Tag Archives: arduino

Pay What You Want: DIY Hardware & Internet of Things eBooks

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3D printers, robots, the “Internet of Things” – the future is truly upon us, and the barriers to building and operating incredible technologies are lower than ever. The 9 ebooks in this bundle are packed with information and projects to explore a wide range of exciting hardware, from Raspberry Pi to Arduino and more.

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You’ll build your skills in a wide variety of hardware and software to help you build your own smart devices using inexpensive, open source technologies to bring your ideas to life.

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There’s over $300 worth of eBooks here, and you can pay what you want for the whole set at the Technabob Shop.

Automatically Bolt the Door for Incognito Mode

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Google Chrome’s incognito mode is essentially a way for you to hide your porn searches from whoever uses your PC along with you. We all know this. Sure, incognito mode might be used for other things like shopping for gifts or whatever, but we all know the main reason for its existence is surfing for porn.

The catch is that when you fire up incognito mode, it won’t keep someone from walking into your room unannounced and seeing what you car looking at. This is where Mike, the CEO of Useless Duck Company, comes in with this cool Arduino project.

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This gizmo has a PC connected to an Arduino Uno using custom software to scan the host PC. When an incognito browser is detected, it triggers a servo, and the door is automatically locked shut. You need to check out the video to see how it works, and to hear Mike’s thinly veiled description of what it’s meant for. It’s pretty amusing.

Like most of the projects from the Useless Duck Company, it’s supposed to be kind of dumb, but it’s actually not a bad idea. Unfortunately, there is no Arduino project that can explain a randomly locked door to your wife.

[via Arduino]

DIY Mechanical PONG Table: Mag Hockey

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YouTuber Daniel Perdomo and his friends made one of the coolest video game replicas of the year so far. It’s a physical replica of the classic game PONG. It’s basically a magnetic, mechanical version of air hockey.

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The ball moves back and forth not due to the force from the paddles but because of a magnet below the glass surface. An arm moves the magnet along the x and y axis. A couple of Arduino microcontrollers handle how the ball behaves when it’s “hit.” It even seems like you can play against the table, or have it control both paddles for an ancient Let’s Play session. A pair of hard drive platters  were turned into rotary encoders to mimic the Atari knob controllers. The scoreboard, interactive LEDs around the playing field and graphics on the side of the table complete the homage. You can skip to 4:03 in the video below to see the finished table, or watch the whole thing to see how it all came together.

I hope it has the table makes PONG‘s blip and buzz sound effects too. Hack A Day says Daniel and his co-creators are looking for investors and business partners so they can start an arcade machine business to sell more units.

[via Hack A Day]

Deal: Touch Board DIY Starter Kit

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Transform any surface, object, or space into a touch controller with this amazing kit from Bare Conductive. The Touch Board DIY Starter Kit includes everything you need to build interactive objects.

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Simply connect the Arduino@Heart-based controller board to whatever you’d like to use as a controller, and it’ll magically transform it into a sensor. You can even use the Touch Board to control applications on your computer via USB.

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The kit also includes conductive paint, which can be used to create buttons, along with a dozen alligator clips, and all the wiring you need to get started. Since it includes a speaker and can play MP3s, you can use it to quickly make alarms, synthesizers, and other cool stuff that makes sounds when activated.

Drop by the Technabob Shop now, and grab the Touch Board DIY Starter Kit for $139.99 now. That’s a $10 savings off the regular price.

Mechanical Giant Squid Kinetic Sculpture: Mechateuthis

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Barry Crawford said that when he was a kid, he dreamed of growing up to be a robot. Sadly, his childhood dream hasn’t come true yet. But he did become what he calls a “gizmologist”, making mechanical artworks, furniture and jewelry. His latest ongoing project is the Mechateuthis, a crank-operated mechanical giant squid.

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The Mechateuthis (named after the giant squid’s genus Architeuthis) may look like it’s made of old materials and found objects, but it actually has over 600 hand-fabricated moving parts. Its tentacles, beak and fin are operated indirectly by eight hand cranks that are situated on fence posts along its perimeter. An Arduino turns the motion of the cranks into signals for the sculpture’s motors, which in turn activate the various moving parts. Here’s Make’s interview with Barry at the Maker Faire Bay Area 2016:

Barry originally made Mechateuthis for Burning Man 2015. Here it is blowing people’s minds at Black Rock:

I’d love to see a desktop version of Mechateuthis. And a Godzilla-sized one.

[via Make:]

 

A Robot That Pats Your Dog and Gives Treats

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Patting your dog is fun, but if you have a needy dog, it can become a chore. If only there was a robot that would pat our dogs for us. Fortunately, there is! Engineer James Cochrane has made a machine that will pat your animal and even give them a treat.

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He got the idea when he was petting his dog T-Bone one day, and so he built the “World’s First OT Robot People/Pet Affectionator“. It is basically an Arduino Nano based robot that automatically shows Fido some automated affection and offers up a spoonful of kibble, all at the touch of an arcade button embellished with a paw print.

Now we can use technology to ignore our dog like we do our fellow humans and we don’t even need to feel bad about it.

[via Laughing Squid]

Colin Furze’s Flamethrowing Guitar & Smoking Bass: Through the Fire & Vapes

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The crazy inventor Colin Furze promoted Intel’s new TV series America’s Greatest Makers by making a flamethrowing guitar and a bass that’s literally smoking. He may be a Brit, but he’s a great maker all right.

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Colin actually made not one, not two, but four mods for this promotion. For the flamethrowing guitar, Colin attached three blowtorch heads to the head of a guitar. He then installed several pipes, a gas reservoir, an igniter and a solenoid valve on the guitar’s body. He can trigger the flames manually, but he also used an Arduino 101 and a program where he can set flame patterns for automated operation.

In keeping with his theme, Colin mounted the Arduino 101 as well as a gas tank inside a guitar amplifier, so that the sound, the electronics and the gas are all coming from one box.

The smoking bass is simpler but no less cool. Colin routed smoke from a smoke machine to holes that he drilled on the guitar’s body, as well as to pipes along the instrument’s neck and head. He added a computer fan to the mouth of the smoke machine to push the smoke along and prevent the hot vapor from melting the plastic pipe that connects to the bass. He also mounted the smoke machine and a bass amp into a single base, and attached strobe lights to the guitar to take it to 11.

We just saw Mad Axes: Furze Road.