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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.

Do you really understand what is happening within the mysterious black packaging of a microcontroller or microprocessor? Most people don’t — we just learn how to use them. That’s because they’re wildly complex circuits combining many different subsystems that are all abstracted away from the view of the user. To help students better understand these integrated circuits (ICs), Dr. Panayotis Papazoglou designed the Hardware-Oriented Microprocessor Simulator (HOMS)

Dr. Papazoglou is an associate professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), so he has a stake in creating an educational tool like this one. The goal of HOMS is to provide a visual and tactile demonstration of what happens inside an eight-bit microprocessor. For example, it will show a value moving from a counter to a memory register. That’s something that is difficult to visualize when using a microprocessor, even if you’re working close to “the metal” in assembly. 

HOMS is a modular system, so students can experiment with blocks that represent different subsystem circuits within a microprocessor. Each module has an Arduino UNO Rev3 board to control its own functions, with all of the modules working under the coordination of a central Arduino Mega 2560 controller. One module may, for instance, represent memory and will show the data “written” to it on a display. Another module may have buttons and switches to allow user input.

There are software simulation tools that seek to illustrate computing fundamentals in a similar way, but many people learn better through physical interaction. For those people, HOMS could be very helpful.

The post The Hardware-Oriented Microprocessor Simulator illustrates the inner workings of microcontrollers appeared first on Arduino Blog.

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.

Proper spindle speed control is necessary to get good CNC milling results. If your spindle speed is inconsistent, your speed and feed calculations will be wrong. That will lead to poor finishes and even broken end mills (and ruined parts) in extreme cases. But cheap CNC mills and routers often have insufficient spindle speed controllers. That’s why Joekutz’s Workbench built an improved spindle speed controller for his generic 3040 CNC mill.

This DIY spindle speed controller has two major improvements: more precise adjustment and closed-loop feedback.

The original controller just had an imprecise potentiometer knob and dot markings, making it impossible to set to a specific speed. The new version lets the user set the spindle to a desired speed with a digital readout.

It also has closed-loop feedback, so it can adjust power to the motor as necessary to maintain the set speed under load. Without that, even a light load could slow down the spindle and throw off the speed/feed balance. 

Joekutz’s Workbench achieved this using an Arduino UNO Rev3 board. It reads input from a rotary encoder to set the motor speed, then shows that speed on a seven-segment display. It controls the motor speed via PWM through a DIY optical isolator, a transistor, and a MOSFET. At the same time, it receives feedback on the real-world motor speed using an LED and photoresistor. That measures the reflectivity of the spinning spindle, which has a piece of aluminum foil tape in one area to increase reflectivity. That lets the Arduino detect a revolution of the motor and calculate the RPM. 

The CNC mill uses an Arduino Mega 2560 with GRBL for controlling the axes’ stepper motors. The Arduino Uno spindle controller can receive g-code speed commands from that, or the user can set the speed using the rotary encoder dial. 

The post Build a better spindle controller for your CNC mill appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Sailing is a great way to get outdoors and explore the open waters, yet it can also pose some risks to the pilot and passengers if they are unfamiliar with how the boat handles under different wind conditions. As Kif Scheuer notes in his project write-up, traditional instruction relies on simple 2D illustrations, so he decided to take it a step further and build a highly interactive demonstrator that can affect a model sailboat in a more realistic/physical manner.

Because this device is meant to simulate sailing, Scheuer needed some sort of wind generator in the form of a 5V PC fan that was powerful enough to move the boat’s sail. It’s mounted onto an aluminum arm that is positioned on the output shaft of a NEMA17 stepper motor, thus allowing the Arduino UNO Rev3 to pivot its direction. Similarly, the boat was also hooked up to another stepper motor so that it could turn according to the fan’s updated position along its arc. The other electronics include a display for showing the current mode, a potentiometer for user interaction, and several buttons that control the mode/fan angle.

Once assembled, the user is able to switch between the various modes: manual, selective, random, and wind, with this last mode enabling the user to pivot the fan rather than the boat to observe how the sail reacts. You can read more about the sailing demonstrator on Instructables.

The post Tabletop device teaches you the basics of sailing before hopping on board a real boat appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Design paradigms are the norm in every industry and automated machine tools aren’t any different. Most 3D printers, for example, function in a similar way: each axis rides on rails, with belts pulled by fixed motors. Pen plotters tend to utilize similar kinematics. But sometimes we see builds that ignore established paradigms, like this DIY fixed-belt CNC pen plotter.

Unlike most pen plotters, this machine moves along fixed belts. This layout treats the belts almost like rigid bodies, similar to a rack-and-pinion gear set. Because the belts remain fixed in place, the motors must move. The result is a unique form factor. In this case, creator tuenhidiy made heavy use of PVC pipe for the machine’s structure and enclosures. The materials are very inexpensive, but this machine’s axes ride on hardened steel rods and so it is still capable of drawing very well.

To keep costs down without sacrificing capability, tuenhidiy chose to use an Arduino UNO Rev3 board for control. That reads GRBL G-code files through a microSD card module and controls the stepper motors through a CNC shield with A4988 stepper drivers. There is also a simple Arduino Nano-based controller interface made with a 16×2 character LCD, button, and rotary encoder.

This will work with a variety of different open-source software tools, including popular plugins for Inkscape. 

The post Affordable fixed-belt CNC plotter runs on Arduino appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Shuffling and dealing is very serious business when you’re playing any card game that puts money on the line, like poker. Even when the stakes aren’t that high, poor shuffling or dealing can drive a family apart. If you’re tired of being criticized for your card-handling skills, maybe you should build this automatic card dealer and shuffler designed by VUBGROUP1.

VUBGROUP1 consists of electromechanical engineering students at Bruface (The Brussels Faculty of Engineering) and this machine was a project for a mechatronics course. It is capable of both shuffling and dealing cards. Both of those subsystems work in a similar manner: DC motors spin wheels that grip the top card and push it out.

To shuffle, the user splits the deck and loads the two halves. The machine then pushes the cards together in semi-random order into the pre-deal area. That probably isn’t enough for a true shuffle, so it might be worth running the deck through a few times. From the pre-deal area, the machine spits out a selected number of cards, pivots on a stepper motor, and the repeats until all hands have been dealt. 

An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls that entire process according to user parameters set through a simple interface consisting of a 16×2 character LCD and push buttons. The enclosure is laser-cut MDF held together by M3 screws and there are a handful of 3D-printed parts, such as the gears attached to the motors.

We think it is safe to say that the students received an A+ on this project. 

The post This automated machine shuffles and deals cards so you don’t have to appeared first on Arduino Blog.



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