A-Bog’s got a writeup of code he grabbed from the sparkfun forums to get the arduino to talk to their compass. – Link
Sparkfun’s compass is cute, but a tad spendy. – Link
Hoeken had mentioned a $15 dollar digital compass and I found the link to get the compass, I bought one! – Link
Here’s a little circuit to play with it. – Link
Aaron Propst made a stepper motor controller with his arduino. This vid gives you an idea of how to control steppers with an arduino. Click through for the details. – Link
I found this cool site with lots of Wii and Atmel AVR controller hacks called Wind Meadow. There isn’t really much info on who runs it, other than some posts by ‘Chad’, but there are some great tutorials. Out of all the great hacks and projects worth looking at is definitely the ‘Wiimote Controlled Firefighting Robot’. ‘Chad’, also has a great tutorial (code included) showing you how to hookup a Wiimote to a microcontroller. If you’re wondering why there is so much interest in doing this vs just buying an accelerometer, it’s because the Wiimote costs $39 and there are lots of goodies inside including a 3 axis accelerometer which is $40 alone from most electronics sites. Anyway, check out the site when you have a chance.
I just got my fancy new LilyPad Ardunios. I have a few ideas for fun projects I can make with them, but I think to start out with I am going to aim for a practical execution: Idea #1 A heated jacket with different levels of, well, heat. I’d probably have to use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to make the different heat levels, but I’ll figure that out later. Idea #2 A jacket with LED arrows that I can activate when I’m riding my bike at night, that way people behind me know which direction I am going to turn. Don’t steal that idea, patent pending.
UPDATE: We just found out that the software to program the LilyPad is not available until October 10th from ardunio.cc
These guys made a punching bag out of homemade sensors. They took pieces of wire mesh and soldered them together with some foam in between to create pressure sensitive foam. It’s all hooked up to the Arduino in a matrix and they were nice enough to post the code, tutorials and Processing files needed to recreate this project. I don’t think I have the need, or the space for that matter, to build a pressure sensitive punching bag, but I could definitely use a concept like this on some wearable clothing hooked up to a LilyPad.
First of all check out the project above. It’s a camera that only takes your picture when you blink. There’s conductive thread fake eyelash action going on here! – Link
We posted for help on finding sources for conductive thread and here’s what we found!
Lame Lifesaver – Link
ITP Resource Guide – Link
Colorado – Link
Conductive Velcro and Fabric too! – Link
Drat! I’m not at home with my stack of electronics catalogues, how am I going to order that electronics part I need? Once I get it, wouldn’t it also be great to have a datashet and can I get that on my iPhone right now?
In steps Octopart, the electonics part search engine. Go try it. It’s a beautiful thing. – Link
Check out the mini drum kit with an arduino! Then check out the spooky arduino class he taught last year! – Link
Soh_cah_toa left a comment for me on flickr that pointed me to this active-belt. This is similar to the “I’m Lost” hacker jacket idea except that this doesn’t just do directing, it does gps! – Link
October 11-13 next week is the 11th ISWC (International Symposium on Wearable Computers). This year it’s being held in Boston and they have some great tutorials scheduled including Building Soft Computers: 1. Materials, Techniques, and Tools. 2. Introduction to Designing Mobile Applications with On-body Sensing. 3. The Role of Design in Wearable Computing, and 4. Wearable Technologies for Persons with Autism Spectrum Conditions.
It seems like a really interesting conference with an impressive lineup of speakers, workshops and discusssions. I’m going to be in Boston around the same time giving a talk at SND so I might try and sneak over there and see what they are up to. Anyone planning on attending this?