Adafruit builds a WiFi Yún soundboard

Adafruit’s Tony DiCola has put together a detailed tutorial describing how to transform an Atmel-based Arduino Yún (ATmega32u4 MCU) into a soundboard that can be controlled from a webpage over WiFi.

Aside from the Atmel-powered Arduino Yún, key project components include a MicroSD card with 20 megs of available space and a USB audio adapter (or USB speakers).

“Before you get, started you will want to have your Yun connected to your wireless network and be familiar with connecting to the Yún over SSH,” DiCola explained.

The project’s first step? Making sure the MicroSD card is inserted into the Yun and powered on. After connecting to the Yún with SSH, Makers are instructed to install the audio and drivers.

Next up? Installing and configuring the Flask web application framework.

“Once the audio and Flask setup steps are complete, you can install the software for this project,” said DiCola. “While connected to the Yun over SSH, execute commands to download the software and unzip it on the SD card.”

As DiCola notes, Makers can add their own sounds to the soundboard by simply copying MP3 files into the YunSoundboard-master/sounds folder. For Mac or Linux, the scp tool is used to copy files from a PC to the Yun by executing in a terminal. On Windows, Makers will need to install the pscp utility, with the syntax the same as used for the Mac/Linux command, except for the ‘pscp’ command instead of scp.

“Once the sounds are copied over, reload the web page and you should see them added to the list of sounds automatically,” he noted.

According to DiCola, the above-mentioned project is a great example of how to use the Yún’s Linux processor to host a web application and play sounds. Of course, the basic project can be modded or expanded to run on other boards. Makers can also copy their music collection to the device for WiFi controlled boombox, or hook up a PIR motion sensor to the Yun and have the web page alert them if someone is near the device and ready to be pranked.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Atmel-powered Yún has been used in a wide variety of Maker projects that we’ve recently covered, including an electricity monitor, mesh extender platform, high-five camera, Foursquare soap bubble machine, a Gmail (alert) lamp, water heater regulator, smart measuring camera and a security camera.

Interested in learning more about building a WiFi Yún soundboard? You can check out Tony DiCola’s full tutorial on Adafruit here.

Adafruit builds a Yún-powered security camera

Adafruit’s Marc-Olivier Schwartz has designed a DIY wireless security camera built around an Atmel-based Arduino Yún (ATmega32u4), USB webcam, microSD card and a PIR motion detector.

“The first application [of the Yún-powered security camera] will be a modern version of standard tasks that you want for a security camera: taking pictures when some motion is detected. The project will store pictures taken by the USB camera on an SD card inserted into the Yún, but that’s not all,” Schwartz explained.

“Because we are in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), we also want these pictures to be automatically uploaded on a secure location. And that’s exactly what we are going to do by uploading the pictures to Dropbox at the same time.”

As expected, the Yún-powered security camera is also capable of streaming video directly to YouTube.

Schwartz recommends kicking off the project by inserting the SD card into the Yún, connecting the camera to the USB port and linking the motion sensor (VCC pin to the Yun 5V pin, GND to GND, SIG pin to the Yun pin number 8).

After connecting to a PC via the microUSB port, Makers should configure their Temboo and Dropbox accounts. Subsequently, additional software needs to be install on the Atmel-based Yún, including UVC drivers, python-openssl package, fswebcam utility and the mjpg streaming library.

In terms of streaming videos to YouTube, Schwartz first creates a local stream which is then transmitted to a PC via Wirecast and finally, to a YouTube live event.

“Of course, there are several ways to build other cool applications using this project. You can drop the motion detection part and build a camera that take snapshots at regular intervals and upload these on Dropbox,” Schwartz added.

“You can [also] easily create time-lapse videos with this kind of project: just collect the pictures from your Dropbox account, paste them into a time-lapse software. You can also extend this project by adding more Yún + camera modules, to have a complete video monitoring system in your home.”

Interested in learning more? Schwartz’s detailed tutorial is available on Adafruit’s learning system here.

Readers may also want to check out other Yún-based Maker projects including an electricity monitor, mesh extender platform, Foursquare soap bubble machine, a Gmail (alert) lamp, water heater regulator and the high-five camera.