Posts | Comments

Planet Arduino

Archive for the ‘pro mini’ Category

When receiving a notification on your phone, it can be a tedious process to take the device out of a pocket, unlock the screen, and then read the message. In order to make viewing simple information much faster, University of Waterloo researchers developed a small pocketable display that can shine images and text through fabric. This means seeing the current time or directions can be done far more quickly since all the user has to do is look down. 

The technology driving this system consists of an Arduino Pro Mini board, an HC-05 Bluetooth module for receiving data from a host phone, an 8×8 RGBW NeoPixel matrix, and a single 420mAh LiPo battery cell for power. All of these components were assembled into a single unit and placed within a 3D-printed enclosure that can easily fit into the user’s pocket. 

After studying how LEDs interact with various types of fabrics by using an Arduino Mega, the team gathered 12 participants to see how effective their smart display, called the PocketView, was at showing important information. Once several tasks had been performed by the group, they consistently rated the LEDs to be a better viewing experience compared to looking at a phone.

To read more information about the PocketView and the plans the team has for it, you can view their paper here.

Images: Antony Albert Raj Irudayaraj, et al.

The post PocketView is an LED display that shows info through clothes and other fabrics appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Roboticists often look to nature for inspiration. That makes sense, because animals are very efficient machines, thanks to millions of years of evolution. Even our most sophisticated technology doesn’t come close to matching a common housefly. But we can get closer to mimicking nature at larger scales, as with this robot created by researchers at EPFL that does a great job of swimming like a lamprey.

Lampreys are long, jawless fish that often get mistaken for eels. They swim through the water with a motion similar to a snake slithering across loose sand. To replicate that movement, this robot’s body contains numerous segments joined by servo motors. Each segment also has a force plate on each side. That lets the robot sense the pressure of the water against its body as it swims. An Arduino Mini board monitors the plates through force cells and controls the motors.

This unique setup let the researchers study the ability of some vertebrates to move even with a damaged spinal cord. The “healthy” robot can coordinate the movement of all of its motors. But the robot with the simulated spinal cord injury cannot. The motors past the “injury” can only react to the force plates on their own segments. The team found that the robot was still able to swim efficiently, because the force plates provided enough information to control the motors as needed. This provides valuable information in the field of neuroscience and vertebrate nervous systems.

Images: Kamilo Melo, BIOROB-EPFL

The post This strange robotic fish swims like a lamprey appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Ham radio, or amateur radio, is a hobby enjoyed by millions of enthusiasts around the world. The FCC in the US and similar organizations in other countries provide amateur radio licenses that allow hobbyists to communicate on designated radio bands. Most ham radio operators communicate by voice, but ham radios can transmit other kinds of data. Dale Thomas built HamMessenger, which is a device that lets users send text messages through their ham radios.

If you remember the early days of the internet, you have heard for yourself that audio can carry digital data. Dial-up internet uses a modem to transmit that audio through standard phone lines. HamMessenger uses a similar methodology to encode a text message as audio. If someone listening on that frequency also has a HamMessenger device, they can decode the text message. Messages are not encrypted, so you shouldn’t use HamMessenger for sensitive information. But it’s a fun way to chat with your ham radio buddies.

HamMessenger contains two Arduino development boards. An Arduino Mega handles most of the functionality and a separate Pro Mini acts as a MicroAPRS modem. A Neo-6M GPS radio module lets you send position information along with your text messages. The HamMessenger’s custom PCB has a small 0.96″ OLED screen to display the messages. You input text via an M5Stack CardKB keyboard. Power comes from a pair of 18650 lithium-ion battery cells. The output from the HamMessenger device is an audio signal, which feeds into any ham radio — even a handheld model. Thomas plans to design an enclosure soon, but you can follow his instructions to put the rest of the hardware together right now.

The post Send text messages over ham radio with the HamMessenger appeared first on Arduino Blog.

When you use a “gyroscope” in Arduino and robotics projects, generally this means a small IMU that leverages several methods of sensing to tell how a device is moving. However, physical gyroscopes are able to employ a spinning disk stay upright mechanically. Could one be combined with advanced electronics to stabilize a robot or other craft?

James Bruton answers this question in the video below, going from a “bare” gyroscope, to an unpowered gimbal, and finally to a simulated boat. This utilizes a powered gimbal for stabilization that’s tilted in one axis by a DYNAMIXEL servo. Angle is measured using an Arduino Pro Mini along with an MPU-6050 IMU, and the gyroscope is controlled by an Arduino Mega.

You can check out the progression of this fun experiment in the video below, and find code/CAD info on GitHub.

The post Spinning gyroscope “boat” stabilization appeared first on Arduino Blog.

When playing the guitar, working the fretboard is only half of the equation. The other half is plucking or strumming the strings. But some people, particularly those with disabilities, may find it difficult to do both. To help with the strumming part of the equation, Jacob Stambaugh designed this DIY AutoStrummer device.

Stambaugh’s AutoStrummer fits into the sound hole of an acoustic guitar, so that it sits over the strings. A guitar pick, attached to an arm actuated by a stepper motor, swings back and forth to strum the desired strings. An Arduino board controls the movement of the stepper motor through a DRV8825 stepper motor driver chip. 

The guitarist uses an array of six tactile push buttons to select which strings to strum. If both the high E and low E buttons are pressed, then the device will strum all six strings. If the D and G buttons are pressed, then it will only strum those two strings. A potentiometer lets the guitarist set the strumming tempo and the strumming pattern is configurable through a menu system.

A 3D-printed case houses all of those components. Stambaugh designed it to fit his specific guitar, so you may need to tweak the size to fit your own guitar. He created the device for the University of South Florida’s Makecourse, and uploaded build instructions and the necessary files to Instructables so that anyone can build their own AutoStrummer.

The post AutoStrummer is a DIY device that strums your guitar for you appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Many of us spend all day staring at a computer screen, entering data, watching YouTube, writing blog articles, or any number of other tasks. According to Daniel Hingston, computer-induced eye strain can be a real problem, and to combat this, you should follow the 20/20/20 rule. That is for ever 20 minutes of computer time, look away at a distance of 20 feet or more for 20 seconds.

To help remind him to do just that, Hingston invented the “Eyesight Guardian.” This little device sits on top of your computer like a webcam, and uses an Arduino board along with a small TFT display to command you to “Look away now!” every 20 minutes. The system is then restarted via the press of a button on top, again counting down the 20 minutes until it’s time for the next “eye break.”

You can see it in action in the video below, and full build details are available in his tutorial here.

Redditor “Higgs8” had a gas convection heater that is (or was) controlled manually, but they wanted something a bit more. To accomplish this, they came up with a small Arduino-based thermostat.

This allows you to set the desired temperature using a potentiometer, and it senses the current temperature value via a DS18B20 thermometer unit. It then adjusts the formerly manual knob with a stepper motor and custom gear reduction in response, maintaining the desired comfort level.

Feedback is displayed on a small OLED screen, which charts the room’s temperature over a 24-hour period. It also shows if the heater was on, letting you see if it was working properly.

More details can be found on Higg8’s Imgur page here.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have come up with a way to build soft robots that are compact, portable and multifunctional without the requirement for compressed air. 

Instead, they’re using a system of tubular actuators made out of heat-sensitive liquid crystal elastomer sheets. Heating elements are placed between two layers of elastomer, which is then rolled up into a cylinder, allowing the tubular digit to bend and contract.

With this novel method, they’ve been able to build a three-jaw gripper, as well as a robot that walks independently with four legs under Arduino control. While the grippers are slow at this point, taking 30 seconds to bend and minutes to return to their original position, the eventual goal is to have them react at the speed of human muscles.

A heart rate monitor can be an important tool for tracking fitness and exertion levels, but what if you want something a bit more interesting style-wise? For a novel idea, be sure to check out the project shown below from “Taste The Code.”

In it, Blagojce Kolicoski turns a handle used for launching rotating toys into something reminiscent of a tricorder from Star Trek.

The build stuffs an Arduino, a pulse sensor, and a tiny OLED display into the handle, which conveniently already had accommodations for three AA batteries. This, along with the monitor’s I2C connection, meant that wiring everything up was quite simple. 

Want to make your own? Instructions are available here, while code can be found on GitHub.

While the STAR, or Sprawl Turned Autonomous Robot, is more than capable of traveling over obstacles with its three-pointed wheels, it can also make itself thin enough to simply slide under others as needed. This clever design uses an Arduino Pro Mini for control, and normally moves around like a tank, rolling on six wheels that are turned by two motors.

When the task calls for it to go under something, a third motor cranks these wheels to nearly parallel with the floor, shrinking the robot down to a very slim profile—so thin, in fact, that it can actually slide under a door as seen in the video below! 

Print files and more information on the build can be found here, while the original paper upon which this robot is based is also available.



  • Newsletter

    Sign up for the PlanetArduino Newsletter, which delivers the most popular articles via e-mail to your inbox every week. Just fill in the information below and submit.

  • Like Us on Facebook