Vacuum tubes used to be the building blocks of computation and the drivers of screaming guitar amplifiers, but they’re rare today — so rare that there are virtually no manufacturers producing new units. If you shop for vacuum tubes, most of what you’ll find is either used or NOS (new old stock). That has led to boutique vacuum tube manufacturing, but that is a substantial undertaking. To make the process just a little bit easier, Nick Poole created this custom vacuum controller.
As the name suggests, a vacuum tube requires a sealed chamber under vacuum. That vacuum is necessary to provide “clean” space between the anode and cathode, so electrons can flow freely. It is practically impossible to achieve a perfect vacuum, but vacuum tube manufacturers try to get as close as possible to get the best performance. Evacuating the tube before sealing is a tricky task, which is why Poole wanted a controller to streamline the process.
This requires two vacuum chambers: one for rough vacuum and one for hard vacuum. The new tube connects to the evacuation port, which connects to those vacuum chambers through specialty valves. This controller, based on an Arduino, needs to control the operation of the vacuum pumps and valves. It also needs to monitor the pressures/vacuum, drive gauges, and provide indicators. There is a lot that can go wrong in a hurry when you’re working with hard vacuum, so the Arduino ensures that each step occurs in the proper sequence so Poole can focus on forming the glass when he fabricates vacuum tubes.
If you are young, you may not remember the turbo buttons of the 1990s. These existed for backwards-compatibility with older games and software that wouldn’t run properly at the blazing-fast processor clock speeds of the time. The turbo button simply told the CPU to run at a slower clock speed that would work with that older software. Joshua Woehlke uses an old PC with a 486 processor and decided to add his own useless turbo readout to complement the turbo button.
Woehlke’s computer uses a vintage ATX case from the ’90s that does, in fact, have a turbo button. But that case lacked the kind of clock speed readout that was popular when it was new. Those readouts were usually three-digit seven-segment displays and the implication was that they would show the processor’s current clock speed. Except that was all a farce and, in reality, they just switched between two preset numbers: one for the faster speed and one for the slower speed. Woehlke’s project mimics that non-functionality.
The hardware for this project includes an Arduino Mega 2560 board and a small OLED screen. Woehlke chose the Mega because he had it on hand, but any Arduino board would have worked. The Arduino receives power from one of the power supply’s 5V rails. And like the real turbo readouts of the ’90s, the Arduino doesn’t measure clock speed at all. It just looks at the LED above the turbo button to see if it is active, then uses that state to determine which number to display on the OLED. For extra flair, Woehlke added a starfield “screensaver” that appears on the OLED 10 seconds after pushing the turbo button.
Due to an ever-warming planet thanks to climate change and greatly increasing wildfire chances because of prolonged droughts, being able to quickly detect when a fire has broken out is vital for responding while it’s still in a containable stage. But one major hurdle to collecting machine learning model datasets on these types of events is that they can be quite sporadic. In his proof of concept system, engineer Shakhizat Nurgaliyev shows how he leveraged NVIDIA Omniverse Replicator to create an entirely generated dataset and then deploy a model trained on that data to an Arduino Nicla Vision board.
The project started out as a simple fire animation inside of Omniverse which was soon followed by a Python script that produces a pair of virtual cameras and randomizes the ground plane before capturing images. Once enough had been created, Nurgaliyev utilized the zero-shot object detection application Grounding DINO to automatically draw bounding boxes around the virtual flames. Lastly, each image was brought into an Edge Impulse project and used to develop a FOMO-based object detection model.
By taking this approach, the model achieved an F1 score of nearly 87% while also only needing a max of 239KB of RAM and a mere 56KB of flash storage. Once deployed as an OpenMV library, Nurgaliyev shows in his video below how the MicroPython sketch running on a Nicla Vision within the OpenMV IDE detects and bounds flames. More information about this system can be found here on Hackster.io.
Whether it’s budget issues, lack of time management, or simply not having any ideas for solving the issue at-hand, dealing with coworkers who bring up these problems is a pet-peeve of element14 Presents host Mark Donners. In response, he built a simple wall-mounted ornament consisting of a series of magic wands that prods coworkers to think first in a tongue-in-cheek way.
The holder itself was inspired by a scroll-shaped wand holder, and Donners was able to recreate it by sculpting clay around a bent sheet of metal, adding some wand-holding eye hooks, and painting the entire thing a parchment color. For the electronics, Donners designed a custom PCB that works with an Arduino Nano to emit sounds from an MP3 module, adjust the backlighting behind the scroll, and even shut itself off after a present amount of time via a clever power delivery circuit. A total of four audio recordings were taken and subsequently loaded onto a microSD card which tell the user to, among other things, pick up a wand and wish for their budget/workforce increase request to be granted.
On the programming side, the Nano starts by initializing the SD card, beginning a rainbow animation on the LED strip, and randomly selecting one of the sound files. From here, the sound plays until the timer expires, at which point the whole system shuts off. To see more about how Donners made this project, be sure to watch his video below!
The launch of the Arduino UNO R4 marks a huge leap forward for our community. For us, it’s also the chance to celebrate the people who bring our ecosystem to life with their bright ideas, radiant enthusiasm, and shining insight.
That is how the UNO R4 Stars blog post series began: to highlight makers who have not only created amazing projects with Arduino, but who are giving back to the community by sharing as they go and helping others make anything they wish.
We invite you to discover each profile, hoping you might find a North Star to navigate around an expanding galaxy or venture into completely new universes.
Greta Galli is a 20-year-old maker – as well as a content creator, student and teacher! – focusing her high energy levels on robotics and 3D printing. If you think that’s a lot, it is. But keep in mind she got her first taste of making at the young age of 11, when she took part in a kids’ workshop at a tech fair. Fast forward a few years and she heard her high school would start teaching with Arduino, so she jumped the gun and bought her first board.
But guess what? She couldn’t figure out how to get her first blink. And while she can laugh about it now – with 160+ tutorials uploaded to YouTube and the Minion robot she built running around her house – she had to quickly come to terms with the fact that failing is a huge part of making. She got help at the store where she had bought the board, and kept going.
Today, her work is inspired by the idea you can make anything you can imagine. The stranger the idea, the better! With robotics, 3D printing, and coding, you can create your own project from scratch – and learn everything you need to learn as you go.
Traditional bi-directional wireless communication requires both a receiver and a transmitter at either end. Your laptop, for example, needs to receive a signal from your Wi-Fi router, but it also needs to transmit a signal back to that router. That transmission requires power proportional to the strength of the signal, which is less than ideal for many applications. Backscatter presents an alternative and UniScatter is new backscatter technology developed by a team of UC San Diego engineers that promises cost-effective reliability.
Backscatter communication works by reflecting a signal emitted by the receiver. But in order for that reflected signal to carry information, the reflector (the backscatter “tag”) needs to be able to introduce some form of modulation. That might information might be as simple as a static identifier, but it can be dynamic as well. A self-driving car could, for example, read backscatter tags on road signs with information as simple as a speed limit or something more complex like the state of a traffic light.
UniScatter utilizes metamaterials, like graphene, to enable more reliable backscatter reflections. It also adopts frequency shift keying (FSK), as opposed to amplitude shift keying (ASK), for modulation. For that to work, the UniScatter tag needs to alter the voltage bias of the graphene capacitor to control the backscatter reflection. UniScatter’s developers used an Arduino Due board to provide that modulation control.
In their research, UniScatter’s developers determined that this system works reliably from 20GHz to 90GHz. That allows for a lot of flexibility in system design and also ensures that communication remains stable across a wide variety of ambient conditions and physical orientations.
Despite snoring itself being a relatively harmless condition, those who do snore while asleep can also be suffering from sleep apnea — a potentially serious disorder which causes the airway to repeatedly close and block oxygen from getting to the lungs. As an effort to alert those who might be unaware they have sleep apnea, Naveen Kumar devised a small device using an Arduino Pro Nicla Voice to detect when a person is snoring and gently alert them via haptic feedback in their pillow.
Although many boards have microphones and can run sound recognition machine learning models, the Nicla Voice contains a Syntiant NDP120 Neural Decision Processor that is specifically designed to accelerate deep learning workloads while also decreasing the amount of power needed to do so. Apart from the board, Kumar added an Adafruit DRV2605L haptic motor driver and haptic motor as a way to wake up the user without disturbing others nearby.
The model was created by first downloading a snoring dataset that contains hundreds of short samples of either snoring or non-snoring. After adding them to the Edge Impulse Studio, Kumar constructed an impulse from the Syntiant Audio blocks and trained a model that achieved a 94.6% accuracy against the test dataset. The code integrating the model continuously collects new audio samples from the microphone, passes them to the NDP120 for classification, and triggers the haptic motor if snoring is sensed.
3D printers need to set their hot ends to a very specific temperatures suited to the filament material and keep them at those temperatures throughout the printing process. Most use PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) control for that purpose, which modulates power according to an algorithm that prioritizes stability and prevents feedback oscillations. But what if you want to control a hot end that isn’t connected to a 3D printer? In that case, Michael Klements has a guide on how to build a dedicated hot end controller.
This dedicated hot end controller is useful if you’re building something like a filament extruder. Klements designed it for the PET Bottle Recycler, which turns garbage into useful filament. That machine needs to melt down the plastic and, naturally, it uses a hot end to do so. But because it isn’t connected to a 3D printer, Klements needed some way to control the temperature of the hot end. A full 3D printer controller board would have been overkill, so he created this dedicated controller for the job.
Because Klements designed this for the PET Bottle Recycler, it includes a stepper motor driver as well. It is meant for use with a Creality Ender 3 hot end, but should work with others that have standard thermistor feedback (which is crucial for PID control). The custom PCB hosts an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, which is brand new and has a lot of great features like a built-in LED matrix. That PCB also contains a MOSFET to control power to the hot end, a small OLED screen, and a rotary push button for navigating the menu.
After assembling the PCB and flashing the provided sketch, you’ll be able to directly control a hot end or a complete filament extruder like the PET Bottle Recycler.
The human brain and eyes are imperfect, so your visual perception has a limited “frame rate.” That is somewhere between 30 and 60 frames per second (fps). Most films are 24fps, which is part of the reason they don’t quite look like real life. Once you reach the upper limits of the human visual frame rate, you begin to perceive moving objects like solid blurs. This small rotating display harnesses that effect and utilizes a CD drive motor to do so.
A PoV (persistence of vision) display like this one relies on your low frame rate perception. It is just a spinning disk with two lines of LEDs. But if it spins fast enough, it can blink those LEDs at certain angles and you will perceive a solid spot of light at each of those points. When the timing is right, it can create the appearance of graphics like alphanumeric characters or simple pictures. In this case, it reveals the weather and the time (in analog or digital style).
An Arduino Nano board controls the 40 LEDs, while an ESP8266 ESP-01 module tells it what image to show based on time and weather data pulled from the internet via Wi-Fi®. Those mount onto a custom circular PCB spun by a small CD drive motor. Because that PCB spins, it would have been difficult to run wires for power. So this takes advantage of wireless power transfer through coils on that primary PCB and a secondary PCB underneath that exists purely for that purpose.
Although we recently launched the new 32-bit Arduino UNO R4, Clem Mayer wanted to honor its 8-bit predecessor by making something special using the Rev3. Drawing on old hardware designs, the ZX-81 is an 8-bit computer based on the Z80 processor which has 1KB of RAM and 1KB of EEPROM available for the user to utilize within the operating environment — typically a BASIC interpreter shell. Similarly, Mayer wanted to have one ATmega328P run the TinyBASIC interpreter while a secondary ATmega328P would handle the external keyboard and display due to resource constraints.
The PCB was designed to fit within the form factor of a standard event badge, complete with a small multiplexed keyboard and a 20×4 monochrome LCD screen to fit the retro theme. On the back layer of the board are both AVR MCUs in a surface-mount package to save on space along with a pair of battery holders and a buzzer/power delivery circuitry.
Although the code was working for the most part, Mayer still encountered a couple of problems which he solved mainly through bodges and ensuring the LCD was producing adequate contrast. Once the hardware was functioning as intended, he 3D-printed a case and turned it into a lanyard-attached device — complete with blinky lights and a highly interactive interface.
The finished handheld computer badge is a testament to the power and versatility of the Arduino Uno R3. By utilizing all available pins and space on the chip, Clem successfully transforms the Arduino Uno into a handheld computer with capabilities like the ZX-81. The project serves as a fitting tribute to the beloved Arduino UNO R3 and showcases the potential for DIY electronics with microcontrollers.
To see more on this project, be sure to watch Mayer’s video below!
Video games are popular because they provide a clear and reliable loop of effort and reward. If you smash the baddie, you get experience; get enough experience and you level up. But real life isn’t like that and there is little direct correlation between effort and reward, which is dissatisfying. Gamification techniques address that by providing game-like rewards in real life. If you want to gamify physical speed and dexterity, then the DIY Cobra reflex coach may be the ticket.
Cobra works a lot like the consumer training devices on the market. It has several big buttons that you must push as quickly as possible after they light up. And it provides gamification by quantifying your performance. Get a little bit faster and you’ll immediately be rewarded with objective feedback on your enhanced speed. That gives you incentive to keep practicing and over time you agility should grow. Continue and you may just become the next Bruce Lee.
This is a compact unit, so the enclosure is 3D-printable and can be mounted to a wall or tree. Inside the housing there is a massive PCB, complete with cobra head artwork. That PCB contains an Arduino UNO Rev3 board, a 16×2 character LCD screen, and a small piezo buzzer. Adafruit NeoPixels illuminate the buttons, indicating which one you should strike at any given moment. Those buttons are actually capacitive touch pads, so you don’t have to hit them hard— even a light tap will register.
The launch of the Arduino UNO R4 marks a huge leap forward for our community. For us, it’s also the chance to celebrate the people who bring our ecosystem to life with their bright ideas, radiant enthusiasm, and shining insight.
That is how the UNO R4 Stars blog post series began: to highlight makers who have not only created amazing projects with Arduino, but who are giving back to the community by sharing as they go and helping others make anything they wish.
We invite you to discover each profile, hoping you might find a North Star to navigate around an expanding galaxy or venture into completely new universes.
Officially a composer and multimedia artist, Gustavo Silveira has been a self-proclaimed “nerd musician” ever since he discovered the technological tools to build his own instruments. His most iconic project so far is the XT Synth — a mix of guitar, violin, and MIDI controller with a slightly psychedelic look he is particularly proud of.
What motivates him in his work is the possibility to create objects that didn’t exist before, to make art in completely new ways. After all, for Silveira making is a form of creativity: when he started “messing with Arduino” he immediately felt he could express himself artistically – not only through the results of his projects, but also through the process itself.
Sharing his work came naturally, as a way of giving back: “I learned everything I know from the community, so nowadays being able to teach – by making videos for YouTube, writing the blog, posting on Instagram – for me is really, really cool.”
We asked Silveira, “What’s your favorite part of UNO R4?”
This new version is now HID, so it can be recognized as a USB device. So you basically have a plug-and-play, MIDI-class compliant tool to create all your next “nerd music” projects.
It’s equipped with a very fast processor and already has a DAC and an amplifier: as a musician or sound designer, this means you can test, prototype, and then listen right there on the UNO R4 and do synthesis or audio processing.
It can replace any UNO project, but also opens up new possibilities for making that were simply not there with the previous versions.
In the world of IoT, staying informed about your project’s status and events is crucial. Imagine receiving prompt notifications when your temperature sensor detects a critical temperature, or when your security camera detects motion in a restricted area. These real-time alerts enable you to take immediate action, prevent issues, and ensure the smooth operation of your IoT projects.
With Triggers, the Arduino Cloud takes project monitoring and management to the next level. You can stay connected to your IoT projects like never before, receiving instant alerts, and seizing control when it matters the most. Prompt notifications help you detect anomalies or critical situations promptly, optimize resource allocation and energy consumption, monitor equipment health and performance, or gain valuable insights and make data-driven decisions.
Triggers and Notifications in Arduino Cloud
Traditionally, implementing notifications in the Arduino Cloud required setting up webhooks that connected to external platforms like IFTTT, Zapier or Google Services. While effective, this approach involved a certain level of complexity and additional steps. With Triggers in the Arduino Cloud, the process is simplified to smooth the users’ experience.
How to set up Triggers in Arduino Cloud
The beauty of Triggers lies in migrating the action from the sketch to the Cloud, removing complexity and simplifying the code. Instead of modifying the sketch in-depth, you can configure Triggers directly in the Arduino Cloud by associating it to a variable change.
Here’s how it works:
Identify the variable that will be synced with the Cloud as usual.
Define the condition using the previously defined variable.
Define the notification selecting the condition using the variable and indicating the notification to be run.
In most cases, no code modifications are needed. And for the majority of the cases, the following example snippet shows how simple it is to use this feature:
if (whatever_action_happens) { my_action_variable = true; // Trigger the Cloud notification
}
else { my_action_variable = false;
}
Let’s explore a couple of practical scenarios where Triggers and Notifications within the Arduino Cloud add value to IoT projects:
Temperature monitoring: Receive an immediate notification when the temperature exceeds a predefined threshold, allowing you to prevent equipment damage or adjust environmental conditions.
Security alerts: Get notified whenever motion is detected by your IoT security system, enabling you to promptly assess the situation and take necessary measures.
System failure notifications: Ensure that you are immediately alerted when a critical component of your IoT infrastructure encounters an issue, minimizing downtime and facilitating swift troubleshooting.
Introducing Arduino Cloud
The Arduino Cloud is the next exciting journey for IoT enthusiasts to bring their projects to life quickly. It is an all-in-one intuitive IoT platform, supporting a wide range of hardware and backed by the vibrant Arduino community. The Arduino Cloud removes complexity to empower users from all levels of expertise to create from anywhere, and control and share their projects with stunning dashboards.
Triggers and Notifications in the Arduino Cloud empower you to create innovative IoT projects while staying informed about crucial events. We invite you to dive deeper into this feature by signing-up on the Arduino Cloud and exploring the comprehensive documentation available. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to bring your ideas to life with the Arduino Cloud! Create a new account today and unlock the full potential of your IoT journey. Kindly note that Triggers is a feature that comes with the Maker plan or higher. Upgrading to a paid subscription is a straightforward process, and you’ll be able to manage up to 25 devices and receive extra features such as over-the-air updates, shareable dashboards, advanced widgets, an extended data retention to maximize your IoT experience.
It may not be as exciting as other fields, but agriculture is incredibly important to humanity and technological advances have increased yields, efficiency, and productivity many times throughout history. All of the evidence suggests that smart agriculture is going to be at the heart of the next big technological leap and that will require trust in the data. To further that goal, researchers from Newcastle University and the University of Nottingham developed the Squirrel Box.
The Squirrel Box is a small, remote device that measures key soil metrics, like pH levels, moisture content, ambient conditions, and NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) levels. That data is important in determining the health of the soil in a field. It is useful for protecting potential yields and also for maintaining the soil to achieve maximum productivity. The Squirrel Box can transmit its readings over long distances via LoRaWAN® to a WisGate Edge Lite 2, which is an eight-channel gateway that many boxes can connect to in order to provide a comprehensive picture of soil health across an entire farm. An Arduino MKR WAN 1310 board monitors the sensors and contains an onboard LoRa® transceiver.
But as the Squirrel Box team points out in their paper, smart agriculture requires trust. If farmers are to rely on this data, they need to trust that it is accurate, reliable, and tamper-proof. For that reason, they implemented decentralized communication that is robust enough to survive the failure of any single unit. They also turned to machine learning to validate the data and identify potential anomalies that might represent anything from a sensor problem to falsified data. This focus on trust makes farmers more likely to adopt smart agricultural techniques.
Static manipulators and mobile robot chassis each have their own advantages, and so by combining the two into a single platform, AadhunikLabs was able to realize both at the same time. The base frame is comprised of four individual wheels, each with their own high-torque geared motor and driven by a pair of VNH3ASP30 DC motor driver boards. All of the arm’s axes are moved via a single high-torque metal servo motor that not only can support its own weight, but also the weight of an object being picked up by the gripper on the end.
Beyond controlling the geared DC and servo motors, an onboard Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect receives commands over Wi-Fi® from a host PC running the control software. In here, the user can view a live camera feed coming from an ESP32 camera module as well as virtually view the robotic arm’s position in 3D space. Similar to a video game, pressing keyboard keys such as ‘WASD’ and sliding the mouse provide general movements for the chassis and arm, respectively. Meanwhile, other keys allow for manipulating the end-effector, moving the arm to default positions, and adjusting the speed.
Soft robotics is a challenging field, because it comes with all of the difficulties associated with conventional robotics and adds in the complexity of designing non-rigid bodies. That isn’t a trivial thing, as most CAD software doesn’t have the ability to simulate the flexibility of the material. You also have to understand how the actuators will perform. That’s why a team of researchers from Zhejiang University and Carnegie Mellon University developed MiuraKit, which is a modular construction kit for pneumatic robots.
MiuraKit isn’t any one robot, but rather a set of tools and designs that can be combined to build robots and shape-changing interfaces. Anything made with MiuraKit will have a few things in common: pneumatic actuation, flexibility, and origami-like structures. Those structures expand or deform in a variety of different ways to suit the application. For example, one type is a simple one-dimensional expander similar to a linear actuator. Another type twists for rotary actuation. By linking different types together, roboticists can achieve complex motion.
Because these structures rely on pneumatic actuation, they need valves to control airflow. MiuraKit works with electromagnetic valves under the control of an Arduino board. That receives commands from a computer over a serial connection, but it can also work on its own with pre-programmed instructions. MiruaKit includes almost everything needed to create a robot: 3D-printable pneumatic connectors, a CAD design tool, laser cutter templates, and the pump with control system. In the coming weeks, the designers plan to give MiuraKit out to design firms and schools for evaluation.
Create your first – or your next – IoT project with the new Arduino Nano ESP32. The latest addition to our wide range of tiny boards with mighty features pairs the accessibility and flexibility of the Arduino ecosystem with the potential of the low-power ESP32-S3 system-on-a-chip microcontroller.
This means you can keep the familiar Nano form factor (just 45×18 mm!), get all the support you need – via documentation or our vibrant community – and master MicroPython in no time.
Embrace IoT with the Nano ESP32 microcontroller
The Nano ESP32 introduces a whole new microcontroller architecture to the Nano family, embracing one of IoT’s favorite standards to offer you new opportunities for making at all levels.
Just imagine implementing a new system to control door locks remotely or automate blinds, building a custom interactive toy for your kids or challenging your students to make their first smart object with this convenient little board: there are infinite applications for home automation, gaming and education.
All you have to do is think on a different scale!
All in all, the Nano ESP32 brings MicroPython and IoT to the fingertips of Arduino users – and is a warm welcome to the Arduino ecosystem for anyone already using MicroPython and working on IoT! Thanks to extensive, regularly updated libraries and “portability” to any Arduino board that is compatible with ESP32, this can be your first step towards a whole universe of open-source projects and open-minded people. The Arduino Nano ESP32 is the best board for learning MicroPython: check out the free MicroPython 101 course!
Unlock new possibilities with Arduino Cloud
But the good news doesn’t stop here. The Nano ESP32 comes with out-of-the-box Arduino Cloud support, an all-in-one platform designed to bring your projects to life quickly. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting your IoT journey, the Arduino Cloud empowers you to achieve complex things in a simple way with a user-friendly experience.
Develop from anywhere, control, and monitor your projects with beautiful custom dashboards from your favorite browser or the IoT Remote app, share information among multiple devices, smoothly integrate your devices with Alexa, and much more. The new Nano ESP32 and Arduino Cloud are the power couple of IoT to help you unleash your creativity and have fun! Arduino Cloud support for the Nano ESP32 will be available by August 2023.
Because when it comes to IoT and prototyping, we want you to have not only the best technology for your project, but the best experience using it. And we can’t wait to see what all of you will make with this new tool in your hands.
Many kids and adults have an interest in electronics because they want to build robots. But it can be difficult to figure out where to even start. There are hundreds of kits on the market and the options are endless where you veer into custom territory. But if you’re looking for a tank-style rover that you can control via Bluetooth®, then this robot designed by Mastoras Inc is a fantastic choice.
We like this project because it combines the advantages of robot kits and custom robots. It uses an off-the-shelf chassis to simplify the complicated mechanical parts, but with custom Arduino electronics that allow for customizability and that offer an introduction to coding. It has Bluetooth capability, so you can control it remotely from your smartphone. Mastoras Inc built an Android app, which you can tweak as much as you like. You can also create your own if you want to try you hand at app development.
The project starts with a tracked robot chassis kit, which includes the frame, DC motors, hubs, and tracks. An Arduino Nano Every board controls those motors through an L298N H-bridge driver. An HC-05 module adds connectivity and power comes from a 9V battery. The electronics enclosures are 3D-printable, but you can also use any pre-built project box. If you do have a 3D printer, you can also add a tank turret rotated by a 9g micro servo motor.
This robot won’t make waves at your local hackerspace, but it is a great way to dip your toes into robotics and develop a foundation that you can build upon.
At the end of last year (November 2022) we announced initial support for MicroPython in the Arduino ecosystem, and continued to quietly work on the toolkit for this language.
We continuously expand the list of Arduino boards for which a MicroPython firmware is provided (available here)
Additionally, we are now releasing new tools to help developers use this language with Arduino Boards as well as third party ones. These tools are released as experimental, under the umbrella of Arduino Labs.
Last but not least, we have created an initial list of MicroPython packages that we consider useful to learn and experiment with this language. The list is published as Arduino MicroPython Package Index(here)
While investigating existing packages we quickly realized that many were available but not always up-to-date or in line with the latest MicroPython versions or certain target hardware. Therefore we decided to maintain a curated list of useful packages which are tested to be compatible with Arduino boards, and most importantly with updated versions of the official MicroPython..
You can browse the list, download the packages from their corresponding Github repository and install them via Arduino Lab Editor for MicroPython. We plan to release tools to easily search, download and install from this package index in the future.
Anybody can contribute to the Arduino MicroPython Package Index! If you want to propose a package to be added, follow the contribution guidelines published in the repo.
Everyone at Arduino is excited about this new adventure, and we believe that we can contribute to this ecosystem as it keeps maturing and growing its user-base across the Maker, Education and Professional spaces.
Humans evolved to sleep and wake according to natural light cycles. So it is strange that we, as a society, have largely chosen to rely on blaring alarms to wake up in the mornings. Wake-up lights have been gaining traction in recent years because they provide a pleasant experience that mirrors the rising sun — but at the time you need it. If you want a DIY option, AWAKE is a very aesthetically pleasing wake-up light.
This seems to be a concept with a prototype that isn’t quite finished yet, but the renders certainly look good. AWAKE uses two bright LED bulbs from flashlights to shine through arc-shaped diffusers, creating an arch. The idea is that the lights will gradually increase in brightness until you wake up. But there is also an integrated speaker, so it can sound an alarm at the last moment if you still haven’t woken up. There also appears to be a stand where you can place your smartphone, and it would be nifty if that included a wireless charger.
The heart of the AWAKE device is an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board. It has built-in Wi-Fi®, which is great for keeping time via the local network. It also has a Bluetooth® and BLE adapter, and those could be useful for setting alarms. The LEDs come from flashlights, so they’re extremely bright. Finally, and MP3 module can store and play audio files for the alarm sounds.
While the prototype doesn’t seem to be complete, the design files are available so you should be able to build an AWAKE wake-up light if you’re interested.
We are excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports the UNO R4 WiFi board, providing makers with seamless connectivity and enhanced features.
Building upon the recent release of the much-anticipated UNO R4 in our store, this new integration significantly amplifies the capabilities of the Arduino Cloud. The UNO R4 WiFi is a revolutionary addition to the Arduino family, combining the widely popular UNO R3 form factor with built-in WiFi connectivity. It is perfect for all users, from beginners to experts, wanting to explore the forefront of innovation and IoT projects creation.
How to connect UNO R4 WiFi to Arduino Cloud
With the Arduino Cloud, connecting your UNO R4 WiFi board becomes a breeze. Our user-friendly interface and intuitive workflows ensure a smooth setup process. To get started, follow our usual “Add a device” workflow:
Navigate to the Devices section and click on “Add Device.” Your board will be detected automatically.
The workflow will guide you through updating the connectivity firmware to ensure compatibility.
Once the update is complete, your UNO R4 WiFi is ready to be managed from the Arduino Cloud.
UNO R4 WiFi + Arduino Cloud = Unleash your creativity
Develop from anywhere using the web editor, share your sketches with your colleagues and friends, create dashboards to monitor and control your devices remotely from a browser or your mobile phone, share information between multiple devices, or integrate seamlessly your devices with Alexa.
About Arduino Cloud
The Arduino Cloud is the next exciting journey for IoT enthusiasts to bring their projects to life quickly. It is an all-in-one intuitive IoT platform, supporting a wide range of hardware and backed by the vibrant Arduino community. Arduino Cloud removes complexity to empower users from all levels of expertise to create from anywhere, control and share their projects with stunning dashboards.
Sign up for Arduino Cloud now and unleash the full potential of your UNO R4 WiFi board!
Before we had fancy digital clocks — or even spring-driven mechanical clocks — most methods for measuring short periods of time relied on gravity moving something in a consistent, repeatable way. Both water clocks and hour glasses work under that principle. But it isn’t very fun to watch grains of sand fall, which is why Brett Oliver built a kitchen timer that uses a rolling ball to count the seconds.
This project started with a rolling ball escapement designed by JBV Creative. That mechanism simply flips back and forth as a ball bearing rolls from one side of the track to the other. Perpetual motion is impossible, of course, so this mechanism relies on a weight to turn the gear system that pivots the track. The ball is just there for timing: when it reaches the end of the track, it pushes a lever that releases the mechanism and lets the weight drop a little. This will work until the weight reaches the ground or runs out of cord.
Oliver turned that mechanism into a kitchen timer by replacing the weight with a stepper motor controlled by an Arduino Nano board. Because the motor ultimately drives the mechanism, it can continue operating as long as it has power. An LCD display shows the remaining time and the user can set that with a few buttons. An MP3 module plays a user-configured sound effect when it reaches zero. The speed of the stepper motor determines the time it takes the ball to traverse the track and the default is five seconds, so the timer increments by five seconds with each pass.
Um dir ein optimales Erlebnis zu bieten, verwenden wir Technologien wie Cookies, um Geräteinformationen zu speichern und/oder darauf zuzugreifen. Wenn du diesen Technologien zustimmst, können wir Daten wie das Surfverhalten oder eindeutige IDs auf dieser Website verarbeiten. Wenn du deine Einwillligung nicht erteilst oder zurückziehst, können bestimmte Merkmale und Funktionen beeinträchtigt werden.
Funktional
Immer aktiv
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugang ist unbedingt erforderlich für den rechtmäßigen Zweck, die Nutzung eines bestimmten Dienstes zu ermöglichen, der vom Teilnehmer oder Nutzer ausdrücklich gewünscht wird, oder für den alleinigen Zweck, die Übertragung einer Nachricht über ein elektronisches Kommunikationsnetz durchzuführen.
Vorlieben
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff ist für den rechtmäßigen Zweck der Speicherung von Präferenzen erforderlich, die nicht vom Abonnenten oder Benutzer angefordert wurden.
Statistiken
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff, der ausschließlich zu statistischen Zwecken erfolgt.Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff, der ausschließlich zu anonymen statistischen Zwecken verwendet wird. Ohne eine Vorladung, die freiwillige Zustimmung deines Internetdienstanbieters oder zusätzliche Aufzeichnungen von Dritten können die zu diesem Zweck gespeicherten oder abgerufenen Informationen allein in der Regel nicht dazu verwendet werden, dich zu identifizieren.
Marketing
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff ist erforderlich, um Nutzerprofile zu erstellen, um Werbung zu versenden oder um den Nutzer auf einer Website oder über mehrere Websites hinweg zu ähnlichen Marketingzwecken zu verfolgen.
