Smart traffic lights let pedestrians play Pong with others across the street

For those of us living in a metropolitan area, we all know how boring it can be to wait at a crosswalk. Now, well at least in Hildesheim, Germany anyway, pedestrians can keep themselves entertained by playing the game of Pong against others across the street. Get ready to say goodbye to those red figurines at traffic lights!

Back in 2012, a duo of HAWK University students unveiled a concept for what they dubbed “StreetPong.” Following the immediate virality of its original video (seen below), Makers Amelie Künzler and Sandro Angel were compelled to begin working with design firms and traffic experts to build a fully-functional, game-playing device.

Why? “Because you use it while waiting … and you’re not passive, you’re active,” the team explains. “We think everyone should have the opportunity to sweeten up their waiting time. And we’re also so-called lifesavers, because: Why would you want to cross the street at a red pedestrian light when you have the opportunity to play a game and have fun?”

Two years later, the game units — rebranded as ActiWait — have been completed and approved for use by the German city, where they were installed just a few weeks ago. Pending positive response from its trial, the team hopes to expand to more intersections. In fact, they have already received interest from a number cities spanning across the globe, including Lyon and Oslo.

How it works is relatively simple. SmartPong features a pair of devices, which are comprised of touchscreens enclosed in a 3D-printed cases,  located in plain view of pedestrians on each side of the road. As soon as its adjacent traffic light turns red, walkers can begin playing. Once the traffic light turns green, the little screen reveals a “thumbs up” to notify the pedestrian that they can cross along with how much time they have to get to the other side. Upon the next red light, the game restarts for others to play.

The two-way communication is made possible through an AT86RF233 transceiver, while some other Atmel components can be found embedded inside the touchscreen controllers.

Not only are the devices a clever way to pass the time while waiting for cars, perhaps will help deter jaywalking and increase safety often overlooked by impatient pedestrians darting into traffic.

Why stop at games? Now seeking €35,000 on Indiegogo, the team hopes to enhance its wireless connectivity and design to enable a number of other applications including real-time news feeds, navigation, citizen surveys or even speed dating!  Interested in learning more? Head on over to the team’s crowdfunding campaign page here.

XPlorerBoard Student is a self-contained Arduino development environment

As we’ve recently explored on Bits & Pieces, it’s exciting to see a number of new products hitting the market in an effort to inspire the next generation of Makers to not only think outside the box, but to encourage them to pursue endeavors in electronics. One of the most recent projects to launch is seeking to combine both tablet accessibility and real-world experiments, in an effort to make the programming learning experience enjoyable for students and beginners alike.

The team at Rich Electronics — who debuted the Dual Arduino Micro XPlorerBoard earlier this year — has developed a self-contained Arduino development environment with all the sensors already on-board. Equipped with an ATmega328P MCU that is preloaded with the Arduino bootloader, the newly-revealed XPlorerBoard Student is fully-compatible with the Arduino IDE. Meanwhile, power is supplied using the included USB cable from the host computer or a USB power adapter.

“The XPlorerBoard Student is an ideal supplement to STEM Educational programs. It can be used as courseware for science and engineering classes, after school programs, home schooling, or for the DIY Makers,” a company rep writes.

The board allows Makers ages 8 to 80-plus to quickly learn programming and circuits using hardware and a set of iPad/Android applications. To accomplish this feat, the XPlorerBoard can easily plug into any Mac or PC, thus enabling users to run programs on its built-in Arduino-compatible processor.

The companion mobile InventIT application includes 50 inspiring experiments, each of which include a video of the completed project, hookup diagrams and an easy-to-follow graphical explanation of the build. Makers will find it increasingly easier to build interactive projects by simply following a series of graphical connection diagrams and then entering the Arduino code into their computer.

The XplorerBoard Student is stocked with photo, temperature, sound, infrared and motion sensors already on-board, providing Makers the ability to easily create sensory experiments. Its OLED display supports both text and graphics, and is visible in bright settings — something that will surely come in handy in well-lit environments like classrooms. In addition, the board features several built-in components as well as a breadboard area to hold external parts.

In what should make for an ideal supplement to STEM programs across the world, the XPlorerBoard is currently seeking $10,000 on Kickstarter. If all goes to plan, the team hopes to begin assembly and testing in early spring 2015, with shipping to backers slated for May 2015. Interested in learning more or backing the ATmega328P based project? Head over to its official page here.

Tutorial: Building cool projects with MCUs (Part 5)

I finally received the circuit boards! And, in this fifth and final part of the microcontroller tutorial, we are going to solder the components to the circuit board and program the MCU using the USB port of a computer.

Just to refresh our memories, so far we have learned:

• Part 1: What is an MCU?
• Part 2: How to choose an MCU
• Part 3: Designing a circuit for the MCU
• Part 4: Making a circuit board

I recently ordered the PCBs from Seeed Studio. In order to expedite their delivery, I used a more expensive shipping option from UPS. I did get the boards pretty fast – but I also got an unexpected bill from them because they had to take it through customs.

So, even though the boards were only $10, I ended up with paying about $60 in shipping and customs… But luckily, there exists a much cheaper shipping option (about $3-4) – you just have to wait a little bit longer for the boards to arrive.

Let’s solder the board!

I wanted to make this circuit in such a way that it was possible to make it at home. To solder the circuit, I’m going to use my old Ersa soldering iron and some standard solder wire. The tip of the iron is a bit thick, so it’s really not ideal for this job. However, I know many people only have a simple soldering iron like this lying around the house – so it’s the perfect test to see if this is something that anyone can build from the comfort of your home.

The first thing we’re going to solder is the MCU chip. This is also the hardest part to solder. I have to admit – when I looked at my soldering iron, then looked at the chip – I was a bit worried that it was going to be hard. But the main trick here was to be patient!

To solder the surface mount components, we can use the techniques described in this smd soldering article.

First, we solder one corner pin of the chip. When we have managed to solder this one pin correctly – and all the pins are aligned over their pads – we move on to the corner on the other side. With two corners soldered properly, all we need to do is to add a tiny bit of solder to all the other pins and pads.

Don’t rush it. Take your time. Inspect the pins closely to see if they are soldered and that they don’t have a “solder bridges” to their neighbors. And, don’t worry if it looks a bit like a war-zone with solder all over – just look at mine above – it still works!

Now, safe to say that the worst part is over. The other components are pretty straightforward to solder. Just make sure the LED and the polarized capacitor is placed in the correct direction.

Programming the circuit

Once we are confident that the components are soldered properly, it’s time to test it! First, we need to check if the USB interface works. Otherwise, we won’t be able to program the circuit. To test the USB interface, all we need to do is to connect a USB cable and connect the circuit to our computer. From there, we can just check if it pops up as a USB device on the computer.

And… it does!

So, let’s program the MCU. A simple way of testing it is to make an LED-blink program. This is a simple program that, well, makes our LED blink. It looks like this:

#define F_CPU 1000000 // The chip runs at 1 MHz as default (even if you are using a 8MHz crystal)

#include
#include

int main(void)
{
DDRC = (1<<PC7); //Sets the direction of the PC7 to output
PORTC = (1<<PC7); //Sets PC7 high

while(1)
{
_delay_ms(500); //Wait 500 milliseconds
PORTC &= ~(1<<PC7); //Turn LED off

_delay_ms(500); //Wait 500 milliseconds
PORTC |= (1<<PC7); //Turn LED on
}

return 0;
}

We save this code in a file called led-blink.c

Compiling our code

The first thing we need to do is to compile our code into machine code that the MCU can read. One way of doing this is through Atmel Studio. But, since I am a big fan of using the Linux terminal, I’ll show you how to compile and upload a program using Ubuntu.

First, install avr-gcc with the command:

sudo apt-get install avr-gcc

Then, compile the code and make it into the right format with the following commands:

avr-gcc -mmcu=atmega32u2 -Os blink-led.c -o blink-led.out
avr-objcopy -j .text -j .data -O ihex blink-led.out blink-led.hex

The resulting file – blink-led.hex – can now be uploaded to the microcontroller. You can find more information on the commands here.

Uploading the code to the MCU

Time to upload the program and see if it works. One way to do this is by using Atmel’s FLIP software. But, once again, let’s see how we can do it with the Linux terminal.

Install dfu-programmer with the command:

sudo apt-get install dfu-programmer

Then, erase the old flash memory on the MCU and upload the compiled .hex file:

sudo dfu-programmer atmega32u2 erase
sudo dfu-programmer atmega32u2 flash blink-led.hex

Unplug the circuit from your computer, then plug it in again. And what do you know, the LED starts to blink!

Making something cool

Now that we’ve got it working, we’re ready to make something cool. There are so many cool things you can make with a microcontroller. For example, you can connect it to this Wi-Fi module and make the LED blink every time @AtmelMakes posts a new tweet.

Or, how about connecting it to this sound module and this motion sensor, and make it play a Christmas song every time someone goes near your Christmas tree? As Atmel always says, the possibilities are truly endless.

If you missed any of the previous parts of this tutorial – you can find them here:

• Part 1: What is an MCU?
• Part 2: How to choose an MCU
• Part 3: Designing a circuit for the MCU
• Part 4: Making a circuit board

Detect exoplanets using a home-brew observatory

Sure, NASA and other space agencies can use high-tech telescopes to spot extrasolar planets (those that don’t orbit the sun), but did you know that you can do the same from your very own backyard? While more elaborate optical devices certainly yield better results, one can now emulate the experience with some DIY gear. Most importantly, those space-seeking Makers will need a DSLR, a 300mm+ telephoto lens, and a star tracker.

“I decided to follow this lead and went shopping for a telephoto lens for my Canon EOS Rebel XS DSLR. With old manual-focus lenses now useless to most photographers, I was able to acquire a 300-millimeter Nikon telephoto lens on eBay for a song (US $92, shipped), along with a Nikon-to-Canon adapter ($17 from Amazon),” IEEE Spectrum Senior Editor David Schneider writes.

Since a number of these items can get a bit pricey, Makers can build their own “barn door” tracker instead using plywood, an [Atmel based] Arduino, a stepper motor along with a few other components.

To drive the tracker, Schneider notes that he extracted a couple of gears from an old inkjet printer, and “attached one gear to a stepper motor and the other to a nut screwed onto a gently curved length of threaded rod. Rotating the nut pushed the doors of the tracker apart.”

The stepper motor is controlled, via a driver board, by an Arduino unit that allows a user to set the rate at which the doors separate.

“Initially, I mounted my tracker on a camera tripod. But I soon abandoned that as being too precarious and built a sturdy wooden platform. The final component of the tracker is a ball head ($18 on Amazon) bolted to the top, which allows me to orient the camera in any direction.”

While constructing your DIY telescope is one thing, picking out and properly pointing the device at a visible star may be a whole another story. In his IEEE Spectrum recap, Schneider reveals that he used the HD189733 as his focal point, which takes place once every 2.2 days.

As soon as the time arrives, start snapping photos and export them to a computer. Using any number of post-production programs, a Maker can measure the brightness of the star over a period of time. If your star is an exoplanet, you should notice the brightness dips. When it’s over, brightness will return to normal.

“Of course, you can’t just look at the images to see the subtle effects of a transit: There are too many confounding influences, such as changes in the transparency of the atmosphere. And the response of a camera’s imaging sensor is seldom uniform: If the position of the target shifts in the field of view (which is hard to avoid over the course of an evening), the amount of light registered will also change, even if there is no actual change in brightness. To compensate, I used free software called Iris, which allowed me to perform the corrections needed to calculate the brightness of HD 189733, as well as four reference stars.”

While spotting an exoplanet in such fashion a few decades ago would have earned you a Nobel Prize, nowadays it’ll at least garner some admiration from your fellow Maker community! Interested in learning more about this out-of-this world, Atmel powered creation? Watch Schneiders video tutorial below, or head on over to IEEE Spectrum’s entire writeup here.

Paying homage to the “Father of Video Games” Maker style

Sadly, the “Father of Video Games” has passed away at the age of 92. Ralph Baer was a prolific inventor who earned more than 150 patents in his lifetime, in addition to having created the precursor to both Pong and the electronic memory game Simon. The true pioneer went on to develop the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Credited as the the first home gaming console, the Odyssey was battery powered, and featured a controller with two knobs to move horizontally and vertically.

A Maker in every sense of the word, the Father of Video Games’ legacy has surely inspired countless others to pursue their ideas. In fact, we have decided to pay tribute to Baer by compiling some of our favorite video game-inspired DIY projects…

Turning a storefront into a arcade game

Competing in the world’s largest online Mastermind game

Saying goodbye to thumb cramps on 3DS

Playing Tetris on your t-shirt

Modding a speech-controlled Game Boy Advance

Retro gaming with the Magpi

Configuring an 8x8x8 LED cube as a Space Invaders game

Recreating the retro game of Pong

Playing Tekken on a piano

Devising a dead-icated Splatterhouse arcade game

Gaming it up on Gameduino 2

Drawing actual blood every time your character bleeds

Hacking 8-bit chiptunes with this DIY instrument

Playing Doom on a hacked printer

Turning your Moto 360 into a classic 007 smartwatch

Reliving the days of 8-bit gaming with Uzebox

Wearing Tetris on your wrist

Making your own credit-card sized gaming console

Ralph, you will certainly be missed!

This Magic 8-Ball has attitude — and an ATmega32U4

Ah, the Magic 8-Ball. Who could ever forget the hollow plastic sphere that emerged as a pop culture icon dating back to the 1950s? Indeed, a fictional fortune-telling device, it was often used for comedic advice given its inaccurate and otherwise statistically improbable answers.

First developed and manufactured by Mattel, the oversized, black-and-white pool ball provided responses to “yes or no” questions via a 20-sided die floating in dark blue fluid — whichever side that floated to the top was the answer. However, a Maker by the name of “e024576” has put a new spin on the vintage toy, replacing the die and liquid with an OLED display and a FLORA microcontroller (ATmega32U4).

While its exterior is pretty much identical to that of its ancestor, Makers can now edit or add answers of their choosing and are not limited to just 20 outcomes. Simply pick it up, ask a question and turn it over. To much surprise, the ball may have a little more attitude and snarkiness than that of your childhood. Watch it in action below!

Interested in creating a Magic 8-Ball of your own? Roll on over to the project’s official Instructables page here.

Rewind: 13 products inspiring the next generation of Makers

With Computer Science Education Week in full swing and the holidays just around the corner, we’ve decided to list some of our favorite creations from this year that are inspiring the next generation of Makers to not only tinker around, but pursue STEM disciplines.

littleBits

Created by Ayah Bdeir, littleBits was launched with hopes of making DIY hardware accessible to everyone of all ages. While making things with electronics can be a difficult feat, the company’s open-source, modular components easily piece together to form larger circuits. Young Makers can even connect real world ’things’ to the Internet, program IFTTT recipes, and sync it all to an Arduino using its ATmega32U4 powered module.

LocoRobo

Drexel University professor Pramod Abichandani and a team of three undergraduate students recently developed the ATmega32U4 driven LocoRobo, a low-cost robot capable of being wirelessly programmed with minimal to no effort. Born out of his own frustrations with bots, Abichandani aspires to advance programming and robotics education for everyone — from first-graders to more experienced Makers — by combining a world-class programming ecosystem with a high-quality device.

Chibitronics Circuit Stickers Starter Kit

With Chibitronic stickers, young DIYers are able to make nearly any surface glow, sense or interact. An imaginative and simple way to create fun electronics projects, the kit not only allows users to easily affix their circuit sticker to a number of materials, but can even connect conductive materials like copper tape or even conductive paint to create elaborate designs, art project and entertaining birthday cards. What makes Chibitronic unique is its ability to converge the familiarity of stickers with electronic components, such as LEDs, sensor circuits and programmable MCUs (ATtiny85).

MaKey MaKey

Think of MaKey MaKey as an invention kit for the 21st century, which gives young Makers the power to transform ordinary objects into Internet-connected touch pads. Powered by an ATMega32u4 MCU, the MaKey MaKey has been on the scene since Jay Silver successfully funded the project back in 2012, attaining nearly $570,000 in Kickstarter pledges. When a user touches an object that is hooked up to the board via alligator clips, i.e. a banana, a connection is made which sends the computer a keyboard message. In essence, the computer considers MaKey MaKey as a regular keyboard (or mouse), meaning it can work with pretty much all programs and webpages.

Nübi

Developed by UX design from Slice of Lime, Nübi aims to teach basic programming skills to kids of any gender. The creation is described by its creator as an Internet-enabled toy that takes the form of a creature who just arrived on our planet and needs to be taught about everything, from colors to music to temperature. The toy is embedded with a series of sensors that enable it to wirelessly communicate like an RFID chip with other devices in its environment, such as a motion detector or light sensor. Kids use an accompanying flower-like wand, equipped with an [Atmel based] Arduino-controlled RFID reader, to talk to Nübi.

AERobot

A group of Harvard University researchers have developed an $11 tool to educate young Makers on the fundamentals of robotics. Dubbed AERobot (short for Affordable Education Robot), its team hopes that it will one day help inspire more kids to explore STEM disciplines. The bot  can move forward and backward on flat surfaces, turn in place in both directions, detect the direction of incoming light, identify distances using infrared light, as well as following lines and edges. With a megaAVR 8-bit MCU as its brains, most of its other electronic parts were assembled with a pick-and-place machine, and to reduce costs some more, used vibration motors for locomotion and omitted chassis. AERobot is equipped with a built-in USB plug that also allows it to be directly inserted into any computer with a USB port.

ArduSat Space Kit

Ask any classroom of kids what they want to be when they grow up, and undoubtedly a few imaginative youngsters will answer emphatically with “Astronaut!” With that lofty goal in mind, Spire (formerly Nanosatisfi) launched its ArduSat program to bring space exploration to the classroom. ArduSat is the first open satellite platform that enables the general public to design and run applications, games and experiments in space, while also steering onboard cameras to take pictures on-demand. More specifically, ArduSat is designed to give ordinary people – like students  – the chance to conduct experiments by controlling over 25 different integrated sensors including spectrometers, magnetometers, radiation measurement devices, gyroscopes, accelerometers and thermometers. With its space kit, ArduSat is supplying individual classrooms all of the tools they need to carry out space exploration. Each set contains an Arduino Uno (ATmega328), a series of sensors, LEDs, and other components. By linking the sensors to the Arduino, students can measure levels of temperature, luminosity, and magnetic fields. Currently, more than two dozen schools are using ArduSat, with plenty more to follow.

ScratchDuino

While the team may not have been able to garner its $105,000 Kickstarter goal, ScratchDuino is an incredibly customizable and accessible robot-building platform that any young Maker would find helpful in their tinkering endeavors. The educational platform’s ease of use will help foster the robot design process for Makers both young and old. Featuring plastic encased parts designed for extended durability and kid resiliency, ScratchDuino includes two light sensors, two contact sensors, two reflective object sensors, and an infrared eye. At its heart lies an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) programmed with the Scratch language, which was developed by MIT.

XPlorerBoard Student

Recently launched on Kickstarter, the XPlorerBoard Student is described by its creators as a fun and quick way to learn electronic circuits and programming. This revolutionary electronics system easily plugs into a Mac or PC, which enables Makers to run programs on its built-in ATmega328 MCU, which is also preloaded with the Arduino bootloader. The XPlorerBoard’s iPad and Android InventIT application features over 50 inspiring experiments, ranging from motion-activated burglar alarms to ping-pong video games.

Bare Conductive

When you think of painting, electricity isn’t probably the first thing that comes to mind. However, Bare Conductive is changing the game with its ATmega32U4 based Touch Board that lets Makers transform nearly all materials and surfaces into a touch sensor. Simply connect anything conductive to one of its 12 electrodes and trigger a sound via its onboard MP3 player, play a MIDI note or do anything else that you might do with an Arduino or Arduino-compatible device. Meanwhile, Bare Conductive’s Electric Paint — which works with a wide-range of materials from plastic to textiles — provides a great platform for discovering, playing, repairing and designing with electronics.

Pi-Bot

Coming off an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign, Pi-Bot is a uniquely designed and affordable kit for anyone interested in building and programming robots. Designed by the STEM Center USA crew, the hands-on learning platform is based on the versatile ATmega328. 

According to STEM Center USA CEO Melissa Jawaharlal, the team designed the Pi-Bot from the ground up to optimize functionality and ensure affordability to its widespread audience, ranging from students to experienced engineers. The kit currently uses standardized C programming language (specifically meant for its Maker-oriented audience), and offers flexibility with its modular chassis, and line following and ultrasonic distance sensors.

Hummingbird Duo Robotics Kit

BirdBrain Technologies (a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff) recently debuted its Hummingbird Duo, a robotics kit powered by an ATmega32U4. The Duo controller serves as the core of all new Hummingbird kits, with a second Atmel chip, an ATtiny24A, tasked with controlling motors and servos. Part of the fun of constructing a robot with this innovative kit is that it’s building material agnostic, meaning a Maker can anything that may be lying around!

Mirobot

Mirobot – created by Ben Pirt – is an an ATmega328 powered DIY robotic kit designed to help teach children about technology. Not only is the open-source bot fun to build and simple to start programming it to draw shapes, the chassis is laser cut and snaps together quite easily. Once connected to a Wi-Fi network, Makers can browse through its on-board webpage and experience its Scratch-like visual programming tool. In fact, Mirobot can even be be programmed in several different ways, including a web-based GUI which is similar to LOGO, albeit with drag and drop.

Powering a grounded F-16 with ATmega328

As MAKE: Magazine points out, one typically doesn’t use the terms ‘Arduino’ and ‘military hardware’ in the same breath. However, that all changes when there’s a F-16 in need of refurbishment just lying around. Just ask author Craig Hollabaugh, who recently used an ATmega328 to restore an Air Force aircraft for the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History.

“The project itself started with a question of how hard it would be to get the lights working again. Craig had little doubt that this could be done, and, rather than fool with a lot of soldering, decided to design and buy a shield for this purpose. I’m not a fan of melting metal unless it’s absolutely necessary, so I definitely like his style,” MAKE’s Jeremy Cook writes.

Hollabaugh believed that getting the lights functioning once again would be a relatively simple task by employing an Arduino and a shield loaded up with a few MOSFETS.

After coming to that decision, Hollabaugh went on to design the shield — dubbed the Lucky7 board — which consisted of the following:

• 7 high-current (12A max) P-channel high-side MOSFETs with gate drivers (These switches have 30mOhm Rds when on. Each output has an LED indicator. 6 of the outputs are PWM controllable.)
• The shield can operate up to 30VDC and supplies this voltage to the Arduino board
• Two additional LEDs are connected to Arduino pin 8 and 13
• 3 analog inputs: 2 for photocells, 1 for user button
• 1 IR sensor input, such as TSOP38238
• Input voltage sense to Arduino analog input A0
• ATO fuse holder for wire protection in case of shorts to ground
• Hardware design and firmware are released CC-BY-SA

The board doesn’t just blink lights on/off either. As our friends at Hackaday noted, since the Maker is using LEDs, “There isn’t a nice dimming glow typically see turning a normal incandescent light off and on repeatedly.” Subsequently, Hollabaugh modeled the F-16’s original incandescent bulb turn-off characteristics using Newton’s Law of Cooling and the ATmega328’s PWM output.

Once completed, the controller was hidden in the F-16’s empty gatling gun bay along with the solar panel charge controller and 12VDC deep cycle battery.

So, did it work? You betcha! On November 5th, Hollabaugh officially pressed the ‘play’ button on his remote to power on the ATmega328 based lights for the aircraft. Although he’s not entirely sure, the author does thinks that this is the first static F-16 on display with working lights. Regardless, it’s a pretty awesome spectacle at night! See for yourself in the videos below!

Don’t forget to soar on over to Hollabaugh’s official project page for a step-by-step breakdown of his build.

Long exposure photos reveal invisible motions in sports

Canadian photographer Stephen Orlando has introduced a new way to visualize action sports through the use of LED lights and an [Atmel based] Arduino.

The technique reveals beautiful light trails, which are not artificially created using applications like Photopshop, and represents the actual paths of familiar objects. Orlando’s long exposure photos turn repetitive, invisible motions seen in outdoor activities such as kayaking, canoeing, tennis, swimming and soccer into enchanted braids of light. Each sport requires the photographer to fine-tune his technique.

“Similar to streamlines of fluid flow, these images show pathlines of objects. In a single image, the viewer is able to compare different points in space and time,” Orlando tells Wired.

Orlando’s images use programmable strips of blinking LED lights that are capable of changing colors over time. A custom Arduino-based rig enables him to not only program the color and pattern of the LEDs, but accentuate the movements of whatever activity is being captured. In an exposure of 20 or 30 seconds, for instance, the kayak becomes invisible, yet the trail of light left behind as the kayakers paddle gets picked up and transformed into a vibrant light show.

Despite its revolutionary take on photography, Orlando notes that a number of traditional elements are just as imperative as well, including background, framing, and composition. “Without them, they would simply be lines without any context.”

The Waterloo-based photographer has spent a number of years analyzing and measuring fluid flow using various methods. Apparent by his impressive portfolio of work, the various images of neon light skipping across water or running across an open field are truly stunning.

“The shape of the light trails turned out to be what I was expecting. I did a lot of planning for these photos and I plotted out the expected path beforehand. The unexpected result was how visually appealing they are,” Orlando concludes.

Well, safe to say this is one bright idea! Intrigued by the photographer’s work? Feel free to browse through Orlando’s gallery here. Meanwhile, you may also enjoy some further reading on how artists are turning to the Atmel powered ‘duino to bring interactive installations to life — including a Japanese waterfront, a political debate, or even an impressive Nottingham night show.

Artist creates a MIDI-controlled, portable organ

Although it may sound like a pipe organ from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Maker Matthew Steinke has packed all of those tunes into a 4”x13”x14” MIDI-controlled, portable device.

Instead of using pipes and a wind chest typically found in cathedral-esque organs, the toaster-sized device utilizes a combination of electromagnets and steel tines. Impressively, the Tine Organ is capable of producing 20 chromatic notes in full polyphony, starting at middle C, and can be attached to a standard keyboard or a synthesizer smartphone app.

“Each tine is coupled with an electromagnet that outputs PWM at its fundamental pitch. The pull and release of the tine by the magnet causes a sustaining effect. The soundboard under the bridge is mahogany and the body is made of bubinga,” Steinke explains.

An [Atmel based] Arduino unit housed inside the device receives the MIDI input that controls 20 polyphonic software oscillators, which is then sent though a trio of Darlington drivers to the magnets.

Listen to the Maker masterpiece for yourself below!