Planet Arduino

With its bright color scheme and generally upbeat tone, the recently released Barbie movie evokes many of the same feelings as the toy brand. In keeping with this idea, Jaimie and Jay of the Wicked Makers YouTube channel decided to take it in the opposite direction by transforming a Barbie dollhouse into a haunted mansion for Halloween — complete with all of the requisite eerie effects and lighting.

The duo started by disassembling the interior and repainting the structural components, outside walls, and several other movable objects such as the door and various props. Once this had been completed, the next step involved finding LED filament, many small, discrete LEDs, and a miniature fog machine for creating an additional spookiness factor. The individual LEDs were placed into SLA printed skull lighting fixtures, custom-made clay candles, and inside of the previously pink chandelier where they could then be controlled by an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi. 

Beyond these effects, a strand of LED filament was laid into the upper floor to produce a glowing ring for summoning spirits. While a pair of iPads and a phone were placed behind acrylic windows on the second floor and on the ceiling in order to play high quality videos of ghosts and a portal opening up above the summoning ring. 

To see more about how Jaimie and Jay’s Barbie dreamhouse conversion using an UNO R4, watch their video below!

The post Turning a Barbie dreamhouse into a screamhouse with the Arduino UNO R4 appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The view from America has long seen French women as synonymous with thin and/or beautiful. France is well-known for culinary skill and delights, and yet many of its female inhabitants seem to view eating heartily as passé. At a recent workshop devoted to creating DIY amusements, [Niklas Roy] and [Kati Hyyppä] built an electro-mechanical sushi-eating game starring Barbie, American icon of the feminine ideal. The goal of the game is to feed her well and inspire a happy relationship with food.

Built in just three days, J’ai faim! (translation: I’m hungry!) lets the player satiate Barbie one randomly lit piece of sushi at a time. Each piece has a companion LED mounted beneath the surface that’s connected in series to the one on the game board. Qualifying sushi are determined by a photocell strapped to the underside of Barbie’s tongue, which detects light from the hidden LED. Players must race against the clock to eat each piece, taking Barbie up the satisfaction meter from ‘starving’ to ‘well-fed’. Gobble an unlit piece, and the score goes down.

The game is controlled with a lovely pink lollipop of a joystick, which was the main inspiration for the game. Players move her head with left and right, and pull down to engage the solenoid that pushes her comically long tongue out of her button-nosed face. Barbie’s brain is an Arduino Uno, which also controls the stepper motor that moves her head.

[Niklas] and [Kati] wound up using cardboard end stops inside the box instead of trying to count the rapidly changing steps as she swivels around. The first motor they used was too weak to move her head. The second one worked, but the game’s popularity combined with the end stops did a number on the gears after a day or so. Click past the break to sink your teeth into the demo video.

Barbie can do more than teach young girls healthy eating habits. She can also teach them about cryptography.