[quetwo] aka Nicholas Kwiatkowski developed a native interface to receive serial data in Flash.
[...] The AIR Native Extension (ANE) is a C based .DLL / .framework for the Windows/Mac platforms that allows AIR to essentially open a COM port. I wrote it in a way that is supposed to emulate the functions of the flash.net.Socket library that is included in the AIR runtime. I’ve posted the entire project, including the source code and final binaries on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/as3-arduino-connector/
[Alex Weber] put together a motorized drawing machine painting 2d Vector Graphics on his office’s glasses.
An automatic scribbling machine sounds less than useful, admittedly, but it’s really just the style of line created by this motorized drawing machine. It’s reminiscent of ASCII art, in which heavier characters are used to create darker tones; in this case, the more jiggle added to the drawing platform, the more ink is put on the drawing surface. It’s kind of mesmerizing.
Stuart and I wanted to design a project that would be a good introduction to upcycling electronics, robotics, arduino, art with maths/code. We came up with a drawing robot based on an old floppy drive.
David Schneider from [IEEEspectrum] tells and shares his DIY Remotely Operated Vehicle undersea, based on two Arduinos
Last year at about this time, crews in the Gulf of Mexico were working feverishly to bring BP’s blown-out oil well under control. Some of the more spectacular parts of that effort, as you may recall, involved the use of remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. Perhaps you had the same thought as I did—that it would be cool to build one.
Riportiamo qui di seguito il tutorial su come realizzare il proprio contachilometri, pubblicato su Wired di Giugno. A realizzarlo sono stati due membri della community: Vittorio Zuccalà con il supporto di Enkel Bici. Per realizzarlo hanno usato una Arduino Uno, un SD shield di Sparkfun e una Reed Switch (sostituibile anche da un Hall Sensor).
L’idea è semplice: tramite arduino si visualizza la velocità di punta e la velocità media su un display 16X2. Per contare i giri della ruota abbiamo utilizzato un reed switch. Questo sensore si comporta come un interruttore: esso rimane normalmente aperto (e quindi non passa corrente); arduino lo vede come un segnale digitale LOW. Quando passa un magnete vicino (posizionato sui raggi della ruota), il sensore si chiude facendo passare corrente; in questo modo restituisce un HIGH digitale ad arduino riconosce il passaggio del magnete; il tempo trascorso tra un passaggio e l’altro ci permette di calcolare la velocità istantanea (e successivamente quella media) e, conoscendo il raggio della ruota, si può calcolare il numero di metri percorsi.
Some time ago [ant.b] from the Arduino Forum manage to reflash the Atmega8u with other LUFA Firmwares. [Dimitri Diakopoulos] has recently developed a similar approach for his HIDUINO project. Very good explanation & references. Diakopoulos succeded to make Arduino show up as a MIDI Device:
LUFA powers the HIDUINO project in that it handles most of the low-level USB-HID implementation while exposing an API for developing other HID-compliant devices like MIDI.
The USB-HID specification has a specific type for MIDI input and MIDI output, which nearly all commercial musical controllers on the market use for class-compliant (driverless!) MIDI I/O.
[Jeremy] made ten Tutorials about Arduino worth our “All Stars” category. He talks about different themes: Blinking Leds [Intro & #2], Electrical Engineering [#3], Analog Inputs [#4], Motors & Transistors [#5], Serial Communication & Processing [#6], I2C & Processing [#7], SPI Interfaces [#8], Wireless Communication [#9] and Interrupts [#10].
Thanks to a generous sponsorship from element14, I’m putting together a tutorial series on using the arduino microcontroller platform! The arduino is a platform that I’ve done several projects with, and I think it is the best possible way for beginners to get acquainted with electronics. This tutorial series will be aimed at beginner users, but I’m hoping to keep it going with some more advanced topics a few episodes into the future.
The “Bat Goggles” are a general-purpose set of visual aids to assist those with low or no vision to sense obstacles. While the original project envisioned the sensors being attached as part of a helmet or eyeglasses, after experimentation it was determined that the tool is much more useful if the proximity sensors are movable, allowing them to be placed on the hands, feet, knees, or any other extremity. This allows more flexibility in exploration of environments and extending the effective range of the extremity.
In a free-moving use case, the user holds sensors in each hand. The proximity sensors serve as a virtual extension of the user’s hand, allowing him or her to check for the existence of objects without touching them. This can be useful in situations where it may be desirable to detect delicate objects that could be damaged if touched with excessive force (eg. a vase or lamp).
Can’t wait to read & see the imminent release of MAKE Volume 25, the Arduino issue. Besides this, Make announced an improvement of the Arduino section on its site:
Over the years, we’ve amassed tons of Arduino content here, offered dozens of Arduino projects in the magazine (and now on Make: Projects), and stocked plenty of Arduino awesomeness in the Maker Shed. But we’ve never had a convenient way for readers to access all of this via a single entry point. Now we do! We’ll be building this site out in the next few weeks and hope it will become an invaluable portal to all things Arduino. We’d love to hear from you about what you’d love to see on this Arduino page. Our thanks to element14 for helping us to get this project off the ground.
Great Tutorial from TronixStuff about the less known Arduino AREF Pin. First: what is resolution?
We measure resolution in the terms of the number of bits of resolution. For example, a 1-bit resolution would only allow two (two to the power of one) values – zero and one. A 2-bit resolution would allow four (two to the power of two) values – zero, one, two and three. If we tried to measure a five volt range with a two-bit resolution, and the measured voltage was four volts, our ADC would return a value of 3 – as four volts falls between 3.75 and 5V.
What is AREF?
AREF means Analogue REFerence. It allows us to feed the Arduino a reference voltage from an external power supply. For example, if we want to measure voltages with a maximum range of 3.3V, we would feed a nice smooth 3.3V into the AREF pin – perhaps from a voltage regulator IC. Then the each step of the ADC would represent 3.22 millivolts.
