.

Built around an Adafruit FLORA MCU (ATmega32U4), the t-shirt is fitted with a battery for power as well as an accelerometer for analyzing body motions and translating them into a series of illuminated patterns. The LED matrix is embedded inside an inverted triangle that is sewn on the front of the shirt.

As Adafruit puts it, what may be most interesting about this project is that through some simple programming, a wearer can create a visual language of their own. See it in action below!

Hicosy lets you take control of your smart energy consumption

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This open source, end-to-end platform helps you keep tabs on your solar energy use.

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Have you ever wondered about the efficiency of your solar panels or just how much energy was being consumed inside your home? Luckily, there’s an open source monitor that can now provide an answer to those questions. Simply plug Hicosy into your photovoltaic system and smart meter, and immediately begin receiving real-time information and alerts.

Driven by an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4), Hicosy comes in two different versions: one for data transmission over WiFi, the other using a cellular network. Each kit is comprised of a custom board, a microSD card, an Arduino GSM shield and some cables and accessories, all housed inside a specially-designed enclosure.

The kits work by connecting to the inverter, as well as either a HAN via Wi-Fi/Ethernet or a GSM network. From there, Hicosy is able to continuously collect energy production data such as voltage and current, and the status of your plant including warning messages, rate comparison and estimated gross revenue.

Acquired information is then transmitted to secure cloud application where it stored for personal monitoring using the web-based dashboard or mobile app. This allows anyone, ranging from homeowners to facility operators, to easily manage their energy activity and immediately receive push-notifications should something go wrong.

Interested? Head over to Hicosy’s Indiegogo page, where the team is currently seeking $85,000. Units are expected to begin shipping in December 2015.

IRduino is an Arduino-compatible USB IR receiver

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IRduino is an open source and programmable USB infrared receiver that gives new life to old remote controls.

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For decades, consumer electronics have relied upon infrared remote controls for operation. However, recent advancements in technology, like Bluetooth connectivity, motion sensors and voice recognition, have led to piles of obsolete remotes collecting dust in closets and storage bins throughout the world. But what if you were able to bring these antiquated gadgets back to life and put them to work in creative, more productive ways? Enter the IRduino.

The brainchild of Longan Lab, IRduino is a peripheral device that enables just about any IR signal to be translated into commands. Based on an ATmega32U4, the board is equipped with an SMD IR receiver and on-board USB interface. It operates by default at 5V with a clock speed of 16MHz, not to mention packs 32KB of Flash, 2.5KB of SRAM, 1KB of EEPROM and a remote distance of over 16 feet.

And unlike many products on the market, the pocket-sized IRduino (just 0.7” x 1.3”) is thick enough to sit snugly inside a USB port. To keep the device humanized, its creators have even screen printed a little robot on its reverse side with a pair of programmable LEDs for eyes.

Beyond that, IRduino comes with the Arduino Leonardo bootloader pre-installed, which makes it fully compatible with the incredibly popular Arduino IDE for programming. According to the Longan Lab team, the board features an open source library that will work with nearly 95% of infrared remotes on the market, such as air conditioner units, TVs, DVD players and household appliances, among a number of other machines.

As for its applications, Makers will find IRduino to be both practical and entertaining. Since it’s compatible with many platforms, ranging from Raspberry Pi to Mac, the possibilities are truly endless. For instance, it can serve as an interface for a single-board media center, a controller for simple games, a remote for PowerPoint presentations, as well as a quick way to reboot a laptop with the push of a button.

Are you ready to give your old remote controls a new lease on life? Then head over to IRduino’s crowdfunding campaign on CrowdSupply, where the team is currently seeking $2,000. Delivery is expected to get underway in September 2015.

This 3D-knitted onesie purifies the air around its wearer

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One Dutch designer has created a 3D-knitted, Arduino-powered onesie that can purify the air around its wearer.

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Borre Akkersdijk recently made a name for himself with a unique form of intelligent clothing: a 3D-knitted onesie capable of turning someone into a walking Wi-Fi hotspot. As the concept of modularity continues to rise in popularity and evolve throughout the Maker community, the Dutch designer decided to further develop his concept of interchangeable, high-tech fashion with a platform that adapts to one’s location of the wearer.

Akkersdijk believes that the current generation of wearable technology — ranging from smartwatches to fitness bands — isn’t so much something you wear as it is something you attach to yourself. This is what he likes to refer to as “carry-able technology.” His original garment, dubbed BB.Suit, was created in an effort to turn this so-called “carry-able technology” into a much truer wearable form.

This project was inspired by his earlier work on a Wi-Fi pillow that established a positive interaction between a caregiver and an individual suffering from severe dementia. He accomplished this by designing a thick padded shell of conductive yarn, copper wire and internal motors, so that the patients could share their gestures with a loved one holding the other side through vibrations. The innovation prompted the interest of SXSW organizers, who requested Akkersdijk come and show it off; however, he wanted to make a bigger splash than just a pillow.

And so, the first version of the BB.Suit was conceived, which featured electrical threads woven into a 3D-knitted fabric along with a GPS tracker, a Wi-Fi access point and a crowdsourced musical library. Beyond that, a wearer’s location was displayed on Google Maps using the suit’s built-in GPS. Initially conceived as a demo for the SXSW 2014 music festival, the Maker collaborated with 22tracks to allow its user and their community to access and upload songs.

As you can imagine, the initial prototype of the suit caught the attention of mainstream media as well as the organizers of Beijing Design Week. Riding the wave of its success, Akkersdijk returned with a second iteration of the conceptual onesie, one in which would solve a meaningful conundrum. Inspired by the city’s smog and pollution problem, version 0.2 introduces a few additional features, most notably an air purification system. In order to bring this to life, the Maker collaborated with Martijn ten Bhomer from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Daan Spangenberg Graphics, Eva de Laat, StudioFriso and Dutch magazine WANT.

Once again, electrical yarn was woven into the body and legs of the outfit, while the sleeves and hood are comprised of ordinary textiles. BB.Suit 0.2 employs a patented technology called Cold Plasma, which divides oxygen and water molecules into free radicals that then easily react to toxic gases, bacteria, viruses and dust particles to clean air. The air quality sensor is located at chest level and is connected to a hidden Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4), which receives and processes the data from the sensor and GPS receiver. The Arduino also controls the air cleaning device. This system communicates with a hacked TP-Link router running OpenWRT which sends the data to an online database.

What’s more, Akkersdijk sees these projects as the very first step to the ultimate goal for wearables: to enable communication in an organic, smartphone-free way. To make this a reality, the designer is already conducting experiments that use sensor-laden clothing to transmit thoughts and feelings. As its creator notes, the updated suit highlights the opportunities of such next-generational intelligent clothing.

Intrigued? Head over to the the Maker’s official page, or read WIRED’s elaborate write-up here.

This beacon shirt lights up whenever it detects nearby devices

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This wearable beacon may look like any other t-shirt, but is able to detect nearby devices.

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As a Masters student at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, Matt Martin was curious about technology and the impact it had on society, particularly wearables. In his exploration of the topic, he decided to wear an embedded shirt around the city of Auckland in search of digital devices. Whenever one was detected, the tee would emit light effects to bring awareness of concealed gadgets in public spaces.

“The result attempts to provoke questions into how we see this technology behaving with people. It is not focused on its literal function, but how it functions at getting a response and direction out of people who see it in action,” the Maker explains.

In order to bring the project he calls Wearable Beacon to life, hundreds of LEDs — 1,056 to be exact — were hand sewn onto the shirt along with the combination of an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560), an Arduino Yún (ATmega32U4) and a Bluetooth module responsible for sensing the devices throughout a surrounding area. Beyond that, it is powered by a pair of LiPo batteries (a 9V and 5V). 

Just like the human nervous system, which sends signals to the brain, wearables are capable of working in similar fashion (no pun intended). Cognizant of this, the Wearable Beacon was designed to simulate its own electrical nervous system for the public to see and ultimately spark a reaction.

“I would say most people were curious as to how it was working and would either approach me or discuss among themselves about it,” Martin tells our friends at Adafruit. “Really it was just great to see people look away from their phones for a few seconds, although I am not used to that sort of attention!”

Marshall McLuhan once said, “The wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing an extension of the skin, electric circuitry an extension of the central nervous system.” And as Martin’s endeavor demonstrates, wearables can not only work like the nervous system, but can also become a discreet part of the body — hidden to the world around you.

BLINKY.SHOES will turn your every step into a light show

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Add these reactive, customizable LEDs to your favorite shoes and be the life of the party wherever you go.

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Anyone who grew up in the 1990s can surely recall begging their parents to head out to the nearest Foot Locker to grab a pair of L.A. Lights. (If not, you may remember this commercial.) Well, get ready to spark up some nostalgia as a new Indiegogo campaign is looking to bring the brilliant trend back, enhanced with modern-day technologies.

The brainchild of Bay Area-based startup Ultimate Collection, BLINKY.SHOES are exactly what they sound like: LED strips that make your sneakers illuminate in bright patterns in response to your movement. With each step, a wave of light spreads out from the point where your foot touches the ground. This is made possible through the use of a three-axis accelerometer that senses the strength of your stride and determines whether you are tapping your toe or heel. In other words, the harder you step, the more energetic the pattern gets.

Whereas back in 1992 wearers were limited to having one illuminated pair of sneaks, BLINKY.SHOES strips can be attached with velcro to any set of existing kicks, enabling unlimited possibilities. What’s more, the strips can be cut to fit any size and are powered by rechargeable batteries. You can even rotate through various color patterns on the spot, while the strips can be easily taken off and swapped out.

BLINKY.SHOES are ready for use straight out of the box, and are fully customizable for the Maker-savvy crowd as well. While they come with six to eight different color patterns pre-installed, thanks to an embedded ATmega32U4 at its heart, the lights can be reprogrammed to do just about anything. The platform features WS2812B individually-addressable LEDs, which are controlled by the Arduino-compatible MCU and powered by 2600mAh lithium-ion battery pack. The controller can be reprogrammed via USB and Arduino IDE, while the default code that ships with the unit will be freely available on GitHub.

“We made BLINKY.SHOES because we wanted to wear them ourselves. Over the last few years we’ve spent a lot of time going to dance parties and wandering around the desert at night. We’ve seen a lot of cool light-up costumes, but never great light-up shoes. We knew we wanted shoes that reacted to movement, that had colorful and complex patterns, and that we could customize. When we couldn’t find a product that fit that bill, we decided to build it ourselves,” the Ultimate Celebration team explains.

Ready to light up your steps? Head over to BLINKY.SHOES’ official Kickstarter page, where the team is currently seeking $5,000. A basic kit will ship with enough components to light up a pair of your favorite sneakers, which means two of everything: LED strips with built-in PCBs, light-difficusing sheaths to cover the strips, rolls of velcro, rechargeable batteries, USB cables and plastic clips. Delivery is expected to kick off in November 2015.

This DIY machine makes paper clips on demand

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Think of it like a 3D printer for paper clips.

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If you’re ever in need of a paper clip and don’t feel like running out to the nearest Staples, you’re in luck. That’s because a Maker by the name of “Credentiality” has developed a machine that can methodically bend a spool of wire into the shape of one for you.

The aptly named Paper Clip Maximizer 1.0 is comprised of two GWS S125 1T sail winch servos for all the locomotion, controlled by an Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4) and a few pages of code. The machine works not unlike the extruder of a 3D printer in that a knurled brass wheel feeds the wire through, which is held in place by a spring-loaded bearing. The wheel is powered by a servo that has been modified for continuous rotation through an Arduino program. The mechanism then passes the wire through a metal feed block and towards a bending head, which is also attached to and driven by a servo.

“These particular servos have a lot more range of motion than normal servos, and are also easy to modify for continuous rotation. That was important for the wire feed servo, which always needs to turn the same direction,” the Maker writes. “When you disassemble this particular servo, you can just remove the gear that connects the axle to the potentiometer. Then when you drive it, if you tell it to move clockwise of where you left the pot, it’ll turn clockwise forever, and vice versa.”

In addition, there is a bearing on the end of the bending head that is used to curve the wire around the guide block. After making several bends to form the paper clip, the Dremel cut-off wheel swings around to chop the end of the newly-formed accessory. The wheel motor is powered directly by the Leonardo. Admittedly, this portion of the process didn’t work too well.

“The way it was supposed to work was to not reset the bender on the last bend, but instead keep moving past the wire. Then I’d feed out the last leg of the paper clip, and then keep rotating the bending head clockwise until it brought around the cutoff wheel in to finish the job,” Credentiality notes. “That’s why you can see a dished out spot on top of the feed block — I had to spend about 15 minutes manually and very gradually feeding the spinning wheel into the block so that it’d clear when moving into place, yet still end up close enough to the block to cut the wire instead of just deflecting it out of the way.”

Intrigued? Head over to the project’s page here, or see it in action below!

[h/t Hackaday]

USB Tester lets you easily monitor the current and voltage of any device

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This Hackaday Prize entry will let you know know how much power your project is using.

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The brainchild of Maker “MobileWill,” the USB Tester was designed as a simple way to monitor the current and voltage of any USB device.

The gadget, which also happens to be a recent entry in this year’s Hackaday Prize, works by being inserted in between both a USB device and the power source or computer. This enables you to not only ensure that you are getting a true 5V, but to read how much power a project is using as well. The base can be employed with a digital multimeter or with the USB Tester’s OLED backpack, which will provide you with the readout directly on the display. In default mode, the USB Tester reveals a graph of current usage, with the button cycling through the different modes.

What’s more, the Tester base can actually measure non-USB devices, too. With its 128×64 OLED, you can monitor up to 3.2A and 26V. The backpack connects to a computer either through the Java app or the Wizkers.io Chrome app. Both can graph and log the data which can be exported as a CSV file. MobileWill does note that Wizkers is easier to setup and can handle firmware updates.

In terms of hardware, the USB Tester is built around an ATmega32U4 along with an INA219B chip for power management, an indicator LED and a microUSB. Looking ahead, MobileWill is the process of developing a BLE-enabled model along with an Android app that will work on-the-go. The next iteration will replace the OLED with Bluetooth, an SD card and RGB LEDs, while its accompanying app will display all the different types of graphs and offer control to setup the RGB LED.

Intrigued? Follow along with the project on its Hackaday.io page here.

This interactive dress visualizes New York City’s subway

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LEDs on this FLORA-powered dress light up according to nearest subway line.

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For those of you who have ever lived in or visited New York City, you know just how intimidating the subway system can be. Cognizant of this, Boram Kim has devised a clever (and stylish) solution to the problem. As shown on the runway at NYU ITP’s Spring 2015 Fashion Show, the Maker created an interactive dress capable of locating the nearest station through illuminated LEDs.

The garment — which visualizes the entire mass transit map in silver thread stitched on a denim-like material — employs an embedded GPS module that can detect a wearer’s location and then highlight the closest subway line via a series of NeoPixels.

“For example, if the user is closest to Classon Ave. station, which is a G train, the whole G line will light up with green color,” Kim writes.

On the inside, the Maker embedded several Adafruit FLORA (ATmega32U4) and GPS modules, all of which are soldered together. A NeoPixel strip was cut to create smaller pixels for the various station lights, which were wired and hot glued to the inner lining of the dress. A 3.7V LiPo battery is tucked away inside a little pocket.

Surely one of the more innovative wearables we’ve seen lately, you can head over to the Maker’s official page to learn more.