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As its name would suggest, the LittleArm is a mini 3D-printed robot that began as a weekend project. Its creator Gabe Bentz wanted a small arm that was easy to work with, and one that wouldn’t require him to dig deep into his wallet. So, as any Maker would do, he decided to design his own low-cost device.

After showing the LittleArm off, it wasn’t before long that he was approached by some STEM teachers in the area who wondered if the kit was something they could use in their classrooms. Ideally, every student should have one to tinker with, but unfortunately today’s systems tend to be too expensive and quickly loose parts and pieces. This is a problem that LittleArm is looking to solve.

The arm is powered by an Arduino Uno and four identical metal-geared micro servos, while all other mechanical components are 3D-printed. There’s also a modular gripper that’s actuated by a servo along with rigid end-effectors for various tasks. What’s more, a basic GUI enables you to control the arm, its gripper, the speed, as well as use its record function to train the robot to perform a specific task and then watch it play out the sequence.

The entirely open-source gadget comes as a DIY kit that can be purchased or built from scratch. Want one of your own? Check out Bent’z Kickstarter page here, and see the LittleArm in action below (including some of its dance moves).

Who can resist video games when they’re packed up in tiny, tiny little arcade machines? [Ken]’s hoping that you cannot, because he’s making a cute, miniature Arduino-based arcade game platform on Kickstarter. (Obligatory Kickstarter promo video below the break.)

The arcades are based on [Ken]’s TinyCircuits Arduino platform — a surprisingly broad range of Arduino modules that click together using small snap connectors in place of pin headers. The system is cool enough in its own right, and it appears to be entirely open source. Housing these bits in a cute arcade box and providing working game code to go along with it invites hacking.

There’s something about tiny video cabinets. We’ve seen people cram a Game Boy Advance into a tiny arcade cabinet and re-house commercial video game keyfobs into arcade boxes. Of course, there’s the Rasbperry Pi. From [Sprite_TM]’s cute little MAME cabinet to this exquisite build with commercially 3D-printed parts, it’s a tremendously appealing project.

But now, if you’re too lazy to build your own from scratch, and you’ve got $60 burning a hole in your pocket, you can get your own tiny arcade — and tiny Arduino kit — for mere money. A lot of people have already gone that route as they passed the $25k funding goal early yesterday. Congrats [Ken]!



Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Crowd Funding
Ago
05

LightBlue Bean+ adds Battery, Connectors, Price

arduino hacks, Bean, BTLE, Crowd Funding, crowdfunding, kickstarter, LightBlue Bean, wireless hacks Commenti disabilitati su LightBlue Bean+ adds Battery, Connectors, Price 

PunchThrough, creators of the LightBlue Bean, have just launch a Kickstarter for a new version called LightBlue Bean+. The tagline for the hardware is “A Bluetooth Arduino for the Mobile Age” which confirms that the hardware is targeted at a no-hassle, get it connected right now sort of application.

lightblue-bean-plus-thumbFor those unfamiliar, the original LightBlue Bean is a single board offering meant to marry Bluetooth connectivity (think Cellphones with BTLE) to the capabilities of a microcontroller-based hardware interface. The Bean+ augments this hardware with a 300m+ range increase, an integrated LiPo (600mAh or more), and headers/connectors where there were only solder pads before.

On the software side of things the Bean+ has four firmware options that make it speak MIDI, ANCS, HID, or Peer-to-Peer, only not all at the same time. The good news is that these are ecosystem upgrades and will work for existing Bean hardware too. The entire thing comes with online-platform integration and easy to use Smartphone tools to guide you through connecting and making something useful.

The board includes a battery tending circuit that allows it to be charged via the USB port but can run over a year between recharges if you use it judiciously. There is a slider switch near the pin sockets marked “A3, A4, A5″ which toggles between 3.3v and 5v so that no level shifters are needed for sensors and other hardware you might use with it. The white connectors seen near the bottom of this image are Grove connectors. These provide I2C and Analog support to that ecosystem of add-on boards.

All in all this is a pretty sweet upgrade. The MSRP will be $45 but early backers can get in around 10-25% less than that. The price doesn’t mean it’s a no-brainer to pick one up, but the header options make this much more versatile and reusable than the original Bean and we like the idea of a rechargeable battery of the coin cells used by Bean+’s predecessor. It is an each choice for drop-in no hassle connectivity when bottom line isn’t your top concern.

Original LightBlue Bean is available in the Hackaday Store.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Crowd Funding, wireless hacks
Ago
05

First Look: Bean+ Microcontroller Adds Greater Range, Better Battery, and More

arduino, Bean, BLE, bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, crowdfunding, kickstarter, Light Blue Bean, Punch Through Design Commenti disabilitati su First Look: Bean+ Microcontroller Adds Greater Range, Better Battery, and More 

BeanFamilyToday Punch Through Design launched a Kickstarter campaign for their new Bluetooth LE Arduino-compatible microcontroller board the Bean+.

Read more on MAKE

The post First Look: Bean+ Microcontroller Adds Greater Range, Better Battery, and More appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

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14

Digistump Announces Partnership with Particle’s IoT Cloud

arduino, cloud, Digispark, digiStump, Electronics, Eric Kettenburg, ESP8266, kickstarter, oak, Particle, Photon, Rootcloud, Spark Commenti disabilitati su Digistump Announces Partnership with Particle’s IoT Cloud 

digistump featured image sizeDigistump has recently announced a partnership with Particle over cloud infrastructure that may well be a signal that the diasporan expansion in microcontroller market may be coming to an end.

Read more on MAKE

The post Digistump Announces Partnership with Particle’s IoT Cloud appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

Lug
02

Keyboardio joins Arduino At Heart Program

arduino, ArduinoAtHeart, Featured, keyboard, kickstarter Commenti disabilitati su Keyboardio joins Arduino At Heart Program 

Keyboardino_post

After two and a half years of work and dozens of prototypes, Kaia Dekker and Jesse Vincent have launched Keyboardio Model 01 on Kickstarter: an heirloom-grade mechanical keyboard designed for serious typists.

As you’ll see from the video presentation below, the Model 01 is not just a keyboard. Kaia and Jesse actually re-envisioned the way we type to make it feel great. On top of that it has a beautiful hardwood enclosure and it ships with source code and a screwdriver. The Model 01’s firmware is a regular Arduino sketch you can explore and change yourself.

The project reached its target in the first few hours and you have a few more days to get one!

In the meantime they also joined the Arduino at Heart Program to make it fully customizable with the Arduino IDE:

We’ve built the Model 01 around the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller that Arduino uses in the Arduino Leonardo. Early on, we figured we’d eventually switch away to a cheaper ARM microcontroller, but then we fell in love with just how easy Arduino makes it for a new programmer to get up to speed. For all intents and purposes, the Model 01’s brain is a regular Arduino. You can update your keyboard from the Arduino IDE. If you want to make your keyboard do something special, there are thousands of Arduino resources online to help you out.

 

Learn more about Keyboardio on Kickstarter, where you can pre-order it and support Jesse & Kaia, who made it with love (and just a bit of obsession).

keyboardio

Giu
15

The RasPiO Duino

arduino, kickstarter, Raspberry Pi, RasPiO Duino Commenti disabilitati su The RasPiO Duino 

20150609023917_RasPiO

by elektormagazine.com:

After a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter earlier this year the low-cost RasPiO Duino board is now in production and available to purchase. The RasPiO Duino is a small development board with similar functionality to an Arduino Uno. Once it is plugged onto a Raspberry Pi the system forms a complete low-cost Arduino development environment allowing programs to be developed and loaded to the RasPiO Duino. The board can then be unplugged to function independently.

It can also be used to operate interactively with the RPi. The RPi’s GPIO ports are broken out on the board as well. A 72-point prototyping area is provided with GND, 3V3 and 5V rails to facilitate the addition of custom circuitry.

The RasPiO Duino – [Link]

Mar
19

What if kids could hack a ball? (Prototyped with Arduino!)

arduino, Featured, game, kickstarter, Kids, leonardo, mega Commenti disabilitati su What if kids could hack a ball? (Prototyped with Arduino!) 

hackball

Hackaball is a smart and responsive ball that children can program to invent and play games. It was recently backed by more than 1000 people and reached the goal!

As many other projects on Kickstarter, Hackaball was initially prototyped with Arduino using sensors that detect motions like being dropped, bounced, kicked, shaken or being perfectly still.

hackball2
We got in touch with its team and asked them to tell us a bit more about the creation process:

Our early versions of the ball worked with the Arduino Uno board, progressing to a breadboard Arduino and then making our own SMD designs with the Uno. In the latests prototypes we used the Arduino Leonardo and our current version runs on the Arduino Mega. Our production version will run on an ARM chip.

We hope to offer Arduino Compatibility as one of our stretch goals in the Kickstarter, so that people can buy a board and put their own code on it using the Arduino software, effectively moving one step up from the app in terms of hacking the ball and making it do what you want it to do. We also believe many adults would love an interactive ball that they can control and design their own interactions – its packed full of features! Hopefully it will also allow kids who’ve outgrown our app to experiment with our technology in a more challenging way, bringing longevity to the product.

We’ve approached the kids who’ll play with Hackaball as the future Makers. The idea of hacking and getting close to technology starts with how the ball first arrives in your home. Kids open the packaging to find the ball is broken: Hackaball has crash-landed on earth and needs to be put back together again. After their first achievement, making the ball, kids are challenged to play games, change existing ones, fix broken games and create new ones from scratch.

We specifically designed the ball and packaging to be gender neutral – making it feel accessible to both boys and girls from the very beginning. We also expanded on the ability of the ball to include both hard and soft skills – from the tactile and linear computational thinking, to the storytelling and imagination-driven game creation, teaching a new generation of Makers to combine technology and creativity. We think that the kids who play with Hackaball would move on to Arduino in their teens!

 

You still have some days to back the project and help them reach the stretch goals, making Hackaball even more hackable!

Mar
19

Tsunami – signal generator and analyzer

analyzer, arduino, kickstarter, Signal Generator Commenti disabilitati su Tsunami – signal generator and analyzer 

tsunami

The Tsunami is a powerful and flexible signal generator, analyzer, and experimenter’s kit built on the Arduino platform. by Nick Johnson @ kickstarter.com:

The Tsunami is a powerful and flexible signal generator built on the Arduino platform. It’s the best way to get started experimenting with analog signals, and a great tool for a huge variety of tasks, too.

We’ve taken the versatile processor behind the Arduino Leonardo, and combined it with a Direct Digital Synthesis chip, which makes generating analog signals incredibly straightforward. Then, we’ve added on flexible input and output circuitry, and an easy to use software library, to make working with analog signals as easy as blinking an LED.

Tsunami – signal generator and analyzer - [Link]

 

Nov
21

Phoenard: World’s 1st Arduino-compatible Prototyping Gadget

arduino, ATMEGA2560, AVR, kickstarter, prototype Commenti disabilitati su Phoenard: World’s 1st Arduino-compatible Prototyping Gadget 

a938ea6cb4b3475cce88c4306bdce57a_large

The ultimate combination of an Arduino-compatible board and your day-to-day Gadget in one handheld Device.

Phoenard is an All-in-one Arduino-compatible prototyping Gadget powered by an 8-bit AVR ATMEGA2560, identical to the one you find in Arduino Mega. It is essentially a pocket-sized prototyping platform which you can use as the ‘brain’ in your projects, similar to using an Arduino. BUT, it has a lot more features built into a single case developed in such a way that you can use it as your day-to-day Gadget.

Phoenard: World’s 1st Arduino-compatible Prototyping Gadget - [Link]



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