January 17th, 2011

DIY Dice Roller For Your D&D Dreams

Are you a Dungeon Master? Do you think you’re a Dungeon Master? Do your literalist parents forbid you from having dice because they are witchery and won’t let you be a Dungeon Master? Why not build your own 20 and 100 sided die simulator.

The kit uses an Arduino board and a single switch to select the dice size. It’s not amazingly complex, obviously, but it’s a noble effort and looks very… → Read More

September 30th, 2010

Mad Pimpin' Personified – The LED Fur Coat

Let no one say that the people who attend Burning Man are not creative. This particular individual decided to “pimp his coat” with various electronics and LEDs. The end result is striking to say the least. Check out the video after the jump. → Read More

September 2nd, 2010

Using An NES Controller With Android

So you’ve got an emulator installed on your Android device, along with a few ROM, and you think you’re pretty cool. Well, I can pretty much bet you that [Sk3tch]‘s geek-fu is better then yours. He took an NES controller, connected it to a Bluetooth module, and plays his NES on a controller, while you fumble around with your SEND and Home buttons. → Read More

April 23rd, 2010

Air rockets are dumb. Make your own floppy drive echo / delay unit

You could spend your weekend making the compressed air rocket posted below. That’d be fun. Or you could get a few floppy drives together and make your own tape delay and reverb. Yeah, that sounds much more exciting. → Read More

March 30th, 2010

Wearing your unread email count on your chest

If you’re like me, you get a little.. obsessive about checking your email. Wouldn’t want to miss that important message after all. So when I see a project like the email count t-shirt, I start to get a little twitchy. It looks like it could be a DIY project, but I’m not sure I have the necessary skills. Like sewing. → Read More

March 18th, 2010

Party people, wave your wristbands in the air

This cool Instructable teaches you how to build your own persistance of vision wristband, one of those things that spell a word when you swing it in front of someone fast enough. The device uses a Lilypad Arduino board and about eight 8 LEDs. → Read More

March 15th, 2010

Play (rock paper scissors) with yourself

Self proclaimed glove hacker and electronics wiz Steve Hoefer just came out with his latest project, the Rock Paper Scissors glove. His project isn’t just random either, the glove actually learns how you play and will take advantage of your patterns in order to defeat you. Kind of creepy. → Read More

March 10th, 2010

Even as tiny blocks, you’ll recognize Super Mario Bros. in this Arduino project

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9928343&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1 Funny thing, isn’t it? That you can watch some little blocks moving on an 8×8 LED matrix and recognize the first level of Super Mario Bros. buried in the squares? Developed by a Carnegie Mellon student named Chloe for an Arduino… → Read More

February 26th, 2010

Drummer Hero for the Wii is powered by Arduino

So many cool things you can do with Arduino. The possibilities are endless now that we have the technology! Jazari has constructed this very elaborate solenoid/Arduino rig to play a myriad of instruments, all with two Wiimotes. Sure beats playing percussion in band back in high school. [BoingBoing] → Read More

February 18th, 2010

DIY: Six rotor helicopter

Adurino seems to be everywhere these days, particularly in the world of DIY. Take for example this helicopter project. Built by a German hobbyist with an inclination for projects related to flight, this 6 rotor helicopter is fast, stable, and extremely responsive. This is obviously not this particular hobbyists first experience with helicopters; he’s actually built an 8 rotor version as well. → Read More

January 14th, 2010

The Quadcopter, or build your own Drone

We told you about the AR.Drone that we saw at CES, but here’s a homebrew alternative that you can build today. Sure, it’s not iPhone/iPod controlled, but it does most everything else: fly, hover, look cool, terrorize the neighborhood. → Read More

November 19th, 2009

The DuinoTagger and Talcapult

Like a ’70s cop team – one is the goodie two shoes and the other one is the drunk – the DuinoTagger and Talcapult allow you to shoot things and make smoke appear. The gun uses an Arduino board to control a tiny catapult that blows out a little puff of smoke. → Read More

October 29th, 2009

DIY: Attack of the pumpkin

Tired of the hoodlums destroying your pumpkins? Looking for a little payback? Here’s a project that will allow you to get some vengeance. Plus, it’d be fun to shoot silly string at the older kids that show up on your front step this Halloween. → Read More

September 11th, 2009

Video: Arduino-powered life size electronic snowball fight game (I can’t explain it)

Okay, just humor me and watch the video, please. It’s not like I get paid to describe things with… those… um, you know, the things that make stuff readable. With individual letters, etc. And periods, commas — the things in between those. → Read More

August 9th, 2009

Droplet: A twee Arduino notification system

Need to know the weather? Need to check Woot? Want to read the news? Well, all you need is an Arduino board, an LCD read-out, four buttons, a breadboard, some experience in electronics, and a computer. Then you can build yourself a Droplet. → Read More

July 10th, 2009

Automated beer brewing courtesy of Arduino

Brewing your own beer by hand is soooo 1992. You can now automate most of the process using an Arduino controller and some source code over at Halfluck.com. → Read More

June 24th, 2009

Super Mario theme on stepper motors

Eventually all music will be made this way: a 24-volt power supply, an Arduino board, and three stepper motors. In fact Akon is actually a simple stepper motor attached to a Vocoder and Pro Tools. Look it up! It’s true! One more video after the jump. → Read More

June 9th, 2009

"Mr. Watson – come here! The Roomba's broken:" Whole home intercoms with Arduino

This cool system uses an Arduino board and home wiring to turn your local home telephone network into an intercom. When you take the phone off the hook it disconnects from the phone line and rings all of the phones with a different cadence. When you pick up the phone you get an open line so you can talk with loved ones and burglars who have broken in anywhere in the house. → Read More

May 27th, 2009

Hacking your Nike+iPod to open your door

This Sparkfun project by Nate creates a keyless entry fob for a Mazda using a Nike+iPod kit, allowing you to leave your car keys at home. Using a serial board you can read the input and output bits of the footpod and grab signals and decode them. → Read More

May 26th, 2009

Steel ball + Arduino + hacks = amazing Katamari Damacy controller

Why this hasn’t been done before is a mystery to me. This little hack project by Kellbot of NYCResistor takes a rolling ball, an optical mouse, a gutted PS2 controller, and some Arduino hacking and makes it into a working (and awesome) virtual Katamari. Why didn’t they have special controllers like this that came with the game? It makes so much sense!

Video or it didn’t happen. Oh, video is… → Read More

May 12th, 2009

Make your own "pager scanner"

Those little scamps over at Adafruit are always up to something. This time they built a “pager scanner” which is basically a system that grabs all of the pages transmitted on pager networks and displays them. Sadly, the pager network isn’t as juicy as it used to be and now only drops sports scores and emergency broadcasts. → Read More

May 4th, 2009

Terrifying LED rainbow table makes your leprechaun dreams come true

This kaleidoscopic fever dream of a coffee table is equipped with a 9×9 matrix of LEDs, which can apparently be set to “acid flashback” mode if necessary. It’s kind of like a demonically-possessed Lite Brite. When it’s not blasting color at your living room, though, I can think of a couple interesting uses for it. → Read More

March 4th, 2009

Neckwarmer modded with lights+LilyPad Arduino

Since neckwarmers just can’t be neckwarmers, this guy put together a LilyPad Arduino neckwarmer. A simple neckwarmer was modified with lights, a LilyPad Arduino, and a light sensor to make the lights blink when it’s dark. → Read More

February 18th, 2009

Micro-controlled Arduino hourglass

So you need your project to pause for a preset number of minutes but you can’t do it programatically? Why not connect a micro-controller to an hourglass egg timer to sense when the sand stops moving through the glass. A motor then resets the hourglass once the sand runs out, thereby repeating the process, ad infinitum. Pretty groovy, huh? → Read More

January 28th, 2009

"Teensy," a Triscuit-sized dev board that supports Arduino

It’s really more half-a-Triscuit-sized. This little 1.2″x0.7″ $20 board is a good solution for your home projects that require a little computation but not a lot of space. Say you want to put a little RFID detector in your door that unlocks it when you come near. Don’t need a big hard drive-sized package nailed to the door; with a Teensy you could practically embed the system in the doorknob. → Read More

January 21st, 2009

Tweet-a-Watt tweets your energy usage

Make’s Phil Torrone entered this odd gadget, the Tweet-a-Watt, in the Green Gadgets design competition. It’s essentially a Kill-a-Watt with a capacitor and transmitter added that will Tweet your current power usage using a nearby computer or wireless Arduino mini PC. → Read More

December 3rd, 2008

Open source gadgetry for one and all

Make, as usual, has an excellent round-up of open source hardware kits based our own favorite, the Arduino. The list includes all the add-ons, like the Ethernet and Motor shields, and devices like the Seeduino, a more powerful Arduino clone. → Read More

October 27th, 2008

Arduino microcontroller used to trigger flash for high-speed photos

These little Arduino boards are a real boon to amateur electronics tinkerers: cheap, versatile, and very small. This guy had the idea to make a high-speed photography setup using one, instead of the more direct circuits usually involved. His reasoning was that the Arduino allows for a lot of easy customization, like for instance hooking up a sound sensor as well as a laser sensor. It allows for… → Read More

October 7th, 2008

ArduinoBoy: A MIDI system in a Game Boy

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1853931&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1Arduinoboy mGB from trash80 on Vimeo. This haxor installed an Arduino Mini into a Game Boy case and then used a MIDI keyboard to play through the internal speaker. It basically turns the Game Boy into a synthesizer. The code is open so you can… → Read More

August 21st, 2008

The DIY Twitter-reading box robot

This odd fellow is an Arduino-based system for reading – and reacting to – incoming Twitter messages. While his eyes look like they’re made of CORN it’s nice to see someone as sad as me about getting incoming Tweets. via Giz → Read More