I’m almost done packing for Maker Faire. So excited to see lots of friends, meet people, learn new skills, and see what amazing project people have been cooking up. I’ll be bringing a few projects to show at the Make: Projects Stage and Maker Shed, including the Arduino Nerf Sentry Gun. Hope to see you there!
Archive for the 'Arduino' Category
My friend Tod Kurt and I built this laser tripwire art heist event for the Machine Project Benefit. Here’s what it looked like:
We’re using a hazer to make the laser beams visible, which works surprisingly well in this semi-open space. To increase the spectacle we installed a few extra lasers that are not being sensed for tripwires, but just look cool. The heisters didn’t know which those were, however, so it added to the challenge without increasing complexity.
In this side view you can see what happens when you break too many beams: lots of lights come on, including a blinding, red LED array. For this Tod used an Arduino-controlled AC optical relay. I’m hoping Tod will write up the whole project for a MAKE article, because he has all kinds of neat tricks like this throughout.
The event was fantastic. People got very competitive about getting the art stolen in the shortest time. Most adept thieves did it in about 20 seconds, but the top three scores were between 5 and 7 seconds!!
Where: In the Make: magazine booth at Bay Area Maker Faire ‘09.
When: Friday before the Faire (which opened on Saturday)
Who: Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, and Mark Frauenfelder of MAKE and BoingBoing.
What: a terrifying solder job on the back of their Peggy 2 kit (it looked like the leads were clipped by gnawing on them!)
Why: This board was built very quickly for the magazine photo shoot
Not trying to make fun of whoever put it together, I just loved this look on Windell’s face as he realized he was going to have to take the board home and do some major resoldering. He did, and it looked great!
The Railographic Apparatus uses a train to deliver messages between terminal stations. My first tests were with HO scale trains. These were very helpful in testing the Arduino + Adafruit MotorShield, but proved to be a bit to small and unstable to lug around all the gear we wanted to use.
Usman Muzaffar and I are working on a telecommunications project called The Rail-O-Graph. It’s a re-imagined Pony Express that passes messages between nodes using a microcontroller on a train. (Initial tests conducted with snakes on a plane did NOT go well.) I’m posting progress videos here as we race the clock to finish by Maker Faire. I previously posted a video of the simple switch > relay > solenoid > switch system here.
Here’s my exploration of solenoids and switches tapping at a constant rate:
The rate wasn’t so constant, until I put a protection diode across the solenoid leads. This was Tod Kurt’s suggestion. Once again, Tod as saved me from putting the project into a little pile and setting it on fire.
I’m working on a project with my friend Usman Muzaffar that involves solenoids. Here’s my first test of a little relay board I built sending 12V to the solenoid based on a 5V signal coming from the Arduino.
My friend Tod and I were agreeing that everything in life should be in a Pelican case. He suggested that we try to get them to sponsor the Make: tv show.
I’m using some in an upcoming project on the show, as well as shipping a bunch of electronics in them. Here’s a Danger Shield in a clear 1020 case. It’s just too dangerous to be out in the open!
These Altoid tin alternatives from Make: are awesome. I’m using mine to build a little button box for doing Arduino microcontroller demos.
