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We all know how annoying a ceiling fan can be when it isn’t balanced well and that annoyance perfectly demonstrates the necessity of a good, sturdy bearing. A ceiling fan’s bearing needs to allow for smooth rotational motion with as little friction as possible, while completely constraining movement in every other axis. Those properties make a ceiling base a surprisingly good starting point for a SCARA, as demonstrated in tuenhidiy’s recent Instructables write-up.

In their tutorial, tuenhidiy refers to this as a “Spaceship Scara Arm.” It isn’t exactly clear why they chose the “spaceship” terminology, but it is similar to a conventional SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm) — just one with only two degrees of freedom (DOF).

The entire point of a SCARA is that it is fully constrained, except for rotation around the Z axis at each joint. After their ceiling fan broke, tuenhidiy noticed that the fan’s base with its beefy bearing would be perfect for this application. They took that, added a couple of stepper motors and belts, some aluminum extrusion, and a couple more bearings to create this simple SCARA.

An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls those motors through a CNC Shield V3. Grbl firmware makes it easy to control the positions of the motors using just about any software a user could possibly want. Some simple calculations regarding the arm’s geometry and gear ratios should let appropriate software determine exactly where it is in space. For a demonstration, tuenhidiy added a DC solenoid for its magnetic capabilities. But anyone replicating this project can add their own end effector to suit their needs.

The post Ceiling fan becomes a “spaceship” SCARA robot arm appeared first on Arduino Blog.

It may not get as much attention as NASA, Roscosmos, or even CNSA (China National Space Administration), but India’s space program has achieved some impressive goals. Just last year, in August of 2023, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) completed their first soft landing on a celestial object with the Chandrayaan-3’s moon landing. That understandably inspired pride among Indians and the YouTube channel Science 4 U celebrated by building this model of the Chandrayaan-3 launch.

This project can be completed with some everyday materials and a few inexpensive components. When ready, it counts down from 10. At zero, the rocket climbs the launch pad’s structure. That rocket is a small model that makers can fabricate on any 3D printer. The launch pad and structure is mostly foam packing material.

The electronics consist of a low-speed geared DC motor, a relay module, an OLED screen, a battery holder, and an Arduino UNO Rev3 board. The Arduino starts by displaying the numerical countdown on the OLED screen. After the countdown completes, the Arduino switches on the relay. That completes the motor circuit, allowing current to flow from the AA batteries to the motor. The running motor winds in a string that pulls the rocket up the structure.

There doesn’t seem to be any switch or sensor to turn off the motor, so the user will have to program a timer to switch the relay. There also isn’t any hardware to reverse the motor polarity, so the user has to lower the rocket manually after a launch. But this is an inexpensive and fun project that should be perfect for students in India who are excited by Chandrayaan-3.

The post A delightful Chandrayaan-3 rocket launch model appeared first on Arduino Blog.

When you think of automation, what’s the first image that comes to mind?

For many of us, it’s a robot. From the blocky, square-headed characters of sci-fi comic fame to household more complex creations like the Replicants of Blade Runner — robots have captured our collective imagination for a long time.

It’s no surprise, then, that lots of Arduino users eventually set out to build a robot of their own.

In this article, we’ll look at how to build your own robot with Arduino and share some project examples from other makers.

What exactly is a robot?

The term “robot” can cover a lot of potential meanings, so let’s agree on a definition.

Here’s what the Oxford Dictionary says:

“(especially in science fiction) a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically.”

It’s a good start, but do all robots resemble humans? Here’s Oxford’s second definition:

“a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.”

This seems more accurate since it encompasses things like construction robots, robotic pets, and robotic vehicles.

Humans have been attempting to build robots for centuries, although most of our success has taken place within the last few decades. Today, thanks to advancements in hardware and automation technology, almost anyone can build their own robots at home.

What do you need to build a robot?

Building your own robot might seem like an unimaginably complex task. After all, aren’t robots the stuff of sci-fi movies and leaked military prototypes?

The good news is that building a robot doesn’t have to be a monumental undertaking, and can in fact be done with some fairly simple and easily obtained components.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Some simple components like wheels, sensors, and switches (this will vary greatly depending on the type of robot you’re planning to build)
  • Some basic coding and automation skills (you don’t need to be a coding wizard)
  • A microcontroller like the Arduino UNO R4, for example.

This is, of course, just a starting point. You can build a fairly simple robot, or you can ramp up the complexity and sophistication as much as you like — the sky really is the limit here. For beginners, though, you can find everything you need at the hardware store.

Explore Arduino robots

With Arduino’s products and other components, it’s possible to build your own robots more easily than ever before.

We need to look no further than the Arduino Project Hub to find a ton of inspiring ideas. Let’s explore a few.

Line-following robot

Robots don’t have to be ultra-complex humanoid feats of engineering.

In fact, if you’re just getting started with robotics, it helps to keep things simple. Check out this great example — it’s a simple, car-shaped robot designed to follow a colored line on the floor.

The robot constantly monitors data from its infrared sensors in real time and adjusts movement based on feedback, ensuring it never strays from the line.

If this kind of project interests you, you’ll love the upcoming Arduino Alvik, which will have a line-follower functionality. Alvik’s user-friendly interface makes MicroPython coding and robotics project development easier than ever, making learning and creating a breeze. 

Alvik is also equipped with a range of sensors including a ToF distance sensor, line follower array, color sensor, and more. It’s especially impressive when it comes to swiftly detecting and navigating obstacles and colors.

Join the waiting list here to be first in line for updates about Arduino Alvik.

A piano-playing robot

Did you think playing music was a uniquely human trait?

Well… think again — this musically-inclined robot is capable of controlling piano keys automatically. The device was able to play piano keys 1,875 times in the space of a minute, beating the human world record by a significant margin.

The project used a range of tools including solenoids and a custom-designed Java software interface.

A chess-playing robot arm

Robots have been giving us humans a run for our money in the world of chess for quite some time.

For a new spin on the machines vs. humans saga, take a look at this robotic arm capable of physically moving the chess pieces.

The arm was created using a 3D printer and works by using a visual recognition system to watch the opponent’s move and then formulate a response. 

One of the most interesting things about this robot is the code used for move recognition. Because the robot uses visual recognition to follow the human’s moves, there’s no need for additional complex hardware like reed switches to be built into the chessboard, unlike other chess-playing robots.

Stay tuned for Robotics Week!

If you have a passion for building robots or just want to learn more about this topic, you’ll love Robotics Week, which takes place this year from April 6th-13th.

It’s a full week of events — many of which are virtual — all centered around robotics and STEM.

And if that’s not enough for you, this year’s Control Automation Day will focus on the theme of robotics: register today to see Arduino’s session on March 26th, “Arduino Pro Opens the Door to Robot Control for Agriculture, Biotech, and Manufacturing,” showcasing a success story based on the Portenta Machine Control by “Robotics for the Real World” provider R2 labs.

In the meantime, visit our Project Hub for more inspiration — where you can search by category and difficulty level. And don’t forget to share your own projects with our community!

The post Can I build my own robot with Arduino? appeared first on Arduino Blog.

The objective benefits may be almost nonexistent today, but there is still something satisfying about rowing through the gears in a car with a manual transmission. If that car was made in the past couple of decades, there is a good chance that it has an indicator on the dash to tell you what gear you’re in. But older cars usually don’t have an indicator, which is why you might want to follow Vaclav Krejci’s guide to add one.

The great thing about this project is that it is easy to perform — even for beginners. Gearheads that don’t typically touch electronics can complete this build with some patience. Once done, it will display the current gear and a visual diagram on a small OLED screen, which the user can then mount anywhere in their car. 

This works using an arrangement of four Hall effect sensors that detect the strength of the magnetic field coming from a permanent magnet attached to the gear shift lever. The principle is similar to triangulation, because the values detected by the four sensors can be used to calculate the position of the magnet. That isn’t very precise, but it doesn’t need to be for an application like this.

The four Hall effect sensors mount onto a custom PCB. That connects to an Arduino UNO Rev3, which the user can tuck away inside of a center console. The Arduino performs the calculations, then updates the OLED screen with the results. Krejci even demonstrates how the user can simulate the entire circuit using WOKWI, which is very useful for ironing out kinks before building a hardware prototype. 

The post An easy way to add a gear indicator for your stick shift appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Arduino Days Are Here Again

Arduino Days are here again, March 21-23!

The post Arduino Days Are Here Again appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Racing “video games” can be incredibly realistic these days, with every facet of the car’s physics and their interaction with the asphalt programmed in. Those racing sims could provide a completely immersive experience—if the player wasn’t sitting on a motionless couch using a controller that doesn’t resemble a car’s steering wheel in the slightest. To rectify that issue, high school student Pranshu Agnihotri built his dream racing wheel.

Agnihotri tackled this project for a senior project in his Principles of Engineering class at Irvington High School. Its purpose is to provide a more realistic interface for racing games and sims. It doesn’t have any force feedback capabilities, but it will work with any PC game thanks to the Arduino that lets the user easily rebind controls. Those can even emulate keyboard and mouse inputs for games that weren’t designed for use with steering wheels.

The brain is an Arduino Leonardo, which Agnihotri chose for its Microchip ATmega32u4 microcontroller. That is configurable as a standard USB HID, so any computer will recognize its inputs without any special drivers or software. The steering wheel and electronics enclosure were 3D-printed in exactly the shape Agnihotri wanted. An M8 threaded shaft acts as the steering column. A potentiometer provides steering angle input, while limit switches detect when the player presses the paddle shifters. The Arduino reads those inputs, then sends out the corresponding gamepad, keyboard, or mouse commands via USB.

We have to assume that Agnihotri aced this assignment, and now he has an awesome steering wheel to race with. 

The post High school student builds his dream racing wheel appeared first on Arduino Blog.

This year we have so many talks, presentations, and announcements we had to spread out over three days! Arduino Days 2024 will be held from March 21st to 23rd – giving us more time to celebrate our community with our yearly event: 100% online, free, and open to all.

The full schedule is now available on the dedicated Arduino Days website: explore the program to find the topics that are the most inspiring or interesting to you, and turn on notifications for the three YouTube lives linked below. 

Day #1: March 21st from 3:30 PM CET — Let’s Get to Business

We start off with a day dedicated to innovative transformation for professionals. From Bob Martin (Wizard of Make / Senior Staff Engineer at Microchip) and Foundries.io CEO George Gray, to founder and CEO of Blues Ray Ozzie and Bosch general manager Marcellino Gemelli – you’ll hear from a variety of pros who are leveraging the open-source ecosystem to innovate their industry with flexible, reliable, out-of-the-box solutions.

Day #2: March 22nd from 3:30 PM CET Makers in the Making

On the second day, the spotlight turns to the educators who embrace Arduino as a platform to teach STEM and engage students of all ages and skill levels. Discover how teachers can use Arduino’s Science Kit R3 to reveal the beauty of physics in Alan Bates’ talk, or find out how Alvik supports MicroPython beginners with project-based learning in Austin Gardner’s. And don’t miss new product presentations: we’re excited to introduce you to the upcoming PLC Starter Kit!

Day #3: March 23rd from 3: 30 PM CET All About the Community

Last, but definitely not least, Saturday will be a huge celebration of makers’ diverse skills and passions! Join this third awesome session to hear about a variety of original projects presented by their own creators, and dive deep into topics ranging from accessibility (with inventor Danielle Boyer) to product quality testing. Don’t miss our partner talks – with STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices, and more – and keep an ear out for our latest major announcements, including one for the new product we’ve been working on with Silicon Labs.

We hope you’ll join us to celebrate Arduino Days live on YouTube, and let us know what your favorite sessions are in the chat comments. 

Don’t forget there will also be dozens of in-person independent events around the world: check out the Arduino Days website in a few days for the official map! 

No matter how you decide to show your love for open source, we look forward to seeing you at Arduino Days!

The post Arduino Days: Full schedule is online! appeared first on Arduino Blog.

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.



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