jetlib.sec » Tags » arduino

If you want to see what kind of abuse you’re causing your body when out on those single-track rides this system is just the thing. It’s an Arduino data logger that [Wdm006] takes along on the rides with him. When he gets back home, a Python scripts captures the data dump and graphs it. It [...]

Tags:  arduino bike mountain python-scripts data-logger bike-ride transportation hacks  

[Spork] over on the Netduino forums wanted to push the limits of what his little board could do. He put together a chronometer to measure the velocity of rifle rounds and Nerf darts using an Arduino-compatable CPLD shield. The project is built around a pair of commercial CED M2 chronograph sensors; because people have the tendency to shoot through these [...]

Tags:  measuring openchronometer spork rifle-rounds chronometer arduino hacks  

[Robert Mibus] took on a project which his kids could present to Mom on Mother’s Day. It’s an LED heart built into a ring or necklace box. The series of white LEDs are animated in a chase pattern. The project let [Robert] push his comfort boundaries by moving past a stock Arduino board. Inside you’ll [...]

Tags:  day mother heart robert-mibus robert white-leds mibus chaser arduino hacks  

Here’s two builds that print text to a TV with only two pins: Still Alive with an Arduino After seeing all the builds that play Still Alive, [Bob] decided to take a 1972 amber monitor and recreate the cut scene at the end of Portal. The build uses the TVout library for Arduino. There were a few problems [...]

Tags:  arduino microcontroller pins microcontrollers  

[Andy] is getting his garden up and running. This year it’s been pretty cold so he decided to get small plastic domed tunnel which acts as a mini greenhouse. To help monitor that environment he built this sensor array which displays temperature and soil moisture readings. Temperature is quite simple. He’s using a TMP36 sensor [...]

Tags:  soil temperature garden andy measure-soil-moisture mini-greenhouse sensor-array arduino hacks  

[Joseph] wrote in to share this home automation system he’s working on as a college project. He calls it the Room Engine and the house-side of the hardware is built on top of the circuit you see here. This is the most basic part of the REBoard, which is meant to connect to a computer [...]

Tags:  arduino automation home joseph home-automation-system voice-control smart-phone hacks  

Not long after [CulinarilySpeaking] got into the Arduino game, he began to want more IO pins and a larger program space for more ambitious projects. This, of course, led him down the path towards the Sanguino, the ATMega644-based dev board with many more IO pins than Arduino boards based on the ATMega328. Instead of buying new, [CulinarilySpeaking] [...]

Tags:  sanguino arduino atmega dev-board ambitious-projects program-space hacks  

[Andy] is taking the complexity of a smartphone-controlled garage door down a notch with this project. He’s not interested in checking on the state of the door (open or closed) using a video feed, or in controlling the thing from anywhere in the world. He just wants to use his Android as the remote control and [...]

Tags:  door garage android andy garage-door-opener video-feed notch arduino hacks  

We’ve seen Arduino-based game controllers before, but the UnoJoy project wants to make it easy for you to plug them into a gaming console. The project is targeted at the Arduino UNO. Why only that hardware… isn’t Arduino universal? Well yes, but in this case the bootloader needs to be overwritten so that the Arduino [...]

Tags:  game-controllers bootloader xbox-360 arduino hacks  

+ So at first glance we were thinking there wasn’t much special about this clock. It’s based on an Arduino and displays the time using a character LCD screen. But then we realized that there’s no battery-backed RTC and no buttons. How the heck do you set the time on this thing? [Mossblaser] is using [...]

Tags:  light clock time light-programming character-lcd arduino hacks  

This radio controlled car controller replacement is a great project to try some new things with that fancy hardware you’ve got sitting around. The hack comes in two parts, the receiver and the transmitter. They’re communicating via Bluetooth so if you only want to build one side of the hardware you should be able to make most [...]

Tags:  fancy-hardware radio-controlled-car hack arduino hacks  

Here’s a way to program an Arduino wirelessly while still using the stock IDE. It uses an alternative bootloader called SuperDuplex along with an IR receiver like the ones used for TV remotes. As you can see, this does take two parts. There is the target device which has the IR receiver, as well as [...]

Tags:  program ide arduino target-device tv-remotes hacks  

When [Antoine] and his family leave home for a few days, they usually have to find a neighbor who is willing to care for their cats while they are away. Instead of bothering the people who live next door, he decided it would be best to build an automatic cat feeder (Translation) instead. [Antoine] originally tried [...]

Tags:  feeder laminator cat antoine automatic-cat-feeder neighbor few-days arduino hacks  

Since the Arduino was launched years ago, many ‘shields’ or add-on boards providing additional functionality have been released. There are hundreds of different shields, from video capture shields to touch screen shields. Now that the Raspberry Pi is out in the wild, it was only a matter of time before a RasPi to Arduino shield [...]

Tags:  video-capture raspberry shields arduino hacks  

We’ve seen the Arduino used to flash BIOS chips several times now. But these hacks are almost always the result of a bad flash. This time around [GNUtoo] is interested in putting a tool in your hands which can be used to flash Coreboot to your motherboard. His offering uses the Arduino Uno, but there [...]

Tags:  bios uno arduino bios-chips hacks  

[Kirill] wrote in to share his Arduino-based PIC programmer. It is capable of writing to the 18F family of chips, including 18F2XXX and 18F4XXX. We think that’s pretty exciting because this line of chips has USB functionality and there are bootloaders out there that let you program them via USB. So if you wanted to build [...]

Tags:  pic-programmer arduino kirill hacks  

Because reaching over a few feet to turn off a switch is too much to bear for [Bruce], he connected his desk lamp to the Internet. It’s a pretty cool build that’s the perfect tutorial for connecting just about anything to the internet. For his build, [Bruce] used an Arduino with a relay attached to [...]

Tags:  internet switch turning bruce desk-lamp arduino hacks  

Instructibles user [Danjovic] managed to get his hands on an Atari 2600, but all the joysticks were damaged beyond repair. Instead of building an atari joystick from scratch, he looked to a slightly newer generation of gaming and decided to us an NES controller instead. This was done fairly easily with the aide of an [...]

Tags:  controller atari nes atari-joystick atari-2600 joysticks arduino hacks  

This is a wiring diagram that [Soranne] put together when developing a method of programming PIC microcontrollers using an Arduino board. You can see that he takes care of the 12V issue by connecting the Master Clear (MCLR) pin to an external source. This comes with one warning that the Arduino should always be reset [...]

Tags:  arduino program pic pic-microcontrollers programming-pic external-source hacks  

We see a lot of LED matrix projects. They’re fun, and you can learn a lot of basic lessons during the build. But this one is out of the ordinary. [Rtty21] built an oddly sized, and sound controlled matrix shield for his Arduino. That’s it right there, the shield is the large chunk of protoboard [...]

Tags:  led shield matrix arduino chunk hacks  

This Arduino BASIC interpreter will make a really fun one-day project if you’ve already got the parts on hand. [Usmar A. Padow] put together an Arduino Uno, SD card, four line character LCD, and PS/2 keyboard. but he’s also included alternative options to go without an LCD screen by using a computer terminal, or without [...]

Tags:  lcd basic arduino a.-padow basic-interpreter padow line-character hacks  

[Unusualtravis] came up with this fairly slick electronic catapult. This easy to construct and moderately cheap rig has an arduino as the brains and controls for 3 servos. One is the release, another controls tension, and the third controls the angle. Both the circuit and the construction are very simple making this a perfect weekend [...]

Tags:  table rig unusualtravis electronic-table arduino servos weapons hacks  

[DanNixon] has put together this unique interactive table concept. Usually, when we see the term interactive table, we think of an LED grid. That just happens to be what we see the most of. While this table does, in fact, have an LED grid in the table top, it also has several other features and [...]

Tags:  led table grid interactive-table arduino hacks  

Let’s be honest, you’re going to have trouble getting kids to play text-based adventure games these days. But this is one way to get them interested. This weekend you should get together with niece, nephew, son, or daughter and help them build their own hardware and program it with an adventure game. One last project [...]

Tags:  arduino adventure text hunt-the-wumpus niece-nephew text-based-adventure-games hacks  

Check it out, a Sip-and-Puff Arduino shield. This is an assistive technology that allows the physically challenged to control things using a plastic air tube. Different combinations of sucking (Sip) or blowing (Puff) differentiate between control commands. In this case the device is used to control an iPod dock, but [Bob Johnson's] Kickstarter project seeks [...]

Tags:  dock puff ipod bob-johnson kickstarter air-tube arduino hacks  

Here’s a quick and easy little robot with a not-so-pint-sized brain. [Dikos] over at grobot, slapped together some gutted micro servos, an Arduino pro mini, H bridge chip, and a solar key-chain charger  to make this little three wheeled cutie. The robot boasts some very simple object avoidance thanks to the Sharp GP2Y0A21YK analog IR [...]

Tags:  robot arduino micro object-avoidance h-bridge dikos robots hacks  

[Tom Fleet] spent the dreary weekend inside learning how to drive this T6963C based graphic LCD controller. Although this is his first time venturing away from HD44780 character displays, the availability of an Arduino library helped him go from being a newbie to coding his own animated graphics. The hardware setup is straight-forward. The screen [...]

Tags:  lcd fleet tom graphic-lcd-controller hardware-setup animated-graphics arduino hacks  

[Joe] sent us an email to show off his latest build. Tank Wars is the beginning of a video game/robot hybrid. You control the tank via an iPad, telling it where to go and how to fire. You have real life targets, in this case another robot. When you hit your target, the interface is [...]

Tags:  video game tank joe tank-wars ipad target arduino hacks  

[Will Finucane] of Revolt Labs/Mad Science Blog was looking for a way to keep his cats happily fed while away on a short vacation, so he put together a cheap and easy automatic feeder to ensure that his pets didn’t go hungry while he was away. We’ve seen different iterations of automatic pet feeders here [...]

Tags:  feeder diy cat linear-actuator cat-feeder automatic-feeder arduino hacks  

[Dustin Andrews] built this add-on board which works as a proximity sensor. He wanted a standalone sensor for his Arduino projects which would use a single pin as a trigger. This lets him alert the Arduino when an object approaches the sensor without the need for polling or extra code on the Arduino side of [...]

Tags:  arduino proximity sensor dustin-andrews proximity-sensor microcontrollers  

From time to time we find ourselves in the mood for some Chiptunes. You know, the music that accompanied all of the best 8-bit console games? These days there are a lot of projects that use the audio chips of yore to recreate the sounds, but you’re always faced with the issue of sourcing those [...]

Tags:  chiptunes arduino time audio-chips fpga digital audio hacks  

In the Hackaday Froums, [Colecago] shares his experience collaborating with [Ben Heck]. They were building some “Robot Luggage”, and you can see the episode after the break below. The idea was that they would build a piece of luggage that would follow you through an airport instead of having to be dragged. [Colecago] shares a [...]

Tags:  experience luggage hackaday ben-heck arduino hacks  

[Basil Shikin] was thinking about different types of locks, and was trying to come up with a locking solution that he had yet to see. It dawned on him that he had never come across a lock triggered by music, so he set off to construct one of his own. He ordered a wooden chest [...]

Tags:  solution chest lock basil-shikin shikin wooden-chest basil arduino hacks  

If you’re looking for something to do on a boring Sunday afternoon, how about dusting off your Arduino and playing a text adventure? [Louis] wrote in to tell us about his project called AZIP, an app that will let you play classic 1980s text adventures on your Arduino. The famous Infocom text adventure games such [...]

Tags:  arduino adventure text louis text-adventure-games zork hacks  

This Arduino MIDI sequencer has no shortage of ways to display loop info. The screen above is a touch-sensitive interface that acts as the user input. But if this screen is not visible, you can still see which tracks have activated samples for each beat and what effects are being used. That’s thanks to the collection [...]

Tags:  sequencer arduino midi midi-sequencer interface hacks  

Depending on how you view them, red light cameras are a great way to get people to drive carefully, or an utter nuisance. We agree with the latter opinion, as does [Dave], so he built a handy little device that alerts him when he’s about to approach one of these intersections. His Red Light Camera [...]

Tags:  gps nuisance way dave red-light-cameras red-light-camera using-gps arduino hacks  

DIY book safes are well and good, but if you give someone enough time to peruse your book collection, the 3-inch thick “Case study on Animal Husbandry Techniques during the 14th Century” is likely to stand out among your collection of hand-bound “Twilight” fan fiction. In an attempt to teach his friend a bit about [...]

Tags:  collection book diy husbandry-techniques animal-husbandry electronic-lock arduino hacks  

We don’t have much personal experience with DOF hardware, but this Arduino library which reads and compensates for three-axis magnetometer and accelerometer data looks very impressive. It should work for existing hardware, but there’s also a demo design using a Honeywell HMC5883L compass and a Freescale MMA8453Q accelerometer which you can build yourself. Unfortunately these come [...]

Tags:  accelerometer library arduino magnetometer honeywell hacks  

It’s surprising what lengths people will go to in order to bring functionality to their smart phones. In this case, [Tadpol] wanted a way to develop for his Arduino on an iOS device like an iPad or iPhone. He figures it’s possible to rewrite the IDE as HTML5, but since that’s a pretty large mountain [...]

Tags:  ios arduino html avr-compiler ipad iphone hacks  

[Oryx] grew up with the bleeps and bloops of an Atari ST, so it comes as no surprise he would want to relish in his nostalgia by playing with the YM2149 sound generator he recently picked up on eBay. Like most of us, [Oryx] went to his old standby, the Arduino, when it came to connect this bare [...]

Tags:  arduino oryx atari atari-st chiptunes ebay hacks  

Being the smart consumer he is, [Denis] usually looks at the price per pound when comparing similar products at the grocery store. When it came time to buy a few AA batteries, he didn’t have any data to go on. To solve his little conundrum, [Denis] decided he would test several brands of batteries and [...]

Tags:  consumer measuring battery denis aa-batteries smart-consumer conundrum arduino hacks  

If you just got your hands on a shiny new Android phone and are looking for a fun project to try out, you might want to check out this simple Arduino exercise that [Mike Mitchel] put together. Everyone needs a starting off point for hacking, and [Mike] thought that combining and Arduino and Android handset [...]

Tags:  arduino android project mike mike-mitchel fun-project mitchel adk hacks  

[Martyn] is restoring a 32-year-old Honda motorcycle, so when the ancient speedometer broke last year he thought it was prime time to start of a digital speedometer project. We’re loving the results so far, and would love seeing it on a nicely restored bike. Instead of the relative horror of driving 40 LEDs with a [...]

Tags:  digital arduino speedometer digital-speedometer honda-motorcycle transportation hacks  

[Martin] sent in a great guide to a simple Arduino based theremin. It’s a very small build – just a single common IC and some passive components – and easy enough to build in an afternoon. The theremin is based on a simple LC oscillator built around a 7400 quad NAND gate IC, a wire [...]

Tags:  quick arduino-powered theremin martin lc-oscillator passive-components arduino hacks  

If the kids have lost interest in that RC car or truck you bought them over the holidays, [Randy Sarafan] from Instructables has a few ideas that might help make the toys fun again, while teaching your kids a bit about electronics in the process. In his writeup, he shows how to swap out the [...]

Tags:  brain drive car randy-sarafan sarafan instructables writeup arduino hacks  

If you’ve got a pet that roams freely in and out of your house, you may find yourself wanting to more closely regulate how they come and go. [tareker] was looking to keep his cat indoors at night when dangerous animals might be lurking in the neighborhood, but he didn’t want it to become a [...]

Tags:  door pet auto-locking dangerous-animals curfew kitty arduino hacks  

It seems that more often than not, [Steffest] finds himself inspired to rock out on his guitar without a percussion section to back him up. Like any enterprising hacker/musician would be wont to do, he built a robotic drummer to join in when he got the urge to play. His DrummerBot is driven using an [...]

Tags:  percussion-section bandmates jam-session arduino hacks  

A media player based on an Arduino and SD card has been done to death several times over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate [Matt]‘s MSP430 audio player. It’s a very nice piece of work that supports a FAT16 file system and only takes up 54 bytes of RAM. To make his dream of [...]

Tags:  msp arduino player matt msp430 fat16-file-system digital audio hacks  

Many of the hacks featured here inspire others to build on the creator’s work, and on occasion the positive feedback brings the hack to market. Last year we told you about [Wayne’s] creation, a system aimed at tracking down would-be game console thieves. He received a bunch of requests to document the tracker in full, [...]

Tags:  source kickstarter system wayne source-tracking-system positive-feedback thieves arduino hacks  

[Kyle Gabriel] moved into a house with a nice tract of land behind it, but due to his busy schedule he had yet to plant the garden he so desperately wanted. He worried that his hectic life and busy hours would lead to accidentally neglecting his garden, so he built a water collection and automated [...]

Tags:  rain-barrel irrigation-system water-collection arduino hacks  

When [Chris Nafis] built an addition onto his historical home he found that a Radon problem, previously mitigated with plenty of concrete, seemed to rear its ugly head yet again. He eventually resigned himself to installing a Radon fan and detector – the latter of which offered no way to store measurement data. He wanted [...]

Tags:  radon-data measurement-data radon-problem arduino hacks  

[Kalle Hyvönen] just finished building his own aquarium lights. He used four powerful soft-white LEDs, mounting them on a pair of heat sinks to keep things cool. Now he could have just connected them to the power supply and plugged it into the wall, but instead he included is own controller. An Arduino drives the [...]

Tags:  aquarium arduino kalle white-leds heat-sinks hacks  

We never imagined that [David Lee Roth] would mesh well with an Arduino, that is until Flickr user [tgtsfkncld] showed off his [Roth] Scream Box a few days ago. The unassuming box resembles sort of a nondescript “Easy Button”, but its payload is far more entertaining than whatever Staples could have possibly recorded for their [...]

Tags:  re-live scream box roth david-lee-roth arduino david-lee hacks  

Sometimes, an Arduino just doesn’t have enough horsepower. Whether you’re gathering loads of sensor data and sending it over the web via Ethernet, or just trying to build a home-brew video game, it’s very easy to run into the limitations of the Arduino platform. [Rik] and his fellow classmates may have a solution to this [...]

Tags:  wimpy arduino simplecortex fellow-classmates sensor-data Hardware  

[Adam] was tired of plopping the same components over and over into his Arduino-based designs. He spent part of his weekend laying out a small board that would host everything he needed and could be built as a single component for all future projects. Above you can see the project he calls SMDuino, an Arduino [...]

Tags:  smduino arduino arduino-based adam tight-places hacks  

[Mark] from SpikenzieLabs was wrapping up a project using an Arduino the other day and found himself in need of a few more I/O pins. He could have added extra circuitry to the project, but he decided to see if he could gain a few pins by removing a few components instead. He put together [...]

Tags:  remove arduino project mark free-pair oscillator hacks  

What can you do with a broken Compaq SLT 286? Its briefcase-like size and shape actually make for a pretty interesting portable electronic prototyping station. [Philip] gutted the components and started adding back the items he most commonly uses when developing a project. He shares all of the details in the video after the break. [...]

Tags:  laptop life ancient philip compaq-slt-286 prototyping-platform briefcase arduino hacks  

The crew at Cooking Hacks in Zaragoza wrote in to share a new shield they developed for the Arduino platform. There are a hundred different shields out there that do this and that, but we think their 3G/GPRS shield looks pretty slick. The base shield contains a WCDMA and HSPA compatible 3G modem as well as [...]

Tags:  shield everything arduino zaragoza wcdma shields hacks  

Sure, squirrels may bother the average home owner, but few have attempted as creative a way to control them as this automated water turret. Check out the video after the break to see how this was accomplished, but if you’d rather just see how the squirrels reacted to getting squirted, fast forward to around 16:00. [...]

Tags:  water meets birdwatching water-cannon awesomeness squirrels arduino hacks  

There’s a fine line between solving problems that don’t exist and solving problems that no one recognizes until a solution is found. The former shows up with housewares peddled on late-night infomercials, while the latter is summed up by [Henry Ford], “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” [Dave]‘s [...]

Tags:  fine cloud storing henry-ford dave night-infomercials faster-horses arduino hacks  

While young children have the tiny hands and fingers that most hackers/tinkerers wish they possessed from time to time, their fine motor skills aren’t always up to par when it comes to operating complicated electronics. People are always looking for ways to make their home entertainment systems accessible to their kids, and [Humpadilly] is no [...]

Tags:  rfid time kid-friendly home-entertainment-systems hands-and-fingers tiny-hands arduino hacks  

[Dominik] built a fun musical toy for his daughter [Anna]. It’s a jukebox that lets her play her favorite tunes using RFID tags to select between them. The project is simple, yet robust. The enclosure is a wooden craft box that you can pick up for a couple of bucks. Inside there’s an Arduino with [...]

Tags:  jukebox fun rfid anna dominik musical-toy wooden-craft arduino digital audio hacks  

This mannequin head was purchased years ago on sale for less than $3. As with many things one sees while shopping, it didn’t have a purpose at the time, but seemed like it would be useful later. Add in an Arduino, some servos, and electronics parts that were acquire in a similar manner, and you [...]

Tags:  mannequin arduino head mannequin-head servos many-things robots hacks  

Whether you’d like to do some real-time logging of data, or just want to control a project with your Android phone, [Thomas]‘s Arduino-Android Bluetooth connection instructable is sure to be useful [Thomas]‘ build uses the very inexpensive JY-MCU Bluetooth module that’s available on eBay or dealextreme. This Bluetooth module ties directly into the Tx and Rx [...]

Tags:  bluetooth android module thomas instructable ebay arduino hacks  

Whether you’re used to dropped wifi connections, or your housemates are using up all the bandwidth for streaming, we’ve all see the spinning octet of disks that is the YouTube loading animation. [technocrat] thought it would be a great idea to actually become YouTube and set out on designing a physical manifestation of the loading [...]

Tags:  youtube loading animation loading-animation physical-manifestation housemates arduino hacks  

[Peter Sobey] had a solar hot water heater installed in his home, which worked great until he relocated his kitchen to a neighboring room. Now a good bit further from the tank, the hot water reaching his sink was tepid at best due to the increased distance and temperature limiting mixer valve in the new [...]

Tags:  heater Wireless water peter-sobey solar-water-heater hot-water-heater arduino hacks  

[Simon] is in the middle of restoring/building himself an Austin 7 Special out in his garage, and like most tinkerers, found that music helps to move the process along. He happened to have an old Bakelite generator phone out in the garage as well, and figured that he might as well have it do something [...]

Tags:  antique garage phone simon austin restoring-old-cars antique-phone bakelite arduino hacks  

If you’ve run out of I/O pins on a project and need a way to add user input you can find a slew of port expanders that work with various communications protocols like I2C and 1-Wire. But if you just want to add in some buttons without reaching for an extra IC you’ll love this [...]

Tags:  adc run ladder port-expanders communications-protocols arduino hacks  

If you’re a big Minecraft fan, the folks at [radikaldesign] have something that might be of interest to you. (Translation) Inspired by some of their Minecraft-loving friends, they have developed Minestation – a weather station for your Minecraft game. The concept is simple. Here in the real world we have the ability to look out the [...]

Tags:  weather minecraft minestation weather-display loving-friends weather-station arduino hacks  

[John Philip’s] brother has a sizable room set aside for his model railroad setup, and he was looking for something interesting to add to his brother’s collection. Rather than construct something for the railroad itself, he decided that an early 1900’s-style semaphore railroad signal would make a great novelty item for the room. The project [...]

Tags:  train-buff railroad-signal john-philip arduino hacks  

If you are thinking of building your own flight/racing sim setup at home, you might want to check this out. [Alex] from the Garoa Hackerspace in Säo Paulo, Brazil put together a slick setup that makes projector image calibration a breeze. When building a wraparound screen for such a simulator, you are likely to run [...]

Tags:  image-calibration slick-setup uneven-surfaces arduino hacks  

If you ever wanted your name out on the Internet, now is your time to shine. [Chris] hooked up an Arduino to the Internet and is streaming the results of combing through Twitter live to the entire world. The SocialBot9000, as [Chris] calls his build, is an Arduino Uno connected to an Ethernet shield and an LCD [...]

Tags:  twitter internet arduino chris entire-world hacks  

[Lars] shows you how to get a perfect score on the first four levels of BIT.TRIP RUNNER by using an Arduino to time and send button presses. This is a pretty simple game that uses a couple of buttons to jump or slide past obstacles. The constant speed of the character makes it quite easy [...]

Tags:  video score arduino lars perfect-score button-presses simple-game hacks  

As a kid, metal detectors seemed like great fun. Every commercial I saw beckoned with tales of buried treasure “right in my own back yard” – a bounty hard for any kid to pass up. In reality, the process was both time consuming and tedious, with little reward to be had. [Gareth] liked the idea [...]

Tags:  kid metal autonomous gareth metal-detector metal-detectors back-yard arduino hacks  

[Kevin] has been working on reverse engineering the protocol used by the Arduino IDE and porting it to the Arduino platform. Now that his BootDrive project is nearing completion, he’s ready to give every Arduino the ability to program another Arduino over an SD card. BootDrive isn’t terribly different from using an Arduino as an ISP, [...]

Tags:  arduino reverse-engineering sd-card hacks  

We really like this take on a conductive wire maze game. It’s the result of a 48-hour hackathon in Belgium which required that all projects stemming from the event use an Arduino. We think [Jan] and [Kristof] made perfect use of the prototyping device in the time allotted. The event organizers thought so too because [...]

Tags:  game wire use kristof jan belgium maze-game conductive-wire wire-loop arduino hacks  

[Deadbird] wanted to recreate some guitar pedal effects that he heard on a music video. The thing is, you can end up spending a bundle on hardware unless you’re crafty like he was. He grabbed a Whammy 4 pedal, but decided to forego using a $125 MIDI controller and sourced an Arduino to perform MIDI-based [...]

Tags:  guitar bundle arduino midi-controller guitar-pedal whammy musical hacks  

[Joe Fernandez] is fairly new to the hardware side of the hobby, but he seems to have easily found his way on this project. He wanted to build his own web-bridge for his Toro lawn sprinkler system. He pulled it off with style and shows off the spoils of his work in the clip after [...]

Tags:  care arduino lawn joe-fernandez lawn-sprinkler-system web-bridge toro-lawn-sprinkler home hacks  

So let’s say your using an Arduino in your project. You already have the hardware-based serial interface working with one portion of the project and need a second serial port for unrelated hardware. The obvious solution is to write one in software. But this is a place where working in the Arduino environment gets really [...]

Tags:  arduino Software project serial-interface serial-port hacks  

[JD] at isotope11 was looking for a way to get instant feedback whenever a developer broke a piece of software they were working on. After finding a 48 inch tall traffic light, he knew what he had to do. Now, the entire development team knows the status of their code from a traffic light hanging [...]

Tags:  monitoring traffic Software traffic-light monitoring-software arduino hacks  

[Boris Landoni] put together a guide to using an inexpensive 3-axis accelerometer with Arduino. The chip that he chose for the exercise is an MMA7455L made by Freescale. It’s got a lot of nice features packed into it, using hardware to do some of the things you’d need software for with other chips like reporting [...]

Tags:  accelerometer catch arduino boris-landoni cheap-accelerometer axis-accelerometer microcontrollers  

We all love the Arduino, but does the Arduino love us back? There used to be a time when the Arduino couldn’t express it’s deepest emotions, but now that [Nick] hooked up a speech synthesis chip from a Speak & Spell, it can finally whisper sweet robotic nothings to us. The original 1980s Speak & [...]

Tags:  spell arduino love nick speech-synthesis 1980s hacks  

[Quinn Dunki] got some free stuff from Element14 to evaluate, including this Mircrochip WiFi module. It’s been used as the centerpiece of an Arduino shield in the past, and she grabbed a copy of that library to see if it would play nicely with an ATtiny chip. What follows is a struggle to de-Arduino the [...]

Tags:  arduino attiny wifi quinn-dunki microcontrollers centerpiece microcontrollers  

Although we’re sure they exist, we wouldn’t want to meet anybody that can’t look back fondly on the halcyon days of youth that included playing hide-and-go-seek. Some kids never grow up and continue the tradition with geocaching or orienteering, but that sense of limitless discovery wanes over time. [Kurt] came up with a small scavenger hunt [...]

Tags:  wouldn leds play kurt infrared-leds time-kurt halcyon-days arduino hacks  

[Patrick] decided to make a computer controlled etch-a-sketch. While the idea is not that new, there is always a different way to accomplish a goal. An Arduino is used to control a pair of stepper motors which were sourced for pretty cheap, and even came with their own driver. Next a stand was mocked up [...]

Tags:  sketch etch-a robotic patrick stepper-motors grayscale-images arduino hacks  

The sales team in [Chuck’s] office is a pretty competitive bunch as you might expect, and they decided that they wanted a system which would allow them to challenge one another during their weekly meetings. The competition involves answering questions posed by their manager, but hand raising only works for so long – they needed [...]

Tags:  game-show-buzzer answering-questions arduino hacks  

[Andrew] and his brother had some time (and a lot of ping pong balls) on their hands, so they decided to have some fun and built a remote-controlled ping pong ball turret. Arduino aside, the turret is cheap and easy to build as [Andrew’s] writeup explains. The firing mechanism was constructed using a pair of [...]

Tags:  turret ball pong andrew ping-pong-balls ping-pong-ball ball-turret arduino hacks  

[Udo Klein] was working with some 1N4148 transistors and was interested in the specs relating to their performance at different temperatures. The forward voltage actually changes quite a bit depending on temperature and wondered if this could be reliably measured. He hacked his own LED shield for the Arduino to use as a 1×20 thermal [...]

Tags:  thermal-imaging-system forward-voltage arduino hacks  

What uses a fire extinguisher, a bike pump, and provides hours of probation, community service, and possibly jail time? If you said an automatic graffiti writer you’re correct! [Olivier van Herpt] calls this little job the Time Writer. We call it defacing property… but tomato, tomahto. Details are a bit scarce, but you get a [...]

Tags:  writer graffiti time olivier-van-herpt graffiti-writer time-writer fire-extinguisher arduino hacks  

In the interests of interface archaeology, [Martin] sent in the Tworse Key, a telegraph key that posts to Twitter using Morse code. It’s a fantastic build that nearly looks like something out of the 1900s. We’ve seen a ton of Morse keyboards over the years, but never one so well-engineered for a single purpose. The guts [...]

Tags:  twitter telegraph input morse martin telegraph-key morse-code guts arduino hacks  

[Brad] had an extremely productive January 18th. Considering how many websites went dark to protest SOPA, we can’t blame him. While considering what he could get done if popular Internet time sinks went dark on command, [Brad] thought of the Stop Online Productivity Avoidance box. This build will redirect all traffic to sites like reddit, hacker [...]

Tags:  blame sopa january brad internet-time avoidance arduino hacks  

Simulators might have lost their cool for a lot of gamers, but [Fergo] is trying for a comeback. He built an electronic dashboard for a car racing simulator. [Fergo] spends most of his track time on iRacing, an MMO racing simulator. Possibly due to a little bit of influence from Formula 1 steering wheels, he wanted [...]

Tags:  dashboard simulator fergo race-simulators steering-wheels arduino hacks  

[Pete] has a cool new tutorial creating a re-imagining of the Atari classic “River Raid” for the PIX-6T4 micro controller based game system. The PIX is a netduino on a larger board featuring 2 analog controllers, a speaker, an sd card and an 8×8 monochrome LED display. With a resolution that low, it may make [...]

Tags:  racer game pix pete atari-classic analog-controllers river-raid arduino hacks  

When [Paul Rea] started work with his current employer, he was intrigued by a traffic light that sat unused near the entrance of the “Engineering Loft” where he was stationed. He promised himself that he would get it working one day, but several years passed before he had the chance to take a closer look [...]

Tags:  stop traffic office paul-rea foot-traffic traffic-light closer-look arduino hacks  

It’s no secret that seven-segment displays are an easy and useful way to relay data, so [Kelvyn Panici] decided to put together a minimalst, self-contained display for use around the house. The display itself is a 16-digit model he picked up from DealExtreme for under $10. He wanted to find a microcontroller small enough to fit [...]

Tags:  display secret segment seven-segment-displays panici simple-self arduino hacks  

[Ladyada] has been working on FLORA, her wearable electronics platform, for a few months now. Even though it has just been announced the specs look much better than the previous queen of the hill, the Arduino LilyPad. Going down the spec sheet for both the FLORA and the LilyPad, we see that FLORA has twice as much [...]

Tags:  ladyada arduino lilypad flora queen-of-the-hill hacks  

Here’s one way to really keep the component count low. [David] developed an NES controller that doesn’t use any buttons. The copper clad has been milled to provide a pad which registers a button push based on capacitance. The board has a SIL header at the top, making it easy to plug into the Arduino [...]

Tags:  controller touch nes david arduino component-count capacitance nintendo hacks  

The team over at the Louisville Hackerspace LVL1 is not going to be outdone when it comes to collecting environmental data. They put together this Frankenstein of sensor boards that lets you collect a heap of data showing what is going on around it. At the center-left a small Arduino clone is responsible for collecting [...]

Tags:  array sensor outdo louisville sensor-array arduino frankenstein hacks  

The team over at the Louisville Hackerspace LVL1 is not going to be outdone when it comes to collecting environmental data. They put together this Frankenstein of sensor boards that lets you collect a heap of data showing what is going on around it. At the center-left a small Arduino clone is responsible for collecting [...]

Tags:  array sensor outdo louisville sensor-array arduino frankenstein hacks  

As one of the founders of Netscape and the Mozilla Project, [Jamie Zawinski] is no stranger to frustration elicited from syntax errors, terrible implementations, and things that don’t work even though they should. This familiarity of frustration is what makes [jwz]‘s command line controlled curtains so great; it’s rare to see someone so technically proficient freaking [...]

Tags:  frustration line command jamie-zawinski syntax-errors mozilla-project arduino hacks  

[Ishan Karve] works in some bizarro world where the building management demands that all servers and Uninterruptible Power Supplies be shut down at the end of each evening. While inconceivable to most systems admins, he has no recourse but to comply. This means that his employees need to turn things off before they leave for [...]

Tags:  apc shutdown automating apc-ups uninterruptible-power-supplies management-demands arduino hacks  

[Mark VandeWettering] was experimenting with a simple transmitting circuit and an Arduino. The circuit in the project was designed by [Steve Weber] to broadcast temperature and telemetry data using Morse Code. But [Mark] wanted to step beyond that protocol and set out to write a sketch that broadcasts using the Hellschreiber protocol. This protocol transmits [...]

Tags:  hellschreiber arduino protocol morse-code steve-weber mark-vandewettering mark telemetry-data radio-transmissions radio hacks  

I2C as many of you know, is a simple serial interface for many peripheral devices to micro controllers, but it can quickly become confusing to people who may not be accustom to it. Because of that, I2C tutorials are always welcome, and this new tutorial by [Embedds] does an excellent job of how to use [...]

Tags:  serial avr Programming c-interface serial-interface micro-controllers peripheral-devices arduino hacks  

[Alex] was digging through his closet and came upon an old PS2 game pad for Dance Dance Revolution. He hated the idea of throwing it out just slightly more than the idea of playing DDR again, so he decided to find a way to reuse it. He was a big fan of the game Simon [...]

Tags:  revolution idea dance alex simon dance-dance-revolution game-simon ps2-game arduino hacks  

[Asher Glick] wrote in to share a project he has been working on with his friend [Kevin Baker], a 4x4x4 RGB LED cube. The pair are students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and also members of the newly-formed Embedded Hardware Club on campus. As their first collaborative project, they decided to take on the ubiquitous LED [...]

Tags:  led rgb cube kevin-baker asher-glick rensselaer-polytechnic-institute friend-kevin arduino hacks  

If you’re looking to remotely control things around the house, but can’t do it over the Internet or via WiFi, the TiDiGino just might have what you’re looking for. [Boris Landoni] from Open Electronics sent some information on the TiDiGino our way, and it certainly looks like a useful device if you’re in need of [...]

Tags:  tidigino gsm control boris-landoni boris remote-control arduino hacks  

[Craig Lindley] recently finished building his own RGB LED cube project. It’s made up of four layers of 4×4 LED grids, but you may notice that the framework that supports the structure is not the usual ratsnet of wires we’ve come to expect. They’re actually long, thin circuit boards. [Craig] grabbed the Rainbow Cube kit sold [...]

Tags:  kit led cube craig craig-lindley cube-project grids rgb arduino hacks  

Need PID control in your next project? Perhaps this little beauty can help. It’s an Open Source PID controller that also follows the Open Hardware guidelines. [Brett Beauregard] based the project on the newly minted Arduino PID library which he wrote. In the video after the break [Brett] takes apart the device, walking through some of [...]

Tags:  pid open source beauregard hardware-guidelines open-hardware little-beauty arduino hacks  

[HC] took a gander around the Googles and saw a number of people trying to read NAND flash chips with an Arduino. It’s an interesting problem; at 16 Megahertz, [HC] is looking at about 60 nanoseconds per instruction cycle, and flash chips normally operate around 20 ns. He got the build working, and was able [...]

Tags:  arduino gander nand nand-flash-chips googles nanoseconds hacks  

[Andrew Robinson] and his co-workers are lucky enough to have a Keurig coffee maker in their office, though they have a hard time keeping track of who owes what to the community coffee fund. Since K-Cups are more expensive than bulk coffee, [Andrew] decided that they needed a better way to log everyone’s drinking habits [...]

Tags:  securing keurig coffee andrew andrew-robinson keurig-coffee-maker community-coffee arduino hacks  

After taking the Stanford Machine Learning class offered over the Internet last year, [David Singleton] thought he could build something really cool. We have to admit that he nailed it with his neural network controlled car. There’s not much to the build; it’s just an Android phone, an Arduino and a toy car. The machine [...]

Tags:  toy neural car david-singleton stanford-machine arduino robots hacks  

We’re past the winter solstice and the days are getting longer, but that doesn’t mean we’re not sick of the sun setting around 5 in the afternoon. There is a way to get more sunlight through our windows – a heliostat. Lucky for us, [Gabriel] sent in his Open Source Sun Tracking / Heliostat project that [...]

Tags:  heliostat arduino sun gabriel winter-solstice solstice hacks  

The folks at The Quad Cities Collaboration and Hackerspace (QC Co-Lab) were trying to find something to build for their first big project, and had to look no further than the wall for inspiration. The north end of their facility is home to a huge 15×17 glass block wall that happens to face a well-traveled [...]

Tags:  video wall hackerspace glass-block-wall quad-cities fps arduino hacks  

This proof-of-concept is just waiting for you to put it to good use. [Mike Tsao] wrote an Arduino sketch that lets him decode incoming audio data which could be used to program the device. He’s calling the project TribeDuino because it decodes an audio file which is actually the firmware update for a Korg Monotribe. [...]

Tags:  arduino file Programming mike-tsao proof-of-concept firmware-update hacks  

[Dino] wanted to make this New Year’s celebration a bit more interesting, but he can’t make it to New York for the ball drop. Instead, he decided to make his own mini display in his workshop. Obviously he’s working with a slightly smaller budget than the folks at Times Square, but we think his display [...]

Tags:  mini drop ball eve dino new-york times-square ball-drop mini-ball arduino hacks  

There’s not much to be gained by living in a discotheque but colored lights are awesome, especially when they’re as well implemented as [michu]‘s StripInvaders. The StripInvaders project takes a gigantic 5 meter LED strip with WS2801 controllers and turns it into an Ethernet-enabled 24 bit display with the new Arduino Ethernet. While the Ethernet-enabled may seem a [...]

Tags:  discotheque ethernet-enabled stripinvaders arduino hacks  

[Andrew] shows us one way to reuse all those strands of Christmas lights you used for decoration this year. He had a friend that was helping with stage props for a local musical and ended up using his skills to build a lighted sign with some animation capabilities. The original plan was to cut out [...]

Tags:  christmas way reuse andrew animation-capabilities stage-props christmas-lights arduino hacks  

[Erv] was putting his holiday shopping list together and decided that instead of buying his friends something from the store, he would give them something a bit more useful. A former Electrical Engineer by trade, [Erv] typically prefers PIC microcontrollers, but he says that Arduinos are just so convenient to use for prototyping that he [...]

Tags:  erv something arduino pic-microcontrollers electrical-engineer holiday-shopping hacks  

You’re out at night and playing a boisterous game of flashlight tag. But how can you tell if you’ve been mortally wounded by your opponents light beam? [Kenyer] solved this problem by building a flashlight tag damage sensor which is worn by each participant. It adds a bit of the high-tech equipment used with laser [...]

Tags:  damage tag flashlight light-beam participant arduino hacks  

[Nirav] painted this masterpiece by hand… with a little help from a computer. He calls it the semi-automatic paintbrush because you do need to move it over the canvas by hand, but a computer decides when to dispense the ink. He’s using a piece of hardware we looked at back in September called the InkShield [...]

Tags:  computer-aided computer hand paint-brush paintbrush masterpiece arduino hacks  

[Axel] wanted to participate in the CheerLights project this holiday season, but not one to always follow the rules he decided to make his display a bit different than most others out there. While the lights at his house are synchronized with the CheerLights project, he programmed his Cheeriobot with a little added personality. Normally, [...]

Tags:  display cheerlights project axel holiday-season personality arduino hacks  

Most holiday light displays we see this time of year are stationary, or at least confined to somebody’s home. [Marco Guardigli] wanted to take his lights on the go, and thought that a light up winter hat would be perfect for showing off his holiday spirit. In the winter he sports a sturdy wool felt [...]

Tags:  head-mounted winter holiday marco-guardigli holiday-light-displays holiday-cheer holiday-spirit arduino hacks  

[Bill Porter] is helping a friend out by designing a simple security system for her home. It relies on Xbee modules to alert a base station when doors are opened, or a pressure mat is stepped on. The door sensors are quite simple, and you’re probably already familiar with them. One part mounts to the [...]

Tags:  xbee someone home bill-porter security-system sensors arduino hacks  

14 year-old [Connor Smith] has been busy this holiday season, thinking up ways to improve the lighting situation at home. A few weeks ago he put together this 3-channel light controller to toggle his parents’ external lights, incorporating an Arduino for control. The Arduino was used to switch the channels on and off at specified [...]

Tags:  christmas controlling arduino connor-smith lighting-situation hacks  

Hack a Day alum [Will O’Brien] recently upgraded his phone, and was trying to find a use for his old one. He always wanted a remote starter for his Subaru Outback, but wasn’t interested in paying for an off the shelf kit. Since he had this old smartphone kicking around, he thought that it would [...]

Tags:  sms smartphone start subaru-outback shelf-kit remote-starter arduino hacks  

There’s a million and one ways to play around with MIDI and an Arduino. It’s trivial to have a ‘duino spit out a scale to a MIDI keyboard, or even respond to SysEx messages to change a lighting or effects rig. There’s one thing that has eluded MIDI-duino builders, though: implementing a MIDI synthesizer with [...]

Tags:  synth arduino midi midi-synthesizer midi-keyboard midi-synth hacks  

They say that the holidays are a time to gather with others, which usually translates into spending time with friends and family. The folks at ioBridge Labs thought that while friends and family certainly are a big part of the holidays, it would be pretty cool to gather together flocks of strangers by using the [...]

Tags:  cheerlights family time christmas-lights flocks synchronizing arduino hacks  

[Minisystem] has a thing for dynamo powered bike lights. He wanted to measure how well his latest is working, but just logging the current flow through the LEDs wasn’t enough for him. He picked up a cheap Lux meter and hacked into the circuit to log measurements while he rides. He started by cracking open [...]

Tags:  minisystem meter data lux-meter bike-lights arduino hacks  

[Milton] sent in a build that censors every ‘F’ word on TV, and not just the one that rhymes with ‘duck,’ either. His setup sounds the alarm every time someone inside the moving picture box says a word that contains the letter F. The build is based around Nootropic Design’s Video Experimenter Shield. This neat little shield [...]

Tags:  censoring shield word f.-the milton moving-picture experimenter arduino hacks  

[John Boxall] took a different route for a single-input combination lock. This unit uses a Ping ultrasonic range finder to input a four digit code. It’s a hardware upgrade, but uses the same basic concept as his button-based combo lock. That design used an Arduino to measure how long you hold down a single button, [...]

Tags:  combo lock ultrasonic john-boxall ultrasonic-range-finder arduino combination-lock hacks  

Ah, the end of the 4th financial quarter – the magical time of increased sales, being at work the entire time the sun is up, and holiday parties. For [Andy] at National Instruments, though, things don’t seem too bad. He built a neat Christmas light suit to entertain everyone with his brilliant persona. [Andy] always [...]

Tags:  christmas suit time andy christmas-light financial-quarter magical-time arduino hacks  

[Josh] and his lab partner [Eric] needed a final project for their Embedded Systems Design class, and thought that designing an Arduino shield would be a cool idea. They noticed that there are plenty of ways to get an Arduino to keep time, though none that they knew of utilized WWVB (Atomic Time) signals directly. [...]

Tags:  shield arduino time josh eric partner-eric lab-partner hacks  

While we normally see piezo elements being used to output audio, [Veedo] thought that they could be used in a more useful manner. He bought way too many piezo film tabs and decided to use them to build a makeshift seismic sensor. The piezo tabs came with weights attached at one end, though while testing [...]

Tags:  piezo detecting element piezo-elements piezo-element seismic-waves arduino hacks  

Want to host a Jeopardy tournament with your friends? Looking to add a bit more fairness to your school’s knowledge bowl? Perhaps you should build some buzz-in hardware of your own. Here you can see [Matt Hanson's] take on this idea. He used one Arduino to gather not just buzzer info, but also keypad data [...]

Tags:  buzzer classroom project matt-hanson buzzer-project knowledge-bowl arduino hacks  

[Fjord Carver] brings together an RGB LED and CdS Photoresistor to make a color sensor. Those Cadmium Sulfide lights sensors usually have a very wide swing of resistance when exposed to varying levels of light sensitivity. That makes for great resolution when reading them using the ADC of a microcontroller. The LED comes into play by shining [...]

Tags:  color led rgb cadmium-sulfide color-sensor light-sensitivity arduino hacks  

[Eric Ayars] has a nice cast iron Christmas tree stand at home, but the only drawback is that the stand makes it hard to see just how much water is available to the tree. Last year we covered a small gadget he created to help keep tabs on the water level, but as several of [...]

Tags:  christmas tree water eric-ayars christmas-tree-stand water-sensor ayars arduino hacks  

When most people think about a telegraph key, a piece of 1890s tech with a lever that moves up and down comes to mind. These ‘straight keys’ were terrible for telegraphers and led to repetitive stress injuries like carpel tunnel syndrome..Iambic keys came along and move the contacts to a horizontal position. If you ever [...]

Tags:  piece telegraph keyer repetitive-stress-injuries iambic-keyer straight-keys arduino hacks  

We know that measuring the speed of light with an Arduino is possible. It’s just that the implementation is hard. Last month we saw [Udo]‘s blinkenlight shield that can be used as a line scan camera. It’s a neat piece of kit, but [Udo] really wants to submit something for the Buildlounge laser cutter giveaway, [...]

Tags:  arduino implementation speed udo line-scan-camera neat-piece hacks  

The guys at BuildLounge wrote us to share a giant LED sign they came across in the submission pile for their “Win a Laser Cutter” contest that’s currently under way. [Stephen Shaffer] helps run a huge party called Fantastic Planet, for which the group typically outsources the lighting arrangements. They got tired of hiring light [...]

Tags:  led custom party stephen-shaffer lighting-arrangements laser-cutter arduino hacks  

Here’s a project that looks to eliminate the PC necessary for pushing weather station data to the Internet. When you think about it, getting data from your own weather sensing hardware to a site like Weather Underground doesn’t require very much processing at all. The largest chunk of the puzzle is a window to the [...]

Tags:  internet weather arduino weather-station-data internet-bridge chunk hacks  

The Arduino is an excellent first embedded development kit, provides a great introduction to electronics, and has the potential to get children into programming. [David] thinks throwing C at non-programmers isn’t the best way to learn programming, so he developed ArduBlock , a graphical programming language for the Arduino. We’ve seen a number of graphical, block-based programming [...]

Tags:  arduino Programming graphical david graphical-programming-language introduction-to-electronics hacks  

Trade shows are all about attracting attention and getting people to learn about your product, so what could be better than a custom-built RC blimp? Sure, you could just buy one, but what’s the fun in that? After several design iterations, [Tretton37] came up with a blimp known as the [LeetZeppelin] controlled by an Arduino, [...]

Tags:  blimp show trade trade-show-booth design-iterations arduino toy hacks  

[Jbremnant] wanted to try his hand with ANT+ wireless networks. This protocol is designed for light-weight and low-power consumer electronics, like heart rate chest straps and bicycle computers (Garmin brand devices for example). There are already libraries out there for Arduino, but [Jbremnant] found that most of them were written as slave-only code. He set [...]

Tags:  ant jbremnant msp chest-straps arduino heart-rate android hacks  

[Elco Jacobs] used to let his beer ferment in the kitchen, but when things got too hot over the summer, he had to suspend his ale making for a few months. Not wanting to have to put production on hiatus again, he modified an old refrigerator into an awesome fermentation unit he calls the UberFridge. [...]

Tags:  production uberfridge beer old-refrigerator beer-production elco arduino hacks  

Finally an Arduino shield that does nothing The folks at Evil Mad Scientist labs have finally created the Googly Eye Shield for Arduinos. With it’s pass-through .100 headers, it adds googly eyes to your Arduino projects. Of course, instead of in addition to the googly eyes you could add a breadboard, making it somewhat useful. A million fake [...]

Tags:  shield hackaday arduino googly-eyes mad-scientist eye-shield hackaday links  

This OWI robot arm has been hacked to add position sensors and Arduino control. [Chris Anderson] took one look at the Launchpad controlled OWI from earlier today and said “wait a minute, I’ve already posted my own version of that project”. Well, that will teach him not to tip us off about his hacks! The [...]

Tags:  launchpad ARM arduino chris-anderson owi-robot position-sensors robot-arm hacks  

The guys over at brainwagon just finished up ANGST, the Arduino n’ Gameduinio Satellite Tracker, a build that displays 160 different satellites in Earth orbit on any SVGA monitor. The build is of course based off an Arduino and Gameduino shield. A real-time clock is always needed for a satellite tracker, so a DS1307 RTC [...]

Tags:  arduino tracker satellite real-time-clock satellite-tracker earth-orbit android hacks  

Ever thought of using touch sensors on your projects but didn’t because it would be too much work? [Paul Stoffregen] proves that it can be pretty easy if you use the CapSense library for Arduino. Here he’s created three touch sensors, connecting them to the Teensy microcontroller with two resistors each. The larger resistor (looks [...]

Tags:  arduino touch capsense paul-stoffregen touch-sensors hacks  

In the quest for a diy laser cutter made from DVD burner parts (that hack’s still in the works) this guy ended up with a junk box full of optical-drive leftovers. He put some of that surplus to good use by building this stroboscope. As the media spins, the white LED just out of focus [...]

Tags:  drive project stroboscope laser-cutter arduino junk-box hacks  

Apparently there was a Nuclear Taco eating contest at the 2010 Codebits Conference. The team from altLab, a Hackerspace in Lisbon, didn’t partake but the discomfort of those that did was burned into their memory. This year, the altLab members decided to build a spciy taco monitoring helmet as part of the conference’s 48 hour [...]

Tags:  helmet taco nuclear lisbon eating-contest spicy-food arduino hacks  

Behold the uWave, a microwave oven that plays YouTube videos while it cooks. [Kevin] and three classmates at the University of Pennsylvania developed the project for the 2011 PennApps hackathon. It uses a tablet computer to replace the boring old spinning food display microwaves are known for. Now, an Arduino reads the cook time and [...]

Tags:  youtube microwave time kevin uwave microwave-oven arduino cooking hacks  

[Grissini] hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to personal audio players. He estimates that he’s gone through about half a dozen iProducts/iKnockoffs over the years, which ultimately adds up to a lot of money poured right down the drain. Rather than lay down his cold hard cash for yet another music player [...]

Tags:  player diy music personal-audio-players cold-hard-cash music-player arduino hacks  

[BadWolf] managed to make some free time to get back to his own electronic projects. This time around he’s created a security system for his car. It’s patched into the ignition, preventing the engine from starting when the key is turned. A driver must first insert the key, then type the combination on a keypad [...]

Tags:  electronic-projects security-system free-time arduino hacks  

[Kris] wanted to make the telecommuting employees at his office feel a little more in control of their virtual presence in the office. He gave them a way to look around without needing to go into full-blown robotics. This laptop stand has a Lazy Susan connected to a servo motor to give the user control [...]

Tags:  user laptop office susan virtual-presence telecommuting-employees laptop-stand arduino hacks  

[Jerome Kelty] is a big fan of the movie Stargate, and when he saw it for the first time, he wanted one of the awesome helmets worn by the Horus Guards. This isn’t the kind of thing you would normally find at your local costume shop, so he knew that he would have to build [...]

Tags:  guard mask horus jerome-kelty animatronic costume-shop kelty arduino hacks  

This clever hack uses an Arduino to do a brute force attack on a computer’s BIOS. In theory, this technique could be used for other programs, but it’s use would be limited since there’s no way to account for too many wrong passwords. The Arduino generates and outputs the possible password emulating a USB keyboard. [...]

Tags:  bios arduino force brute-force-attack usb-keyboard hacks  

[Peter] was tired of crawling behind his desktop computer to switch between headphones and speakers. We feel his pain, as the headphone port on our computer speakers has its own demonic hum rendering the jack useless to us. His solution was to build this output selector board, then control it via the network. A relay [...]

Tags:  audio output computer peter headphone-port computer-speakers desktop-computer arduino hacks  

If you ever wondered how the Arduino came into being, check out [IEEE Spectrum's] article entitled “The Making of Arduino.” From it’s humble origins in Northern Italy, the Arduino, as shown by a large number of projects featured at [HAD], has become the go-to processor for DIY processing power. It’s cost (around $30) and ease-of-use [...]

Tags:  origin arduino check northern-italy humble-origins ieee-spectrum hacks  

We think this is an intriguing take on half-tone art. It’s a CNC machine that uses an Arduino and two stepper motors to draw on a paper-covered drum. But you’re not just going to set it and forget it. To simplify the device, the Z-axis is not mechanized, but requires the dexterous opposing digit of a [...]

Tags:  half-tone take cnc cnc-machine arduino stepper-motors hacks  

[Paul] was looking to spice up his holiday decorations this year, so he picked up some GE Color Effects lights and started hacking away. We’ve already seen how hacker-friendly these LED bulbs are, which is why [Paul] decided to give them a try. His ultimate goal was to synchronize several sets of lights from one [...]

Tags:  color colornode led paul led-bulbs holiday-decorations hacker arduino hacks  

OK, year-old pop culture references aside [Kyle] dropped us a line to show us his tutorial on using interrupts with your Arduino. Given the single core nature of your average Arduino’s AVR you pretty much have two choices for monitoring occasional un-timed inputs: Either check an input at an interval (which risks missing the signal [...]

Tags:  beginner tutorial arduino pop-culture-references two-choices interval hacks  

Here’s a simple camera setup that lets you make your own panning time-lapse videos. It uses a couple of motors driven by an Arduino to snap successive still images which can later be rolled into a video format. [Acorv] was not thrilled with the fact that his new Lumix LX5 didn’t have a time-lapse option built-in. [...]

Tags:  time-lapse-videos camera-setup arduino digital cameras hacks  

[Charles Gershom] has been tinkering around with his keyboard and Arduino in order to build his own version of a MIDI controlled synthesizer. It looks like he’s gutted the enclosure of some commercially available MIDI hardware to use for the project. This works nicely since it gives him both the MIDI and audio jacks that he needs. [...]

Tags:  synth midi arduino-based charles-gershom midi-synth midi-hardware audio-jacks arduino hacks  

Although there are other ways to do this, [Rod] has decided to write up his method of using two Arduinos and the I2C protocol to expand an Arduino’s IO capacity. As seen in the picture above, you’ll sacrifice 2 analog pins, but if you happen to need IO and have an extra Arduino lying around, [...]

Tags:  i2c-protocol pins arduino hacks  

This fully-addressable RGB LED matrix was built by [John Graham-Cummings]. He didn’t start from scratch, but wisely repurposed a strand of GE Color Effect lights and built a pleasant looking case in which to mount the G-35 hardware. We’ve seen this hardware used in a similar way before. Because each ‘bulb’ has its own microcontroller, [...]

Tags:  led matrix Hardware john-graham-cummings led-matrix start-from-scratch christmas-lights arduino hacks  

Hackaday reader [Kieran] volunteers at an outdoor haunted house attraction called the “Disenchanted Forest”. Attendees are lead through the haunted forest by a volunteer, who helps keep everyone on the predetermined trail. The trail is usually lit by small LED fixtures that the group constructed, but the organizers wanted to make the lights more interactive [...]

Tags:  hacking trail forest kieran magic-wand disenchanted-forest haunted-forest arduino hacks  

[monkeysinacan] wanted to add a fog machine to his Halloween display, but he says that the cheaper consumer-grade models are pretty unruly beasts. He cites short duty cycles and tricky fog control as his two biggest gripes with these sorts of foggers. He decided make the fogging process a little more manageable, and modified his [...]

Tags:  machine fog halloween unruly-beasts fog-control fog-machine arduino hacks  

[linux-dude] always wanted to have a binary clock, but he didn’t want to pay someone else to make it for him. Additionally, he was looking for a compact alarm clock he could take on the road, rather than relying on the one in his hotel room. Inspired by other binary clock projects he has seen [...]

Tags:  clock diy alarm binary-clock pocket-linux alarm-clock arduino hacks