Super Awesome Sylvia is at the White House!

Sylvia Todd – aka Super Awesome Sylvia – has been creating and making things since she was five. Sylvia, who learned how to solder when she was 7, also hosts her very own MAKE YouTube show.

Today, Bits & Pieces had the opportunity to interview the young Maker about DIY culture and Making at the very first White House Maker Faire – which Atmel is proudly attending.

Atmel: Who, or what inspired you to become a Maker?

Sylvia: I was inspired to be a Maker/make things when I went to the very first San Mateo Maker Faire in 2006 when I was 5. That event and the ones after it showed me that making is fun, interesting, and [helps] you learn lots of new skills. After that weekend, I wanted to solder and build and take apart things even more!

Atmel: How do you feel about being chosen to attend the very first Maker Faire at the White House?

Sylvia: I am so happy and honored that I was invited to attend the White House Maker Faire. It is pretty amazing that after being inspired by the Maker Movement to create my show back in 2009, I eventually became one of the people that helped others get into Making!



Atmel: How do you think the Maker Movement democratizes the tools and skills necessary to design and create just about anything?

Sylvia: I think the Maker Movement helps give us the knowledge resources to create lots of stuff, through sharing! The internet allows us to find and share projects, sell projects, and even show others how to make things. Sharing how to’s and project details really can inspire people to get out there and make something, even if it’s not exactly what they’re trying to make, it helps them learn by doing.

Atmel: What projects of yours are powered by Atmel-powered Arduino boards or stand-alone MCUs?

Sylvia: 

I have a book coming out next moth that shows three super simple Arduino projects for beginners, all using the Arduino Uno as the base. I am also going to use the Arduino in many other projects and might soon design a custom circuit board around the ATmega328 MCU for a kit. One of my older projects was an Arduino and GPS powered RC car that could navigate around my house, and one of my latest ideas is a sensor that senses when the mail truck comes and tells me by switching on a servo to ring a bell.

Atmel: How do you think the Maker Movement and DIY culture make the world a better place?

Sylvia: I think the Maker Movement will change the world because when you have lots of people thinking of new ideas or inventions and sharing their work and results, we could solve really big issues faster! Also when kids grow up in an environment of making, they’ll be more willing to fix or reuse things instead of just throwing them away, and they’ll be making themselves smarter about the world at the same time. Making stuff rocks!

Quin Etnyre talks Makers at the White House

At 13 years of age, Quin Etnyre is already an accomplished Maker and teacher working to change the world – one Atmel powered Arduino board at a time.

Today, Bits & Pieces had the opportunity to interview the young Maker about America’s burgeoning DIY culture on the sidelines of the very first White House Maker Faire.

Atmel: Who, or what inspired you to become a Maker?

Quin: I was inspired by LEGO. Every day I would build a kit. To be a Maker, you have to think outside of the box, and come up with new ideas on your own. Later on, I started ‘hacking’ LEGO, and making my own versions of kits that worked just as good, maybe even better. This concept led to me hacking other electronics and mechanical objects around the house, which made me a Maker.

Atmel: How do you feel about being chosen to attend the very first Maker Faire at the White House?

Quin: It is awesome!!! I can’t believe that last year I started to show my projects at Maker Faire, and just the next year I am picked to go to the White House, and show the President what I’m making! It is super fun to show people what I make, and teach them how they can learn how to make projects, too!

Atmel: How do you think the Maker Movement democratizes the tools and skills necessary to design and create just about anything?

Quin: It allows more and more people the knowledge they need for free (open source), allows them to modify projects – and contribute to to the community in the end. Many people can learn, and many people can teach.

Atmel: What projects of yours are powered by Atmel-powered Arduino boards or stand-alone MCUs?

Quin: All of my projects with a microprocessor are Atmel-powered! Many of them are based on Arduino boards, like the FuzzBot, Gas Cap, and TFT LCD screen Instructables, and the Quasi-duino Arduino clone (also on Instructables!) uses the ATmega328 MCU with the bare minimum components needed to function as an extra small Arduino. [Since it] uses [a minimal number of] components on the breadboard, I even had to rewrite the Arduino core for it!

Atmel: How do you think the Maker Movement and DIY culture make the world a better place?

Quin: The average child or adult will be much smarter! They will have even more access to the digital tools and DIY machinery necessary to build complex projects with ease. Every open source product made will enable an average citizen to learn more and become ore knowledgeable, whether it is building space engines, or making light-up cupcakes.

This ultrasonic ruler is pocket-sized

A Maker known as “bergerab” has created an Atmel-based ultrasonic ruler powered by the popular ATtiny85 microcontroller (MCU).

According to the inventor, the recently posted Instructables prototype is accurate to +/- one centimeter.

“Using this pocket-sized ultrasonic ruler, you can simply point at any object, click a button, and the distance will be displayed on the 8 LED display,” bergerab explained in a meticulously detailed Instructables post.

“This ruler is the smallest (5cm by 7cm) and cheapest (about 5 USD) ultrasonic measuring device available today.”

Aside from Atmel’s versatile ATtiny85 microcontroller, key project components include:

• 74hc595 shift register
• 7805 voltage regulator
• HC-SR04 ultrasonic range sensor
• 330 Ohm resistors (8)
• One tactile-switch button
• One two-way slide switch
• LEDs (8)
• One indicator LED (with 2k resistor)
• Perfboard (5cm by 7cm)
• 9v battery (with connector)

On the software side, bergerab describes the sketch for the circuit as quite small and simple.

“Basically, all the code does is every 500 milliseconds, the distance between the HC-SR04 and an object infront of it is shifted out to the shift register via the data and clock pins attached to the ATtiny85,” he added.

“When the user presses the button on the device, they are actually activating the ‘latch’ on the 74hc595. This illuminates the need for attaching the latch pin to the attiny and attaching a button to the ATtiny85.”

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

OpenSprinklerBee has Atmel under the hood

The OpenSprinklerBee (OSBee) is an open-source Atmel-based sprinkler timer (prototype) designed to work with battery-operated valves.

Recently debuted by RaysHobby, the platform is powered by an ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU) paired with a nRF24L01 2.4G RF transceiver.

Additional key components include two AA batteries (boosted to 3.3V), SMT buzzer, push-button, 16KB EEPROM, PWM-driven boost converter, H-bridge (to drive sprinkler solenoid), soil moisture sensor and a Serpac 121 enclosure with water-proof perimeter seal.

“The name ‘Bee’ comes from the abbreviation Battery-Enabled Extension. It’s coincidence that it sounded more like XBee. It may very well have an XBee slot in the end, but the name was not intended to imply XBee,” Ray of RaysHobby.net explained in a blog post.

“Also, ‘Bee’ reminds me of the garden, and gardens need to be watered, so, there is the connection. Different from the classic OpenSprinkler, OSBee now comes with a water-proof enclosure, which means it can be left outdoors, such as in a garden, and will do its work diligently, like a Bee.”

Although the OSBee itself is still in the prototype stage, Ray recently debut the OSBee Arduino Shield (V 1.0), which is currently available for purchase.

So, how does the OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) differ from other OpenSprinkler products?

“The main difference is that OSBee is designed to work with battery-operated sprinkler Tvalves. These valves internally use a latching solenoid, which only draws power when you open or close the valve, and does not draw power if it remains in the same state. So it’s very efficient and suitable for battery-operated controllers,” said Ray.

“The other OpenSprinkler products, such as OpenSprinkler 2.1s, DIY 2.1u, OSPi 1.4, OSBo 1.0, are all designed for 24V AC sprinkler valves, which operate on 24V AC and require a power adapter / transformer.”

While the OSBee shield itself is not equipped with built-in wireless modules, Makers and devs can stack it with other Arduino shields, such as RF, WiFi, Ethernet shields, to provide web connectivity. Indeed, the OSBee Arduino library offers at least one example of using the Arduino Ethernet shield with OSBee shield to create a web interface for sprinkler control.

Interested in learning more? You can check out OSBee here and the OSBee Arduino shield here.

minDUINO v1.5 (ATmega328) goes live

Steve Smith of Project AVR has published the design files and relevant data for the Atmel-powered minDUINO v1.5 board – with the information released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

According to Smith, the ATmega328-based minDUINO is relatively easy to assemble, featuring a two layer through-hole design, along with headers for FTDI, ISCP and port breakouts.

“The board has two LEDs, one red, as seen above, for power indication and one green for testing,” Smith explained in a recent blog post.

“I chose to connect the green test LED to pin D10 (physical pin 16) because it is capable of PWM output. I used a shrouded connector for the ICSP connection which matches the plug from my USBASP programmer.”

The minDUINO boards were fabricated by the Hackvana crew, with the relevant gerber files available here.

“I have been using Hackvana for a while and they have fabricated several boards for me,” he added.

“Their customer service is second to none and the end result is a high quality, professional PCB that would be at home in any commercial equipment.”

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

ATmega328 tick-tocks this binary clock


A Maker named Aaron has built a rather impressive binary clock using the shell of an old, discarded hard drive. The unit is powered by a DS1307 Real Time Clock (RTC) module paired with an Atmel ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU).



”As I have an abundant supply of old hard drives, I went the upcycling route and used one for the enclosure. Should add to the clocks nerd cred as well, which can’t hurt,” Aaron explained in a recent blog post.

“You typically need a torx screwdriver bit to crack open most hard drive cases. However, you can bust out some dodgyness and use a flat head if need be.The only parts to be re-used were the body and cover of the hard drive, [although] there’s also some handy rare-earth magnets that can be salvaged.”

Aaron kicked off the binary clock project by marking a grid, then punching and drilling the holes, which he describes as a common LED arrangement for DIY binary clocks. Simply put, the left two columns represent the hours, while the right side displays the minutes.

“Each LED is installed and secured into place with a bit of hot glue. All the LEDs negative legs are soldered together creating a common ground connection. A color coded wire was soldered to each positive connection then insulated with another healthy dob of hot glue,” he continued.

“I had a couple of ATmega328 microcontrollers with Arduino bootloaders (can be programmed by an Arduino) so I breadboarded out a functional Arduino (hackduino) and tested it with the standard blink sketch.”

Aaron then adopted a more permanent model using a protoboard with the RTC – adding outputs for each LED with a resistor in series, 7805 5V regulator and other supporting passive components.



”Once everything was connected up, I let it run naked for a couple of days to make sure everything was sweet. A spare 9v wall wort provides enough power for the unit,” he added.

According to Aaron, the RTC “remembers” the time for approximately 10 years on its own battery, although it is capable of drawing power from an external source when available.

Last, but certainly not least, the Arduino sketch uses Adafruit’s RTC library to interact with the RTC module and ask for the current time/ The sketch then takes those values and calculates which LEDs should be lit to display the current time in binary format.

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

Harpa is an origami night light

Harpa – which recently surfaced on the official Arduino blog – is a large hand crafted elephant lamp shade with Wifi controlled RGB LEDs, microphone, speaker and a custom designed iPad application to teach children about color.

Originally conceived as a small paper origami elephant with blinking LEDs, the model was designed in Blender and 3D printed as a solid wireframe using the Shapeways service.

“The idea with the wireframe was to hand sew all the faces onto the model, that way I could try different materials as well as save money on the 3D print (printing filled surface faces would cost thousands at that size),” Harpa creator Trent Brooks explained in a recent blog post.

“The electronics are driven by an [Atmel-based] Arduino Mega 2560 board (ATmega2560 MCU) with Ethernet shield for network control. Connected to the board is a 50cm 5V RGB addressable LED strip with 30 LEDs, a 3.3V microphone module for sound detection and an 8ohm speaker for playing back generated ‘white-noise’ audio. Total cost for the all the electronics was less than $100.”

According to Brooks, the custom iPad application allows children to learn about color by selecting from various presets. Essentially, the primary interface displays a grid of colored elephant heads. When one is selected, the name of the color is pronounced, while the main night light changes color.

“There is a hidden control panel in the iPad app which allows me to change some of the more advanced features. For example, I can switch the ‘white-noise’ speaker on,” he added.

“[Plus] I can switch on audio reactive mode which uses the microphone to detect variations in sound level to change the LED colors (great when playing music, not so much for a sleeping baby); I can also change the number of LED’s, brightness, saturation and have them auto cross fade into different colors.”

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

Qiyang’s QY-A5D3XEK is a SAMA5D3 dev board

Based in Hangzhou, China, Qiyang Technology (杭州启扬智能科技有限公司) is a company that specializes in embedded hardware solutions such as the QY-A5D3EK development board which was recently featured on CNX-Software.

The platform comprises a base board (IAC-A5D3X-MB) and computer-on-module (ICA-A5D3X_CM) equipped with the following specs:

• 

Atmel SAMA5D3 ARM Cortex A5 @ 536 MHz
• 256 MB DDR2 @ 333 MHz
• 
256MB NAND flash + 2MB dataflash on CoM, 2x SD card slot on baseboard
• VGA and 16-bit TFT LCD (24-bit compatible) interface up to 2048×2048
• 
AC97 codec, 1x mic input, 1x LINE in, 1x LINE out
• 10/100M Ethernet
• 5x RS232 ports including one as a debug port (DB9), 2x RS232/RS485 ports
• 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
• Headers – GPIO, PWM, SPI, I2C, JTAG, EBI CAN bus, 8×8 keyboard matrix header (also used as 4-wire resistive touchscreen I/F)
• Wake-up and reset buttons
• +12V power supply, supports +6V to 23V input
• -20 to 70 C (operating) temperature range

“The company provides support for Linux 3.6.9 + Qt4, as well as Android 4.0 for the board which are provided with the documentation and tools on a DVD,” a CNX-Software writer noted.

“[Plus], Qiyang offers various LCD panels compatible with their board from 4.3″ to 10.4″, as well as optional TTL to LVDS or TTL to VGA modules.”

The IAC-A5D3X-KIT is currently available, with a sample price of $180 per unit.

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

Driving a rotary stewart platform

A Stewart platform is a type of parallel robot that incorporates 6 prismatic actuators, typically hydraulic jacks. According to Wikipedia, the actuators are mounted in pairs to the mechanism’s base, crossing over to three mounting points on a top plate.

Meaning, devices placed on the top plate are granted 6 degrees of freedom in which it is possible for a freely-suspended body to move. These are the three linear movements x, y, z (lateral, longitudinal and vertical) – and the three rotations pitch, roll, & yaw.

Recently, a Maker by the name of ThomasKNR debuted a rotary stewart platform controlled by an Atmel-based Arduino Uno board (ATmega328 MCU).

The project – which can be found on Instructables – is designed to accommodate a DSLR as well as other digital cameras.

“This version of Stewart Platform use ordinary hobbyist servos instead of linear actuators for motion,” ThomasKNR explained.

“The whole platform is controlled by an Arduino Uno, [which] computes all necessary equations to get the platform into right position and also controls servos.”

Key platform features include:

• 

Supports loads up to 2kg.
• 
Low power consumption (around 5W).
• Capable of precise movements (within approximately 1mm).
• Can repeatedly achieve the same positions.
• Stable – even with a heavy load.

All told, ThomasKNR says the total BoM for his rotary stewart platform likely equals around $150 and includes a base PCB, acrylic, an IrDA unit, cables, servo arms, spacer screws and an LCD with I2C interface.

So, how does it work? Well, according to ThomasKNR: “The controlling platform uses inverse kinematics. We know the position of the base and the desired position of platform – calculating the necessary rotation of servos.”

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

Atmel-powered shield measures air quality

Powered by a tinyAVR Atmel MCU (microcontroller), this Air Quality Sensor Shield measures temperature, humidity, carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

Currently available on Tindie for $95, the shield can be connected to an Arduino board or Nanode to create a air quality station.

Developed by Wicked Device, the open source sensor shield is part of the Air Quality Egg project, which was chosen as one of the top KickStarters of 2012.

With this unit, users can make their air quality data available on the Internet, all while viewing related information other Air Quality Eggs and Shields have added in real time here.

It should be noted that air quality data is relayed in real-time to Xively, an open data service which both stores and provides free access to data. Xively offers embeddable graphs, the ability to generate triggers for tweets and SMS alerts as well as a robust API which allows devs and Makers to unlock the potential of this new dataset by building mashups, maps and applications.

Interested in learning more? You can check out the Air Quality Sensor Shield project here.