Planet Arduino

Using an Arduino Uno along with an Adafruit Wave Shield, Brent Chapman added more features to the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe including a push-to-start ignition and a sound system.

Although Chapman notes that the Coupe comes with some onboard entertainment options, he thought “his client” deserved something a bit more high-tech. This meant that he retrofitted the classic toy with several pushbuttons that allow him to select a fun song to play and replaced the key with a giant arcade button. He also 3D-printed a replacement hood for the car to cover the electronics, since the original was modified to fit them inside.

Per the second video on the project’s page, his little client seems to be hesitant at first, but eventually starts happily car-dancing along to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’s  “Hot Dog Dance” tune that parents will probably be familiar with.

You can see the entire build, including videos and code, here or follow Chapman on Twitter to see what he’s up to next!

The Cozy Coupe gets a much needed upgrade thanks to @arduino and the wave shield from @adafruit – https://t.co/9Y4UE5Z4Vu #ArduinoMonday pic.twitter.com/U1xWwQF9Bx

— Brent Chapman (@brentmore) January 9, 2017

A team at the Royal College of Art has created Space Replay, a floating black orb that records and plays back conversations from passers-by. Space Replay is a neutrally buoyant helium balloon carrying a small payload. An Arduino, an Adafruit Wave Shield, and a small speaker make up the balloons’ brain. The team used the waverp library to record and play back sounds through their shield. 3 lithium coin cells power the system. A small vacuum formed plastic housing keeps all the internal parts together, as well as acts as a small speaker cone to amplify sounds entering and leaving the orb.

As the video shows, the final result is rather creepy. A slight breeze in a subway station caused the orb to move slowly down the hallway. One would think that space replay would freak a few people out, or at least entice the curious to touch it. Other than one amused elevator rider, the unflappable London public paid no mind to it. Maybe if it had some tea…

[Klaus] wanted some sort of aid for parking his car, and after running across a $4 ultrasonic sensor, decided to build his own speaking distance sensor (.de, Google Translation).

Inside [Klaus]‘ device is an Arduino Uno, an HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor, and an Adafruit Wave Shield. Originally, this parking/distance sensor used a small TFT to display the distance to an object, but after a few revisions, [Klaus] redesigned the device to speak the current distance, courtesy of an SD card and a soothing female voice.

Right now, the voice is set up to speak the distance from an object to the sensor from 10 cm to 1 m in 5cm increments. This isn’t the limit of the sensor, though, and the device can be easily reconfigured to sense a distance up to four meters.

The board doesn’t have an amplifier or speaker, but with the addition of a small amplifier, [Klaus]‘ device is loud enough to be heard in even the noisiest environments.

Video demo below.