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Congratulations! You finally have a garage to call your own and you’re ready to turn it into the workshop of your dreams. But before you go on a shopping spree in Home Depot’s tools section, you may want to consider upgrading from that single dim lightbulb to more substantial lighting — otherwise, you’ll never find the screws you drop on the ground. LeMaster Tech can help with his great video on installing DIY voice-controlled smart LED lighting.

LeMaster Tech’s primary goal was simply to increase the brightness in the garage. He took the route that gives the best bang for the buck: LED tubes. Those are similar in form factor to fluorescent light tubes, but they can put out more lumens with fewer watts and they tend to last a lot longer. They also don’t need expensive and bulky ballasts. LeMaster Tech installed several of those on the ceiling of his garage, then took things to the next level.

These LED light tubes work with standard household mains AC power, so they can be wired like regular light bulbs. But instead, LeMaster Tech made them smart by wiring them through a relay board controlled by an Arduino UNO Rev3 board. That lets the Arduino safely switch each light tube on and off. LeMaster Tech gave it the ability to do that in response to voice commands by adding a DFRobot Gravity voice recognition module. That handy module works entirely offline and uses a simple AI to recognize spoken words. It has 121 built-in words and supports 17 custom words, so LeMaster Tech was able to tailor it to his needs.

Now he can switch the lights with a simple voice command and even activate pre-programmed effects, like flashing the lights. 

The post Upgrade your shop with voice-controlled smart LED lighting appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Almost all modern video games require either a gamepad or a keyboard and mouse, which means that they’re inaccessible to many people with disabilities that affect manual dexterity. Bob Hammell’s voice-enabled controller lets some of those people experience the joy of video games.

This is a simplified video game controller with a minimal number of physical buttons, but with special voice-activated virtual buttons to make up the difference. The gamepad only has six physical buttons, plus an analog joystick. That makes it much easier to handle than a typical modern controller, which might have a dozen buttons and two joysticks. If the player has the ability, they can utilize the physical controls and then speak commands to activate the game functions not covered by those buttons.

The controller’s brain is an Arduino Micro board, which Hammell selected because it can be configured to show up as a standard USB HID gamepad or keyboard when connected to a PC. The physical controls are an Adafruit analog two-axis joystick and tactile switches. An Adafruit 1.3″ OLED screen displays information, including the status of the voice activation.

An Elechouse V3 Voice Recognition Module performs the voice recognition and it can understand up to 80 different commands. When it recognizes a command, like “menu,” it tells the Arduino to send the corresponding virtual button press to the connected computer. It takes time for a person to speak a command, so those are best suited to functions that players don’t use very often.

If you know someone that would benefit from a controller like this, Hammell posted a full tutorial and all of the necessary files to Hackster.io so you can build your own.

The post Voice-enabled controller makes video games more accessible appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The video game Portal 2 is widely regarded as a classic that introduced players to several memorable characters, including one of the main protagonists-turned-antagonists, Wheatley. This anthropomorphized personal assistance robot was able to move, speak, and listen/respond to speech from a user, which is exactly what Steve Turner was trying to recreate when he built his own version of Wheatley. His animatronic device starts by waking up, and from there it selects a folder of audio files to play at random. Additionally, its AI-powered interactivity is provided by an Amazon Echo Dot via Alexa and the Arduino Cloud

In order to generate eye movements, Wheatley’s five servo motors are controlled by a single Nano 33 IoT, where three are dedicated to moving the eye and two move the eyelids up and down. As for storing the nearly 900 audio files, a DFPlayer Mini and an SD card hold them all for later playback by a BC127 Bluetooth audio module. This package is able to read files from the SD card and output them over Bluetooth to the Echo Dot, which in this case acts as a wireless speaker. Finally, the central “eye” can change colors via three independently addressable RGB LED rings to show Wheatley’s current status.

When put together, all these components comprise a project that closely mimics Wheatley from Portal 2 and having a way to interact with it through voice commands makes it even better. You can see this project in action below, or watch its build log here.

The post This Portal fan brought Wheatley to life as his own personal assistant appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Being able to design your own custom smart home device is a great way to both have fun experimenting with various hardware/software and to escape the walled IoT device ecosystems that so many users find themselves trapped within. One maker who goes by mrdesha came up with a smart heater solution that utilizes the new Arduino Oplà IoT Kit to provide voice functionality to their room heater. 

In terms of hardware, mrdesha’s project is quite simple as it just needs a few parts to function. The main component is the MKR IoT Carrier board from the Oplà Kit, along with the MKR WiFi 1010 that fits into it. Because the Oplà has two relays onboard, a pair of buttons on the heater’s remote were connected to the common (COM) and normally closed (NC) terminals, allowing for a single GPIO pin to digitally “press” each button. 

Over in the Arduino Cloud, three variables were created that control various aspects of the heater, including on/off, set high-power mode, and set low-power mode. These variables are also all compatible with the Alexa integration, meaning that a user can simply tell their smart home speaker to adjust the heater automatically. 

For more details about the project, you can view mrdesha’s write-up here and a demo of it in the video below.

The post Connect your space heater to the Arduino Cloud and control it via Alexa appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Whether commuting to work or simply having fun around town, riding a bike can be a great way to get exercise while also enjoying the scenery. However, riding around on the road presents a danger as cars or other cyclists / pedestrians might not be paying attention while you try to turn. That is why Alvaro Gonzalez-Vila created VoiceTurn, a set of turn signals that are activated by simply saying which direction you are heading towards.

VoiceTurn works by using the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense at its heart to both listen for the “left” or “right” keywords and then activate the appropriate turn signal. Gonzalez-Vila took advantage of edge machine learning through the Edge Impulse Studio. First, he collected audio samples consisting of the words “left,” “right,” and then random noise via the Google Speech Commands Dataset. Next, he sent them through an MFCC block that does some processing to extract human speech features. And finally, the Keras neural network was trained on these features to produce a model. 

With the model deployed to the Nano 33 BLE Sense, Gonzalez-Vila developed a simple program that continually reads in a waveform from the microphone and passes it to the model for inference. Based on the result, a string of NeoPixels on either the left or right will begin to light up for a predetermined number of cycles. As seen in his video below, the VoiceTurn works really well at detecting keywords and is easy to see from a distance. You can read more about how this project was built in its write-up here.

The post VoiceTurn is a voice-controlled turn signal system for safer bike rides appeared first on Arduino Blog.

If you ever watched the 1980s Inspector Gadget cartoon, you undoubtedly wanted a hat like his, which can pop out all kinds of useful tools under voice control. Although it won’t allow you to fly off after saying “go go gadget ‘copter,” DJ Harrigan’s replica does produce a spinning propeller and an emergency light with 16 RGB LEDs.

Underneath this 3D-printed hat is a pair of micro servos, with linkage systems that open the top flaps. A standard servo extends the actual gadget. Controlling the device is a MKR1000, and voice commands are registered via a MikroElektronika SpeakUp click board.

While many characters sparked DJ’s imagination for invention and quest for technical skills, one of the earliest was everyone’s favorite 1980’s cyborg policeman: RoboCop, er uh Inspector Gadget! While Inspector Gadget’s gadgets certainly obeyed the laws of cartoon physics rather than real physics, they’re just beyond the edge of plausibility. So in a year long preparation for Halloween 2021, DJ is setting out to make a voice activated hat that can summon real gadgets from his head. No plastic surgery necessary. Some assembly required. 

When we see RGB LEDs used in a project, they’re often used more for aesthetic purposes than as a practical source of light. It’s an easy way to throw some color around, but certainly not the sort of thing you’d try to light up anything larger than a desk with. Apparently nobody explained the rules to [Brian Harms] before he built Light[s]well.

Believe it or not, this supersized light installation doesn’t use any exotic hardware you aren’t already familiar with. Fundamentally, what we’re looking at is a WiFi enabled Arduino MKR1000 driving strips of NeoPixel LEDs. It’s just on a far larger scale than we’re used to, with a massive 4 x 8 aluminum extrusion frame suspended over the living room.

Onto that frame, [Brian] has mounted an undulating diffuser made of 74 pieces of laser-cut cardstock. Invoking ideas of waves or clouds, the light looks like its of natural or even biological origin while at the same time having a distinctively otherworldly quality to it.

The effect is even more pronounced when the RGB LEDs kick in, thanks to the smooth transitions between colors. In the video after the break, you can see Light[s]well work its way from bright white to an animated rainbow. As an added touch, he added Alexa voice control through Arduino’s IoT Cloud service.

While LED home lighting is increasingly becoming the norm, projects like Light[s]well remind us that we aren’t really embracing the possibilities offered by the technology. The industry has tried so hard to make LEDs fit into the traditional role of incandescent bulbs, but perhaps its time to rethink things.

After being given a 2009 MacBook, John Forsyth decided to use it to start a 1976 Jeep via voice control.

The build uses the laptop’s Enhanced Dictation functionality to convert text into speech, and when a Python program receives the proper keywords, it sends an “H” character over serial to an Arduino Uno to activate the vehicle.

The Uno uses a transistor to control a 12V relay, which passes current to the Jeep’s starter solenoid. After a short delay, the MacBook then transmits an “L” command to have it release the relay, ready to do the job again when needed!

As a fan of Iron Man, Forsyth channeled his inner Tony Stark and even programmed the system to respond to “JARVIS, let’s get things going!”

[Diyguypt] may be an altruist to provide the means for people who can’t manipulate chess pieces to play the game. Or he may just have his hands too busy with food and drink to play. Either way, his voice command chessboard appears to work, although it has a lot of moving parts both figuratively and literally. You can check out the video below to see how it works.

The speech part is handled by an Android phone and uses Google’s voice services, so if you don’t want Google listening to your latest opening gambit, you’ll want to pass this one up. The phone uses an app that talks to the Arduino via Bluetooth, which means the Arduino needs a Bluetooth module.

The Arduino controls what amounts to an upside-down 3D printer. Instead of a hot end pointing down, the mechanism has an electromagnet pointing up. A small washer in the base of each chess piece makes it susceptible to the magnet’s motion. The electromagnet is required to let go of a piece before a move to a new position. It is possible that a small servo moving a permanent magnet closer to the board for a move and away from the board to reposition could do the same job, though we suspect that could be tricky.

We’ve seen this before, often with a Harry Potter theme. We sort of prefer a more obvious chess robot, but that’s just us.

Before going into the journalism program at Centennial College in Toronto, [Carolyn Pioro] was a trapeze performer. Unfortunately a mishap in 2005 ended her career as an aerialist when she severed her spinal cord,  leaving her paralyzed from the shoulders down. There’s plenty of options in the realm of speech-to-text technology which enables her to write on the computer, but when she tried to find a commercial offering which would let her point and shoot a DSLR camera with her voice, she came up empty.

[Taras Slawnych] heard about [Carolyn’s] need for special camera equipment and figured he had the experience to do something about it. With an Arduino and a couple of servos to drive the pan-tilt mechanism, he came up with a small device which Carolyn can now use to control a Canon camera mounted to an arm on her wheelchair. There’s still some room for improvement (notably, the focus can’t be controlled via voice currently), but even in this early form the gadget has caught the attention of Canon’s Canadian division.

With a lavalier microphone on the operator’s shirt, simple voice commands like “right” and “left” are picked up and interpreted by the Arduino inside the device’s 3D printed case. The Arduino then moves the appropriate servo motor a set number of degrees. This doesn’t allow for particularly fine-tuned positioning, but when combined with movements of the wheelchair itself, gives the user an acceptable level of control. [Taras] says the whole setup is powered off of the electric wheelchair’s 24 VDC batteries, with a step-down converter to get it to a safe voltage for the Arduino and servos.

As we’ve seen over the years, assistive technology is one of those areas where hackers seem to have a knack for making serious contribution’s to the lives of others (and occasionally even themselves). The highly personalized nature of many physical disabilities, with specific issues and needs often unique to the individual, can make it difficult to develop devices like this commercially. But as long as hackers are willing to donate their time and knowledge to creating bespoke assistive hardware, there’s still hope.

[Thanks to Philippe for the tip.]



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