Every office has those moments where nobody knows WTF is going on. At least this office has taken the important step of acknowledging the problem.
The WTF Counter system consists of a button hooked up to an Arduino. Whenever an awkward moment arises, an employee presses the aptly labeled WTF button which is connected to the Arduino. The Arduino logs the WTF moment on a local web server.
What’s a programmer to do. Buy a hard-to-find LED strip? Most likely. He’ll then probably spend weeks hacking it so he can interface it with an Arduino. Afterwards, the LEDs will fade in and fade out for weeks to come, as our hero desperately tries to make sense of all this. After meeting with a friend, our hero and his companion work together to release a library for said LED strip. The day ends and they both breathe a sigh of relief. They hack to live, they live to hack. Hit the link to see it in action.
The Arduino makes a fierce return, this time in the form of a hat. Using flex sensors and a hat-mounted Arduino, Instructables user RonanOD created a game of Pong where you use your eyebrows for play. The hat senses how much pressure is being created along the brim and uses the related data as input in the game. Instructions are available, but I can’t promise it’ll be fun twitching your eyebrows like Mr. Bean all day long.
Party on, Wayne! Look, if you don’t have an Arduino by now, I have no idea what’s wrong with you. Grab one and then plunk down some cash for this Piezo Drum Kit from Spikenzie Labs. It’s a mere $18.95 and will allow you to easily hook up piezoelectronic sensors to your board and start drumming with any tangible surface area. Your desk? Drum kit. Your 8-month-old child? Drum kit. That bag of cocaine you picked up in the alleyway last night? Drum kit! The possibilities are endless, as long as you don’t suck at percussion.
Yup. Exactly what you probably thought. This is an Arduino made from paper instead of using a printed circuit board. Created by DIYer Guilherme, this Arduino is fully functional and is also the most inexpensive Arduino available. Want to design your own? Instructions are indeed available, my friend.
Thirsty for a fun DIY project this weekend? Check out these light-up milk bottles controlled by an Arduino. Created by Instructables user Nachimir, he’s posted full out instructions on how to construct your own. The video is very eerie but don’t let that scare you off. I’d be more worried about having to drink all that milk in one sitting.
We’ve seen the Arduino used before in multiple DIY projects and mods. Makes sense, especially since it’s a user-friendly microcontroller. But what about using the Arduino as a full-fledged computer? That’s what a guy named Johannes decided to do. Check out what he’s managed to pull off so far:
I have resently been working on a project for the arduino, called Arduputer. With the project i intended to see how much the arduino could do. The current sketch is about 13kB.
On the arduputer I have several programs including a text editor, a simple ocilloscope and a program that shows available ram on the Arduputer.I have modified the Ps2 keyboard library and the GLCD. In the GLCD library I added a routine for showing a picture. I used Bitmap2LCD for converting it from bmp to bitmap.
If you want to try building your own, instructions are available. Not for the light of heart.
Anyone old enough to have owned an NES when it was the prime system knows how awesome the Power Glove could have been. Alas, it was just a controller bolted to a neat-looking glove. Now, 20 years later, Matt Mechtley has done the impossible and has officially made the Power Glove cool again.
Using an Arduino, a Bluetooth module and an accelerometer, Matt can now manipulate all kinds of data using the Power Glove. Hell, I can only imagine the possibilities when paired up with Pure Data. If you dare make your own, Matt has posted all the code and instructions you could possibly need.
The Arduino continues to power innovation and creation well into 2009. This blender, created by Matti Niinimaki, is rigged to create beats. No smoothies here, folks, just pounding techno full of cheesy sound FX. The Beat Blender prototype reads fruit embedded with RFID tags that are dropped into it. Hitting different blending speeds (Puree, Liquify, Blend, Grind, etc.) will add different effects and filters to the music, allowing for a unique style of making new music.
Matti’s setup makes use of a combination of hardware and software, including Max/MSP, Ableton Live, an RFID reader and of course, the Arduino. What gives Matti? Max/MSP? You know Pure Data would work just as well and we’d all be able to play around with your code.
I guess when God gives you lemons, you make music.
The Smapler is quite the instrument. First off, you’ll have to build it using your trusty Arduino since it’s a shield that works in tandem with the microcontroller. It’ll allow you to build some unique and interesting instruments as well. This new snap-on panel really gives it more of an instrument-like feel though, don’t you think? It features 4 knobs, two switches and a mount for your Arduino board and Smapler shield. It even has a rustic, steampunkish paint job to top it off. Better hurry over to BlushingBoy.org though, ’cause they’re giving away 10 of these away to buyers of the Smapler.
