This DIY railgun can blast projectiles at 560 mph

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Maker David Wirth has created the first-ever portable railgun with the help of 3D printing and Arduino.

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Most commonly associated with the military or NASA, railguns are electromagnetic projectile launchers based on similar principles to the homopolar motor. Instead of relying on gunpowder to propel ammunition, the futuristic blaster uses an electric circuit comprised of three parts: a power source, two parallel conducting rails and a sliding armature.

Well, David Wirth is neither a soldier or a rocket engineer. Instead, he’s simply a Maker who decided to create a Quake-like railgun with the help of 3D printing and some widely available components. The WXPR-1 houses six large capacitors, which weigh 20 pounds altogether, and an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) to monitor the capacitor voltage, amperage, temperature and battery voltage. The entire thing is powered by a 12V LiPo battery that’s stepped up to 1050V using a micro-inverter and a transformer.

What’s more, the WXPR-1 has pressure regulators in its handle. The system draws CO2 from a paintball gun tank into a compressed gas tank in the middle of the railgun. And while it may look like a Super Soaker, this is surely no toy. Wirth’s monstrous gadget is capable of blasting tungsten, aluminum, carbon and even Teflon/plasma at speeds of up to 559 mph, and firing with 1,800 joules of energy per shot. While such velocity can certainly do some damage, keep in mind that the ones being developed by the military can go upwards of 13,000 mph in a matter of 0.2 seconds.

Nevertheless, his demonstrations are pure awesomeness. In the first video, Wirth projects a piece of carbon toward a steel-backed plywood target three feet away, which seems to vaporize in thin air. In his next attempt, the Maker tested an aluminum slug whose impact was clearly visible, leaving a 1/2-inch deep indent.

Intrigued? Watch it in action below, as well as check out Wirth’s entire project here.

1:1 interview with Tristan Bel of NYDesigns

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“There’s no better place for hardware prototyping and building in New York City.” 

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We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Executive Director Tristan Bel from Long Island-based NYDesigns to discuss how his company is helping Makers get from the MakerSpace to MarketPlace. In our 1:1 conversation, we also addressed how NYDesigns and Atmel can jointly help do-it-yourselfers get from the lab to the fab. You can find our entire interview below!

Atmel: Tristan, can you tell us what NYDesigns does and how it fits into the MakerSpace to MarketPlace theme that we’ve been promoting for the last year?

Tristan Bel: NYDesigns is dedicated to the success of design and hardware tech startups in NYC. Companies in our incubator get three years of private studio space and access to a network of mentors and advisers. Makers can prototype their design ideas in our safe, secure 5,000-sq-ft fabrication lab. We also produce events and programs for a thriving community of creators and innovators.

Our purpose is help entrepreneurs turn an idea into a product and coach them through every growth stage; that clearly resonates with the MakerSpace to MarketPlace initiative. One never knows where the next good idea will come from, and more importantly, who will have the skills and stamina to lead it through to a viable company.

Atmel: What was the model behind opening NYDesigns in the middle of one of the most expensive areas in America?

TB: We opened in 2006 as an initiative of LaGuardia Community College to promote NYC’s economic development after 9/11, so we existed before incubators were cool and numerous. NYC is teaming up with people with ideas. The density of the city naturally favors connections and exchanges. It is also the home of many headquarters of large corporations that can become clients or partners. In my opinion, that mix is one of the main reasons why tech entrepreneurship here is catching up with Silicon Valley.

Software startups tend to congregate around Union Square. Hardware startups need more space, and still benefit significantly from our proximity to Manhattan — that’s why our large studios, which are located in Long Island City just 15 minutes away from Midtown and are more affordable than other spaces even in the neighborhood, are so attractive to cash-strapped young companies.

Atmel: We understand you attended the World Maker Faire New York back in September? Are there any key findings you can share with us?

TB: It’s inspiring to see hobbyists of all ages gathered around making. I was impressed by the amount of resources available to anyone with an idea, and how inexpensive these are becoming. Prototypes that required a team a highly skilled engineers and specialized equipment can now be made by a couple of passionate techies on their time off. That opens up so many possibilities!

Atmel: With so many Makerspaces popping up around the United States, let alone the world, why would a Maker go to NYDesigns versus a local Makerspace?

TB: If you want to start a company in the design or hardware tech industry, it’ll be hard to find a beautiful space with amenities, close to Manhattan, and open 24/7 (the lab is open during regular business hours) as affordable as NYDesigns. You’ll have the 5,000-square-foot fabrication lab in the same building, and be part of a community that will help you grow and overcome the obstacles you’ll inevitably be encountering.

If you are a tinkerer or simply need good fabrication resources, the NYDesigns FabLab is equipped with an array of tools both analog and digital, including traditional hand and power tools, a vacuum former, an FDM rapid prototyper, and a large format industrial laser cutter.

Atmel: How can Atmel partner with NYDesigns to help Makers get from the lab to the fab?

TB: Actually, this is great timing! We are about to start a series of workshops around Arduino for tinkerers; we’d love for you to spread the word. Also, we are expanding our development tools for AVR and ARM development. For example, resident companies Vengo, which designs and manages high-tech vending machines, BotFactory, which makes a desktop electronics-circuit printer with conducting ink, and Boston Biomotion, which is developing an intelligent rehab and sports performance device straight out of the MIT lab, would all greatly benefit from such a partnership.

Lastly, we have large spaces within our walls in Long Island City in which we regularly host events related to entrepreneurship, hardware technology, and design. We’re happy to hold joint events or make that space available to the MakerSpace community.

Atmel: Is there anything else our Maker audience should know about NYDesigns?

TB: There’s no better place for hardware prototyping and building in NYC. Email info@nydesigns.org or call us at 718.663.8404 — we’d love to meet you and show you our space. Come build your side project or your company!

This robotic guitar can strum itself

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Guitarduino?

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For those of us who’ve always wanted to shred like Hendrix, B. B. King or John Mayer but lacked the necessary skill and know-how, Giuseppe Pilla has come up with the perfect solution. As seen on display at Maker Faire Rome, the Maker has built a fully-automated, acoustic guitar-playing robot.

Impressively, the music-making machine is capable of playing tracks ranging from Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” to Leonard Cohen’s “Allelujah,” to “Jessica” by the Allman Borthers. To get started, a user first selects a song on an Android smartphone. Commands from the device are transmitted over Bluetooth to an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560), where they are then decoded, processed and matched up to one of the tracks already stored in the robot’s memory. This provides the actuators (motor steppers and servo motors) with all of the necessary instructions to begin strumming.

The guitar itself is placed horizontally on a smooth and even surface where handcrafted supports keep the various actuators mounted in place. Each servo motor is equipped with a pick allowing it to pluck away with precision, while six stepper motors located near the handle are used to correspond to a note. The motors, drivers and switches are all powered by the Arduino.

As to why we didn’t come across this project any sooner, we have no clue. But boy, are we glad we stumbled upon this at Maker Faire Rome! See it in action for yourself below.

This 3D-printed RC car can go 100 mph

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With his sights set on the world record, this Maker created a 3D-printed, remote-controlled car that can go over 100 mph.

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Like most of us, James Beswick has a hobby. That interest pertains to the building and racing of remote-controlled cars. But we’re not talking about just any RC vehicle. In fact, the British Maker has designed and 3D-printed one that’s capable of achieving speeds over 100 mph. And while that may sound pretty darn fast to many, the world record for ground speed is actually 202.02 mph, a benchmark Beswick has set out to break.

Thanks to 3D printing, the Maker says the entire construction process became much faster, easier and more efficient. Beswick employed the help of an Ultimaker 2 Extended, which he used to create the car’s four-foot-long body out of a PLA/PHA blend filament for shock absorption and robustness, as well as its rear wing, servo holders, controller mounts, battery and cable clamps, and absorbers for the electronics.

So why go with 3D printing? Not only did the Ultimaker’s build volume provide a printing surface suitable for the car’s dimensions, its open filament system allowed him to experiment with a combination of different materials for his design. According to Beswick, the technology enabled him to make the RC vehicle in more unique shapes, comprised of less pieces with less seams, which made it more aerodynamic.

“I’ve learnt through testing that stones at high speed versus PLA are a deadly mix, so in the next version of the body I’ll be printing I’ll be addressing a few weak spots,” he explains. “The current R/C world record has very recently been set at 202 miles per hour and I won’t be stopping with the development of my project until I can go faster.”

You can learn all about his story, the vehicle and the entire process in his recent interview Ultimaker below.

[Images: Ultimaker]

Readybox may be the world’s fastest consumer 3D printer

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This desktop 3D printer can extrude six times faster than existing 3D printers without any risk of clogging.

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Readybox is a super speedy 3D printer reportedly capable of spitting out objects six times faster than other leading consumer 3D printers.

The brainchild of University of Maryland engineering student Brett Potter, the ReadyBox was born out of his own frustrations with the lack of quality in most user-friendly devices. He discovered that although many of these printers are affordable, they aren’t always so reliable. Constant malfunctioning leads to ongoing maintenance and new parts, none of which are cheap. Making matters worse, the speeds associated with such 3D printers generally run on the slow side of the spectrum — not great for when time is of the essence. So as any Maker would do, Potter decided to build a unit of his own that fully satisfied his appetite and met each of his demands.

“Our dream is to push the 3D printing industry forward to the point where 3D printing is a truly household technology. In order for this to happen, consumer 3D printers need to be as fast and as reliable as the industrial printers currently on the market. Readybox is designed to be the next step in achieving this goal,” Potter shares.

As the Maker explains, a majority of 3D printer movement systems max out at around 200-250mm/second, often restricted by friction and the heaviness of its own components. Not to mention, even if a printer can overcome these obstacles and its speed, it is then limited by extrusion as most extruder motors can only apply a certain amount of force to plastic filament before the filament breaks or the motor stalls.

Thanks to Potter’s patent-pending extrusion system, Readybox is able to avoid these constant hurdles and to apply significantly more force to the plastic. This eliminates clogging and enables the filament to flow faster than previously thought possible. This means that, although Readybox uses a larger 0.6mm nozzle, it can move at speeds much faster than existing machines on the market — we’re talking up 400mm/seconds and layers between 50 and 450 microns thick. To put things into perspective, models that would normally require upwards of 20 hours on other gadgets takes less than three hours on ReadyBox.

And not only can it produce objects with incredibly great detail, its impressive build volume allows it to take full advantage of its high speed. Designed to provide users with a professional-grade service on their desktop, Readybox will automatically calibrate itself, level its heated build plate and clean its nozzle before going on to the next job, thereby ensuring that every print is as accurate as the first. These features, coupled with the clog-free extrusion system, eradicate the most commonly experienced problems seen with other consumer printers.

In terms of electronics, ReadyBox boasts a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 core and an easy-to-use LCD screen with SD card support so that it can print by itself, even when a PC isn’t present. Additional specs include:

• Printer size: 550cm by 55cm by 56cm (21.5” x 21.5” x 22”)
• Print area: 33cm x 33cm x 33cm (13” x 13” x 13”)
• Layer thickness: 0.05mm (50 microns) to 0.4mm (400 microns)
• Top print speed: 400mm/second at 0.05mm layer thickness
• Travel speed: up to 700mm/second
• Nozzle: 0.6mm
• Filament: PLA (2.85mm or 3mm)

Ready for faster prints without sacrificing quality? Head over to Readybox’s Kickstarter campaign, where Potter and his team are currently seeking $12,500. Delivery is projected for next spring.

These smart shoes will improve your morning jog

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These Arduino Gemma-based sneakers will make your run more fun with less injuries! 

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Like 75% of runners, Maker Lisa Kusaka is an avid jogger, but doesn’t enjoy it so much without her extensive playlist of music. One day, she noticed that certain songs seemed to suit her pace better than others, becoming a natural and entertaining pace keeper. With this in mind, RunBeat was born.

Developed while at SLEM (an international innovation and education institute for footwear located in the Netherlands), it is a smart insole that measures your running pace and generates music with the same beats per minute to match your stride. The system consists of a pressure sensor embedded into the insole beneath the ball of the foot to promote proper running form. The sensor reads the impact of each step and sends the data over to an Arduino Gemma (ATtiny85) located in the shoe’s arch.

This pace data is also transmitted to an accompanying mobile app via Bluetooth. This app then selects the tunes based on the preferred genre and the current running pace. What’s nice is that, since all of the technology is located in a 3D-printed insole and not the sneaker itself, RunBeat is compatible with just about every running shoe on the market.

On top of that, fellow SLEM classmate Chrissy Glove recently came up with an idea to improve the running experience as well. This time, instead of pairing beats to stride, the maker wanted to create a wearable device that would help improve form. Having dealt with injuries throughout her own career, she was well aware as to how imperative injury prevention is to any runner. So, she decided to develop a smart sneaker that would detect improper form in three ways: by recognizing when a runner’s gait differed from their norm, suggesting a forefoot foot strike and detecting the precise location of an injury when one strikes.

The aptly named Strike features a side lacing system to relieve pressure from the tendons on the top of the foot, while Adafruit NeoPixel lights allow for nighttime safety and easy notification. Glove attached an Velostat sensor in the heel pad to an Arduino Gemma (ATtiny85) and a piezo buzzer. These electronics, along with a battery, are all enclosed inside a 3D-printed insole.

The Maker wrote some code that would read the pressure sensor as input, and in turn produce a different effect with the LEDs and piezo buzzer accordingly. For example, when the runner strikes with their heel, they will feel a buzz to alert them so they can modify their footstrike to be more forefoot. Additionally, the shoe records the wearer’s normal foot strike pattern and stores it in its internal memory. This way, should the runner happen to stray away from his or her natural gait, they will be warned in similar fashion.

Beyond that, Glove included electrodes in the shoe that could read the nerve endings on the bottom of the runner’s foot. As a precaution should they get hurt, Strike can better determine the exact location of the injury by buzzing in a varying sequence and illuminating the red LEDs.

Creating a custom, self-learning TV remote

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Reminiscent of the seven-function remotes of yesterday, this Maker built a barebones controller for the elderly.

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While on the topic of slick remotes, we couldn’t help but share another one. This time, it’s not from a high-end brand of smart home devices; rather, it’s from no other than the Maker community. You see, Hari Wiguna’s 90-year-old father found himself having trouble pressing those darn little buttons on his TV clicker. So, doing what any DIY spirited individual would do, Wiguna decided to build his dad a custom controller with only a few key buttons.

To create this minimalistic unit, the Maker mounted an ATmega328 and several of its other components onto a stripboard, which he then housed inside a laser-cut acrylic case. The barebones gadget features an IR transmitter and receiver, an FTDI jack for reprogramming, a switch to select whether it’s in use or being programmed, an LED, and a beeper for additional feedback.

As eluded to above, the controller is equipped with only the buttons necessary for the most frequently used functions, including power, channel up and down, volume up and down, and a directional pad. Each one can be programmed by simply pointing an original remote to this DIY self-learning unit. Come to think of it, many old-school clickers only had seven buttons anyways.

Perhaps one of, if not, the most interesting aspects of the project was that Wiguna lived thousands of miles away from his father, so he didn’t have the original remote on hand to do the programming. Fortunately, he found an emulating Android app that allowed him to mimic his dad’s cable box and TV remote, basically giving him a duplicate copy right at home. This enabled the new remote to learn from the other remote, which this case was actually the smartphone.

Not only can you find a breakdown of the project along with its source code and schematics here, you can watch the Maker give a detailed overview in the video below!

Building a robotic bed with Arduino

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Self-driving cars? How about an autonomous bed instead? 

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Randy Sarafan over at the Instructables Design Studio has created a robotic social bed that seeks out people and makes new friends along the way.

You can think of it as an autonomous vehicle, just in the form of a queen-sized bed. Bedfellow is more than a futuristic piece of furniture, it’s capable of achieving some pretty impressive high speeds and sustaining 8 horsepower of force with peaks of 25 horsepower. Not to mention, the bed has quite a bit of torque behind it as well, having carried up to at least 12 people at once without ever slowing down.

Thanks to its wooden torsion frame box frame and sturdy central drive column, Bedfellow has been made to support up to 3,000 pounds. Additionally, the outer casters have springs to absorb some of the shock and account for uneven surfaces. The Maker does note, though, that there really isn’t any sort of suspension, so taking it outdoors may not be the best idea. There are also two drive wheels located underneath the bed, aligned in such a way that it can turn on point like a tank, along with a pair of high-powered DC motors, two Alltrax motor controllers and a 20:1 gear reducer.

“My specific model is capable of handling up to 400 amps. In the motor control circuit there is also a solenoid for engaging the power, and a reverse contactor for reversing motor direction. Each motor has its own separate drive circuit and battery bank,” Sarafan explains. “Currently, the drive system is operating at 24V, but I can be boosted to 48V for increased speed. However, traveling any faster than it is currently capable is likely not a good idea. There are also two chargers for each battery bank onboard.”

Bedfellow is built around the mighty Arduino Mega (ATmega2560), which reads 12 ultrasonic sensors and interfaces with the Alltrax motor controllers. How the system itself works is fairly simple: the bed picks a random direction to move, checks to see if there is anything in the way, and begins to move if all clear. If there happens be an object in the way, it will randomly choose another direction and try again. There are four safety bumpers which are linked to the Arduino using interrupts. If they’re hit, Bedfellow immediately stops in its place and restarts its routine.

Keep in mind, this project was admittedly done for sheer entertainment value and as a way to motivate Makers to go build something that’s fun, exciting and somewhat out of the ordinary. Sarafan explains, “Before you flood a thousand discussion boards talking about how pointless these instructions are, I just want to point out that I get it. No one is likely ever going to recreate this and, even if they wanted to, they probably don’t have access to all of the tools necessary to easily do so. This project uses a ton of expensive parts, is designed around a discontinued IKEA bed frame, takes forever to make, is largely cost prohibitive, and does not make sense to many highly rational individuals.”

Putting rationality aside, this would make for one heck of a bed racing vehicle! Intrigued? Check out the Maker’s exhaustive, 74-step breakdown of the build here…

Okay, now everyone hop on!

moodLight is a smart box that displays real-time emotion

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moodLight is a Wi-Fi-connected desk lamp that illustrates the mood of the online world with beautiful twists of color.

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It’s safe to say that social media has not only revolutionized the journalistic landscape, but the way in which we gather news, events, gossip and other share-worthy content. However, wouldn’t it be cool if you could actually see how the world responded to such information? That is exactly what Connor Nishijima set out to accomplish with moodLight — a three-inch tall, USB-powered smart lamp that beautifully shines a spectrum of colors based on the emotion of Twitter users.

To bring this to reality, the Maker collates a sampling of experimental social data from all over the globe and displays that deep connection in the form of nine LEDs. The gadget works by sifting through millions of tweets each day and checking them for several dozen keywords tied to one of six emotions: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear. These emotions are graphed in real-time, placed on a server, downloaded by the moodLight and then translated into colors that are shown in the form of RGB LEDs inside a laser-cut box.

“For example, ‘I am so proud of my son for getting his degree! I’m going to miss him at home,’” Nishijima explains. “This tweet contains the word ‘proud’ (Joy > Pride > ‘proud’) and the phrase ‘miss him’ (Sadness > Loss > ‘miss him/her/you/them’) making it a bittersweet tweet of both joy and sadness. These emotions would result in a twist of goldenrod and cyan in your lamp.”

The system keeps a weighted moving average of each emotion’s tweet count per minute and uses this to build a sort of baseline average for each feeling. From there, it compares the most recent minute’s data to the average to deliver a percentage value.

In terms of hardware, moodLight is equipped with an ATmega328P at its core along with WS2812B LEDs and an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module that the lamp uses to make GET requests to the moodLighting website every second. While the VPS backend running the service consumes many gigabytes of data per day, it shrinks this content down into 25-byte summaries that the lamp consumes in one-second intervals. Impressively, this amounts to only 2.16MB of data consumed daily — which ends up being smaller than the size of an MP3.

The tabletop lamp can also be integrated with IFTTT, thereby opening up endless possibilities from serving as a basic notification portal to turning on a WeMo bulb or dialing your Nest thermostat to different temperatures based on a particular social media status update. For instance, you can define various combinations of colors for various alerts: flash red twice for an incoming email, blink brown and fade to blue for a UPS package delivery, or emit green if a Fitbit goal is achieved.

What’s more, each moodLight is controllable over UDP packets, making it easy to set your own color combinations. By sending packets very similar to the mood summaries above, you can change the hue of one or more of the nine pixels, set a global brightness level, put the lamp to sleep or wake it up, or stream color data at 30+ FPS, to name just a few. As its creators note, this essentially gives you the functionality of a Philips Hue or LiFX smart bulb.

Looking for new way to stay connected with news? Head over to the moodLight’s Kickstarter campaign, where Nishijima has blown past his $935 goal. Delivery is slated for early next year.

This cyberpunk wearable projects video graffiti onto walls

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VIDEOBLΛST_R is a wearable projection device used for mapping eight prepared audiovisual pieces.

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Spray-painted graffiti is so 2014. Just ask media artist R▲, who has developed a wearable projection device that enables users to map eight prepared audiovisual pieces in dynamic outdoor conditions. And the best part, it doesn’t leave a mess nor any trace of vandalism whatsoever.

Dubbed VIDEOBLΛST_R, the entire system is mounted onto a rollerblade wrist guard which goes around the forearm to make for quite the cyberpunk fashion statement. The wearable is comprised of eight vector graphics animated with Processing, which are accompanied by sound samples from a Cwejman S1 modular synthesizer. According to R▲, some of the visuals involved 3D animation, analog signal degradation and data bending techniques.

This GIF-like artwork is triggered by pressing buttons on a Nintendo Wii Nunchuk controller, connected to an Arduino Uno (ATmega328). The button mappings are all processed with the ArduinoNunchuk library and transferred via USB Serial to a Raspberry Pi 2 running the Processing environment. From there, video and audio signal output is sent to a Optoma PK-320 projector via an HDMI cord and voilà! The images can then be displayed on a variety of objects and surfaces, ranging from the walls of buildings to the bottom of fire escapes. The entire gadget is powered by 5V DC battery housed inside an iPhone band worn on the upper arm.

Intrigued? Head over to the R▲’s official page here, and be sure to see it in action below!