Ootsidebox goes touchless with the 3Dpad

Ootsidebox has introduced the 3Dpad, a sophisticated touchless gesture control interface with a depth perception of 10cm.

The platform – which recently made its Indiegogo debut – comprises three primary components:

• Electrode plane PCB
• Arduino shield
• Arduino Uno (Atmel ATmega328 MCU)

“To detect the proximity of the human hand or finger, we use the projected capacitive technique. This is the principle of virtually all modern touch screens – except that now we are in the air, relatively far away from the detector surface (10 cm max). So we build capacitors which are as ‘open’ as possible, using electrodes drawn on the electrode plane PCB in order to obtain a maximum ‘hand effect,'” 3Dpad creator Jean-Noël explained.

“[Meanwhile], the capacitors formed by the electrodes are part of an oscillator whose frequency is influenced by the distance of a hand. When it enters the electrostatic field, this ‘intruder’ is going to cut the field lines and divert the electrical charges. The closer the hand approaches the electrodes, the more the oscillator’s frequency increases.”

According to Jean-Noël, the system employs a phase/frequency comparator along with a control and locking program.

“This simple system makes the conversion of the very small frequency shift into a variation in a voltage signal which is easy to use,” he said.

On the software side, an embedded software (sketch) running on the Atmel-based Arduino Uno is tasked with calculating 3D coordinates, recognizing basic gestures (swipes, push and rotations) and relaying the data to a host device on the USB COM Port.

“The evaluation software (PC) will enable you to quickly evaluate the 3D-Pad. You’ll see all the values sent by the Arduino Uno (1), the gesture events (2) and the 3D coordinates in the form of a cursor (3),” he added.

As Jean-Noël notes, 3Dpad is only the starting point for Ootsidebox, as the company is currently working on a number of HMI related projects, including touchless & gesture interfaces, telehaptics, wearable tech and even artificial intelligence (AI).

Interested in learning more about the 3Dpad? You can check out the project’s official page here.

Atmel @ Maker Faire Day 1

Bay Area Maker Faire 2014 kicked off today, with hackers, modders, makers and veteran DIYs showcasing their creations, many of which are powered by Atmel microcontrollers.

Atmel’s booth – #205 – is drawing large crowds, with entire families clustering around to see a wide range of Atmel-based products, including the MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer, Mel Li’s wearable electronics, various Arduino boards, Red Boards, ProtoSnap Pro-Mini, MicroView, FuzzBots, the Phoenar, Touch Board, Hexabugs and uToT Robots.

There are literally thousands of cool creations here at the show so stay tuned for more. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures below! The gallery for Day 2 is available here.

 

 

Atmel @ Maker Faire Day 0 (sneak peek)

Atmel is getting ready to take center stage at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 in San Mateo on May 17th and 18th.

Our team is currently setting up booth #205, where we’ll be showcasing a wide range of Maker projects, platforms and devices, including the new Arduino Zero which is powered by Atmel’s ARM-based SAMD21 microcontroller (MCU).

So, what else can you find in booth #205?

• Wearable electronics and cosplay
• MicroView
• ProtoSnap Pro-Mini
• Red Boards
• FuzzBots
• Phonear
• Touch Boards
• Hexabugs
• uToT ‘bots
• 3D printers
… And more!

Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 will kick off at the San Mateo Event Center in San Mateo, CA, on Saturday, May 17, from 10am to 8pm and Sunday, May 18, from 10am to 6pm.

Tickets can be purchased on-site at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 on May 17 and 18, 2014 ($25.00 – $40.00 for a full day pass).

Can’t make it to the Faire? You can follow @Atmel live on Twitter for event updates, or join the conversation by tweeting #AtmelMakes.

Preventing motorcycle accidents with GearBrake

Chris Bailey recently debuted the GearBrake, a device that detects when a motorcycle is slowing and automatically activates the vehicle’s brake lights.

GearBrake – prototyped on an Atmel-based Arduino board – was created 7 years after a motorcycle accident that Bailey managed to walk away from.

“I was just like, ‘Well, this is it. I’m dead. Finally, I got up and I was like, ‘Holy crap, I’m alive!” Chris told the Lane Report (BG Magazine). “I tried riding again for about six months after that… And it just wasn’t fun because I felt invisible on the roads. Over the years, I tossed around this idea of how we can add better visibility to motorcycles.”

According to Bailey, the GearBrake was actually inspired by another accident.

“I was on I-71, and there were two massive back-to-back, rear-end collisions.”

Although the accident didn’t involve motorcycles, it prompted Chris to think about brake light visibility, which is somewhat problematic for motorcyclists. To be sure, a driver can almost come to a stoplight without hitting the brakes if he or she is driving a manual transmission car or motorcycle.

“When this happens, you’re not telling the person behind you you’re slowing down,” he explained.

The solution? The GearBrake, which was prototyped using an Atmel-powered Arduino board paired with an accelerometer.

Interested in learning more about the project? The full text of Amy Talbot’s “Young entrepreneur: Making the road safer, one GearBrake at a time” can be read here.

Video: Building a DIY musical rain poncho (Uno)

Carnegie Mellon student Liana Kong recently designed a DIY musical rain poncho using an Atmel-powered Arduino Uno (ATmega328), FM tuner and flexible speaker.

According to the official Adafruit blog, the poncho is capable of controlling the radio in a number of ways, including: Hood up/down – power, colorful snaps – different station presets and hood strings – volume.

“Most of my classmates made radios out of wood or plastic, something that sits on a table. When I told everyone that the colorful pile of fabric was my radio, they had to second guess themselves,” Kong explained in a recent blog post.

“A lot of my past projects have been pretty practical, so it was refreshing that people were getting excited about my poncho. Also, seeing their faces brighten into a smile when they put the poncho on was really fulfilling.”

Kong also noted that the “key point” of her DIY musical rain poncho was to stay connected to one’s surrounding while listening to and enjoying music in harmony with the rain, sans earbuds or headphones which create walls to the outside.

“While the exterior is a more muted tone, the inside reflects the excitement and playful aspect of the poncho,” she added.

Interested in learning more? You can check out Liana Kong’s blog post here.

Let’s Make the world a better place

It was 1974 when tech pioneer Ted Nelson first asked a nascent industry to hand over “computer power to the people.” A few years later, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel expressed similar sentiments, proclaiming that “we need to build computers for the masses, not the classes.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, empowering individuals and communities is a core value of the international Maker Movement. Makers, with an open source philosophy, affordable technology and “can do” attitude, are truly helping to make the world a better place.

Indeed, medical implants designed with 3D printers (long championed by Makers) are saving lives, while 3D printed prosthetics allow physicians to restore physical capabilities lost in accidents or at birth.

Makers are also active in agriculture to ensure an organic, green and sustainable food supply for us all. To be sure, Atmel-based Arduino boards are currently being used to facilitate a plethora of open source platforms tasked with regulating everything from urban-based aquaponics to rural greenhouses constructed out of recyclable materials.

Photo Credit: Scott Taylor, Sun Journal

In addition, Makers are at the forefront of reversing bee colony collapse disorder, with the Atmel-powered (ATmega32U4 MCU) Smart Citizen Kit (SCK) currently monitoring 3D-printed hives around the world.

Unsurprisingly, Makers looking to the future are designing open source home automation platforms to help individuals conserve water and reduce energy consumption by linking various “smart” appliances to the rapidly evolving Internet of Things.

Last, but certainly not least, open source Arduino boards used by Makers across the globe are an important tool for the STEM community (science, technology, education and mathematics), with science and computing teachers in secondary schools and universities choosing the popular platform to teach students the basic principles of programming and computational thinking.

We at Atmel are proud to be at the very heart of the Maker Movement, with microcontrollers that power a wide range of open source platforms and devices, from 3D printers to Arduino boards. For us, Maker Faire is one of the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth – a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity, resourcefulness and a celebration of DIY culture. Simply put, it’s a place where people of all ages and backgrounds gather together to show what they are making and share what they are learning.

So be sure to drop by the Atmel booth (#205) at Maker Faire Bay Area on May 17th and 18th to meet our star-studded lineup of Makers and presenters, including Mel Li, Trevor Zylstra, Quin Etnyre, Pamungkas Prawisuda Sumasta, Super Awesome Sylvia, Matt Johnson, Bob Martin and Dan Ujvari.

Can’t make it to the Faire? You can follow @Atmel live on Twitter for event updates, or join the conversation by tweeting #AtmelMakes.

Who’s talking about the Arduino Zero ?

The Atmel-powered Arduino Zero dev board was officially announced on May 15th, 2014. The board’s debut has already been covered by a number of prominent tech publications, including Ars Technica, HackADay, EE Times, Electronics Weekly, CNX Software, UberGizmo, Geeky Gadgets, SlashGear, PC World, SemiWiki and Makezine.

Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica



“The Zero is a 32-bit extension of Arduino’s flagship Uno board, developed jointly by the Arduino team and Atmel, targeted at helping developers prototype smart devices. Based on the Atmel SAM D21 ARM Cortex-based microcontroller, the Zero includes Amtel’s Embedded Debugger—allowing developers to debug their projects without having to wire up another interface.

”

“It gives developers a huge boost in storage and memory over the Uno, providing 256KB of onboard Flash storage (compared to the Uno’s 32KB) and 32KB of static RAM (compared to the Uno’s 2KB). It can also emulate an Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) of up to 168KB, while the Uno only supported 1KB of EEPROM.”

Brian Benchoff, HackADay

“The Arduino Zero uses an Atmel ARM Cortex-M0+ for 256kB of Flash and 32k of RAM. The board supports Atmel’s Embedded Debugger, finally giving the smaller Arduino boards debugging support.

“The chip powering the Zero features six communications modules, configurable as a UART, I2C, or SPI. USB device and host are also implemented on the chip [and] there are two USB connectors on the board.”

Max Maxfield, EE Times



“I’ve become a huge supporter of the Arduino, from the concept to the hardware to the software (IDE) to the ecosystem. I’m now using Arduinos and Arduino-compatible platforms for all sorts of projects, including my Infinity Mirror, my Inamorata Prognostication Engine and my BADASS Display.

“Each Arduino and Arduino-compatible platform offers different features, functions, capacities, and capabilities, which makes it possible to select the optimal platform for the project at hand using criteria such as size, cost, performance, and number of input/output pins. As of this morning, there’s a new kid on the block – the Arduino Zero, which has been jointly developed by Atmel and Arduino.”

Alasdair Allan, MakeZine

“While it shares the same form factor as the Arduino Leonardo—with 14 digital and 5 analog pins—all of the digital pins except the Rx/Tx pins can act as PWM pins, and the analog pins have a 12-bit ADC instead of the Leonardo’s 10-bit ADC, giving significantly better analog resolution,” writes Makezine’s Alasdair Allan.

“The new board comes with 256KB of Flash memory, and 32KB of SRAM. While the new board doesn’t have EEPROM, it does support 16KB by emulation, so Arduino sketches relying on this feature will still run without issue.”

Arduino Zero – official specs:

• Microcontroller ATSAMD21G18, 48pins LQFP
• Operating voltage 3.3V
• Digital I/O Pins 14, with 12 PWM and UART
• Analog input pins 6, including 5 12bits ADC channels and one 10 bits DAC
• DC current per I/O Pin 7 mA
• Flash memory 256 KB
• SRAM 32 KB
• EEPROM up to 16KB by emulation
• Clock speed 48 MHz

Interested in learning more? You can check out the official Arduino Zero page here.

Arduino and Atmel debut Zero dev board

Arduino and Atmel have debuted the Zero development board – a simple, elegant and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform originally established by the popular UNO.

“The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the Maker community,” said Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO.

“The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development.”

Indeed, the Arduino Zero board packs Atmel’s versatile SAMD21 microcontroller (MCU), which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ core. Additional key hardware specs include 256kb of flash, 32kb SRAM in a TQFP package and compatibility with 3.3V shields that conform to the Arduino R3 layout.

The Arduino Zero board also boasts flexible peripherals along with Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG) – facilitating a full debug interface on the SAMD21 without the need for supplemental hardware.

In addition, EDBG supports a virtual COM port that can be used for device programming and traditional Arduino bootloader functionality.

According to Atmel exec Reza Kazerounian, the Zero board aims to provide creative individuals with the potential to realize truly innovative ideas for smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation and robotics.

“Leveraging more than 15 years of experience since the inception of AVR, simplicity and ease-of-use have been at the core of Atmel’s technology,” Kazerounian added.

“[We are] pleased to see the continued growth of the global maker community stemming from the increasing access and availability to open source platforms such as Arduino. We enable Makers, but the power lies within the Makers themselves.”

Interested in checking out an Arduino Zero prototype? You can get up close and personal with the very first prototypes at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 in San Mateo on May 17 and 18 at the following booths:

• Arduino booth: #204
• Atmel booth: #205
• ARM booth: #405

We’ll see you there!

Garage door gets an Arduino RFID upgrade

A Maker by the name of Jason955 has designed an RFID-controlled garage door opener using an Atmel-based (ATmega328 MCU) Arduino board.

As HackADay’s Rick Osgood reports, the Arduino acts as the brains of the operation while an off-the-shelf NFC/RFID reader module is tasked with reading the RFID tags.

“To add new keys to the system, [Jason] simply swipes his ‘master’ RFID key. An indicator LED lights up and a piezo speaker beeps, letting you know that the system is ready to read a new key,” Osgood explains.

“Once the new key is read, the address is stored on an EEPROM. From that point forward the new key is permitted to activate the system. Whenever a valid key is swiped, the Arduino triggers a relay which can then be used to control just about anything.”

According to Osgood, the system also offers access to a number of manual controls, including a reset button (erased EEPROM) and a DIP that switch that allows the user to select how long the relay circuit remains open (configurable in increments of 100ms).

As Jason955 points out, the opener pictured above is simply an initial design prototype, with the next iteration likely to be a prototype shield followed by a PCB.

“The top section of components (Arduino and breadboard) will be placed inside the garage and the bottom section of components (LED, buzzer, NFC/RFID reader) will be placed outside (in a project box),” he adds.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official page here.

SmartWood goes old school on Kickstarter

SmartWood – which recently hit Kickstarter – is a lineup of smartphone controlled models powered by Atmel’s ATmega8 microcontroller (MCU).

“No technical skills are necessary to assemble and use a Smartwood model, even if you’ve never built a robot before,” a SmartWood rep explained. “It’s affordable, readily expandable and the perfect hobby to do with your kids or even on your own.”

Aside from Atmel’s ATmega8 microcontroller, key technical specs and features include:

• Onboard 5V regulator
• Power supply voltage: 5-9V
• DC Motor Driver up to 2A per channel
• Supports up to 8 Servos
• Built in LED connected to D13
• Battery level monitoring
• Master on and off switch
• Compatible with the Bluetooth Module supplied with the controller

Currently, the following five SmartWood models are available on the crowd funding website: MiniBot, Crawler, Dragster, Truck and a Kickstarter special edition vehicle.

Interested in learning more about the Atmel-powered SmartWood? You can check out the project’s official Kickstarter page here.