Planet Arduino

You don’t have to be an extinct mammal or a Millennial to enjoy the smooth, buttery taste of an avocado. Being psychic on the other hand is definitely an advantage to catch that small, perfect window between raw and rotten of this divaesque fruit. But don’t worry, as modern problems require modern solutions, [Eden Bar-Tov], [Elan Goldberg], and [Mizpe Ramon] built the AvoRipe, a device to notify you when your next avocado has reached that window.

Taking both the firmness and color of an avocado as indicators of its ripeness into account, the team built a dome holding a TCS3200 color sensor as stand for the avocado itself, and 3D printed a servo-controlled gripper with a force sensor attached to it. Closing the gripper’s arms step by step and reading the force sensor’s value will determine the softness the avocado has reached. Using an ESP8266 as centerpiece, the AvoRipe is turned into a full-blown IoT device, reporting the sensor readings to a smartphone app, and collecting the avocado’s data history on an Adafruit.IO dashboard.

There is unfortunately one big drawback: to calibrate the sensors, a set of nicely, ripe avocados are required, turning the device into somewhat of a chicken and egg situation. Nevertheless, it’s a nice showcase of tying together different platforms available for widescale hobbyist projects. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to know how to do each part from scratch on your own, but on the other hand, why not use the shortcuts that are at our disposal to remove some obstacles — which sometimes might include programming itself.

[Labpacks] wanted to build a robot car controlled by his phone. As a Hackaday reader, of course you probably can imagine building the car. Most could probably even write a phone application to do the control. But do you want to? In most cases, you are better off focusing on what you need to do and using something off the shelf for the parts that you can. In [Labpacks’] case, he used Visuino to avoid writing ordinary code and RemoteXY to handle the smartphone interface.

RemoteXY is a website that allows you to easily build a phone interface that will talk to your hardware over Bluetooth LE, USB, or Ethernet (including WiFi). One thing of interest: even though the interface builder is Web-based, the service claims that the interface structure stays on the controller. There’s no interaction with the remote servers when operating the user interface so there is no need for an external Internet connection.

The system supports Arduino and ESP controllers. On the phone side, you can use Android or iOS. The RemoteXY site has plenty of examples.

We know there are other ways to do this, including just rolling your own. However, it is nice to have different options and RemoteXY has all the usual controls, including a joystick, a color picker, a level, graphs, and more.

We did our own version of this project using Blynk. We’ve also seen Visuino before, too.

[Labpacks] wanted to build a robot car controlled by his phone. As a Hackaday reader, of course you probably can imagine building the car. Most could probably even write a phone application to do the control. But do you want to? In most cases, you are better off focusing on what you need to do and using something off the shelf for the parts that you can. In [Labpacks’] case, he used Visuino to avoid writing ordinary code and RemoteXY to handle the smartphone interface.

RemoteXY is a website that allows you to easily build a phone interface that will talk to your hardware over Bluetooth LE, USB, or Ethernet (including WiFi). One thing of interest: even though the interface builder is Web-based, the service claims that the interface structure stays on the controller. There’s no interaction with the remote servers when operating the user interface so there is no need for an external Internet connection.

The system supports Arduino and ESP controllers. On the phone side, you can use Android or iOS. The RemoteXY site has plenty of examples.

We know there are other ways to do this, including just rolling your own. However, it is nice to have different options and RemoteXY has all the usual controls, including a joystick, a color picker, a level, graphs, and more.

We did our own version of this project using Blynk. We’ve also seen Visuino before, too.

Model trains have been a staple of DIY hobbiysts for generations, and while wireless control options can be purchased, KushagraK7’s hack lets you use your phone instead.

The setup consists of an Arduino Uno, along with a motor driver shield to vary the trains’s peed and direction, as well as flip turnouts to allow for different sections of track to be used.

The system employs a novel interface system, where an off-the-shelf Bluetooth receiver passes DTMF (telephone dial tones) to a decoder board, which then sends this decoded data on to the Arduino. While some might opt for an HC-05 Bluetooth module or similar, this enables control with a standard tone generator app, and the phone could even be physically connected via a stereo cable if convenient.

Besides, perhaps a longer battery life, what would make your smartphone experience better? If you said a more versatile interaction method than poking one side with your thumb, researchers in Germany may have just the thing.

InfiniTouch morphs two LG Nexus 5 phones into one, with their touchscreens stacked back-to-back. This allows for not only thumb interaction, but also program control with the four fingers that normally only grip the device. It can even tell what finger your using via a convolutional neural network. 

In order to save space, most of the electronics are housed in a separate hardware container, including the phone boards as well as an Arduino MKR1000. 

More info is available in the project’s research paper, and a short demo can be seen in the video below.

Besides, perhaps a longer battery life, what would make your smartphone experience better? If you said a more versatile interaction method than poking one side with your thumb, researchers in Germany may have just the thing.

InfiniTouch morphs two LG Nexus 5 phones into one, with their touchscreens stacked back-to-back. This allows for not only thumb interaction, but also program control with the four fingers that normally only grip the device. It can even tell what finger your using via a convolutional neural network. 

In order to save space, most of the electronics are housed in a separate hardware container, including the phone boards as well as an Arduino MKR1000. 

More info is available in the project’s research paper, and a short demo can be seen in the video below.

A good robot is always welcome around here at Hackaday, and Hackaday.io user [igorfonseca83]’browser-controlled ‘bot s is no exception. Felines beware.

[igorfonseca83] — building on another project he’s involved in — used simple materials for the robot itself, but you could use just about anything. His goal for this build was to maximize accessibility in terms of components and construction using common tools.

An Arduino Uno gets two D/C motors a-driving using an H-bridge circuit — granting independent control the wheels — an ESP8266 enabling WiFi access, with power provided by a simple 5V USB power bank. [igorfonseca83] is using an Android smartphone to transmit audio and video data; though this was mostly for convenience on his part, a Raspberry Pi and camera module combo as another great option!

A few workarounds notwithstanding — considering some components in this particular configuration do not directly connect to each other — a bunch of code, set up of a website to act as a controller that accesses the IP address of the ESP8266, and an app installed on the audio/video streaming smartphone later, and you have a cat-stalking robot ready to rock. There are, of course, other uses for fpv robots, but with arguably less entertaining results.

[via Hackaday.io and Instructables]

For most of us, our touch-screen smartphones have become an indispensable accessory. Without thinking we tap and swipe our way through our digital existence, the promise of ubiquitous truly portable computing has finally been delivered.

Smartphones present a problem though to some people with physical impairments. A touchscreen requires manual dexterity on a scale we able-bodied people take for granted, but remains a useless glass slab to someone unable to use their arms.

LipSync is a project that aims to address the problem of smartphone usage for one such group, quadriplegic people. It’s a mouth-operated joystick for the phone’s on-screen cursor, with sip-and-puff vacuum control for simulating actions such as screen taps and the back button.

To the smartphone itself, the device appears as a standard Bluetooth pointing device, while at its business end the joystick and pressure sensor both interface to a Bluetooth module through an Arduino Micro. The EAGLE board and schematic files are available on the project’s hackaday.io page linked above, and there is a GitHub repository for the code.

Technology is such a part of our lives these days, and it’s great to see projects like this bridge the usability gaps for everyone.  Needless to say, it’s a perfect candidate for the Assistive Technology round of the Hackaday Prize.

Who doesn’t like the user interface in the movie Minority Report where [Tom Cruise] manipulates a giant computer screen by just waving his hands in front of it? [AdhamN] wanted to unlock his door with hand gestures. While it isn’t as seamless as [Tom’s] Hollywood interface, it manages to do the job. You just have to hold on to your smartphone while you gesture.

The project uses an Arduino and a servo motor to move a bolt back and forth. The gesture part requires a 1sheeld board. This is a board that interfaces to a phone and allows you to use its capabilities (in this case, the accelerometer) from your Arduino program.

The rest should be obvious. The 1sheeld reads the accelerometer data and when it sees the right gesture, it operates the servo. It would be interesting to do this with a smart watch, which would perhaps look a little less obvious.

We covered the 1sheeld board awhile back. Of course, you could also use NFC or some other sensor technology to trigger the mechanism. You can find a video that describes the 1sheeld below.

Augmented reality has yet to find a foothold in widespread applications, but MIT has just released an AR app that allows you to control IoT devices.

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