Jose Julio likes to tinker with robotics; his daughter likes air hockey. From these mutual interests, an Arduino and a handful of surplus parts from a RepRap 3D printer, Jose devised an air hockey game with a robotic opponent. “The project is based on standard RepRap 3D printer parts : NEMA17 stepper motors, drivers, Arduino […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
Ajax webapp for uploading Arduino sketches over network
Luca Dentella has developed a webapp providing another way to upload sketches to Arduino Yun. The project allows you to upload a new sketch using a protected web page, easily accessible also over the Internet. It’s based on Ajax and can be found on Luca’s website. Via the contact form.
DEFCON 21: Arduino based vehicle tuning device
In this presentation from DEFCON21, Albert Garcia Illera and Javier Vazquez Vidal discuss the development, Houston TX enclosed auto transport and operation of an Arduino based device for controlling automotive functions in 2010 and newer model vehicles that use the K-Line protocol (although we’re told it could easily be modified with newer protocols.) Additionally they […]
Arduino Bot tweets temp/humidity updates
While testing out various sensors, Steve from Hackshed.co.uk thought it would be fun to make the Arduino actually tweet out what the current status of our office is. “The Arduino records the current, minimum, maximum and temperature change as well as humidity and then sends out a tweet to a Twitter account with an update […]
SquareWear Mini chainable color LED matrix and animation design tool
Ray Wang writes about his recently completed project, the SquareWear Mini with All-New Chainable Color LED Matrix, and an Interactive Animation Design Tool. The goal is to make standalone programmable color display gadgets. The LED matrix is chainable and can be seamlessly extended in both X and Y directions. The SquareWear Mini is essentially an […]
DCC/TAPR video: FreeDV, CODEC2 and “The HT of the Future”
In this presentation from the 2013 Digital Communications Conference, Bruce Perens K6BP discusses FreeDV, CODEC2 and “The HT of the Future”. Bruce is active in advancing interest in open-source digital voice to Amateur Radio on both HF and VHF/UHF. Here he also discusses D-STAR and Yaesu’s controversial new proprietary VHF/UHF digital amateur radio communications protocol.
RTL_FM_Python: An API and web interface for controlling RTL_FM
Here’s an interesting piece of open source code known as RTL_FM_Python for controlling the RTL-SDR dongle. “This is a Python library built upon the RTL-SDR project and allows you to use the RTL-SDR dongle to tune in arbitrary stations either with a simple web application running on a built-in server, or programmatically with Python or […]
project ECHORD – Riverwatch
Eduardo Pinto informs us that the Riverwatch crew has finished the first phase of their project ECHORD – Riverwatch and have posted a first version of their site. The project is developing a Marsupial Surface-Aerial Robotic Team for Riverine Environmental Monitoring. One of the main goals of our project is to make everything open source […]
DiyouPCB low-cost PCB printer for photoresist
Charlie and Victor from Diyouware write, About a year ago my brother and I engaged on a quixotic project to build from scratch a low-cost PCB printer for photoresist. Finally we did it using a Blue Ray optical pickup (PHR-803T) and his UV laser/electronics to sensitize Dry-film. The optical pickup is used through his own […]
Video: Deploying software updates to ArduSat in orbit
Jonathan Oxer VK3FADO gave this presentation at the recent 2014 Linux conference in Perth, Western Australia. The ArduSat project aims to give hobbyists, students and space enthusiasts an opportunity to design and run their own experiments in space. “By choosing a standardized platform based on the hugely popular Arduino hardware design, ArduSat allows anyone to […]
The Drinkmotizer – a Raspberry Pi drink mixing robot
Cabe Atwell wanted a way to have a robot serve up a mixed drink efficiently and economically. He developed the Drinkmotizer, which uses a Raspberry Pi in combination with an Arduino to construct the dream project of many a maker. What makes this drink mixing robot different from other designs? Cabe says this machine builds […]
BLE fun with Ubertooth: sniffing Bluetooth Smart and cracking its crypto
Mike Ryan writes about his latest efforts in BLE hacking. Hot on the heels of Omri Iluz’s BLE-sniffer-on-the-cheap, I decided to write up the BLE sniffer I built on Ubertooth. My sniffer highly robust, can capture data from connections, and is 100% open source. I also discovered a vulnerability in BLE’s crypto that allows me […]
30C3 video: Monitoring the Spectrum – Building Your Own Distributed RF Scanner Array
At the recent 30C3 conference in Hamburg, Germany, Andrew Reiter outlined his efforts in using inexpensive RTL-SDR dongles to build a distributed RF scanner array for monitoring and spectrum mapping. Software-Defined Radio (SDR) has increased in popularity in recent years due to the decrease in hardware costs and increase in processing power. One example of […]
Last call for entries to Hack the Arduino Robot competition
Today (January 26) is the closing date for initial idea submissions for the Hack The Arduino Robot contest sponsored by RobotChallenge. This year RobotChallenge in cooperation with Arduino and RS Components presents a new open source competition – “Hack the Arduino Robot!”. To apply for this competition you need to submit a short description of […]
PIC16F1454 used as inexpensive ARM debugger
Peter Lawrence has been working on using a PIC as a CMSIS-DAP ARM debugger. I wanted to see what was feasible in the way of a very-low-cost ARM board. OK, that doesn’t sound original, but stick with me. The solutions that I’ve seen (Tweeny, McHck, mbed, etc.) are limited to wholesale firmware updates. Press a […]
OpenBCI EEG project
The OpenBCI project is an open source project with the goal of expanding the availability of hardware for maker experimentation with brain wave measurement. It was recently fully funded on Kickstarter. According to the developers, OpenBCI is a versatile and affordable 8-channel EEG signal capture platform built around Texas Instrument’s ADS1299 Analog Front End IC. […]
Apple II DOS source code available
Could you write a Disk Operating System in 7 weeks? That was the time frame in which the Apple II DOS was developed! According to the Computer History Museum, “On April 10, 1978 Bob Shepardson and Steve Jobs signed a $13,000 one-page contract for a file manager, a BASIC interface, and utilities. It specified that […]
Building a CPLD based logic analyzer
Alex from InsideGadgets has been working on a Building a CPLD Based Logic Analyser. In Part I of his post he details his build of a logic analyzer which saves the sample to external SRAM. For this project Alex used the Altera MAXII EPM240 development board with an on board 20MHz oscillator. The coding was […]
30C3 video: Programming FPGAs with PSHDL
In this presentation from the recent Chaos Communications Congress conference in Hamburg, Germany, Karsten Becker highlighted the Plain Simple Hardware Description Language (PSHDL) programming language for FPGAs. PSHDL is a new language that purports to have a much better syntax similar to C, making it easier for developers to learn. If you’ve tried to learn […]
Online Contextual Electronics course
Chris, co-host of The Amp Hour podcast writes about his new project and website called Contextual Electronics. It’s an 8 week course that teaches people how to take theoretical knowledge and translate it into a real electronics project. The first course (session 1A) teaches how to build an open source arduino shield for lots of […]