Posts | Comments

Planet Arduino

Archive for the ‘arduino’ Category

Video may have killed the radio star, but cell phones and smart phones all but killed the pager. They still exist, of course, but only in very niche applications. [João Santos] wanted a pager-like experience for himself, though, so he enlisted an Arduino and got to work. Watch a video of the system working below.

The build uses an Arduino Uno to drive a simple HD44780 LCD display with 16 characters each across two lines of text. It’s hooked up to a Wemos D1, which uses its WiFi connection to get online. To this end, it’s capable of talking to a web application which allows users to enter text messages. It receives these messages, passes them to the Arduino Uno over I2C, and then the Uno shuttles the message to the display. It’s overkill, but [João] just found it quicker to get everything up and running via this route.

Those who want to message [João] via the system can head to a website that runs on the OutSystems platform. There, they can enter their name and message, and it will be sent to the pager-like device for display.

It’s a fun little thing, and it makes us wonder if pagers could make a comeback. Maybe simple devices could work in a similar way to Sidewalk or Apple AirTags, communicating via a low-power network made up of smartphones in the local area. We’ve seen something similar done with LoRa. If you happen to whip up something along those lines, don’t hesitate to let us know!

The Tesla coil, patented by legendary inventor Nikola Tesla in 1891, is a kind of resonant transformer circuit capable of producing sparks of high-voltage alternating-current electricity. They don’t have many practical uses today beyond novelty, but they were commonly used in spark-gap radio transmitters in the early 20th century. The sparks generated by a Tesla coil would emit strong bursts of radio waves and operators could encode information through patterns of pulses, similar to a wired telegraph. But those sparks are difficult to control, which is why Mirko Pavleski designed this Arduino-based “staccato” controller for Tesla coils.

The purpose of Pavleski’s device is to gain better control over a Tesla coil, with the goal of generating longer sparks with less power. It does so by providing very granular control over the length of each pulse, its intensity, and the interval between pulses. A Tesla coil requires a lot of voltage to create a spark, but very little current. That means that the total power needed to produce a spark is minimal and relatively safe to oversee with a microcontroller.

In this case, Pavleski used an Arduino Nano to manage the circuit. A control panel lets the user adjust the parameters, then the Arduino does the rest. Power comes in from mains via a 12V transformer and the Arduino controls the current going from that to the Tesla coil with a standard triac, with a large capacitor providing some filtering. Almost everything else comes down to the Arduino’s programming, which ultimately determines the characteristics of the electricity supplied to the Tesla coil. Because that’s going through a triac, the Arduino can “dim” the voltage, as opposed to simply toggling it like a relay would.

This will let Pavleski perform more in-depth experiments with Tesla coils.

The post DIY “Staccato” controller drives Tesla coils appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Fans off Wallace and Gromit will all remember two things about the franchise: the sort of creepy — but mostly delightful — stop-motion animation and Wallace’s Rube Goldberg-esque inventions. YouTuber Gregulations was inspired by Wallace’s Autochef breakfast-cooking contraption and decided to build his own robot to prepare morning meals.

Gregulations wanted his Autochef-9000 to churn out traditional full British breakfasts consisted of buttered toast, eggs, beans, and sausage. That was an ambitious goal, because each of those foods requires several steps to prepare. Gregulations’ solution was to, essentially, create one large machine that contains several smaller CNC machines. Each one is distinct and tailored to suit a particular food. In total — if you add up all of the different sections — this is a 12-axis CNC machine.

The Autochef-9000’s central controller is an Arduino Mega 2560 board. But even with the power and number of pins available, that wouldn’t have been able to handle everything. So it divvies out some tasks to Arduino UNO Rev3 boards.

As you would expect, this takes quite a lot of heat to cook everything. That’s why the Autochef-9000 contains several electric heating elements, which the Arduinos control via relays.

Users can order food using a touchscreen menu system or a smartphone interface. Autochef-9000 will then whir to life. It will open and heat a tin of beans, grab and heat a sausage, hard boil an egg, and toast and then butter bread fed from a magazine. Finally, it will deposit all of those items onto a plate.

There is a lot going on inside of this machine and Gregulations breezes past a lot of the technical details, but it is a joy to see in action. And unlike Wallace’s inventions, this one hasn’t caused any serious disasters (yet).

The post Autochef-9000 can cook an entire breakfast automatically appeared first on Arduino Blog.

For owners of Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers in the ‘80s, few games were more desirable than Matthew Smith’s Manic Miner. It is very much a classic and has official and unofficial ports available for just about every console and computer released since. There was even a port made for Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player. And now you can play it on an Arduino UNO thanks to Scott Porter’s custom game engine and port.

This isn’t the first time someone has done this, as James Bowman created a Manic Miner port for Gameduino a decade ago. But Porter’s project is a little different. His port runs on a custom engine on an Arduino UNO Rev3 that produces composite video output through a custom shield. That shield also contains a speaker driver circuit, buttons for control, and a port to connect an NES controller for a more comfortable gaming experience.

Porter’s biggest challenge was generating video, as that requires very accurate timing. For that reason, he recommends using an official UNO and not generic boards that sometimes cut corners with resonators instead of crystals. 

The game engine is impressive, with a fixed framerate of 50fps at 256×256 and up to nine sprites on screen. One of those sprites can have pixel-perfect collision detection with all of the others, which is ideal for a game like Manic Miner. But the video is monochrome and there do seem to be some glitches evident in the demonstration video. Regardless, this is very impressive and we’re excited to see what else Porter can achieve with his engine. 

The post This new game engine runs Manic Miner on an Arduino UNO appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Poppy Playtime is an interesting horror video game — or rather, an episodic series of games — that puts players into the eerie toy factory of fictional company Playtime Co., where they find that the company’s characters are alive and quite aggressive. A big part of the game’s appeal is the creepy character design, with the eponymous Poppy being just one example. But they’re all scary, as the Wicked Makers proved when they built this life-sized CatNap animatronic.

The Wicked Makers aren’t strangers to this game, as they previously built an eight-foot-tall Huggy Wuggy. Their CatNap animatronic isn’t quite as tall, but it is still huge. And it is a faithful recreation of the monster seen in-game. It can move its head side-to-side, and its body sort of sways like a real, breathing creature’s would. It even breathes glowing red fog to represent the in-game sleeping gas formulated for children.

As usual, that vast majority of the work here went into constructing the animatronic’s skeleton, body, and head. It is a masterful mishmash of PVC pipe, wire, foam, clay, and fabric. But the real magic comes from the movement, which is possible thanks to the use of an Arduino UNO Rev3. That controls the torso’s wiper motor via a relay, the servo motor that moves the head, the LEDs for the eyes and smoke, and the smoke machine.

To simplify the animations, the Wicked Makers turned to Bottango software. That’s free and made specifically for controlling animatronics. It makes programming and uploading animations easy, so the Wicked Makers can alter CatNap’s behavior whenever they want.

The result is just as terrifying as it is impressive.

The post This animatronic CatNap is predictably creepy appeared first on Arduino Blog.

In virtual reality, anything is possible, yet being able to accurately model things from the real-world in a digital space remains a huge challenge due to the lack of weight/feedback that would otherwise be present in physical objects. Inspired by working with digital cameras and the inherit imperfection they bring to their videos, Bas van Seeters has developed a rig that translates the feeling of a camera into VR with only a few components.

The project began as a salvaged Panasonic MS70 VHS camcorder thanks to its spacious interior and easily adjustable wiring. An Arduino UNO Rev3 was then connected to the camera’s start/stop recording button as well as an indicator light and a potentiometer for changing the in-game focus. The UNO is responsible for reading the inputs and writing the data to USB serial so that a Unity plugin can apply the correct effects. Van Seeters even included a two-position switch for selecting between wide and telescopic fields of view.

With the Arduino now sending data, the last step involved creating a virtual camcorder object in Unity and making it follow the movement of a controller in 3D space, thus allowing the player to track things in-game and capture videos. More details on the project can be found in van Seeters’ write-up here and in the video below!

The post Getting more realistic camera movements in VR with an Arduino appeared first on Arduino Blog.

If you have an interest in robotics, it can be really difficult to know where to start. There are so many designs and kits out there that it becomes overwhelming. But it is best to start with the basics and then expand from there after you learn the ropes. One way to do that is by building MertArduino’s adorable app-controlled robot dog.

This is a little more complex than a typical line-following rover kit, but it is still approachable for beginners. It uses eight inexpensive MG90S hobby servo motors to walk on four legs, plus one more servo to rotate the head. The tutorial explains how to create a smartphone app for controlling the robot and there is an ultrasonic sensor hidden in the dog’s eyes to help it detect obstacles. 

To construct this robot, you will first need to 3D print the body, legs, and head. Those parts are small enough to print on almost any model of 3D printer. You’ll then need the custom PCB, onto which all of the electronic components attach. You can order that from any PCB fabrication service. Using basic through-hole soldering techniques, you can populate that PCB with an Arduino Nano board, an HC-05 Bluetooth module (for communication with a smartphone), and various miscellaneous components like resistors and a voltage regulator. Power comes from a pair of 18650 lithium battery cells.

After assembly, you can begin controlling the robot using the provided app. Or you can follow the instructions to make your own app with the help of MIT’s handy block-based Scratch programming tool.

If you want to dip your toes into the world of robotics, this seems to be a fun way to do it.

The post Build yourself this simple app-controlled robot dog appeared first on Arduino Blog.

It is amazing how much technological progress humanity has achieved over the past few centuries. But while our capability with electronics has shot ahead, it seems that we’ve almost regressed when it comes to mechanical and electromechanical design. Watches and clocks are great examples of this, as pre-digital craftsmen were capable of astonishing feats that are still impressive today. But some people are keeping those traditions alive, as evidenced by this mechanical seven-segment display clock driven by a single stepper motor.

This clock is truly a work of art. It shows the time across six digits, each of which is a seven-segment display. But those aren’t segments lit by LEDs, they’re physical pieces of plastic. A complex series of gears flips them in and out in the appropriate sequence to display the numeric characters. That is very impressive when you consider that the segments don’t actuate in an order that correlates with the numerical value — the number 4 isn’t simply turning “on” one more segment than the number 3. But even so, the clock progresses through the numbers in order.

That’s only possible because of the genius mechanical design of the clock. Further increasing the wonder is the fact that the clock and all of its parts were 3D-printed — no precision machining necessary. An Arduino Nano board controls the stepper motor that drives the whole series of gears. That ensures that the motor turns at a constant rate, which is required to keep accurate time.

The post A single stepper motor drives this mechanical seven-segment display clock appeared first on Arduino Blog.

If you’re ever driving through rural Finland about an hour south of Jyväskylä, you might come across the Haihatus art center. That includes KITA, “the house of kinetic arts.” You’ll recognize it right away by its bold swaths of vibrant paint. And if you come by at night, you’ll see the snow illuminated in dancing colors by a kinetic art installation built by Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä.

Because the building is unheated and can reach temperatures as low as -30°C (-22°F), KITA remains closed through the winter. Roy and Hyyppä approached this project with the goal of turning the building itself into a kinetic art piece for people to enjoy through the cold months. To achieve that, they lit the windows and added movement. Lights inside the building move along tracks and motors pull them with spools of twine. An Arduino Nano development board controls the motors through H-bridge drivers. Various reflectors and filters alter the lights as they move.

To make that even more dynamic, they animated the illumination and introduced sound. A control box built into an old tool case contains another Arduino Nano that can switch the lights through relays. That Arduino also generates sounds and melodies from algorithms based on random inputs, but synced to the lights. 

This project came with unique challenges related to the weather, as many electronic components act unpredictably at these extreme temperatures. But the installation worked well enough to unveil on New Year’s Eve 2023, when the people living in the town of Joutsa got to enjoy the dazzling inauguration.

The post This kinetic light installation illuminates the Finnish snow appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The EV (electric vehicle) versus ICE (internal combustion engine) debate is more complicated that it may seem, but one fact is quite simple: it is much easier to generate electricity at home than it is to refine fossil fuels. This means that it is possible power a vehicle for free after the initial investment. But doing so takes quite a lot of hardware, which is why Shawn Murphy developed this charging system controlled by an Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi.

Murphy owns a Ford Lightning electric pickup truck, which is inefficient by EV standards thanks to its weight. But even at just two miles per kWh of electricity, he estimates that he can break even on the cost of his solar charging system within four to five years. After that, the electricity to power the Ford will, essentially, be free. Any excess energy can power his home or feed back into the grid.

Just powering the truck alone will require a lot of electricity, so Murphy acquired 10 used 360-watt solar panels. Those feed to a battery backup array, which supplies power to the Ford charging station. 

To maximize efficiency, Murphy wants the solar panels to pivot on one axis to follow the sun. He estimates that will increase their output by 20-25% throughout the day, which is a significant amount of energy with a solar panel array this large. An Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi board controls the tilt of the panels via linear actuators. Murphy originally used “dumb” actuators, but is switching to “smart” models from Progressive Automations that include positional feedback through Hall effect sensors.

A GIGA Display Shield gives Murphy access to an interface, which he can also access through the Arduino Cloud. In addition to controlling the linear actuators, the Arduino monitors power generation and consumption.

This is still a work in progress as Murphy continues to make improvements, but he’s well on his way to “free” energy for his truck.

The post Controlling 3.6kW of solar EV charging with an Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi appeared first on Arduino Blog.



  • 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