It isn’t a secret that many kids find math to be boring and it is easy for them to develop an attitude of “when am I ever going to use this?” But math is incredibly useful in the real world, from blue-collar machinists using trigonometry to quantum physicists unveiling the secrets of our universe through advanced calculus. By engaging children early on in fun, intuitive ways, we can lay a mathematical foundation to build upon and TIEboard is a unique electronic toy that could help.
Developed by researchers from the Keio Graduate School of Media Design and University of Auckland, TIEboard is an interactive digital tool aimed at teaching kids geometric concepts. It is a bit like the classic Lite-Brite toy, but for geometric shapes and smart enough to guide learning. It consists of a grid of points, each of which is a hole that can be lit by an LED and accept a “thread.” Those threads are fiber optic and light up. They’re also conductive and make contact with pads around the holes.
A basic lesson to guide the construction of a square would light up four points. The child could then string threads between those points to form the sides of the square in glowing colors. More complex lessons are possible and kids can progress through them as they grasp the fundamentals of shapes and geometry.
An Arduino Nano Every board provides that functionality by setting the colors of the LEDs and monitoring the matrix of copper pads around the holes. Buttons let the pupil move through the different lessons.
The lessons created for the TIEboard prototype are limited and the researchers found that some of the test participants struggled to follow along, but the concept is strong and lesson refinement would likely improve the results in the future.
One of the best features you’ll find on a fancy luxury car is seat position memory. Typically, there are at least two profiles that “save” the position of the seat. When switching drivers, the new seat occupant can simply push the button for their profile and the seat will automatically move to their saved position. Tired of adjusting it manually, Andy of Yeah Nah DIY implemented a similar memory function into the controller he built for his standing desk.
There are a lot of motorized, adjustable standing desks on the market and some of them do have memory settings. But the model Andy owns didn’t have the functionality. Instead, it just had two buttons to raise or lower the desk. His DIY controller solves that problem, making the desk far more convenient to use from day to day.
The original controller was very simple, with two buttons to activate the motor (one with reversed polarity). Basic limit switches disconnected power to prevent collisions.
The new controller, controlled by an Arduino Nano Every board on a custom PCB, has similar buttons, but also three memory positions. To find those positions, the Arduino needs to know how high the desk is at any given time. Andy added an encoder to the elevation screw to count revolutions, which are then used to calculate distance and therefore height. With that feedback the Arduino controls power to the desk’s motors via relays and also monitors the limit switches.
The Arduino and custom PCB fit into a nice, minimalist enclosure that mounts onto the front of the desk within easy reach. All of the 3D models and the Arduino sketch file are available for download if you have a similar desk and want to upgrade it in the same way.
When you want to paint the walls in your bedroom that very specific shade of Misty Irish Green, all you have to do is head to your local hardware store and have them scan the corresponding card. The paint-mixing machine will then add the pigment to a white base and, a few minutes later, you have that exact color. So, shouldn’t you be able to do the same thing with acrylic paint for hobby purposes? Now you can, thanks to the “Color By Code” machine designed by Frida Moreno and her team.
Moreno and her partners built Color By Code for a class project and it is, essentially, a hobby version of those hardware store paint-mixers intended for acrylic paint. As is the standard across many industries that deal with pigments, paint, and printing, this works using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key) color mixing. Here, the key is black and the machine takes an input color value for each component, then dispenses the paint in those ratios to achieve the desired hue.
That all happens under the control of an Arduino Nano Every board. That operates peristaltic pumps, via L298N motor drivers, that dispense each color. Afterwards, a flushing procedure clears the lines before the next mix. The pumps fit into a 3D-printed stand, with the hoses dropping below to a waiting container.
At this time, the user must set the color values through serial commands. But the team hopes to create a Bluetooth app in the future. They also plan to add a weight sensor, which would improve the machine’s accuracy.
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely are still prone to human error — you may simply forget to close the door. This “auto closer” system developed by SébastienL42 prevents such errors.
At its heart, this setup’s purpose is to close a garage door that a homeowner mistakenly left open. That’s a common problem, as you can see for yourself if you drive around a suburban residential neighborhood at night. If a homeowner forgets to close their garage door, SébastienL42’s device will sound a notification through an indoor dashboard. If enough time passes, it will go ahead and close the door itself.
That functionality requires two Arduino Nano Every boards. The first goes in the garage and connects to the garage door opener so it can close to the door. It detects a closed door using a pair of microswitches. The second Arduino is for the indoor dashboard, which provides notifications and control buttons. SébastienL42 designed that dashboard to fit into a picture frame and it looks really nice.
The two Arduino boards communicate with each other via nRF24L01 radio transceiver modules, which could potentially create a new vulnerability. But SébastienL42 put serious thought into that possibility and eliminated exposure by simply making the system incapable of opening the garage door — it can only close it. If a bad actor somehow gained access, they wouldn’t be able to do anything more nefarious than close the door for the homeowner. And the garage door opener’s standard safety features remain in place, so there shouldn’t be any danger.
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, with the combined market expected to reach $77 billion by 2025, from just $15.3 billion in 2020.
For makers, AR and VR represent exciting opportunities to build new types of projects, tapping into entirely new possibilities and learning skills that will only become more valuable as time goes on.
We’ll explore the significance of AR and VR for makers and look at some of the ways in which makers can integrate these technologies into their projects, rounding off with some real-world examples.
AR and VR — what’s the difference?
AR and VR are similar technologies, but they’re crucially different. Let’s take a quick look at what sets them apart.
Augmented reality involves overlaying digital elements onto the physical world, allowing us to observe and even interact with these virtual objects in the context of our actual environments.
Virtual veality is much more immersive — typically you will put on a headset and enter a completely virtual world, totally different from your actual physical environment.
How can makers use AR and VR in their projects?
Let’s take a look at some of the specific ways makers can leverage AR and VR to improve their projects, along with some examples from Arduino users.
Gaming and fun
AR and VR are both making a massive impact in the world of gaming, allowing for far more immersive, novel, and fun experiences. This represents a great opportunity for makers to play around with an entirely new trend, playing a small role in shaping this next chapter of video gaming.
Probably the best example of this is Pokémon GO — where players track down Pokémon in real-world locations. But this is just the beginning. Ryan Chan decided to design a way for Minecraft — the best-selling video game of all time — to start using AR.
Thanks to Chan’s work, Minecraft players can now control their in-game movements via their real-life actions. For example, taking physical steps forward will translate into in-game movement. Ryan’s project uses an Arduino MKR Zero board, a MPU-6050 IMU (inertial measurement unit), and two force-sensitive resistors.
It’s an awesome approach to bringing a fresh set of features to an already established and popular game, and could mark a new generation of smart individual gamers making adjustments to their favorite games.
Training safety, and education
Developing new skills is essential if you want to keep making progress as a maker, but it can be tricky. After all, making is a highly technical and complex activity with no real rules.
The good news is that AR and VR can be massively helpful here. AR can help make learning more interactive, intuitive, and visual by overlaying instructions and visual augmentations onto real-world objects. VR, meanwhile, can help by constructing immersive virtual environments where makers can practice technical tasks in a risk-free setting.
Let’s check out an example. Kids typically don’t take fire drills too seriously, which means they miss out on important information. This is where AR can come in. This project from a team of engineers at Sejong University created an augmented reality fire drill system based on video games to make fire safety training more realistic and effective.
By combining virtual reality, AR, and the real world, you can conduct fire drills that simulate smoke-filled rooms and other realistic elements, mimicking the actual experience of a fire much more than standard drills.
On top of that, the team also made a fire extinguisher that works with the VR system but also looks and feels like the real thing. It connects to an Arduino UNO WiFi Rev2 and can give users the realistic sensation of operating a real extinguisher to put out flames.
Data visualization and analytics
It’s important for makers to be able to gain and analyze data related to their projects. This might be a central part of the project’s function — like with a wearable health monitor or a thermostat — or it may just be a way to learn more about your creation to make improvements.
AR and VR can massively improve your ability to interact with and understand data. By representing data in an entirely new, much more immersive, and more visual way, these technologies can allow you to spot new insights, make connections, and learn more about your projects.
Mars Kapadia chose to build his own set of smart glasses for a school science fair, using a transparent OLED display paired with Retro Watch software running on an Android phone and powered by an Arduino Nano Every and an HC-05 Bluetooth® module.
Mars’ glasses also come with darkened lenses to keep the glare of the sun at bay when outdoors, which can also be lifted up when in darker environments.
Get started today
With Arduino, you can start bringing AR and VR into your own projects, expanding your horizons and opening up fascinating new possibilities to use this tech as it continues to grow.
In our Project Hub, you can browse other people’s projects according to category, including AR and VR, and share your own work, too.
Most ski lifts are pretty simple systems: they use big ol’ motors to pull cables with chairs or hangers attached. More advanced detachable designs let the chairs come off the cable temporarily while in the terminal, so skiers can hop on at a leisurely pace. But basic fixed-grip chairlifts don’t have that capability and skiers have to jump on while the chairs move at full speed. To help ski lift operators space those chairs properly, Marc Antaya designed the Ski Lift Spacer 2000.
Antaya was working as a liftie at a local ski area and noticed that it was difficult to attach chairs to the ski lift cable at consistent intervals that facilitate smooth operation. So he built the Ski Lift Spacer 2000, which measures the cable speed and distance traveled, calculates the spacing, and stops the lift at the right times to hang the chairs. It is wired in series with the lift’s existing controls, so it can’t override their safety measures. It simply provides a remote start/stop function, which it can perform when desired for attaching chairs.
The device consists of an Arduino Nano Every board, lithium batteries, relays, an LCD screen, and a control interface. That interface is important, because it lets lifties calculate the chair positions in several different ways based on the data they have available. For example, they can start with a certain number of chairs and the cable length. In that case, the device will calculate the spacing between chairs. Or they can enter the cable length and desired spacing, in which case the device will calculate the total number of chairs required.
To do its job, the device needs to know exactly how much the cable moves. To achieve that, Antaya built a wheel turned by the cable. It has magnets, which the Arduino can use for rotational encoding thanks to Hall effect sensors. This is all configurable in the device menu system, where the liftie can set the wheel circumference/diameter and number of magnets.
Antaya has already tested an earlier version of the Ski Lift Space 2000 at his local ski area. After updating it as shown in the video, it is ready for a second round of testing.
If you think coffee people are opinionated, then you’ve never met an espresso person. There is a lot of art and science that goes into making the perfect little cup of espresso and a good barista will control every factor, from temperature to pressure to pour rate. It isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t far off. So the LanderShot Lunar Espresso Module, a CNC-machined high-tech espresso machine, has a fitting theme.
This is, at its core, a premium espresso machine that merges designer aesthetics with cutting-edge electronics. The founder of LanderShot, Ted Ciamillo, lives in the state of Washington, but is of Italian descent. He wanted to honor his Italian heritage — and the origin of espresso — so he turned to Arduino.
Temperature control is crucial when making espresso; heat the water too much and you’ll burn the coffee, but you’ll lose the flavor and strength if you heat it too little. For that reason, the Lunar Espresso Module utilizes PID (proportional-interval-derivative) control for the 1000-watt heater. That ensures that water comes up to temperature quickly without overshooting the target, helping it go from 20 °C to 100 °C in just 180 seconds. A pneumatic lever lets the user increase the pressure to the desired level, with each stroke adding one bar.
An Arduino Nano Every board controls the heat, monitors temperature and pressure, and displays the results on a small screen offset to the side. “The Nano Every is excellent at performing the several jobs in the machine. We chose it for its low-profile architecture, easy access to the pinouts, robustness and accessible price point. And, of course, we are pleased that the brains of our machine were designed in Italy,” Ciamillo says.
He adds that the greatest technical challenge was fitting all of the electronic components into the compact machine. While that may be true, we think that he’s selling himself short on the design and CNC work. The milled parts are stunning to look at, and we can only imagine that they’re even more pleasing to touch while pulling a shot.Ready to take your daily coffee to new heights? A limited number of LanderShot Lunar Espresso Module machines are available for pre-order and should ship out in June.
Generators are expensive pieces of equipment. You can get a small low-quality model for a few hundred dollars, but powerful high-quality generators cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. Old cars, on the other hand, can be very cheap — especially if they aren’t roadworthy anymore. Jake von Slatt has a video series explaining how you can convert an old car with a working engine into a powerful generator.
Most of the cost of a generator is from the engine, and alternator or dynamo with inverter. In this case, the engine is in a Toyota Sienna minivan. The vehicle isn’t worth keeping on the road, but the engine still runs well. And that engine has plenty of power for a generator. The alternator came from a Harbor Freight generator that had a bad engine. To keep the AC voltage output at the steady 60Hz needed for household appliances and tools, von Slatt utilized an Arduino.
The Sienna has a cruise control system that actuates the throttle in an attempt to keep wheel speed consistent. But in this case, von Slatt needed it to keep the engine steady at 3600rpm to maintain 60Hz. So he built a simple circuit around an Arduino Nano Every board and an H-bridge. The Arduino controls the cruise control actuator’s servo motor through the H-bridge while monitoring the alternator output voltage (stepped down to 5V) frequency. If the frequency is too low, the Arduino rotates the cruise control actuator to increase engine speed until the frequency is exactly 60Hz. If the frequency is too low, it does the opposite.
The great thing about art is that it doesn’t have to serve a purpose. When utility is irrelevant, the artist is free to express their creativity in whatever way they like. A painting doesn’t have to inspire introspection or revolution — it can just be something pretty to look at. In the same vein, Eirik Brandal’s Intermittent Luminal Phase kinetic sculpture is both gorgeous and useless.
Brandal started this project as an excuse to experiment with his new CNC router. Cutting gears seemed like a good way to do so, but he didn’t have a need for any mechanism that utilized them. That led him to the concept of a kinetic sculpture and Intermittent Luminal Phase is the result. It spins endlessly, making noise and blinking lights. But it is almost hypnotizing to see in action.
An Arduino Nano Every board controls two motors that spin a central input shaft, which turns all of the other gears. The gears aren’t perfect and produce a fair amount of vibration, but Brandal converted that bug into a feature. He added a piezo element that picks up the vibrations. Those are then amplified and pumped out through a speaker on the sculpture. The gears also have LEDs that make contact through DIY slip rings, so they light up at certain points in the rotation.
Today’s consumer and professional drones are very stable. They’re easy to pilot and we’re past the era of rampant out-of-control drone crashes. But drones can still fail and benefit from a system that lets them return safely to the ground without damage. That is also true for hobby rockets, which still have very experimental controlled descent systems. To suit both types of craft, Niklas Bommersbach designed his own setup to detect critical flight behavior and then activate a two-stage parachute.
The idea is something familiar to everyone: if the aerial vehicle experiences uncontrolled descent, the parachute deploys and returns it gently to the ground for recovery. But achieving that is more difficult than you might think. Bommersbach had to engineer a robust deployment mechanism, as well as a system to trigger the deployment. He chose to load the primary parachute with a spring mechanism, plus a drogue chute as a backup. That drogue chute would also slow descent if the primary parachute fails to deploy altogether.
An Arduino Nano Every board monitors altitude using a barometric pressure sensor. It can either deploy the parachute at a set altitude when it senses rapid descent indicative of an uncontrolled fall, or it can respond to a manual command sent via radio. The chutes reside within 3D-printed containers opened servo motors. Power comes from a small lithium battery independent of the craft’s battery, so the system is self-contained. The Arduino first deploys the drogue chute, which slows descent and tries to pull out the main chute. If that fails, the Arduino can actively deploy the main chute.
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.
Ham radio allows for the broadcast and reception of non-commercial radio signals across vast distances with relatively inexpensive equipment. As the name implies, ham radio relies on antennas to function, and most designs can take up large amounts of space. An alternative antenna is the magnetic loop design which has a tall circle of copper tubing around the outside while each end is soldered onto a variable capacitor that is used to tune the signal.
TekMakerUK was inspired by Kevin Loughin’s YouTube video on the design and decided to make his own experimental version capable of 5W transmissions, which he could tune via an Android phone. The variable capacitor is from an old valve radio and has a central shaft that rotates to adjust the distance between the dielectric plates. In order to turn the coupling, a 5V stepper motor was added to the base along with a ULN2003 stepper motor driver. The driver was then connected to an Arduino Uno, although the board was replaced by a Nano Every for soldered connections.
In terms of usage, there is a digital encoder that increments the count either up or down depending on the direction it is rotated in, and this dictates how far the stepper should move. Calibrating the “zero” or home position is done by slowly moving the stepper on initialization until it hits a limit switch. More details about TekMakerUK’s magnetic loop antenna tuner can be found here on Instructables.
If you do any kind of video content creation and you still rely entirely on static shots, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to generate visual interest that draws viewers in. Dynamic shots can do a lot to increase the production value of your videos, but most people can’t afford to hire a camera operator. That’s why you should check out Giovanni Aggiustatutto’s camera robot.
This device attaches to a standard tripod to provide motorized panning and tilting. While those movements are not comprehensive, they do allow for a lot of flexibility for capturing dynamic video. The best part is that the setup includes a remote with a joystick to make controlling the movement a snap. The remote lets users program movements ahead of time, which the device can then execute when it is time to get the shot. There is even a timelapse mode that will move the camera slightly between still captures.
Because this pans and tilts, it needs two motors. Those are stepper motors controlled by an Arduino Nano Every board through two TMC2208 stepper motor driver modules. A joystick on the remote lets the user pan or tilt, while an LCD provides information. The remote connects to the main unit via an Ethernet cable. The enclosures and most of the mechanical parts are 3D-printable, but this project does require some hardware like pulleys, bearings, and aluminum tube.
While their popularity seems to be waning as LCD and OLED TVs grow in size and shrink in price, projectors can still be a good choice for home theaters. They can give you a screen bigger than any TV on the consumer market and at a lower price than large TVs. But if you get a projector for your home theater, you’re going to need a way to mount it. To keep his home theater projector out of the way when it isn’t in use, Sam Baker built this scissor lift mounting system.
A scissor lift was a good choice for this application, because it can be made very compact and still quite rigid. A winch-style cable mechanism would have been a bit more compact and simpler, but wouldn’t have kept the projector from swaying — something that would surely ruin the cinema experience. A scissor lift like this one uses the power of parallel linkages to translate short, high-torque movement into long actuation. It keeps the projector up close to the ceiling most of the time, but then allows it to drop down to the proper height when it is time to watch a movie.
The mechanical parts for the scissor lift (including the lead screw) and the enclosure were all 3D-printed. A stepper motor turns the scissor lift’s lead screw and an Arduino Nano Every board controls that motor through a small driver board. A limit switch at each end keeps the motor from turning the lead screw too far. An infrared receiver connects to the Arduino, which lets it look for a specific code coming from an infrared remote. When it sees that code, the Arduino drops the projector down into place so Baker can start a movie.
If you’ve ever stood in an elevator with mirrored walls and saw your reflection bouncing back and forth endlessly, then you’ve experienced an “infinity mirror” from the inside. If you were standing outside of the elevator and one of the walls were a one-way mirror, you’d be able to peer inside as the interior lights reflect forever. That’s the infinity mirror concept, which ThomasJ152 implemented with his laser-cut infinity dodecahedron.
This is an infinity mirror in the form of a dodecahedron, which is a regular polyhedron with 12 sides. Each face is a one-way mirror facing inwards, so light inside reflects while the user can see through the faces. The frame, which follows the edges between faces, contains inward-facing LEDs. The light from those LEDs bounces off the of them mirrors inside the dodecahedron, resulting in an interesting lighting effect. That effect is enhanced by the animations of the RGB LEDs.
ThomasJ152 constructed the dodecahedron’s body using laser-cut acrylic sheet and plywood. One-way mirror film on the acrylic reflects the light. That light comes from strips of WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs. An Arduino Nano Every board controls those LEDs. At this time, the Arduino sketch is simple and cycles through different LED animation effects. That looks pretty cool, but it would also be possible to create custom animations that take advantage of the dodecahedron shape.
LED accent lighting is very trendy right now, as it can add quite a lot of visual interest to a room without introducing clutter. But commercial products are often either very expensive or subpar in quality and capability. Fortunately for makers, this kind of project is perfect for a DIY weekend build. One great option is Nancy’s HEXA LEDs, which are gorgeous, affordable, and controllable via Bluetooth®.
Nancy’s design work here is fantastic and HEXA LEDs look awesome. As the name suggests, they’re hexagonal arrangements of LEDs. They’re modular, which gives the builder the freedom to create whatever pattern they like. It is even possible to have HEXA LEDs flow from a wall onto the ceiling or around a corner to an adjacent wall. An Android app (sorry, no iOS app available) lets the user control the LED effects, animations, and colors.
To create your own HEXA LEDs decor, you will first need to decide on the pattern you want. From there, you can 3D-print all the required parts. Those include the supports that mount to the wall, the diffusers that cover the LEDs, the electronics housing, and so on. The brain of the system is either an Arduino Nano or a Nano Every board. An HC-06 module allows for communication with the Android app. Illumination comes from strips of WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs. Proper power distribution is critical and becomes more complex as you add more LEDs, so be sure to follow Nancy’s instructions carefully.
If you want LED wall art that will wow your visitors, then you don’t need to look any further.
KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was a fictional car based on a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am in the Knight Rider television series. KITT featured an artificial intelligence, voiced by the legendary William Daniels, and some iconic styling. Savall21 built a replica RC KITT and used Arduino boards to add sound and light effects that he can trigger with the RC transmitter.
This is a custom RC car created by Savall21 using a Tamiya TT-02 kit and a resin 3D-printed body shell. The controller/transmitter is a Jumper T18, which has a customizable touchscreen interface. Savall21 programmed his own widget for that touchscreen. It mimics the fictional KITT control panel and lets the user select different sound effects and activate the iconic headlights. The T18 sends commands to an FrSky XR8 radio receiver located in the car.
The FrSky receiver communicates with two Arduino Nano Every boards via the S.Port. The first Arduino controls the sound effects, which play through a DFPlayer Mini MP3 player module. The FrSky receiver simply sends a numerical code to the Arduino, which then activates the corresponding audio clip. The second Arduino drives a strip of WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs for the headlights and taillights. The user can control the headlights directly, while the taillights automatically come on any time the throttle is below 50%.
For fans of Knight Rider and RC vehicles, this is the ultimate project. The car looks fantastic and the Arduino effects add polish to the build.
The brand new Nano Screw Terminal Adapter turns up the speed on your prototyping efforts by giving you a fast, reliable way to hook up your boards. This awesome add-on is exactly what seasoned makers have been crying out for, and is now available from the Arduino Store.
Let’s take a look at this mini mechanical marvel.
A solderless solution
With a finished project, you’re likely to make permanent connections to your Nano by soldering it. Even if you’re connecting it using a header strip, the wires, components, sensors and accessories will be soldered, crimped or attached in a permanent way to the controller side of your project. It makes perfect sense to do this, when you’re looking for a reliable connection.
The trouble with permanent connections like this is that they’re… well, permanent! Soldering and de-soldering during the design and prototyping stage can become a real chore. And it’s not good for the components or the board itself, either.
The Screw Terminal Adapter is what you need. It’s something we’ve been asked for a lot, giving people a way to make robust, fast, easy connections that can be changed just as easily.
Easy access to all I/Os
The Nano Screw Terminal Adapter features a double row of headers. The Nano drops into the two inner rows, giving you a second, outer set that lets you connecting using jumpers, wires or what have you.
Then you have a third row of connectors on either side of the adapter with a screw terminal for each pin. The perfect way to connect wires or components in a reliable, but easily changeable way. It’s never been easier to develop and design a project that with these connection options.
There’s even a 9×8 prototyping area with through plated holes for adding extra components, connections or accessories.
Of course, this doesn’t have to only be for prototyping. The screw terminal is a long-established, trusted connection option, so there’s no reason it can’t become a permanent fixture in your project. That’s totally up to you, and is quintessentially what this board is all about; giving you lots of reliable options.
Get connected
We can really see this becoming an essential part of any Ardunino lover’s or maker’s tool kit. That’s why they come in packs of three. Once you’ve used one, you’ll realize how vital they are. Being able to assemble, test, change and reassemble a project with the adapter is a time saving, labor saving gift.
You can also pick them up bundled with your favorite Nano board, in which case you get one adapter and one board. A perfect prototyping partnership.
The Nano Screw Terminal Adapter is now available in stock to purchase on the Arduino Store and will be available from our global network of reseller partners in the forthcoming days.
For apartment-dwelling drummers, electronic drums are really the only option. While cheap electronic drum sets are on the market, they aren’t much more than noise-making toys. High-end sets, on the other hand, cost thousands of dollars. To make high-end hardware and software accessible to DIYers, Jeremy Oden developed an open source, low-latency electronic drum system called eXaDrums.
Electronic drum sets consist of three major subsystems: the triggers (the drum pads that you strike), a trigger board that registers those strikes, and a processing unit. The processing unit can either pump out sound itself (through synthesis or sampling) or send a MIDI signal to an external system. The eXaDrums project contains all of this hardware, as well as the software to run it. Oden developed that software carefully to be operating system agnostic and to maintain a low latency so there is no audible delay between a beat and the sound output.
The trigger board is a shield for Arduino Nano Every boards. The Nano Every is an affordable board, which keeps costs down. It can also read eight analog inputs at very fast speeds, which means it can support an entire kit’s worth of drum pads. That includes seven single-zone pads, plus an additional hi-hat. It can handle 9,000 samples per second, per channel.
The Nano Every then sends MIDI notes via USB to a Raspberry Pi running the eXaDrums software. That software interprets the incoming MIDI signals and then outputs the sound that the user configures for the corresponding drum pad. All of that, along with a touchscreen interface, fits into a tidy 3D-printed enclosure that the user can attach to their electronic drum kit.
Designing a DIY watch with a brass ‘cyberpunk-y’ aesthetic
Arduino Team — June 20th, 2022
The cyberpunk aesthetic, like several other genres, often takes the form of heavy and metallic body modifications or devices that are meant to signify a more futuristic society. Inspired by the video game Deus Ex, Redditor Star_11 had the idea to create their own smartwatch primarily out of soldered brass sheets and 3D-printed plastic.
Within this space-age bracelet is an Arduino Nano Every, which controls the connected Crystalfontz SSD1320 flexible OLED display. On it, the watch can currently show the time and date, although other information such as the level of the 280mAh battery, alarms, and timers might be added in the future. Star_11’s plan is to also take a Nano 33 IoT and replace the Nano Every for extra IoT functionality or connect to a phone via Bluetooth®.
Although the watch’s three-pin magnetic pogo connector appears to be used for recharging the device, Star_11 intended it for use with a custom input ring that slips around the wearer’s finger and houses a single pushbutton. However, later iterations might swap this out for a small joystick so that the GUI is easier to navigate.
To see more about how Star_11 built this cyberpunk-themed smartwatch, head over to their Reddit post here.
Nearly everyone is familiar with the mercury thermometer and how it uses the expansion of the element to display ambient temperatures. But in Instructables member TurboSnail’s latest project, they attempted to turn this concept on its head by making a thermometer that uses the iconic Freddie Mercury to show the temperature without the need for the toxic liquid metal.
The plan for this project involved a quite simple circuit. An Arduino Nano Every would read the current temperature and humidity levels using an Adafruit AHT20 sensor module and map them to Freddie’s arms and a set of LEDs, respectively. To help reduce current consumption in this battery-powered display, the servo motor only receives power when a transistor is switched on by the microcontroller for brief periods of time.
After assembling the circuit and getting the code to work, TurboSnail then moved their attention to designing a cool-looking PCB that features the dial face complete with temperatures and sayings, a smaller humidity scale at the bottom, and a large silkscreen figure of Freddie along with pads on the back for soldering the larger components. Freddie’s arm was 3D-printed and attached to the micro servo motor while the Nano Every was replaced by a lower-power DIY Uno board. Last of all, the PCB was fitted inside of a custom wooden enclosure and switched on.
To see more about the Mercury Thermometer, you can read TurboSnail’s write-up here on Instructables or watch the demo video below!
Nearly everyone is familiar with the mercury thermometer and how it uses the expansion of the element to display ambient temperatures. But in Instructables member TurboSnail’s latest project, they attempted to turn this concept on its head by making a thermometer that uses the iconic Freddie Mercury to show the temperature without the need for the toxic liquid metal.
The plan for this project involved a quite simple circuit. An Arduino Nano Every would read the current temperature and humidity levels using an Adafruit AHT20 sensor module and map them to Freddie’s arms and a set of LEDs, respectively. To help reduce current consumption in this battery-powered display, the servo motor only receives power when a transistor is switched on by the microcontroller for brief periods of time.
After assembling the circuit and getting the code to work, TurboSnail then moved their attention to designing a cool-looking PCB that features the dial face complete with temperatures and sayings, a smaller humidity scale at the bottom, and a large silkscreen figure of Freddie along with pads on the back for soldering the larger components. Freddie’s arm was 3D-printed and attached to the micro servo motor while the Nano Every was replaced by a lower-power DIY Uno board. Last of all, the PCB was fitted inside of a custom wooden enclosure and switched on.
To see more about the Mercury Thermometer, you can read TurboSnail’s write-up here on Instructables or watch the demo video below!
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