Choosing the right baby names with ATmega328

Despite what some may think, names do matter. Trust us. The wrong one can lead to countless jokes in the schoolyard, mockery around the neighborhood, and if it happens to be a character in a popular TV show, it can lead to endless one-liners. Nevertheless, selecting the right name can be a difficult task. So much so that Maker “Ranthalion” set out to devise a gadget that could automatically choose one for you.

According to Ranthalion, the solution needed to not only generate some awesome names, but be easy and relatively cheap to make with parts on hand. After all, given the limited use of the device, the aptly dubbed Baby Namer would eventually end up in a drawer somewhere.

“I prototyped the system with an [Atmel based] Arduino. I ran into two snags developing the software. It’s actually difficult to come up with a bunch of awesome names, and the amount of SRAM in an Arduino is actually quite limited. I looked to the census to overcome the first problem and downloaded a list of names,” the Maker writes.

Given the tremendous size of the list, Ranthalion says a quick NodeJS script reduced it down to a random 8% sample. “The SRAM space turned out to be a bit more difficult to identify. The first attempt was to just stuff hundreds of names into a huge array. This compiled and uploaded without a problem, but resulted in strange runtime behavior.”

However, after Ranthalion realized that the variable space was too small to hold the variables, he discovered the value of the PROGMEM modifier for storing data.

The ATmega328 based Baby Namer uses two separate arrays — one with “awesome names” that include both first and middle names (like Sharktooth Chompenstein, Skunk Ahdjunk and Beezer Washingbeard), the other array containing much less exciting names from census data. While the first four names derive from the awesome array, the device then switches to the census names (like Carol, Ted and Alice) with a 25% chance of using part of an awesome name.

Have a baby on the way? Then, hurry on over to the project’s official page here.

Building an ATmega1284P prototyping board

For his latest vintage CPU/MCU mashup, Maker Dave Cheney recently decided to replace an Arduino Mega board with a bare megaAVR microcontroller to create a two chip solution — just the Atmel and the 6502, no glue logic or external support chips.

“While toying around with the project, [Cheney] found the microcontroller he was using, the ATMega1284P, was actually pretty cool. It has eight times the RAM as the ever-popular 328P, and twice as much RAM as the ATMega2560P found in the Arduino Mega,” Hackaday’s Brian Benchoff writes.

The minimal design was laid out in Fritzing along with a crystal, load capacitors, an ISP connector, and pins for a serial connector. “The trickiest piece was fitting the crystal and load capacitors into the design without disrupting to many of the other traces. It worked out well so I decided to add ICSP and FTDI headers,” Cheney notes.

Since the ATmega1284P MCUs that he ordered were unprogrammed, all the bootloading was done through Manicbug’s Mighty1284 Arduino Support Package. Though the package only supported Arduino 1.0, the Maker still had a nifty little prototyping board on hand.

“I’m smitten with the ‘1284P. It feels like the right compromise between the pin starved ‘328 and the unfriendly ‘2540 series. The 1284P supports more SRAM than either of its counterparts and ships in a package large enough that you get a full 24 pins of I/O.”

Interested in learning more about Cheney’s build? You can get a detailed breakdown of the prototyping board here.

A flower pot that can find its own sunlight

Tired of having your plants constantly die on you due to lack of nourishment? Wouldn’t it be nice if they were capable of tracking changes in sunlight and moving themselves? NYU ITP graduate students Xiaolong Mu and Shu Zhang are making that a reality with their tech-enabed, Atmel based flower pot aptly named Chasing Sunlight.

Four light sensors housed in a laser-cut acrylic case determine the brightest direction in the plant’s environment, along with servo motors and motorized wheels enabling the pot to get around the room. After sunset, Chasing Sunlight rolls itself back into the shade.

“We think the plants also can live like mammals or insects; it can run and have its own desires. We also have a preset for plants set in the pot, and the flower pot will give the plants appropriate sun light according to its species. The user who owns this flower pot will also get benefit from this, [as] they don’t have to worry about the the plants’s photosynthesis anymore,” Mu writes.

In the future, Mu sees his project as an easy-to-assemble DIY Arduino kit. Until then, you can watch Chasing Sunlight in action below, as well as read all about the build on its official page here.

This electronic mystery box is full of puzzles

What’s better than the build up of anticipation and excitement before unboxing a present? Originally conceived as a birthday gift, Maker Raffael Herrmann has devised an electronic puzzle box that will take a little longer than usual to open. Though the Captain Herrmano Mystery Box contains an actual present inside, the recipient must first go through a series of puzzles. Beat that, wrapping paper!

“The box is a so-called ‘reverse geocaching puzzle.’ The inspiration for this project was a reverse geocaching box built in 2009 by Mikael Hart. Unlike Mikael’s version of the box, it’s not enough to simply find and visit the target place. To unlock the treasure of Captain Herrmano, the player has to solve more tasks,” Herrmann writes.

The length of the gameplay is contingent upon how quickly the gift recipient, or player, solves the riddles. Theoretically, one could finish it within an hour or two.

Inside its trunk-like housing, the project is controlled by an Arduino Mega (ATmega1280) and hooked up to several components, including a temperature sensor, a GPS receiver, a carbon monoxide sensor, an ultrasonic sensor, a speaker, a display, a mini-SD card, and a servo. The box also is equipped with a numeric keypad and an LCD screen for user input and output.

Why a GPS unit or CO sensor? Some of the puzzles require outside interaction in order to advance to the next level, such as blowing tobacco smoke into a tube, carrying the box several meters above sea level and even grabbing a telephone. Others, however, simply command players to enter answers to numeric problems and sending emails with the word “secret.” You can watch it all in action below!

Tired of someone opening your presents too quickly? Not a huge fan of wrapping paper? You’ll want to read about the Maker’s entire build here.

Maker 3D prints his own set of headphones

We’re sure you’ve probably seen the recent Beats by Dre commercial, which features a handful of celebrities showcasing some #SoloSelfies to the tunes of Swedish musical group Axwell Λ Ingrosso. As part of a digital fab project, Maker Juan Sian has created a pair of 3D-printed headphones of his own, equipped with speakers wired to an Arduino soundboard. Paired to the same song from the advertisement (“Something New”), this DIY set emits lights across an acrylic engraved base that correspond to both sound frequency and particular instruments. You’ll have to watch it below!

Maker mods Quake to run on an old oscilloscope

Oscilloscopes are tools conventionally used to indicate changes in signal voltages with a simple 2D XY line plot. However, with a little tinkering, they can also become a gaming monitor. That is just what programmer Pekka Väänänen demonstrated. The Maker had rigged an aging oscilloscope into a playable version of the classic first-person shooter game Quake.

While gaming demakes — which refer to the process of adapting modern games to the standards of older platforms — have risen in popularity over the years, this one will surely spark up some nostalgia. In fact, Väänänen isn’t the first to modify an oscilloscope to play a video game. Back in 1958, physicist William Higinbotham designed Tennis for Two on a Donner Model 30 analog computer, which simulated the game of tennis (or ping pong) on an oscilloscope display.

To bring his creation to life, Väänänen used a Hitachi V-422 oscilloscope and a simple XY-oscilloscope simulator written in the Processing language. The programmer’s complex demake required him to transform the 3D graphics of Quake into a signal the oscilloscope could read and display, such as audio.

The system used the PortAudio I/O library in order to get a signal from the PC over to the oscilloscope. By outputting the game through an audio card, Väänänen was able to alter the game’s engine to be read as a series of changing voltages that the oscilloscope would draw in series of rapidly moving lines.

Well, it looks like Doom isn’t the only game that can be modded and played on unusual devices, like printers. Interested? You can read all about Väänänen’s complicated build here. Or, you can just watch it in action below!

Imagining an ad-free Internet with AdTrap

Particularly in the holiday season, many of us are bombarded with advertisements as we surf the web. While there may not be a whole heck of a lot we can do about other forms of ads (like billboards or digital signage) we come across throughout the day, a Palo Alto-based company is however letting us eradicate adverts from our computer, mobile device and even smart TV screens.

In essence, AdTrap is an ad-filtering, open-source hardware device that simply plugs into your Internet router and banishes ads from your entire network. The creation, which first successfully debuted on Kickstarter two years ago, is the brainchild of Makers Chad Russell and Charles Butkus as they reminisced the ad-free “glory days” of the Internet.

The white rectangular box, resembling a wireless router and costs $129, is packed with an Atmel | SMART AT91SAM9X25 MCU, 128MB RAM, 256MB Flash for storage, two ethernet ports, two CAN buses, a serial port, a software modem, USB host/device as well as a ZigBee interface. AdTrap is also based on open-source Linux firmware, which its creators say can be easily tweaked.

And for those wishing to access certain ads or sites, you can still do so by easily configuring your own set of rule filters using its online management system. So, are you ready to browse the web without any interruptions? You can more about the Atmel | SMART based device by visiting its official site here.

ArduRF eases wireless links for the Arduino platform

Developed by Daniel deBeer, ArduRF is an ATmega328 based electronics development platform that aspires to make wireless links easier for Arduinos, while maintaining full compatibility and long range AES-128 radio link encryption.

The platform is equipped with an ATmega328 MCU, a HopeRF RFM69 radio, on-board battery charging, as well as the ability to operate from a solar panel for independence. As its creator notes, the ArduRF family is comprised of three designs: ArduRF1, ArduRF1s and PC2ArduRF1. Each of the boards are optimized for a different application environment.

The ArduRF1 is a completely Arduino-compatible board, which features the same shape, connectors and CPU as an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and operates at 5V even when battery powered. In addition, it packs a LiPo charger and connector directly on-board, while its integrated boost converter provides 5V when operating off the battery to sustain shield compatibility.

“The ArduRF1 and its CPU operates at 5V and 16MHz — even when running from the battery. The ArduRF1 has the Arduino Uno form factor and uses the FTDI FT231 chip for the USB interface. The form factor, pinout, CPU, and 5V operation ensures that the vast majority of shields will just work. All the experience and working knowledge of Arduino’s are directly applicable. The standard IDE and examples continue to work without modification,” deBeer writes.

Meanwhile, the smaller (2.25” x 0.9”) ArduRF1s boasts the same design as its bigger sibling except for that it operates at 3.3V.

“All the pins available on an Arduino Uno are brought to connectors on the board edge. The pin pitch is 0.1″ and the width is 0.8″ making it possible to mount the board on a solderless breadboard and still have two breadboard holes on each side available for connection to other devices.”

The third is the PC2ArduRF1, the family’s smallest and lowest cost member. This board is specifically designed to wirelessly connect a PC to one or more of the other ArduRF1 units.

Each of the boards possess an off-the-shelf transceiver — which is available in three different frequency bands — to minimize risk to the project.

“It has been tested on the first and second prototype (915MHz version only to stay legal) and found to have exceptional range more than 500 meters in an open field. The data rate is adjustable up to 300kbps and the transceiver supports hardware AES encryption making the transmissions secure,” deBeer adds.

Currently seeking $9,500 on Kickstarter, the Maker says that his platform is different from previous Arduino RF crowdfunding projects. Reason being, the pick-and-place programs and reflow oven profiles have all been developed and tested, the boards work flawlessly, and most importantly, they are ready for production today.

Interested in learning more about or backing the project? Head on over to its official Kickstarter page here. If all goes to plan, shipment is expected to begin within weeks.

Making a mason jar mood lamp with ATtiny85

Instructables user Deba16 — who you may recall from his DIY wireless home security system — has discovered an innovative way to transform ordinary mason jars into color-changing mood lamps using ATtiny85 microcontrollers (MCUs).

Aside from the tinyAVR MCUs, Deba168’s project utilizes RGB LED lights, an 8-pin DIP socket, a coin cell battery, some resistors, a slide switch, and a few other components to piece it all together.

The DIY lamp works by sensing the lighting condition of a room. Once off, complete darkness will trigger the RGB LEDs to begin slowly fading through a series of colors.

“The ATtiny85 only had 2 PWM pins. But to change the color of a RGB LED, we needed 3 PWM pins. This limitation was overcome by using software PWM. This means that you can fade in and out of all 3 colors using any of the pins on the ATtiny. The software PWM works by setting the pin HIGH and then LOW at different rates so that the LED looks like it’s dimming. This is called Persistence of Vision, or POV. The LED blinks so rapidly that the human eye can’t detect that it is flashing at all, and it sees instead that the LED appears to be dimming.”

Want to create a mason jar lamp of your own? Find a step-by-step breakdown of the build here.

Building a DIY heartbeat sensor with ATmega328

A Maker by the name of “Bajdi” recently created a heartbeat sensor using a 2.2” TFT display and an ATmega328 MCU.

Inspired by a previous open hardware project, the Maker connected the sensor to an ATmega328 running at 3.3V and loaded an example code, which allowed the heartbeat to be seen on the Arduino serial monitor. The Maker then connected a 2.2″ TFT display to the ATmega328 to display the sensor output.