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Sabertron: a foam lightsaber game that finally proves who's got the most midi-chlorians
Chances are you've clutched a lightsaber or two in your time, whether that be an inexpensive imitation of the iconic Jedi weapon, or a deluxe model. You may even be a veteran duelist, but unless you're willing to commit murder with a Star Wars toy (or, someone else could just score the bout, we guess), then the dance always ends with no true victor. If you think that something with a name like Sabertron can't solve this dilemma, then these aren't the swords you're looking for. Just launched on Kickstarter, the idea of Sabertron is pretty simple: foam sword, electronics to detect blows, LED scoreboard above the grip. The current prototype uses an Arduino board with accelerometer to register hits, with Xbee handling the wireless connection so swords know when they've merely collided, and when to shut off LEDs after an opponent's successful strike. Also, a control panel and screen built into the grip lets you pick between different game modes for one-on-one combat. During the year, LevelUp intends to created a chest/back mounted scoreboard with proximity detection that'll allow for multiplayer battles, with other accessories for the Sabertron range expected later. While it's aimed at Star Wars fans and live-action role players primarily, only a fun-sponge would be incapable of enjoying a few rounds of Alliance vs Empire with a buddy. And, with early bird pledges of $99 getting you a pair, breaking the will of Jedi scum doesn't have to break the bank.
Put a box to good use with ShoeboxCNC
Oh, the lowly box. It spends most of the year being broken down, stashed away and pulped, but one day a year, it gets its moment to shine (at least in the UK and various Commonwealth Nations). Consider the ShoeboxCNC a continued celebration of the cardboard vessel, a kit you build from the box it arrives in. The router is an Arduino-controlled CNC fabrication machine you can put to use for all sorts of things that require an arm that moves on the X Y and Z axes - from cookie frosting to picturing painting (with varying degrees of success, of course). It's not exactly a heavy duty router or miller - more the sort of kit you'd expect from something made out of cardboard. Still, it looks to be a fun weekend activity for burgeoning makers - or a nice classroom project. The company's just opened up its Kickstarter, hoping to harness a bit of that spirit of giving. $250 will get you a kit scheduled to be delivered around this time next year, for an early Boxing Day celebration.
Clack-Clack FACE gives a typewriter new life as a text-based portrait painter
There's something oddly romantic about taking a piece of archaic technology and giving it new life as a work of 21st century art. Take the Royal Empress typewriter you see above. This particular model was built in 1961 and eventually landed in the hands of Amanda Gelb as graduation gift. She and her fellow classmates, Jinyi Fu and Quingyuan Chen, looked at the hunk of aging metal and saw potential instead of an obsolete writing tool. For their installation at the ITP Winter Show, they wired up each of the keys to an Arduino for tracking what a user types, then paired that with a tiny projector that displays the letters on a sheet of paper wrapped around the platen. The "face" part of the equation comes from the webcam mounted to the top of the typewriter case. It uses brightness to map a silhouette of the person sitting in front of it and fills only the darkened areas with letters, creating an ASCII portrait in real time. The code also automatically loops the letters you type, so even if you press only a single key the picture will appear. Of course, you could also type out a love letter or a quick blog post and the whole thing will be wrapped inside the confines of your outline. When you're done, you can press the re-labeled print key and a laser printer spits out your portrait. While there are already plenty of apps and sites out there that will automatically create ASCII versions of images, there's something alluring about sitting in front of gorgeous piece of hardware and creating it live. Plus, there are few things in this world as satisfying as pressing down the stiff keys of an old typewriter, hearing the titular onomatopoeia and seeing the letter appear before you. Especially when you know you're creating a work of art, even if you're a terrible writer.
Punch Through's new Arduino board can stay wireless forever (video)
You'll have to plug in a typical Arduino-compatible board at some point in its life, whether it's to add code or just to supply power. Not Punch Through Design's upcoming Cortado, however. The tiny device centers on a custom Bluetooth 4.0 LE module that both enables wireless programming (including through mobile apps) and helps the board last for more than a year on a replaceable watch battery. In fact, the Cortado will already be powered up when you get it -- you can start coding before you've opened the shipping box. It should also be relatively flexible for its size with a built-in accelerometer and the ability to serve as an Apple iBeacon transmitter. Punch Through is crowdfunding the board with hopes of shipping its first units in May. If you're interested, you can pledge $18 to pre-order a Cortado; there's also a helpful promo video after the break.
Touch Board kit combines an Arduino heart with touch sensors, conductive paint
Capacitive sensing isn't limited to your smartphone. In fact, you can use contact with human skin (or any other conductive surface) to trigger almost any circuit. And the Touch Board from Bare Conductive wants you to combine your DIY spirit with the ability to turn practically any surface into a sensor. At the heart is an Arduino compatible microcontroller (based on the Leonardo) with a few extras baked in, including a Freescale touch sensor connected to 12 electrodes and an audio processor for triggering MIDI sounds or MP3 files. While you can simply trigger the electrodes by touching them or connecting them to any conductive material, such as a wire, the Electric Paint Pen really opens up the input possibilities. It's just like a paint marker, often used for small scale graffiti, except it spits out conductive black ink that can turn a wall, a piece of paper or almost anything else into a trigger. In fact, it's preloaded with a bunch of sample sounds on a microSD card so that you can simply paint a soundboard out of the box. The Kickstarter startup has already more than quadrupled its target funding, but there's still a few days left to get in on the fun. For £45 you can get a Touch Board (with microSD card), an Electric Paint Pen and your choice of either a micro USB cable or a rechargable lithium battery for your untethered projects. And, since its pin compatible with most Arduino shields, you can add even more capabilities to the Touch Board for more complex projects. For example, pop on a relay switch shield, like the one included in the £100 light switch kit, and you can turn your lights on and off or tackle any other high-voltage project on your wishlist. And, since the Electric Paint can also act as a proximity sensor, you could potentially build a dimmer that brightens the room as you bring your hand closer to the wall. For the requisite sales pitch and demo, check out the video after the break.
Peripheral Vision 007: Tyler DeAngelo - 'wasting time is an important piece of innovation'
"There's something we miss when everything becomes virtual and goes online," says Tyler DeAngelo. "Tactile-ness gives it something that is more interesting and a deeper connection and makes it more meaningful." The ad executive invited us to Havas Worldwide's Chicago offices to show off his latest creation, and with Fifth Avenue Frogger, the Check 'N Chew Foursquare gumball machine and the Buzzed Buzzer under his belt, we took him up on the offer. His latest creation was born of the same desire to bridge the physical and the virtual. Created for a beer client, the bottle opener has Arduino Nano-based circuitry built-in, which connects with an Android handset via Bluetooth, sending texts to friends when you crack open a bottle. "I'm definitely not the first person to say this, but creativity comes from finding meaningful relationships between things that already exist," explains DeAngelo. "Nothing I'm doing is going to change the world. A lot of the stuff I do is wasting people's time, but I still think that making someone think differently or making someone laugh or have fun -- wasting time is an important piece of innovation." It's also, naturally, an important part of engaging a public increasingly immune to sales pitches. Getting people's attention in an ad-saturated world requires a lot more than clever jingles. "i think the most innovative things in the media field should be happening inside ad agencies right now," DeAngelo adds. "If they're not, those who aren't innovating are going to be dead."
Intel launches Galileo, an Arduino-compatible development board
Notice how so many maker projects require open-source hardware like Arduino and Raspberry Pi to function? Intel has, and the company is leaping into bed with the former to produce the Galileo development board. Galileo is the first product packing Intel's Quark X1000 system-on-chip, Santa Clara's (designed in Ireland, trivia fans) new low-power gear for wearables and "internet of things" devices. Don't imagine, however, that Intel is abandoning its X86 roots, as Quark's beating heart is a single-thread Pentium-based 400MHz CPU. As part of the new project, Intel will be handing out 50,000 of the boards to 1,000 universities over the next 18 months -- a move which we're sure will make Eben Upton and Co. delighted and nervous at the same time.
WiFi-equipped Arduino Yun now available for $69 (video)
If you were wondering what happened to the Arduino Yun after it missed its original June release target, you can relax: it's now on sale worldwide. As promised, the $69 (€52) design combines a garden variety Leonardo board with a WiFi system-on-chip running Limino, giving owners a customizable wireless access point with Ethernet, USB and a microSD slot. Tinkerers can also program the Arduino component over the air using a newly updated developer environment. Those already sold on the concept can buy an Arduino Yun at the source link, while newcomers can check out an introductory video after the break.
Flutter: A $20 wireless Arduino with a long reach
If the words "ARM-powered wireless Arduino" send your heart aflutter, then you might be interested in... Flutter -- a development platform with the aforementioned qualities. The Kickstarter project claims the device has a usable range of over half a mile, letting you nail that wireless letterbox-checker project with ease. Similar tools, such as Xbee and Zigbee already exist, but the $20 price tag for the Flutter basic, and $30 for Flutter Pro (adds battery charging, another button, more memory) make this a tempting option for tinkerers on a budget. So, if building that mesh network of quadrocopters has been sitting at the top of your to-do list for too long, we recommend you get backing right now.
This Arduino hackaphone was never going to be pretty, but it does the job
Okay, we'll admit that it looks a bit like a baby monitor. But in contrast to those over-engineered pieces of parenting paraphernalia, this DIY cellphone can actually make calls and send texts over GPRS. More importantly, Hackaday claims it was put together by a lone hacker ("Victorzie") from an assortment of off-the-shelf and modded parts, including a TFT touchscreen, lithium ion battery, charging circuit, GPRS module and shield. These components were hooked up to an Arduino Uno microcontroller running a barebones UI and then jammed into a 3D printed case, which makes the device look far more pocketable than some previous hackaphone efforts. The end result inspires big respect for the creator, but also, more grudgingly, for the pro engineers at places like Nokia, who can pull all this stuff together and even get it FCC-approved for just a few dollars.
Homebrew 8-bit computer packs in 16 cores, multitasks like a champ
It looks like Jack Eisenmann has done it again. A couple of years after the hobbyist hacker built his first 8-bit computer, he's cobbled together yet another one, but this time with a whopping 16 cores. Appropriately dubbed the DUO Mega, the multicore wonder is made with 16 ATMega328p microcontrollers, each connected to an 8-bit data bus and designed to interpret a custom bytecode that runs the software. Compiled inside a nondescript plastic bin, the machine is also comprised of 16MHz crystal oscillators attached to each of the aforementioned cores, three Arduino UNO boards, 32kb of SRAM, 512kb of flash memory, eight breadboards, an Ethernet shield, a VGA out port and a multitude of components that combine to look like that mess of wires seen above. Because of all that processing power, this relatively primitive machine multitasks beautifully and can perform complicated calculations at an impressive clip. To get a demo of what this marvelous feat of DIY computing can do, have a peek at Eisenmann's video, complete with an 8-bit soundtrack, after the break.
EMW kick-starts JuiceBox, a $99 Level 2 DIY charging station
Electric vehicle charging stations aren't cheap: one of the most affordable Level 2 (240V) units sells for $450 and only supplies 16A. Electric Motor Works (EMW) -- which is best known for its electric conversion kits -- wants to change this with JuiceBox, a 15kW Level 2 EV charger that costs just $99 in kit form (plus $10 shipping). The device, which is launching on Kickstarter today, supplies up to 62A and operates on both 120V and 240V. It's built around an Arduino microcontroller and EMW is making both the hardware and software open source. But wait, there's more! The company is also crowdfunding a Premium Edition of JuiceBox ($199 in kit form) which adds time-of-day charging, a color LCD, ground-fault plus output protection (for outdoor use) and a unique enclosure (hopefully as funky as the one in the picture above). While the DIY kits only require basic assembly and soldering skills, you'll be able to buy fully assembled versions for $100 more. At $329 (shipped), a ready-to-use JuiceBox Premium Edition undercuts other similar charging stations by several hundred dollars. The catch? You'll have to supply your own cables (or buy them separately from EMW), including one with a standard J1772 EV connector. Hit the source link below to check out the campaign, and take a look at the PR after the break.
Custom-built Katamari controller is made from yoga ball, DualShock 2 pad, power of the cosmos (video)
Conventional wisdom would suggest that making a for-real Katamari Damacy ball would be tricky, but that didn't stop Chris McInnis, Ron LeBlanc and Tom Gwozdz from taking up the challenge. As part of the Nuit Blanche festival in London, Canada (which also included some building-projected gaming), they were able to fashion their very own Katamari ball from a yoga ball, some stickers, wood, an Arduino microcontroller, several optical mice and a dissected DualShock 2 controller. See how it steers after the break.
HackEDA hits Kickstarter, makes Arduino board design a drag-and-drop affair (video)
Writing code for an Arduino-friendly board is relatively easy; creating the board is the hard part, unless you live and breathe electrical engineering. If HackEDA has its way, however, the design process could be almost as easy as window shopping. Its new Kickstarter-backed project lets tinkerers choose from a list of parts and get a made-to-order board without knowing a lick about PCB assembly -- algorithms sort out the finer details. While the initial effort includes just 36 combos based around an Atmega328 processor, contributors who want tangible hardware can pay anything from $30 for a bare board through to $10,000 for the first stages of mass production. The truly committed will have to wait until December for the finished goods, but those willing to try HackEDA can use its existing web tool for free.
Adafruit smart helmet guides bike riders with Arduino-based light shows (video)
Bike sharing systems like New York's Citi Bike may be taking off, but it's doubtful that many participants can find every station without checking a map. Thankfully, Adafruit has unveiled a smart helmet project that could help at least a few of those riders get to their destinations while keeping their eyes on the road. The DIY effort feeds locations to an Arduino-based Flora board and its positioning add-ons, which in turn use a string of NeoPixel LEDs on the helmet as turn indicators. Commuters just have to watch for blinking lights to know where to go next. While the system isn't easy to set up when cyclists have to manually enter coordinates, it is flexible: the open-source code lets it adapt to most any bike sharing system or headpiece. As long as you can get over looking like a Christmas tree on wheels while you navigate, you can build a smart helmet of your own using the instructions at the source link.
Olympia Circuits shows Arduino datalogger and Arno Add-Ons at Maker Faire 2013
Olympia Circuits is best known for its Arno board and Arno Shield, which are designed to ease the Arduino learning curve by providing a bevy of pre-wired sensors and controls along with detailed instructions for several DIY projects. The company announced a couple of new products at Maker Faire this past weekend: the Arno Digital RGB Add-On and the SODA HE-1.0 Arduino datalogger. With the former, your Arno simply gains three RGB LEDs, while the latter stands for "Simple, Open Data Acquisition, High Efficiency." It's an Arduino board with screw terminals designed around Atmel's ATmega32u4 that features a real-time clock (RTC) with battery backup, a high-precision ADC and a microSD card slot. The RTC can either wake the entire board or trigger an interrupt at set intervals, which makes the board very power efficient when used in the field. Olympia Circuits will be updating its website with more info shortly (including availability and pricing). Until then, don't miss our hands-on gallery below.%Gallery-188775%
Arduino Yun weds Arduino, WiFi and Linux at Maker Faire 2013
The Arduino Robot wasn't the only interesting product the Italian company launched at Maker Faire this past weekend. Arduino Yún combines a Leonardo board (featuring Atmel's ATmega32u4) with a MIPS-based WiFi SoC (Atheros AR9331) running Limino (an OpenWRT / Linux derivative). It includes everything you'd expect from a Leonardo board plus WiFi, wired Ethernet, a USB host port and a microSD card slot. The Arduino side can be programmed wirelessly and communicates with the WiFi SoC via SPI and UART interfaces using the new Bridge Library, which delegates networking to the Linux side. Out of the box, the board behaves just like any standard WiFi access point with a full web interface -- it even allows SSH access. Arduino Yún is the first of a family of WiFI-enabled products and will be available late June for $69. Check out the gallery below for some closeup shots, and follow the source for more details. %Gallery-188774%
Insert Coin: Linkbot modular robotic platform lets you quickly build a bot, skills
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. Everybody loves robots, but the initial ardor for building one can quickly be snuffed out by the complex reality of actually programming it to do anything. That's where Linkbot comes in, a new project from the Barobo team that brought us the Mobot. It's designed as a modular system that can be expanded infinitely with accessories like a camera mount, gripper, and wheels, thanks to three separate mounting surfaces -- which also have standard #6-32 screw attachment holes on the mounting plate to attach personality-enhancing cutouts. Despite the expansion potential, though, it can still be used right out of the box to do robotics without touching a lick of code. That's thanks to several built-in modes like BumpConnect, which permits wireless connections between the modules by touching them together; and PoseTeach, to program complex motions by hand in a similar (but less time-consuming) manner to stop-motion animation techniques. For those who want to step it up a notch, the system lets you go far past basic mech fun. The Linkbot itself has two rotating hubs with absolute encoding, along with an accelerometer, buzzer, multicolored LCD and ZigBee wireless system with a 100m line-of-sight range. There are also optional breakout and Bluetooth boards to connect sensors like range finders, IR proximity sensors, photo detectors and thermostats. The outfit's BaroboLink software for Mac, PC or Linux is included to program the Arduino-compatible bot in several languages as well, and can even translate previously created PoseTeach motions into computer routines. So far, the company has created working prototypes and even shipped them to local schools, so if you're interested, you can pledge a minimum $129 toward the company's $40,000 target to grab one. That'll net you a Linkbot, two wheels, the BaroboLink software, access to the MyBarobo community -- and hopefully a jolt to your robotics confidence.
Arduino Robot launches at Maker Faire, we go hands-on (video)
There's a new kid on the Arduino block, and it's called the Arduino Robot. Launched yesterday at Maker Faire Bay Area, it's the company's first product that extends beyond single microcontroller boards. The Roomba-like design, which we first saw in November 2011, is the result of a collaboration with Complubot. It consists of two circular boards, each equipped with Atmel's ubiquitous ATmega32u4 and connected via ribbon cable. The bottom board is home to four AA batteries (NiMH), a pair of motors and wheels, a power connector and switch plus some infrared sensors. By default it's programmed to drive the motors and manage power. The top board features a color LCD, a microSD card slot, an EEPROM, a speaker, a compass, a knob plus some buttons and LEDs. It's programmed to control the display and handle I/O. Everything fits inside a space that's about 10cm high and 19cm in diameter. Pre-soldered connectors and prototyping areas on each board make it easier to customize the robot platform with additional sensors and electronics. It even comes with eleven step-by-step projects and a helpful GUI right out of the box. The Arduino Robot is now on sale at the Maker Faire for $275 and will be available online in July. Take a look at our gallery below and watch our video interview with Arduino founder Massimo Banzi after the break. %Gallery-188773%
Google I/O attendees will see their every move recorded in real time
During Google I/O this week, visitors to the Moscone Center will have their every movement tracked, but it's not as creepy as it sounds. Google's Cloud Platform Developer Relations team is spearheading a project called the Data Sensing Lab, which utilizes a network of Arduino sensors to collect ambient data and translate it into easily understood visualizations. Fluctuations in temperature, air quality and humidity will be recorded along with noise levels and foot traffic to provide a real-time breakdown of activity within the Moscone Center. The information from the Data Sensing Lab will then be displayed on a number of screens scattered around the conference floor. The Data Sensing Lab is the next step in Google's quest to master environmental data collection after absorbing the team behind Behavio last month. Developer Programs Engineer Michael Manoochehri admits that the plan is "kind of futuristic, and maybe a little crazy," but emphasizes the practical uses for real-time environmental analytics. For example, information about air quality fluctuations can be monitored to adjust a room's temperature and footstep counters can provide valuable insight into which areas are most popular. In the spirit of open innovation, Google promises to make the Cloud Platform code, the Arduino sensor designs and the collected data available online after the conference. Big Brother might be watching, but at least we'll be able to watch right along with him.
