Like with many projects similar to this, an Arduino board controls pretty much everything. The floor is dominated by powerful LED lights, which respond to a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). A small computer is also inside (complete with Wi-fi), along with a car radio hooked up to speakers. Oh, and thanks to additional wheelchair motors, the floor can be wheeled away to wherever it’s needed.
Chris managed to build the dance floor in just one month, and documented how to do it on Instructables for anyone who wants to make their own. And now you’ve seen this, would you really want to throw a party without one?
TriggerTrap, is a very interesting product developed by Ziah Fogel & Haje Jan Kamps. Arduino-based & open-source, is now on preorder. What does it do? (Watch Video)
(With TriggerTrap) your camera will be easily controlled in a number of ways either by sound, by breaking a laser beam, time or any other method you can think of using its built in a Aux port.
TriggerTrap comes in the well designed, finished product and with the TT Shield (75$). More info soon.
Even if some of you (thanks for the wonderful picture, Bill) already realized it, we are officially announcing a big Christmas surprise for all Arduino users in North America: Radioshack sells Arduino in most of its 6000+ stores all around US!
This means that you’re going to find Arduino UNO, Arduino MEGA 2560 and Arduino ADK, together with four shields, in the main Radioshack stores in your homecity.
Arduino jumps into the retail market in its new *sexy* retail packaging developed by TODO.
We are asking you to celebrate this wonderful achievement by taking pictures of the Arduinos in the Radioshack nearby and twitt them with #Arduino@Radioshack hashtag.
Wonder if any of these new products (and retail packaging) will be sold on the Arduino Store? Stay tuned for next week Christmas’ Specials.
Il prossimo week-end a Torino si terrà un workshop gratuito di Arduino (un kit opzionale potrà essere comprato per partecipare qualora non disponeste dei materiali elencati) sul circuit bending e la generazione di suoni con la scheda.
Un workshop di tre giorni per smontare riciclare e far suonare vecchi strumenti elettronici, creare una digital toys orchesta e sfilare in parata a Paratissima.
Il circuit Bending è una pratica molto diffusa tra gli sperimentatori musicali. Soprattutto sulla scena della musica elettronica sono sempre più frequenti gli artisti che si creano controller o addirittura strumenti musicali personalizzati.
Nel workshop saranno coinvolte diverse discipline: toy hacking, riciclo elettronico, elettronica di base, sintesi sonora, programmazione ad oggetti e faremo largo uso di Arduino per comandare i nuovi strumenti.
Il workshop è gratuito, a carico dei partecipanti il costo dei materiali e l’acquisto del kit-workshop. maggiori informazioni quì!
Sometimes, it is amazing to see how technology is used to make the world a better place to live for the less fortunate. One such problem has been thought out and tackled by Anirudh Sharma aka touchaddict on IRC. His invention is called ‘Le-chal’ which translates to ‘Take me there’ in Hindi.
Sharma conceptualized and demonstrated the system at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab Design and Innovation Workshop 2011.
The Le Chal system comprises of a pair of shoes, one of which is fitted with Vibrators, proximity sensors and a Bluetooth pad which is connected to an Android phone that calculates directions and real time location using Google Maps and the phone’s built-in GPS and compass module.
For all the people calling Arduino a ‘toy’ and ‘too simple’ here is a fact: it’s simplicity gave the inventors the power to rapidly prototype, and the invention was ready in 6 days.
As per his presentation, the system costs barely a few hundred rupees to assemble with 8 mini vibrational motors costing Rs 90, a sole of specified dimensions, an Arduino Lilypad GSM+GPS shield custom made for Rs 400 or a wired version costing Rs 150 for all the components.
The shoes have also been tested at a blind school in Bangalore, India, and have received positive reviews.
Accelerometer to Renoise via OSC to control trippy and dubby sounds.
[Lizzie] from LustLab sent in her Ball of Dub that turns a few accelerometer and a digital audio workstation and turns everything into an aural experience of wubs and dubs. The Ball of Dub can turn just about anything into dubstep, and does so with a fairly interesting user interface.
There isn’t a build log for the Ball of Dub, but the folks at LustLab did send in a basic overview of her project. Inside the ball, there’s a Razor IMU from Sparkfun that is attached to the ever-popular XBee wireless transceiver. A tiny program on an Arduino calibrates the gyroscope and accelerometer and sends that data to the DAW at 50Hz.
The host computer is running Renoise, a very popular tracker that can accept MIDI and OSC input. A Processing app parses the ball spin, free fall and impact, averages them over a period of time, and pipes that into the OSC input of Renoise. In [Lizzie]‘s video, the ball spin is sent to a low-pass filter on the baseline track, and the average impact is applied to the vocal track.
via [HackADay] source [LustLab Tumblr] special demo video for the few skeptical comments on HackADay
[Alan Amon] posted a cool vintage hack on Instructables, adding GPS-based clock funcionalities to a Bally Wizard pinball.
Pinball machine will automatically power up at the preset time each day and then resets to display the current time, the year, the time the alarm is set for and the date month/day. Then as long as the GPS has a signal the time will update once a minute for the rest of the day. At the time you would like to go to bed the Arduino will cut power to the game and it will remain off until the alarm time. Should you have a power failure in the night the machine will not lose it’s settings. If power is restored prior to the alarm time the machine will wake up as normal, otherwise the machine will wake up once power is restored.
If the game is powered on because it is not yet bed time and it is after the alarm time then at 12am, 1am or 1pm the game will do a full reset. This makes sure the clock hasn’t gotten off due to a stuck score reel, keeps the time in a 12 hour format and keeps the date display up to date.
Have a look at the “cool features” and “coolest features” in the instructables article
We are happily announcing two new products in the Arduino Store: [E000011] 32×08 Red LED 5mm Matrix and [E000013] 32*16 Green/Red LED 3mm Matrix from Sure Electronics. Both products are coming with tutorials and related projects.
Kenbak computer (claimed to be one of the first personal computer – 1971) has come back from the shadows of the past.
I’d been thinking for a while that emulating an old-school switches-and-lamps computer would be a fun Arduino project, but had stalled looking at things like the Altair 8800 with its 30+ lights and 20+ switches. However, when I stumbled upon the Kenbak I thought it was something I could pull off as my first real Arduino project. Naturally I called it the KENBAK-uino. This is the end-product, it can be programmed via the buttons on the front panel and show outputs on the LEDs. It’s a faithful emulation of the original CPU but with a few enhancements thrown in like pre-loaded sample programs and access to a real time clock.
Interesting Workshop at ISEA 2011 in Istanbul led by Anna Dumitriu and Tom Keene with Alex May. The aim of the workshop is building and calibrating iPhone compatible/connectable Galvanic Skin Response Sensors (GSR) to record subtle changes in emotion.
This very personal sensor data will then be shared online. Participants will also collaborate to develop a networked performance intervention to take place at ISEA 2011 that engages with the social benefits and ethical implications of disclosing such personal information as arousal levels within the public realm.
Participants will learn to solder and connect their own GSR sensors, connect them to their iPhones and share their sensor data online. There will be a discussion of the implications of this technology and the increasing issues of privacy as pervasive computing technology is increasingly able to record and reveal personal details. Finally participants will work with the workshop leaders to improvise, plan and rehearse an intervention performance work that will be performed at the end of the second day. This performance may be very subtle and not immediately obvious to any audience members that may be around, again playing with ideas of what we do and do not reveal to those around us.
Arduino counts with two twitter accounts: @arduinoteam is the one used by the team to report about things we think matter to the community. @arduinoblog is twitting for every blog post, and allows us handling answers on our blog.
