Planet Arduino

dropController has the kind of documentation we wish would spontaneously generate itself whenever we build something. [Martyn Currey] built a robust rig for water droplet photography, and we don’t want to dismiss the hardware, but the most impressive part might be the website. It might not be very fancy, but it’s thorough and logically organized. You can find parts lists, assembly manuals, tutorials, sketches, and schematics. If only all the projects that came our way were so well detailed.

Water droplet photography is pretty cool, although freehanding it will make your patience fall faster than 9.81 m/s². The concept is that a solenoid valve will flicker open to release a drop of water, wait for a certain number of microseconds, and then trigger your DSLR via a wired remote cable. The tricky part comes from controlling as many as six valves and three flashes. We don’t have enough fingers and toes to press all those buttons.

The bill of materials contains many commonly available parts like an Arduino Nano, an LM2596 voltage regulator, some MOSFETS, an HC-06 Bluetooth module, plus standard audio connectors to hook everything up. Nothing should break the bank, but if money is not an issue, [Martyn] sells kits and complete units.

Waterdrop controllers are not the newest kids on the block, and strobe photography is a time-honored tradition.

All pictures credits are to [Martyn Currey].

Wireless, Credit-Card sized, Android + Linux + Arduino™, Embedded Sensors, starting from $49. What else?

UDOO Neo embodies a new concept: a single board computer suitable for the Post-PC era:

• Like a Raspberry Pi, you can program it in any language and run a full Linux environment with graphic interfaces.
• You get all the simplicity of an Arduino-compatible board, thanks to the Cortex-M4 and the Arduino UNO pinout layout, with the possibility of adding most Arduino™ shields, actuators and sensors, both analog and digital.
• An incredible, smoothly-running Android 4.4.3, it gives you the possibility to build new Android-based smart devices.
• You get a wireless module: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.0 (Classic Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy), because we hate cables.
• 9-axis motion sensors are embedded, to build your perfect drone/robot/3D printers/whatever or create new kinds of interactions with the real world.
• Open-source hardware: because we love to let you hack things or create new devices from scratch!
• Starting from $49!

UDOO Neo = Raspberry Pi + Arduino + Wi-Fi + BT 4.0 + Sensors - [Link]

This week we are delighted to announce a new Arduino At Heart Partner targeted for makers to develop low power Internet-Of-Things (IoT) projects quickly and easily: Blend Micro.

Blend Micro, by RedBearLab is an integrated developement board “blend”ing Arduino with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (aka BLE or Bluetooth Smart) into a single board.

In the following videos, you can see how easy it is to use Blend Micro with the companion Apps for both iOS and Android. See how to control digital output, PWM and Servo, obtain readings from digital or analog inputs.

On their website you can find some sample codes on how to write your own Apps too. They soon will provide a boot loader update which allow the Blend Micro to be programmed over-the-air from Bluetooth Smart Ready portable devices and PCs, no USB wire is required for uploading the sketch.

If you want Blend Micro now, it’s available in the Arduino Store.