This AVR powered device makes growing veggies at home easier

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Meet HUI! — the virtual garden assistant that’ll help your garden thrive with real-time environment condition updates and care instructions.

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In the movement towards a more green and sustainable future, urban farming has become a growing trend in cities. However, these environments differ greatly from that of farm land tended by skilled farmers, and not everyone has the green thumb when it comes to gardening and plant care. The team at Grow&Help sought to solve this problem by creating a smart device that would alleviate the headache of maintaining healthy plants.

GROW & HELP — a company that aims to promote urban farming and sustainable agriculture projects — acknowledged the difficult task of growing plants, and created a technology to inform people on what soil and temperature, and the amount of sunshine and water that certain plants need to thrive. With HUI!, short for Intelligent Urban Garden or “Huerto Urbano Inteligente,” urban farmers can skip the grocery store and grow their own produce for a price as low as $50.

HUI! is a weatherproof, intelligent device, with a minimalist design, that’s simply placed into the soil. Its accompanying mobile app will indicate which plant(s) you are growing, and will send you daily updates and best practices for care, (maximum/minimum temperatures, daylight hours, water, etc.) and alerts if the plant needs attention. As mentioned before, urban environments differ greatly, so HUI! can also identify what plants and vegetables thrive best in your area at different seasons of the year. Ideally, the gadget would be installed in the place where you want to grow (garden, planter box, or pot), and after 24 hours, it will precisely measure the environmental parameters and inform you in real-time.

At the heart of the unit lies an ATmega328 along with a series of light, temperature and soil moisture sensors. With its Wi-Fi integration and the app’s artificial intelligence techniques, HUI! utilizes the knowledge of farmers and other users’ input, and pulls from a database of information to better serve your urban garden. The device has been developed with Natural Language Processing algorithms to be a voice-controlled assistant that answers specific questions about growing vegetables. For example, you can ask HUI! how to cultivate vegetables ideal for your environmental conditions, or for it to show you vegetables to fit your preferred dietary needs. If you start to see discoloration in your plant’s leaves, HUI! can even diagnose the problem and present solutions.

Are you ready to take on urban gardening on your balcony, terrace or even inside your home? Head over to HUI!’s Kickstarter page, where the GROW & HELP team is currently seeking $3,134. Preorders will be delivered as soon as December 2015. Single units are available, as well as bundles if you want to plant vegetables at your restaurant, office or greenhouse.

The Eleven is an open source desktop 3D printer

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The Eleven is an affordable 3D printer with a large build area and high precision. 

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Developed by Canadian startup ISG3D, the Eleven is a hackable desktop 3D printer with an open-air design. Boasting an impressive build envelope of 22cm x 40cm x 40cm, the machine is capable of creating decently-sized objects in a variety of filaments like PLA, ABS, Nylon and NinjaFlex.

Inspired by the Prusa i3 and based on RepRap mechanics, the newly-revealed gadget was built specifically with Makers in mind, not to mention hackers thanks to its open source nature. Its stripped down composition provides users with the ability to make improvements of their own, and customize it to their liking.

What’s more, the Eleven features a sleek open-air body, resembling that of the Prusa, and can easily fit on any desktop or workbench without taking up too much space. The printer is equipped with a heated bed, a user-friendly LCD screen for menu navigation, a resolution of up to 100 microns, and can precisely extrude layers as thin as 0.1mm. With a print speed of up to 100mm/second, objects can be spit out relatively quickly with a great degree of accuracy. In terms of hardware, the desktop device is driven by the mighty combination of an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560) and RAMPS 1.4 along with a set of NEMA 17 stepper motors, and runs Repetier Host software.

The Eleven’s simple design makes it convenient to swap out filament spools, accessible for quick repairs or tune-ups, and pretty portable with a weight of roughly 30 pounds. Meanwhile, its frame is comprised mostly of aluminum, which offers enhanced stability and reliability during a print job. Plus, to give the gadget a little personality, the team has even added a series of LEDs that lets users choose from up to 15 colors and for different effects.

• Printer size: 33cm x 60cm x 60cm
• Build volume: 22cm x 40cm x 40cm
• Layer resolution: <100microns
• Nozzle: 0.4mm
• Filament: PLA, ABS, Nylon (1.75mm)
• Print speed: 100mm/s
• Power supply: 240W
• Connectivity: USB
• OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
• Software: Repetier

Sound like a 3D printer you’d like to have in your Makerspace? Head over to its Kickstarter page, where ISG3D is currently seeking $8,402. The first batch of units is expected to ship in February 2016.

This artist turns celebrity tweets into psychedelic art

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With the help of Arduino and LEDs, this Maker combines analog and digital tech to convert tweets into vibrant light shows. 

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Today, it seems like just about every celebrity has a Twitter account. Whenever big names like Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus send out a post, not only do they receive thousands of retweets, they become an instant trending topic. Interestingly enough, artist Lori Hepner has taken their updates one step further by photographing them. Wait, what? You heard that correctly, she transforms their 140-character rants into psychedelic images.

@KimKardashian 4:06 PM – 1 Sep 2015
September Selfie Cover of @interviewmag #InterviewGang

As part of a series she calls Status Symbols, the Maker combines analog and digital tech to convert the tweets into an actual physical object, which she then photographs to create vibrant, circular shapes. Hepner’s Twitter portraits can best be described as a visual manifestation of celebrities’ fragmented thoughts — an exploration that recognizes the online musings of cultural icons and ultimately studies identity in the era of social media.

The idea for such an eccentric project came about nearly six years ago, after obtaining her first Arduino board and programming it to make eight spinning LEDs flash based on the binary code within a tweet. According to WIRED, a hashtag is red, the @ symbol is orange and quotes are purple. Every word becomes a random color in the light show. From there, Hepner uses a medium format camera to capture long exposures.

“I wanted to leave some of it to chance, but the patterns of language and the inherent patterns of the binary code come through. In my brain, I saw them as circular and presented in a way that you can’t undo the code, you can’t extract it,” the artist tells the magazine.

Intrigued? You can browse through her entire portfolio of Twitter portraits here. You’d be surprised. Even some of the most mundane, accidental pocket tweets translate into beautiful imagery… Right, Lady Gaga?

[h/t WIRED]

The Gizmos and Gadgets Kit is the ultimate Maker’s toolbox

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littleBits has launched a new kit that enables young Makers to build a wide range of new DIY projects.

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Over the last four years, littleBits has transcended from just a small New York-based startup into one of the most monumental names empowering the Maker Movement. During this time, the team has launched over 70 tiny, modular Bits and 13 exciting kits, many of which powered by Atmel MCUs.

After receiving some feedback from customers, littleBits realized that its existing kits may not have been intuitive enough for beginners, nor did it have enough components to keep young Makers interested with ‘replayability.’ Cognizant of that, they have unveiled a brand-spankin’ new Gizmos & Gadgets Kit that promises to deliver an enhanced experience that’ll enable users to bring their ideas to life in ways like never before.

This complete invention toolbox is packed with everything you could possibly need to build one of 12 interactive devices with easy, step-by-step instructions, as well as thousands of others available online and through the accompanying littleBits app. In total, the kit comes with 15 electronic building blocks including a light sensor, slide dimmers, a power module, a bargraph, electric motors, wheels, a wireless receiver and transmitter, and all the cables necessary to start making remote-controlled cars, bubble blowing machines, arcade games, and even mischief systems for spooking friends and family.

“The pride of inventing something is addictive, and it stays with you for life,” CEO and founder Ayah Bdeir explains. “The littleBits Gizmos & Gadgets Kit provides kids, and creative people of all ages, the roadmap to invent amazing devices with an easy­to­follow guide. But the beauty of the kit is that once the training wheels come off and people feel comfortable with the tools, people can invent virtually anything they imagine.”

Intrigued? Head over to littleBits’ page here to get a kit of your own.

Napz is a biohacking device that lets you control your dreams

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This wearable mask wants to make lucid dreams accessible to everyone. 

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For many of us, getting a full night’s of shut-eye is quite the challenge. Between stress, late nights at the office, the kids or simply finding yourself unable to doze off makes getting the desired six to eight hours of sleep nearly impossible. But what if there was a wearable device that could help you get the most of out your limited time catching z’s?

That’s the idea behind Napz — an electronic, biohacking sleep mask designed to not only help you hit the hay but to induce a state of lucid dreams as well. This is the state where sleepers are aware that they are, in fact, dreaming and can control many elements of what happens during their nocturnal experience.

Developed by COCOLAB robotic engineer Octavio Martinez García, the prototype is meant to measure REM using LED lights that shine through the eyelids to stimulate you and bring you to the brink of consciousness where you can actually become mindful of the actions in your sleep. The wearable itself is comprised of infrared sensors, Adafruit NePixels and an Arduino Lilypad (ATmega328) for its brain.

“Napz is a wearable device intended to schedule lucid dreams and thus produce actual rest and better patterns of REM sleep. Its interface allows the programming, design, and analysis of dreams. As everybody is different the device needs to be calibrated to each individual,” Garcia explains.

Dream manipulation is a method commonly used to assist those who suffer insomnia, severe nightmares, PTSD and other sleep disorders. The idea is that, with Napz, users will be able to access controlled dreams much quicker and without the many hours of training typically required.

Napz was recently showcased at V&A’s Digital Design Weekend.

[Images: British Council Creative Economy]

Artist releases his EP as a tiny circuit board

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One artist has released a set of EPs as a circuit boards that generate and play tracks in real-time.

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Whereas some musicians will throw a hidden track or two in their albums, Norwegian artist Captain Credible has taken that a step further by releasing a series of EPs that are actually printed circuit boards capable of composing and playings songs in real-time.

The Dead Cats EPs (don’t mind the name) are based on an ATtiny85 along with Captain Credible’s Arduino sketches. Not only will the boards come with a downloadable set of five songs for each respective EP, but the final track is generated through a special code that’s used as input for a complex algorithm running on the tinyAVR. The result? A unique and seemingly infinite 8-bit beat.

Aside from the ATtiny85 at its core, the board is fairly simple with a CR2032 button cell battery, three resistors, an LED and a power switch embedded inside its audio socket. A user simply plugs their headphones into the 3.5mm jack to begin playing, or unplugs and reinserts their buds to restart the pretty much never-ending tune.

“The code fills an array with a melody, and a few others with drum patterns. Using a randomly selected key, time signature, subdivisions for individual notes and tempo. It then proceeds to play the melody and drum sequences while occasionally switching out notes, subdivisions and percussion sounds and sequences,” Captain Credible writes. “It also inserts ‘drum breaks’ and occasionally goes into ‘free jazz mode’ where it comes up with random ‘one liner sound generating algorithms.’”

Following the release of his third EP, the prototyping board will be made available for others to enjoy. Those who don’t feel like waiting can also build their own. Although it may not the most usual or euphonic video you’ll ever see, you can get a glimpse of it in action below!

8 out of the 10 Hackaday Prize finalists are powered by Atmel

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Hackaday reveals the 10 finalists who are one step closer to a trip into space or some big bucks.

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One simple idea can make a difference, but together we Makers can change the world. That was the premise behind this year’s Hackaday Prize, which encouraged participants to build something that matters.

As our friends at Hackaday explain:

“The problems that these projects tackle come from many different angles. Some improve safety in extreme situations by giving emergency workers the ability to detect the presence of dangerous gases, or by helping to find unexploded munitions in war-torn areas. Others make improvements in transportation by working on transportation where infrastructure is poor, and looking toward the future of electric vehicle transportation. There are projects that tackle pollution through monitoring and also by scrubbing pollutants from indoor air. Improvements in wheelchair mobility and advancements in prosthetics can transform the lives of people living with loss of function. And feeding the world can start with more automated farming options, and becoming more efficient with farming methods. These are the problems the finalists have chosen to solve with their entries.”

Now, the pool of 100 semi-finalists has been narrowed down to 10 finalists who are one step closer to walking (or flying) away with the grand prize of a trip into space or $196,883. Plus, four others will claim top prizes each valued between $5,000-$10,000. These winners will all be revealed at the Hackaday SuperConference in San Francisco on November 14th and 15th.

And guess what? There’s a pretty good chance that this year’s winner will have Atmel inside… again. We can’t say that we’re too surprised either, as eight of the last 10 are embedded with AVR or Atmel | SMART MCUs. Here they are…

FarmBot

This open source, automated precision farming machine and software package is designed for small-scale precision food production. Similar to 3D printers and CNC mills, FarmBot’s hardware employs linear guides in the X, Y, and Z directions that allow for tools, such as plows, seed injectors, watering nozzles and sensors, to be precisely positioned and used on the plants and soil. The unit itself is controlled by an Arduino Mega (ATmega2560) + RAMPS stack and a Raspberry Pi 2.

Eye Controlled Wheelchair

The Eyedrivomatic system takes advantage of existing eye tracking technology to enable those who have lost the use of their muscles to operate their own wheelchairs. The system is comprised of a wheelchair-mounted computer running an accompanying app and software, which is connected to a 3D-printed, Arduino Uno (ATmega328) brain box. This command center receives and inteprets the program’s requests and controls a pair of servos that drive an electronic hand to move a joystick in the user’s desired location.

Gas Sensor For Emergency Workers

Designed primarily for emergency response workers, these ‘grenade-like’ sensors can be thrown into dangerous areas to remotely report levels using their voice. With an Arduino Nano (ATmega328) at its core, each ball-shaped gadget is equipped with smoke, liquified petroleum gas and carbon monoxide sensors along with an inexpensive 433MHz transmitter for communication with any basic radio inside the potentially hazardous space.

LUKA EV

The problem that LUKA is attempting to solve is a big one. Mindful that internal combustion engine cars pump billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere each year, this group of Makers hopes to provide an open source platform that’ll unlock the possibility for cost-competitive, all-electric automobiles to be built and sold locally, on a global scale. This electric vehicle is capable of achieving top speeds of around 80mph and a range of over 185 miles. Although the concept of an EV is far from new, using hub motors to power it isn’t so ordinary. What’s more, this project will introduce a revolutionary technology to the production line, reducing weight and eliminating a great deal of unnecessary parts along the way. LUKA will also help in energy storage, as your home can power LUKA or vice versa.

Portable Environmental Sensor

The uRADMonitor is able to detect pollutants in the air that otherwise go unnoticeable, ranging from toxic chemicals to radioactive dust or radon. Packed with an array of powerful sensors and an ATmega128, this handheld battery-operated device connects to the Internet via an embedded Wi-Fi module and shares readings to its global network. The online data is then used to build graph, track stats and send automated notifications when certain thresholds are reached.

Light Electric Utility Vehicle

Transportation is major issue in the developing world due to its lacking physical infrastructure, and unfortunately, off-road SUVs are outside the means of the average person. In an effort to make them more accessible to everyone, this light electric utility vehicle is capable of battling harsh environments and rugged terrain. The basic design of the vehicle is made of locally sourced components, and features a frame that can rotate at the point of articulation so that all four wheels are in constant contact with the ground. Steering is accomplished by differential motor control, while each wheel is powered by a single PMDC geared motor via a chain drive. Power comes from two large tubular gel batteries which are charged by solar panels. System control is accomplished by two Arduino Pro Minis (ATmega328) — the first handles the motor controller, the other monitors the current.

OpenBionics

OpenBionics is an open source initiative for the development of affordable, lightweight prosthetic hands that can be easily reproduced using off-the-shelf materials and rapid prototyping techniques such as 3D printing. The fingers are constructed out of Plexiglas with silicone knuckles that are flexed by tendon cables running in sheaths and extended by energy stored in elastomeric material along their dorsal aspects. Each finger can be selectively locked in place using a differential based on the whiffletree mechanism, resulting in 16 combinations of finger positions with only a single motor. Combined with nine unique thumb positions, 144 unique grasp are possible with the prosthetic hand. Meanwhile, electronics are provided by an embedded Arduino Pro Micro (ATmega32U4).

Vinduino

Given the water crises affecting California, wine growers are in need of low-cost, customizable and easy-to-maintain soil moisture monitoring systems. As luck may have it, Vinduino is an accessible measurement tool for irrigation management that isn’t just ideal for cutting irrigation costs for vineyard owners, it can be just as useful for a wide range of other agricultural applications, science class experiments or even to reduce the H2O consumption of your backyard sprinklers. The system consists of moisture sensors, an Arduino handheld device for taking sensor readings, and a series of irrigation valves, water pressure sensors and data loggers for managing the irrigation system.

Congratulations to all of the 2015 Hackaday Prize finalists, especially those using our chips! As we await next month’s announcement, head over to the contest’s official writeup to see more.

This glove can translate sign language into text and audio

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Maker designs a smart glove that translates sign language from hand gestures into visual text on a screen and audible dialog.

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In an effort to improve communication between people with different disabilities, designer Hadeel Ayoub has developed a smart glove capable of converting sign language into readable text and audio.

The aptly named SignLanguageGlove works by using several flex sensors attached to the fingers that record their position, while an accelerometer​ detects which way the glove is oriented. Built around the mighty Arduino, all of the collected data is fed into a computer program that identifies the gestures and displays the correct output.

Ayoub, who is also a student at Goldsmiths, University of London, has gone through a series of prototypes with each version less clunky than the one before. The original model, which looked like a bunch of wires attached to a winter glove, consisted of five flex sensors, an Arduino board and a four digit graphic numerical display. It worked by interpreting the user’s gestures and translating them into visual letters on a screen.

The second iteration was a bit faster, more durable, and featured smaller hardware. The Maker incorporated a LilyPad Arduino (ATmega328) and tinier flex sensors, as well as revamped the software to allow text to scroll on a screen, deleting the old and adding the new.

Her latest piece incorporates a text-to-speech chip with the majority of equipment sewn into the lining of what appears to be a Rawlings batting glove. She is currently working towards integrating a language translation function into the system, too. This way, when finished with her next prototype (dubbed ​Reach All​), a user will be able to connect to a smartphone via an embedded Wi-Fi module. The motions will then be relayed wirelessly and translated in real-time through its accompanying app.

Pretty amazing stuff, right? You can head over to the Maker’s Tumblr page to see the progression of her work.

Creating fake passports from your personal data

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This robotic installation will steal and share your data — with your help. 

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The brainchild of ECAL student Martin Hertig, Sensible Data is a unique project designed to show just how easily people are willing to give up their personal information in exchange for fun. The playful installation collects a user’s data, judges their mood, age, gender and beauty, and creates a faux passport that is also randomly sent to another participant without them knowing.

If you think about, what really happens when you openly give your name, numbers and other information online, and where does it go? Although the experiment was done intentionally to test a small sampling’s confidence in how data is collected, it does highlight a much broader privacy issue that exists today, especially in the wake of several mainstream leaks.

The Maker’s exploration is comprised of three machines that are essentially modified versions of the Piccolo CNC, an open source drawing device based on the Arduino Pro Micro (ATmega32U4). Meanwhile, a Raspberry Pi acts as the brain of the installation, running a Python script for every step of the process. Each script listens to the desired input and relays the plotting commands to the necessary gadget.

How it works is pretty straightforward. First, a participant snaps a selfie with an iPad that’s automatically synced up to a Raspberry Pi using Dropbox. A Python script takes this picture and converts it into a line drawing with the help of OpenCV. The user is then prompted to send a blank email to the project’s iCloud address.

From there, the person’s face is analyzed. Upon receiving an email, the Raspberry Pi transmits the previously taken image to the Rekognition API. The facial recognition program is able to properly determine one’s mood, age, gender and their beauty, which is measured as a percentage. This information is stored in a database and inked onto the novelty passport letter by letter using a laser-cut stamp-wheel.

Last but not least, the participant is asked to press a dubious button that is actually a fingerprint scanner. Once the validation step is complete, an email with a matching participant’s data including their fingerprint, photo and email address is sent to the user. (Absurdly, the matchmaking is determined by the amount of lines in the portrait.)

The idea is that, when encountered with a decision, more times than not people are willing to just hand over their likeness, not knowing what will be done with it. Intrigued? Check out the entire project here, and be sure to watch it in action below!

This LED map tracks the MBTA in real-time

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Maker uses an Arduino, Raspberry Pi and LEDs to create a real-time map that keeps tabs on Boston’s trains.

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Inspired by his love for making and public transit, MIT student Ian Reynolds has built an MBTA map into the wall of his fraternity room to show real-time locations of vehicles using bright LEDs.

The Maker employed a few meters of NeoPixels, driven by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) that takes orders from a Python script running on a Raspberry Pi lying on his floor. The color of the LEDs were specially designed to match those of each transit line (e.g. red line, blue line, green line, orange line, etc.). Every 10 to 15 seconds, the system receives data via the MBTA’s API, which in turn, causes the respective lights to flash based on the trains’ approximate GPS location throughout Boston.

“It maps those to some LEDs, decides which ones actually need to be changed, and then sends that information to the Arduino, which does the bit pushing,” Reynolds explains. “In addition, I’m writing a tiny web app that lets me change visualizations and adjust the brightness for when I need to sleep.”

Intrigued? The Maker has put together an elaborate blog post that breaks down his entire project, from the hardware to the headaches. You can also get a glimpse of it all below!