Planet Arduino

The Enrichment Center likely disapproves of the SoundCube: a portal music box in the form of a Portal Companion Cube. [Andreas] finished this project a couple of years ago, but we’re glad he’s finally had time to give a rundown on the details at his blog.

The build is primarily a modified speaker box cube—constructed out of what appears to be MDF—with four Alpine SXE-1725S speakers placed at the center of the middle faces. The faces were routed out to resembled the Companion Cube, while the electronics mount and the speaker grills were 3d printed. Inside is a homemade amplifier built around an Arduino Mega, with a TDA7560 quad bridge amplifier, a TDA7318 audio processor, a Belkin bluetooth receiver, and a 3.5″ touchscreen for volume control and for input selections.

Two 12v 7.2Ah lead-acid batteries keep the cube functional for an entire weekend of partying, but probably add a few pounds to the already hefty MDF construction. Check out [Andreas's] blog for more pictures and his GitHub for all the necessary code.

We’ve featured loads of IR Arduino projects and they are all exciting and unique. The projects spring from a specific need or problem where a custom infrared remote control is the solution. [Rick’s] double feature we’re sharing in this article is no exception, but what is interesting and different about [Rick’s] projects is his careful and deliberate tutorial delivery on how to copy infrared remote codes, store the codes with a flavor of Arduino and then either transmit or receive the codes to control devices.

In the case of his space heater an Arduino was used to record and later retransmit the “power on” IR code to the heater before he awakes on a cold morning. This way his room is toasty warm before he has to climb out from under the covers, which has the added benefit of saving the cost of running the heater all night. Brilliant idea if you don’t have a programmable heating system. Maybe he will add a temperature sensor someday so it doesn’t have to run on strictly time.

A more complicated problem was controlling DVD playback software on his computer remotely. [Rick] says he sits at a distance when watching DVDs on his computer but his computer doesn’t have a remote control like a normal TV. Arduino to the rescue again! But this time he pulls out a Teensyduino because of its added feature of being able to emulate a keyboard and of course the computer DVD playback software accepts keyboard commands. Once again he used the “IRremote.h” library to record certain button codes from an old remote control before adding the retrieved codes to a Teensyduino setup and programmed to receive and decode the remote’s IR signals. The Teensyduino then maps the IR codes to known keyboard shortcuts and transmits the simulated keyboard shortcut commands to the computer via its USB cable where the DVD playback software recognizes the key commands.

As always [Rick] shares all his libraries and sketches on his blog so follow the above links to download the files. You will not miss a single step if you follow his excellent videos below. Plus, here are some other ways and other tools for using an IR remote with your Arduino and cloning an infrared remote.

If you’re having a hard time tuning out those loud commercials why not let your electronics project do it for you? This is an Arduino-based setup which adjusts television volume when it goes above a certain threshold. It uses a microphone, rather than a direct audio signal, so you can set it based on what is actually heard in the room.

The control scheme uses the IR LED and IR receiver seen on the breadboarded circuit above. The receiver lets you teach your volume up and down buttons from your remote control to the system. The one failing we see in the design is that the volume level is hard-coded, requiring you to flash new code to make adjustments (perhaps an enterprising reader could add a potentiometer for making easy adjustments?).

We can’t help but be reminded of the setup which reads the closed caption info to mute topics you’ve added to a blacklist.