Top 10 creative projects from Arduino Day Community Challenge
Meet the winners of the Arduino Day 2021 Community Challenge, and take another look at their inspired, creative projects.
Micro Category
Access control unit designed with a Raspberry Pi CM4 and an Arduino Micro
Whether granting access to public transit or restricting unauthorized personnel in buildings, NFC card readers can be extremely useful. Although most might not consider how they work – and simply happy getting through a turnstile – there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. In his video, Daniel Raines shows off a pair of prototype […]
Upgrade your flight sim setup with Tom Stanton’s floor-mounted joystick
Most joysticks sit on your desktop, allowing you to control flight sims and other such games with a bit more realism than a keyboard and mouse. YouTuber Tom Stanton, however, decided to take things to the next level by creating one that pivots from the floor out of aluminum extrusion and 3D-printed parts. The device’s […]
This air hockey robot never loses
Air hockey is normally a two-player affair, but not for this student-built robot. The table features a designated human goal with a touchscreen GUI for settings and control. The second goal is guarded by an autonomous striker, attached to a pair of steppers using a drive belt arrangement. The robotic device analyzes the puck position […]
Enjoy VR games on your PC with this Arduino-based DIY headset
If you want a virtual reality headset for your computer, but don’t want to dig deep into your pockets, this project by “jamesvdberg” (AKA Killer Robotics) presents a low-cost alternative. Although it won’t pack the capabilities of an Oculus or HTC Vive, jamesvdberg’s VR rig can be replicated for just $80 using a Google cardboard-compatible shell, along […]
DIY collective control lever for a helicopter flight sim
Kaleb Clark really enjoys flight simulators, but when attempting to fly a helicopter, a normal keyboard or even a joystick isn’t quite optimal for controlling its vertical movement. Real helicopters use a lever assembly called a collective to adjust downward thrust, and he decided to build his own with an Arduino Micro and GPIO expander. […]
This retro-looking rotary cellphone is free of modern-day distractions
What we carry today in our pockets is nominally called a “phone,” but more often than not we’re using it to do various other computing tasks. Justine Haupt, however, wanted an actual phone that “goes as far from having a touchscreen as [she could] imagine.” What she came up with is a rotary cellphone that’s not […]
Designing an extremely realistic animatronic heart with Arduino
For his latest project, Will Cogley has created an animatronic heart so realistic that you might wonder if it’s the actual thing. The device is made out of molded silicone with fake blood poured on top to enhance the effect, and inside a trio of servo motors push the lower and upper sections of the […]
Cambridge-1 is a 4-bit homebrew 7400-based CPU
Richard of ARITH-MATIC had the idea to build a 4-bit computer based on 7400 series ICs (like the 74HC273, 74HC193, and 74HC125), but other responsibilities got in the way of this becoming a reality for quite some time. Finally, with the Retro Computer Festival at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, England held earlier […]
This interactive machine makes art out of wine
Spilled wine may be a hassle to clean up, but you might also observe that it makes interesting patterns. Marketing firm KPS3 had the same kind of thinking when they designed the web-controlled “Swirl Machine” to promote the Santa Maria Valley wine industry. The machine takes the form of a tabletop display, where a vacuum […]
Boards:Micro
