Re-live 1978 in all its glory with the [Roth] Scream Box

March 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

roth-scream-box

We never imagined that [David Lee Roth] would mesh well with an Arduino, that is until Flickr user [tgtsfkncld] showed off his [Roth] Scream Box a few days ago.

The unassuming box resembles sort of a nondescript “Easy Button”, but its payload is far more entertaining than whatever Staples could have possibly recorded for their device. Once the Scream Box is powered on, each press of the button rewards the user with a short sound clip of [Roth] singing the lyrics from [Van Halen’s] “Runnin’ With the Devil”.

[tgtsfkncld] took snippets of the isolated vocal track from the song, playing them back using an Arduino along with an Adafruit Wave Shield. The circuitry behind the device is not overly complicated, though the final result is great. With the wide array of isolated vocals floating around online, it would be very easy to create one for your favorite band/singer as well.

Continue reading to see the [Roth] Scream Box in action.

[via Adafruit Blog]

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Filed Under: arduino hacks, musical hacks Tagged With: , , , ,

Remove your Arduino's external oscillator to gain a free pair of IO pins

March 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

2free-arduino-io-pins

[Mark] from SpikenzieLabs was wrapping up a project using an Arduino the other day and found himself in need of a few more I/O pins. He could have added extra circuitry to the project, but he decided to see if he could gain a few pins by removing a few components instead.

He put together one of his Minuino boards, but rather than installing the crystal and its associated capacitors, he added a couple of pin headers in their place. It’s well known that the internal clock on the chip is not as precise as a crystal, but [Mark’s] project was not that time sensitive, so he had no problem sacrificing the oscillator for a few extra pins.

With his new I/O pins in place, he merely needed to tell the ATmega chip which clock it should be using, and he was well on his way. While this might not be the best solution for all projects out there, if you are building something that values pincount over precision, this hack is for you.

Check out the video below to see [Mark’s] hack in action.

[via HackedGadgets]

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Filed Under: arduino hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Arduino shield includes everything but the kitchen sink

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

arduino-3g-shield

The crew at Cooking Hacks in Zaragoza wrote in to share a new shield they developed for the Arduino platform. There are a hundred different shields out there that do this and that, but we think their 3G/GPRS shield looks pretty slick.

The base shield contains a WCDMA and HSPA compatible 3G modem as well as a GPS receiver. The modem can be used with an Arduino, or plugged directly into a computer via USB, allowing it to be used any way you like it. The more advanced kit offered by the Cooking Hacks crew features a VGA video camera, as well as an audio kit that can both play and record audio.

One neat feature they were quick to point out is that not all network communications need to be handled by the Arduino. Simple transactions (HTTP/FTP/POP3/SMTP) can all be carried out by sending standard AT commands to the modem.

Now, the kits don’t come cheap, but we can’t help but be interested in seeing what applications people dream up with this shield at the helm. Cooking Hacks is a division of Libelium Communcations, but as they are the company’s “Open Hardware Division” there are schematics available should you be interested in rolling your own 3G modem instead.

Filed Under: arduino hacks, cellphones hacks Tagged With: , , , ,

Birdwatching Meets a Computer-Controlled Water Cannon, Awesomeness Ensues

March 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

squirrel turret

Sure, squirrels may bother the average home owner, but few have attempted as creative a way to control them as this automated water turret. Check out the video after the break to see how this was accomplished, but if you’d rather just see how the squirrels reacted to getting squirted, fast forward to around 16:00. According to [Kurt] he was sure this would be his solution, however, his conclusion was that “squirrels don’t care.”

As for the presentation, it’s more about how to use [OpenCV], or Open Source Computer Vision. It’s quite a powerful piece of software, especially considering that something like this would cost thousands of dollars in a normal market.  An Arduino is used to interface the computer’s outputs to the real world and control a squirt gun. If you’d rather not program something like this yourself, you could always simply use a garden hose as someone suggests just after the video. [Read more…]

Filed Under: arduino hacks, toy hacks, weapons hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Motor controller also does nyan cat

March 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As a freshman at UC Berkeley, [Keegan] has been helping out with his school’s Pioneers in Engineering program that gives high school students some hands on experience with engineering principles, usually by building robots. This year, [Keegan]’s project is a motor controller that just so happens to play the nyan cat song over the motor PWM output.

The motor controller is meant to replace the Pololu simple motor controller the PiE team is currently using. Onboard is an H-bridge chip and an ATmega328 that takes commands from an I2C bus. The ‘328 is loaded up with the Arduino bootloader making the firmware very accessible – a good thing for the high school students that will be building and programming these robots.

[Keegan] put up the Eagle files for the board up on the PiE Wiki. For now, just enjoy the dulcet tones of the pop tart cat theme song after the break.

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Filed Under: robots hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Self-balancing transport is Arduino-controlled

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Nick Thatcher] has built several iterations of a homebrew Segway, and the latest version is very impressive. When developing the project he figured there was just no way the thing would ever work, which led to its name, the No-way.

After the break you can catch a video of [Nick’s] test-ride. Looks like the two-wheeler is ready for daily use. You can just make out a red kill-switch on the right side of the polycarbonate body. This lets you disconnect the power if things get out of hand, or just when you’re done riding it. But there is also a dead-man’s switch which we believe uses two sensors where your feet go on the enclosure’s top surface. The handle has some indicator lights built into it, as well as buttons under each thumb which are used for steering. Control circuitry includes an Arduino UNO which reads a gyroscope/accelerometer sensor board from SparkFun. Two 7.2 Ah batteries provide 24V for the pair of electric scooter motors that turn the wheel-barrow wheels.

We love looking at these Segway clone project. So if you’re working on one of your own don’t forget to document your progress!

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Filed Under: transportation hacks Tagged With: , , , ,
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