Planet Arduino

Microcontroller demo boards such as the Arduino UNO are ubiquitous on Hackaday as the brains of many a project which inevitably does something impressive or unusual. Sometime someone builds a particularly tiny demo board, or an impressively large one. In the case of the board featured here, the Arduino is a gorgeous labor of love which can’t really be called a board since there is no PCB. Instead of the traditional fiberglass, [Jiří Praus] formed brass bars into the circuitry and held it together with solder.

This kind of dedication to a project leaves an impression. His notes show he saw the barest way to operate an ATMega328, built it, tested, and moved on to the power supply to make it self-sustaining, then onto the communication circuit, and finally the lights. The video below shows a fully-functional Arduino happily running the blink program. He plans to encase the brass portion in resin to toughen it up and presumably keep every bump from causing a short circuit. The components are in the same position due to a custom jig which means a standard shield will fit right into place.

The Arduino started far less flashy yet nearly as fragile, and it has grown. And shrunk.

Tulips come in all shapes and sizes, but Jirí Praus has created a mechanical version like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s masterfully crafted as a gift for his wife, using bent wire to form its six petals and stem. 

In order to make this present truly amazing, however, a servo-driven linkage system opens up the tulip when touched, exposing seven programmable LEDs in the center, along with 30 bright white SMD LEDs on the petals themselves.

Control for the freeform flower is accomplished via an Arduino Nano, hidden inside its wooden base. It’s a truly spectacular build, shown below illuminating the surrounding area with a brilliant light and shadow pattern.

It’s done! Mechanical tulip as a present for my wife. When caressed it blooms into various colors. And will never fade. #freeform #jewelry #arduino pic.twitter.com/yDePeURXXd

— Ji?í Praus (@jipraus) February 12, 2019

Designer Kimio Kosaka soldered together an entire Arduino using the difficult freeform method.

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