The Honda Insight was the first hybrid car released in North America and Honda put serious effort into making it as efficient as was practical at the time. That meant aerodynamic streamlining, which is why the first-generation Insight had very distinct covers over the rear wheels. It even had special tires with very low rolling resistance. Those factors made the Honda Insight the perfect platform for Robot Cantina’s Kubota diesel engine swap with a homemade Arduino ECU.
Engine swaps are common in the car enthusiast community, but this is an unusual one. Instead of trying to make the Honda Insight more powerful, Robot Cantina went in the opposite direction. Their project replaces the original engine with a 700cc Kubota diesel engine. That’s the kind of power plant you would typically find in industrial machines and vehicles. For reference, that engine has less displacement than any motorcycle currently offered by Harley-Davidson.
To help this Kubota diesel engine run efficiently and cleanly in the Honda Insight, Robot Cantina needed to construct a custom engine control unit (ECU). They used an Arduino UNO Rev3 for the job. It physically adjusts the boost valve and fuel rack limiter using stepper motors through stepper driver modules. It also monitors the throttle position sensor (TPS) to determine how much the driver is pushing the accelerator. For testing and refinement, an LCD screen shows the current positions and potentiometer knobs let the driver manually set the values.
But while the driver can set boost and rack manually, the goal is to develop a formula to automatically adjust those two values in response to the TPS value. Like a production vehicle’s ECU, this will let the engine run at maximum efficiency without direct driver involvement. It will also reduce visible smog, which is an important factor for a diesel Honda Insight that the driver doesn’t want to drawing attention.
Today, Laura James, Head of Computing and ICT at King Edward’s School in Bath, UK, shares how Experience AI has transformed how she teaches her students about artificial intelligence. This article will also appear in issue 24 of Hello World magazine, which will be available for free from 1 July and focuses on the impact of technology.
I recently delivered Experience AI lessons to three Year 9 (ages 13–14) classes of about 20 students each with a ratio of approximately 2:3 girls to boys. They are groups of keen pupils who have elected to study computing as an option. The Experience AI lessons are an excellent set of resources.
Everything you need
Part of the Experience AI resources is a series of six lessons that introduce the concepts behind machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). There are full lesson plans with timings, clear PowerPoint presentations, and activity sheets. There is also an end-of-topic multiple choice assessment provided.
Accompanying these are interesting, well-produced videos that underpin the concepts, all explained by real people who work in the AI industry. Plus, there are helpful videos for the educators, which explain certain parts of the scheme of work — particularly useful for parts that might have been seen as difficult for non-specialist teachers, for example, setting up a project using the Machine Learning for Kids website.
Confidence delivering lessons
The clear and detailed resources meant I felt mostly confident in delivering lessons. The suggested timings were a good guideline, although in some lessons, this did not always go to plan. For example, when the pupils were enjoying investigating websites that produce images generated by a text prompt, they were keen to spend more time on this than was allocated in the lesson plan. In this case, I modified the timings on the fly and set the final task of this lesson as a homework task.
Learning about AI sparked the students’ curiosity, and it triggered a few questions that I could not answer immediately. However, I admitted this was a new area for me, and with some investigation, found answers to many of their extra questions. This shows that the topic of AI is such an inspiring and important one for the next generation, and how important it is to add this to the curriculum now before students make their own, potentially biased, opinions about it.
“I’ve enjoyed actually learning about what AI is and how it works because before I thought it was just a scary computer that thinks like a human.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
Impact on learners
The pupils’ feedback from the series of lessons was unerringly positive. I felt the lessons on bias in data were particularly important. The lesson where they trained their own algorithm recognising tomatoes and apples was a key one as it gave students an immediate sense of how a flawed training data set created bias and can impact the answers from a supposedly intelligent AI tool. I hope this has changed their outlook on AI-generated results and reinforced their critical thinking skills.
Many students are now seeing the influence of AI appearing in more and more tools around them and have mentioned that a career in AI is now something they are interested in.
“I have enjoyed learning about how AI is actually programmed rather than just hearing about how impactful and great it could be.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
Clearly this topic is incredibly important, and the Experience AI series of lessons is an excellent introduction to this for key stage 3 students (ages 11–14). My tips for other educators would be:
I delivered these to bright Year 9s and added a few more coding activities from the Machine Learning for Kids website. As these lessons stand, they could be delivered to Year 8s (ages 12–13), but perhaps Year 7s (ages 11–12) might struggle with some of the more esoteric concepts.
Before each lesson, ensure you read the content and familiarise yourself with the lesson resources and tools used. The Machine Learning for Kids website can take a little getting used to, but it is a powerful tool that brings to life how machine learning works, and many pupils said this was their favourite part of the lessons.
Before the lesson, ensure that the websites that you need to access are unblocked by your school’s firewall!
I tried to add a hands-on activity each lesson, e.g. for Lesson 1, I showed the students Google’s Quick, Draw! game, which they enjoyed and has a good section on the training data used to train the AI tool to recognise the drawings.
We also spent an extra lesson using the brilliant Machine Learning for Kids website and followed the ‘Shoot the bug’ worksheet, which allowed pupils to train an algorithm to learn how to play a simple video game.
I also needed to have a weekly homework task, so I would either use part of the activity from the lesson or quickly devise something (e.g. research another use for AI we haven’t discussed/what ethical issues might occur with a certain use of AI). Next year, our department will formalise these to help other teachers who might deliver these lessons to set these tasks more easily.
Equally, I needed to have a summative assessment at the end of the topic. I used some of the multiple choice questions that were provided but added some longer-answer questions and made an online assessment to allow me to mark students’ answers more efficiently.
“I have always been fascinated by AI applications and finally finding out how they work and make the decisions they do has been a really cool experience.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
From comments I have had from the students, they really engaged with the lessons and appreciated the opportunity to discuss and explore the topic, which is often associated with ‘deception’ within school. It allowed them to understand the benefits and the risks of AI and, most importantly, to begin to understand how it works ‘under the hood’, rather than see AI as a magical, anthropomorphised entity that is guessing their next move.
“The best part about learning about AI was knowing the dangers and benefits associated and how we can safely use it in our day-to-day life.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
As for my perspective, I really enjoyed teaching this topic, and it has earned its place in the Year 9 scheme of work for next year.
If you’re interested in teaching the Experience AI Lessons to your students, download the resources for free today at experience-ai.org.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a fast-paced, retro-inspired FPS that comes with buckets of pixelated gore. Taking on the role of a Space Marine, players previously had the chance to blast their way through a variety of Warhammer 40,000 inspired environments, and now we’re thrilled to announce the next expansion to our boomer-shooter saga!
Boltgun: Forges of Corruption offers more enemies, more levels, and even more mayhem, so with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at everything that goes into crafting the perfect outlet for your righteous rage… the enemies!
Choosing the Best
The Warhammer 40,000 universe is full of incredible character art, and the team here at Auroch were spoilt for choice when it came to picking a cast of enemies. Using initial design requirements as a guide, the first step was to collect as much reference as we could. This helped to confirm things like size, colours, details, and even which weapons or items to include. Shots of real life miniatures made this task even easier, and the Games Workshop website proved to be extremely useful.
Shapes are Important
Once a good library of reference has been established, the process of creating a retro enemy sprite can begin. It starts with a conventional method you’d find in most other games, by modelling a 3d mesh. However, we pay special attention to the overall shapes of our characters, pushing things like heroic proportions and creating silhouettes that players can easily identify. In Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, enemies are shown from the front a majority of the time, so we always ensure the front view captures them in their best light.
Exaggerated Angles
In a similar way to how we model characters, things on the animation side tend to focus on exaggerated poses and frame timing that really sells the intent of an animation. In order to capture that ‘retro’ magic, we use minimal frames, so it’s important to pack all the visual information we want into a tiny, animated space. The impact point of a crushing punch can be held slightly longer, or the juddering of weapon’s rapid fire can be sped up into a chaotic blur. This level of single frame control is almost like working with stop motion.
Special FX
Once an enemy has been modeled, animated and rendered, we start working on the FX. This step adds dynamism and interactivity, and the way we use FX for enemy attacks are particularly important. Not only do they need to look amazing, but there’s a set of game mechanics that should be followed. Certain weapons fire at different speeds, projectiles have different trails, and explosions have different sizes. All enemy attacks in Boltgun come in three distinct types, magical Tzeentch, organic Nurgle or combustible human, and it’s important for players to be able to visually distinguish between them, using colours, shapes, and various other artistic techniques.
Blood and Guts
One of the cornerstones of Boltgun is its stylistic gore, and the most satisfying way of bringing our enemies to life is seeing the crimson mess that results when they expire. We’ve built a gore system in a way that enables players to effectively ‘paint’ sections of our levels with the red of previous battles, something that’s both awesome, and can be useful as a pathfinding tool. Lastly, each enemy comes complete with a set of custom body parts, or ‘gibs’ as we like to call them. These have a habit of bursting outwards when an enemy has been destroyed, offering just one more level of detail to the interactive package that is your typical Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun enemy.
A Place to Call Home
Finally, what good would combining all the amazing elements above be without giving our enemies a proper place to live? We use visual theming to really set the scene. A sickly green haze suggests an area infested by Nurgle, where as the chaotic purple of the warp means the presence of Tzeentch is near. We also use decals to add extra detail to floors and walls, giving players the impression that they’re moving from one territory to the next. And lastly, a well thought-out prop library can really help with the storytelling aspect of a map.
As the game progresses, players may notice evidence of previous conflicts such as fortifications, military supplies, corpses, sacrificial shrines, and much more. Adding things like this helps to make the experience of encountering enemies in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun feel more alive and real.
So now you’ve been given an insight into some of the tips and tricks the team here at Auroch uses to create AI for players to blast away at or run screaming from. We’ve worked hard to customize the standard character art pipeline you’d see in most modern games, and produced a result we’re proud to say is one of the cornerstones of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun’s unique retro aesthetic.
Unleash your mighty wrath in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun DLC: Forges of Corruption, out now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC for $5,99! For newcomers, a special edition containing the base game and the DLC is also available for $24,99. EnjoyWarhammer 40,000: Boltgun on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Xbox Game Pass!
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
Focus Entertainment
☆☆☆☆☆284
★★★★★
$21.99$17.59
Xbox Game Pass
Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90’s retro shooters. Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos. In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy! • Dive into a visceral combat experience, complete with viciously satisfying gunplay, high mobility and buckets of blood to reward your skills
• Dominate the battlefield with the awesome firepower and heavy metal of a Space Marine’s devastating arsenal
• Experience the ultimate homage to retro shooters, blending stylish visuals with fluid, modern FPS gameplay
Welcome back to the regular “help me pick out what to play next” list (or maybe that’s just me) with Game Pass! We have more games waiting for you to boot up and play on PC, console, and cloud. Let’s jump in!
In Case You Missed It
But first, quick shout out to those who tuned in this last week for the Xbox Games Showcase, where we showed off 18 games that will be coming Day One to Game Pass! Check the recap of the whole show here, and we’ll keep you updated on the Wire for when you can start to play some of these games soon.
Available Today
Still Wakes the Deep (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) Available on day one with Game Pass! From the award-winning developers at The Chinese Room comes a terrifying tale of isolation. You are trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea, running from an unknowable horror that has come aboard. With no escape and no way to fight back, all you can do is survive. Learn more about Still Wakes the Deep in Xbox Wire’s hands-on preview.
Coming Soon
My Time at Sandrock (Cloud, Console, and PC) – June 19 Just like My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock takes place in a wholesome post-apocalyptic world 300 years after the Day of Calamity destroyed most modern technologies. Gather resources to build machines, befriend locals, and defend Sandrock from monsters — all while saving the town from economic ruin!
Keplerth (PC) – June 20 Try to survive on a hostile alien planet in this 2D sandbox RPG, where you can choose to live alone or fight side-by-side with your friends in the online multiplayer mode. Survive, build, farm, fight, and explore your way to victory in this open-world adventure!
EA Sports FC 24 (Cloud, Console, and PC) EA Play – June 25 Welcome to the Club – EA Sports FC 24 is coming to PC Game Pass and Ultimate via EA Play on June 25, just in time for UEFA EURO 2024. Lead your nation against the best and challenge for international glory as champions from across The World’s Game go head-to-head to become Champions of Europe.
SteamWorld Dig (Cloud and Console) – June 26 A platform mining adventure with strong Metroidvanian influences. Take the role of Rusty, a lone mining steambot, as he arrives at an old mining town in great need. Dig your way through the old earth, gaining riches while uncovering the ancient threat that lurks below…
SteamWorld Dig 2 (Console and PC) – June 26 SteamWorld Dig 2 is making a return to the Game Pass library, taking you on a platform mining adventure forged in Metroidvania flames. When an old trading town is struck by mysterious earthquakes, it’s up to a lone steambot and her unlikely companion to uncover what trembling terrors lie beneath.
Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – June 27 Join Robin Hood and his unwavering band of outlaws in 12th-century England on their mission for a free Nottingham, as you travel across various regions and build up a secret hideout village and help the denizens of the surrounding lands. Complete quests, construct various builds, craft a broad range of items, and freely explore locations inspired by both myth and history in this open-world RPG with base-building features.
DLC / Game Updates
Minecraft: Tricky Trials Update – Available now Venture into the Tricky Trials Update! Team up or go solo and discover new decorative blocks, hostile mobs, items, weapons, paintings, and the trial chambers – a sprawling structure stuffed with traps and treasures for every player!
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks
Smite: Summer Sizzle Pack – Available now Ignite your fights with the Summer Sizzle Pack in the free-to-play action MOBA game, Smite! Unlock the gods Danzaburou, The Morrigan, and Fenrir as well as their voice packs and emotes. Plus, unlock a 3-Day Account Booster!
Monster Hunter Now: New Season Bundle – Available now Hunt monsters in the real world on your mobile device! Celebrate Monster Hunter Now’s Season 2 with a bundle that includes new monster materials and other awesome bonuses! Claim one Ultra Hunting Ticket, a Paintball, a Potion, a Wander Orb, and a material for crafting Basarios (new monster with the next update!) weapons and armor. This Perk content requires Monster Hunter Now mobile game to use (available free-to-play).
Leaving Soon
The following games are leaving the Game Pass library soon, be sure to check the dates below and don’t forget to use your 20% membership discount on games you would like to keep!
Leaving June 30
FIFA 22 (Console and PC)
F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Stranded Deep (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Sword and Fairy Together Forever (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Leaving July 5
Cricket 22 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Stay tuned to @XboxGamePassPC and @XboxGamePass, and @Xbox for updates and when you can start scratching games off your backlog. Cheers!
Now that flashback is over, it’s in with the new as Modern Horizons brings some of the greatest machines of our current decade. Technology, innovation, and a lot of power come to play as this series’ Festival Playlist Reward cars: the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, 2023 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N, 2021 Toyota GR Yaris, 2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, and the 2023 KIA EV6 GT. 18 new EventLab props to create your dream highway are joining your collection complete with everything you need to create a modern motorway. Five icons from your favorite movies and TV shows for a spin across the Horizon Festival with the Universal Icons Car Pack available for purchase now. This series’ collectible item takes technology even further than we thought. Meet the Robot Collectible on the second week of the Festival Playlist. The 21st century shines on Horizon Festival in our latest update: Modern Horizons.
Release Notes and Game Fixes.
General
General performance and stability fixes
Cars
Fixed an issue with the 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 where it wasn’t possible to tune the gear ratio while in stock configuration
You can find a list of issues we are currently investigating here. The Troubleshooting Hub is always open for you to leave any reports you have.
Your Way IS the Highway with New EventLab Props
There are some who will do anything to escape the traffic and mundane sensation of driving on a motorway.
Then there are others who replicate their daily commute or create new highways on their favorite games.
For this second group of people, we have added the latest 17 EventLab props that include everything you need to build a modern road.
This list of props includes:
Roads & Racing
Gameplay
Robot Collectible
Every highway piece features snapping functionality for easier attachment!
Festival Playlist.
Modern wonders with an electric touch, muscle power, and maximum comfort make way as the Reward Cars available for each week of Modern Horizons and as a Series reward.
Can you unlock these future legendary vehicles?
2023 KIA EV6 GT
Earn 80 PTS during the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist to unlock as a Series Reward.
The 2023 KIA EV6 GT has the heart-and-home feel of an SUV that crosses the “GT” line on the sand to become a racing utility vehicle that’s as comfy as it is powerful.
Like a futuristic spaceship, EV6 GT features a green button on the steering wheel that unlocks its true power, transforming this changeling from urban driver into racing speedster able to go from 0 – 100 kmh in just 3.2 seconds using its surprising 576 bhp.
To keep you on your toes from the get-go, this KIA’s inside is adorned with racing interiors like the seats and trim, so even the tamest drives around the Festival will have the unique race-to-the-finish feel.
Did we mention it’s 4 wheel-drive and electric? Because it is and we love it.
2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Earn 20 PTS during Week 1 “Summer” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from June 20 until June 27
Galloping to the Horizon Festival with crashing footfalls; it’s the latest, biggest, and meanest horse we have seen: the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
As soon as you pop this car’s hood you will be greeted with a very delightful badge, one that says “5.0”. The emblem is not there only for decoration, it’s to remind you of the massive 5.0-liter V8 naturally aspirated Coyote engine that drives this car forward and powers it with 500 horsepower.
6-speed manual transmission and rear-wheel drive to get the complete muscle car experience and an updated braking system to excel its performance on the track as well
Enjoy the reckless charge of the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse!
2023 Hyundai iONIQ 5 N
Earn 20 PTS during Week 2 “Autumn” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from June 27 until July 4
The future has arrived. Looking like your regular Sunday-drive SUV, but hiding a potent powertrain and futuristic technology, the 2023 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is an auspice for cars to come.
The all-electric powertrain will put its 320 bhp to work and to make the 5 N vanish right in front of your eyes as it reaches 100 kmh from a standstill in 4.5 seconds.
This new iONIQ is a great outdoors partner with an upgraded towing capacity, a great ride, and a minimalist interior design you’ll want to live in.
2021 Toyota GR Yaris
Earn 20 PTS during Week 3 “Winter” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from July 4 until July 11
Running on sheer force of vigor and with a willingness to take you from point A to point B in the least number of seconds possible, the 2021 Toyota GR Yaris is taking its shot as your new favorite hot hatch.
The GR is quite hot, actually: a daredevilish four-wheel drive system to make quick work of corners, a very eager 2.1-liter turbocharged engine that puts out 257 bhp, and a six-speed manual transmission to experience corner taking like a true champion built to smash the giants of the track.
Drive around the Horizon Festival in the new benchmark for modern hatchbacks and create your own special build of the versatile vehicle.
2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S
Earn 20 PTS during Week 4 “Spring” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from July 11 until July 15
Picture it: the echo of eons of Porsche’s magnificent history added to modern electric technology and comfort of an all-wheel-drive SUV. You don’t have to imagine it anymore: it’s the 2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S,: Porsche’s all-electric sports utility vehicle.
As the name implies, this Taycan shares a lot of aspects and components with its sedan counterpart. However, the electric SUV comes with two engines that output 750 horses as soon as you touch that pedal. You will cruise so comfortably inside; you’d probably forget that this vehicle can reach 100 kmh in just 2.4 seconds.
Porsche reaps the past by adding elements of its racing legacy into this model which perfectly contrasts with the new generation additions such as touch screens and, of course, the completely modern electric power train bringing the racing history of the brand into the modern era.
Universal Icons Car Pack
From the big screen to your gaming monitor, these icons from your favorite movies and TV shows take the Horizon Festival for a retro revival!
Experience new adventures for K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, the Jurassic Park 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara, and all 3 versions of the Time Machine from the Back to the Future trilogy!
Time Machine from Back to the Future
The original Time Machine from Back to the Future has arrived at the Horizon Festival!
Lights and sounds similar to what you saw on the film will burst out of the car just when you hit 88 mph.
Time Machine from Back to the Future Part II
Complete with the new Mr. Fusion attachment, the second iteration of the Time Machine will also be available on the Universal Icons Car Pack.
Just like the first Time Machine, this one will display unique effects once the classic 88 mph speed is met.
Time Machine from Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future’s Time Machine from the saga’s third instalment will be at your disposal in this Car Pack.
The driving experience of this Time Machine really sets it apart from the previous two versions, and of course, this one will also produce the iconic VFX of its movie counterpart when it reaches, you guessed it, 88 mph.
1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara from Jurassic Park
From Isla Nublar, the Horizon Festival welcomes Jurassic Park’s 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara.
Your vehicle of choice to race on the different off-roading courses in Mexico or to take on a cozy tour watching unusually large ancient reptiles.
K.I.T.T from Knight Rider
Villains hidden across the Horizon Festival, beware! A muscle car powered by justice and artificial intelligence has arrived.
K.I.T.T also comes with a body kit (no pun intended) that allows it to activate Super Pursuit Mode!
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Car…
Lurking in the deepest corners of the Festival Playlist’s second week is an outfit so amazing nobody has been able to keep it in captivity. From the bottom of the ocean, get your character ready to wear the Shark Outfit–includes swim trunks and fins!
Complete Week 2 EventLab “Laderas Core” by PinHead Larry06 to unlock this exclusive outfit.
A Modern Construct to Add to Your Collection
BEEP BOOP BOP! Transmission confirmed.
Location of the new collectible: unknown. Coolness level: the highest.
Modern Horizon’s second week Collectible event will give you the chance to find and smash.
You will also be able to add this automaton to your EventLab constructions in case you were looking for a futuristic theme or build a robotic scenario.
What’s Next
Time to slow things down and take a well-deserved breather!
Forza Horizon 5’s next update will feature a new Evolving World Coffee Shop, as well as new collectibles and clothing items, and, of course, new cars to unlock and collect!
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires regulated gas and large refrigeration space. A keg is also more difficult to transport and overkill if you just want to bring a few beers to a friend’s backyard BBQ. For those reasons, many homebrewers bottle their beer. Those homebrewers will want to check out this very impressive wet labeling machine built by Franz Hirschböck (AKA Fraens).
This machine is mesmerizing to watch in action and would be genuinely useful to most homebrewers — or anyone else with a reason to label bottles. It works with standard printer paper, so users can print their own labels on an inkjet or laser printer at home. When a user places a bottle, the machine will automatically grab a new label, apply the glue, and then attach the label. It is even possible to adjust the amount of glue and the glue pattern by swapping out rollers.
Hirschböck designed this bottle labeler as a mostly electromechanical machine, meaning that it doesn’t need much electronic sophistication to work. That’s all thanks to electric motors and an ingenious set of 3D-printed mechanical parts. But there are two exceptions: the button that starts the labeling process and an infrared sensor that detects the end of the label. An Arduino board monitors the button and sensor.
If you want to build this machine for your own bottling needs, Hirschböck has the files and plans available on Etsy and Cults3D. He even provides glue recipes to get started.
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop renovation project where he is rearranging tools, tidying up various spaces, and even creating a dedicated “clean” room for his collection of 3D printers/electronics work. With its jet-black walls, Clagett felt it needed some RGB lighting to keep it interesting, and after taking inspiration from the Tron movie franchise, he had a few ideas.
Before anything could be built, he first needed to select the ideal type of LED strip since the typical WS2812B strip lacks a diffuser and therefore emits harsh light. Rather, an RGBIC strip allows for individual segments of LEDs to be controlled from an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and illuminate through a built-in diffuser. Five strips were attached to the ceiling and programmed to display a quickly-moving pixel that starts its animation sequence at a random interval. Clagett was also able to line the room’s large window pane with another one of these RGBIC strips, and thanks to the UNO’s Wi-Fi connectivity, indicate if it has an active internet connection.
The final piece of specialty lighting was made by 3D printing a custom drum featuring various cutouts and placing it around a UV bulb. From here, a secondary Arduino UNO R4 Minima slowly rotates it using a 5V stepper motor that gives nearby fluorescent objects a flickering effect.
To see how Clagett revamped his room’s lighting in more detail, watch his video below!
Engraving items with a laser-based system at home is amazingly convenient for one-off parts, but what happens when the production volume needs to increase? For element14 Presents host Clem Mayer, this usually meant preparing many uniform pieces of engraving stock, opening the laser’s enclosure, placing down the material, and then finally running the machine. In doing so, the process could introduce errors and was simply inefficient, leading Mayer to think of a way to automate things instead.
The limiting factor was mostly about how long it took to change the material, so Mayer got to work designing a carousel-like device that could house up to four sheets of stock and rotate each one into place after the previous one had finished. A stepper motor driven by a Trinamic TMC2100 was responsible for moving the drum while an Arduino UNO Rev3 received inputs from external switches and then sent pulses to the motor driver accordingly.
Once placed into the laser cutter’s enclosure, Mayer quickly discovered that his vertical drum design was too tall and interfered with the toolhead. This necessitated swapping the orientation to a flat disc where material could be positioned around a spinning turn table. The original spring-loaded clamps were also exchanged for a magnetic system that is strong yet easily removable.
To see more about this project, you can watch Mayer’s build log video below!
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control several motors and monitor a bunch of sensors. But what if the robot is enormous and the motors are far apart? James Bruton found himself in that situation when he constructed this huge “tentacle” robot and his solution was to put an Arduino in each joint.
This is an oblique swivel joint robot arm, which means that each joint sits at an angle relative to the axes of the preceding and succeeding segments. This creates movement that is unlike any other kind of robot arm.
Bruton took this concept and scaled it up to ludicrous proportions. Each joint is a big ring made of plywood and 3D-printed parts, driven by a DC motor geared down 1600:1 and controlled through an ODrive module.
Because the robot is so large, it would have been difficult to run wires from a single Arduino to all of the motor drivers — especially because those have to go through slip rings to allow for continuous joint rotation. Instead, Bruton put an Arduino Mega 2560 board in each joint to control that joint’s motor driver. Those operate under the control of a primary Mega 2560 located in the base, with communication handled through a CAN bus system.
There is also another Mega 2560 in the remote control that Bruton built for the robot. That reads control input from switches and rotary encoders, then sends commands to the robot through a direct Wi-Fi connection (established via two ESP32 development boards).
Bruton designed this robot to exhibit at EMF Camp in the UK, where it was a popular attraction.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle made a grand appearance at Xbox Games Showcase 2024 last weekend, showing off new gameplay, revealing new elements of the story, and treating us to an extended scene set in the Himalayas, as Indiana and new companion Gina attempt to recover a relic while avoid the clutches of colonel Viktor Gantz.
On a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, host Malik Prince got to talk more about the trailer and the wider game, joined by MachineGames’ Jerk Gustafsson, Game Director, and John Jennings, Production Director. If you want to watch the full interview, check it out below – or read on for the new details.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s development is in full swing, and what we’ve seen of the game promises a truly authentic Indiana Jones adventure – both in storyline and gameplay.
“The story kicks off when an ancient relic is stolen from the college where Indiana Jones works,” explained Gustafsson. “He’s determined to track down the thief, and he stumbles into this ancient conspiracy involving the theory of the Great Circle, as we call it. The Great Circle is a strange alignment of ancient sites around the globe, and a set of mysterious artifacts connect to it. But Indy isn’t the only one in search of answers. The enemy are scouring the world for these artifacts, believing that they hold some kind of power – and to stop them there’s only one thing he can do, and that is to find the artifacts first.”
This kicks us off on a classic globe-trotting adventure, beginning in the corridors of Indy’s beloved Marshall College, before taking in the Himalayas, the ancient jungle sites of Sukhothai in Thailand, the Vatican (an all-new location for an Indiana Jones project), the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and more. It’s the kind of set-up you’d hope for from an Indiana Jones story, but it stemmed from a perhaps unexpected source:
“It actually started with an idea from [Bethesda Game Studios director and executive producer] Todd Howard,” said Gustafsson. “He had been thinking for years about creating a story around the concept of the Great Circle, so when we got this opportunity to work on an Indiana Jones game it felt like the perfect match.”
Of course, that idea was just the starting point, and the team at MachineGames has worked incredibly closely with Lucasfilm Games to ensure that their original adventure would feel faithful to movies it sits alongside.
“We spent countless hours just rewatching the films – especially the two movies that are closest to the game, which are Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade,” said Gustafsson. “In addition, we have one of the best resources through our partnership with Lucasfilm Games, and working together with them on this project has been invaluable, just this cave of knowledge about the character, which has been fantastic.”
“It’s been great having access to writers, art directors from Lucasfilm, people who worked with the Indiana Jones property for decades,” continued Jennings. “Having their input – I mean, some of these people know everything that has ever been written about Indy – and having them to bounce ideas off, and get some of their own input has been hugely, hugely invaluable.”
That partnership came with perks for fans on the team, too: “We managed to get access into some of the Lucasfilm archives as well,” said Jennings, “which for Indy fans has been an absolute dream come true, to get access to some of these things that perhaps not so many people have seen.”
The research has been deep. Writers and artists on the team studied not just the films, but comics and books, not to mention had recreations of Indy’s costume created – including his iconic fedora, reproduced by the same hatmaker that created the original for Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the musical side, longtime Lucasfilm Games collaborator Gordy Haab (who recently won a Grammy for his work on the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor soundtrack) has been brought in to create a score John Williams would be proud of.
That authenticity extends to the characters involved, too. While most of the cast will be brand new faces for the franchise, the latest trailer showed us more of Indy’s friend, Marcus Brody: “Because we start the story in Marshall College it made sense to have Marcus there, to sort of ground it in the familiarity of Indy’s home base,” said Gustafsson – before going onto tease that we’ll see cameos from other classic characters along the way, too.
Of course, the most important element for authenticity was in getting Indy himself right, and the team found a perfect partner in renowned actor Troy Baker:
“It was maybe an unexpected choice at first, but from the moment we watched his audition tape we were just totally sold,” said Jennings. “He’s just a great actor. He’s put so much effort into the role as well – you can tell he’s just this huge, huge fan of Indiana Jones […] We’ve just been in a [voiceover] session recently with him, and he was improvising lines. You know, ‘Wouldn’t Indy say it a bit more like this?’ Or commenting on lines that we’ve written that we thought were subtle Easter Eggs just for the die-hard Indy fans, and he’ll pick up on it straight away.”
Baker’s performance doesn’t just extend to a great impression of Harrison Ford, either. “He’s not just a voiceover actor, he’s the full thing,” Jennings continued. “We do full performance capture: the body, the face, and the voice all recorded at the same time. And he’s got the physical acting nailed down as well. He does a really, really good job of capturing the character of Indy – specifically his character in the first few movies, the earlier ones, which is where our game is set of course. He just does it perfectly.”
This has been a new kind of development process for MachineGames, and that extends to the game itself. “It’s a little bit different, this game, for us, in many ways,” said Gustafsson. “We are very used to having heavy weapons, gun-blazing shooters – and this is a little bit different. We are making a proper adventure game here.”
While the team’s acclaimed Wolfenstein games were brutal, frenetic shooters, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle offers an experience more befitting of the world’s most famous archaeologist.
“He solves problems with his mind first and really relies on smarts, and not this excessive combat that we have seen or done before with the Wolfenstein games,” explained Gustafsson. “When you are playing the game, choosing the more authentic stealthy Indy route – or just some classic old fist-fighting – will be a benefit to the player more times than not, and also make for a very fun and challenging experience.”
In playing as Indy, we’re not rampaging through the world, but stopping to solve puzzles, and trying to avoid conflict when we can. The team wanted to avoid turning the character we know into a superhero.
“He is flawed, he makes mistakes, he stumbles, there is weight to his movement, and we have this gritty, pulpy edge to the action,” continued Gustafsson. “But at the same time he’s also rather athletic, he’s an excellent fighter, and he also has an enormous amount of luck as well – and at the same time he’s the best archaeologist in the world. So focusing on all of these things, in a way it makes the game feel in line with these classic matinee action-adventures that the movies were celebrating, something I think Indy himself also personifies in a way.”
To do that, the game will primarily be set in first-person – a perspective that MachineGames is very familiar with, a key way to help players feel like they’re truly walking in his shoes, and an exciting point of difference when looking at the wider action-adventure genre as a whole. In key moments, however, we will see the character in third-person, letting us live those filmic moments from the outside.
And speaking of filmic moments, the trailer ended with a callback to perhaps one of the most famous sequences in movie history – Indy’s rolling boulder escape. We had to ask how that made it into the game, and whether we’ll be able to play it. But Gustafsson wanted to keep some mystery before Indiana Jones and the Great Circle arrives:
“That’s unfortunately one of those things where I just have to say: ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’”
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark™ and The Last Crusade™. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones™. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard. YOU ARE INDIANA JONES Live the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time. A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITS Travel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces. WHIP-CRACKING ACTION Indiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery . THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
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.
As someone interested in giving old tech a new lease of life, the idea came naturally. “I was inspired by the many high quality network audio streaming devices sold by the major stereo component brands such as Sony, Cambridge Audio, NAD and so on but I couldn’t justify the cost,” he explains.
“I figured they just play back digital audio so I started looking at DIY options. I knew I wanted a standard-sized stereo component and decided an old stereo tuner would be reasonably-priced because they are not in very high demand, even among audiophile collectors.”
Treble buy
Alan purchased three Sony ST-JX411s so that he could mix-and-match the best looking parts (“most were dented and dirty,” he says). He liked its look and noted it had space for a decent-sized LCD. “The Sony tuner has a retro vibe but doesn’t look too dated, and it fits in with much of my second hand stereo equipment,” he says. “I also thought that a repurposed tuning knob would be a nice touch for a streaming player – few attractive modern tuners have one.”
The front panels were important. “I wanted to play a playlist or start and stop the device without using a web interface on my computer or phone,” he explains. “Another requirement was for an alphanumeric display for the currently playing song, title and file format. Since my amplifier already had a digital-to-analogue converter [DAC], I wanted quality digital audio – S/PDIF – too.”
For the audio quality, Alan chose a HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro which uses the I2S sound port for S/PDIF audio output (without a DAC, he’d have opted for a DAC HAT such as the Raspberry Pi DAC Pro). To connect everything together, he used a small proto PCB board with some male headers. “That way I could use female-to-female jumpers to connect to the Pi GPIO pins,” he says.
Setting the tone
Alan retained the logic board which houses the front-panel buttons. “The main challenges related to reverse-engineering these buttons and I’m not sure I would have accomplished the project without a schematic diagram I found online,” Alan continues. As it was, Alan was able to read row and column values, reducing the number of wires from 17 to 11. He also replaced the logic board’s vacuum fluorescent with a new alphanumeric LCD, and Raspberry Pi’s ports were extended to the tuner’s back panel.
To control the functions, Alan used the open-source project moOde. “I had already been using moOde on Raspberry Pi 4 and I was happy with its features and audio quality,” he says. “I also liked the simplicity of the moOde API, so I didn’t have to spend much time figuring that out.”
So how does it fare? Great, as it happens. “It works very well, with no issues,” Alan says. “And since I’m using the original board passively – that is with no power applied – there’s not as much to wear out or go wrong. I now use the music streaming player almost every day and the audio quality is indistinguishable from the original source material, at least to my ears.”
For children who experience certain developmental delays, specific types of physical therapies are often employed to assist them in improving their balance and motor skills/coordination. Ivan Hernandez, Juan Diego Zambrano, and Abdelrahman Farag were looking for a way to quantify the progress patients make while simultaneously presenting a gamified approach, so they developed a standalone node for equilibrium evaluation that could do both.
On the hardware side of things, an Arduino Nano BLE 33 Sense Rev2 is responsible for handling all of the incoming motion data from its onboard BMI270 six-axis IMU and BMM150 three-axis magnetometer. New readings are constantly taken, filtered, and fused together before being sent to an external device over Bluetooth Low Energy. The board was also connected to a buzzer and buttons for user inputs, as well as an RGB LED to get a real-time status.
The patient begins the session by first putting on the wearable and connecting to the accompanying therapist application. Next, a game starts in which the user must move their torso to guide an image of a shark over the image of a stationary fish within a time period — ultimately trying to get the highest score possible. Throughout all of this, a vision system synchronizes its readings with the IMU sensor readings for an ultra-detailed look at how the patient responds to the game over time.
World of Warcraft’s The War Within expansion got a release date during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 – coming to PC via Battle.net on August 26, this expansion will be the first part of a trilogy of expansions known as The Worldsoul Saga, diving deep into the mythology of World of Warcraft.
To celebrate, Official Xbox Podcast host Malik Prince teamed up with World of Warcraft community manager and WoWCast host Bethany Stout to interview World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale and Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, finding out more about this expansion, and why now is a perfect moment to jump into the game for the very first time. You can watch the entire interview below, or read on for all the key details.
Of course, it’s something new to see World of Warcraft on an Xbox podcast. “We’re just super excited to be part of Xbox now, coming from Blizzard,” said Longdale. “And we’re representing a PC game, World of Warcraft, so we’re super excited to be here, and we want to share with all the Xbox fans that we’re here to stay. We’ve been around for 20 [years] – we’re not your dad’s game, we’re not your mom’s game – and we’re going to be around for 20 more at least. We want to invite everybody into this incredible experience.”
Part of that invitation comes with the game’s free trial, allowing you to explore the world and level up all the way to level 20. But there’s a new option to do so with the Welcome to Azeroth bundle. Including everything players need to begin their adventure in Azeroth, this offers the current expansion, Dragonflight, a level 60 character boost, and 60 days of game time for $24.99 USD.
That bundle has been carefully-chosen to help you get ready for the upcoming expansion: “We’ve really done a lot over the last 20 years to ensure that 20 years of content is not 20 years of obstacles that you have to overcome to get to the latest, coolest thing,” said Hazzikostas. “When War Within comes out, Dragonflight, the current expansion, will be what you play through to level up and jump right into War Within. That will give you the power, give you an understanding of the mechanics, you’ll have a dragon companion that you’ll earn very early on […] and it’s also going to prepare you story-wise for what The War Within is going to bring.”
It all makes The War Within a great marker for when to start playing WoW – as the beginning of a brand-new, three-expansion saga, this is a new story that even seasoned veterans will be discovering for the first time. And that story is already being told ahead of the expansion’s August 26 launch:
“In the lead-up to War Within, there’s already stuff going on in World of Warcraft at this very minute,” said Hazzikostas. “Xal’atath – the villain that you saw at the end of that [Xbox Games Showcase] cinematic – has emerged into the world, and her tendrils are branching throughout Azeroth, weaving dark plans that are going to threaten us. It’s exciting to have that build-up to that launch moment.”
When it does kick off, The War Within will introduce brand new zones to explore: leading players under the surface of Azeroth into Dwarven caverns, taking them to the beautiful Hallowfall Canyon (with airship travel to get around), and into Azj-Kahet, the home of one of World of Warcraft’s most powerful civilizations, the Nerubian Empire. Incidentally, Nerubians are an intelligent race of arachnids – and The War Within will offer an arachnophobia option to replace their models with (friendlier-looking) crabs.
We’ll also get a new feature called Warbands, which will allow players to switch between multiple characters without having to replay swathes of the expansion. Delves will offer a new dungeon experience, allowing for smaller, shorter dungeon crawls, even for solo players. For bigger dungeons, which often require you to play with others, The War Within will offer AI characters for those who can’t play with a party.
The War Within is doubly special for Blizzard, as it marks the 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft, and it’s an opportunity to look at how different kinds of players approach the game, and build something for all of them: “This is a huge year for World of Warcraft in general,” said Hazzikostas. “It’s really humbling to reflect upon my own relationship with the game, but really just to look back at the journey that we’ve taken as a development team with our community. We’re a game that has grown and evolved as our community has.
“I think not everyone has that time to spare these days – we’re all busy, we all have a lot of responsibilities, but we want to maintain a relationship, or build a new one, with this world that’s been special for so many people. [It’s] evolved over the years to keep that depth for those who want to seek it, but [we’re] making sure that there’s a wide range of levels of commitment and relationship you can have with the game and still have an epic, fulfilling experience.”
“What you saw [in the Xbox Games Showcase] cinematic was a celebration of the past 20 years, and the journey of our story over the past 20 years,” said Longdale. If you want to join in those celebrations – whether you’re a committed player, someone looking to return, or a total newcomer – now’s the time.
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a box inside a wall, and everything seems to be working like a charm. But then, you spot a bug in the firmware. The thought of pulling the hardware back out sends shivers down your spine. You start wondering for how long you can just ignore the issue. The good news is you don’t have to, and there is a simple solution: over-the-air (OTA) updates!
OTA updates are a crucial aspect of IoT (Internet of Things) devices, allowing you to remotely update the firmware or software of your connected devices without the need for physical access. This technology is a game-changer for both makers and businesses because it offers seamless maintenance, enhanced security, and improved user experience.
At Arduino, we’ve long recognized the importance of OTA updates and do our best to assist users implement this technology. Over time, this has allowed us to identify some common questions on the topic: let’s dive into the top 10!
#1: What are OTA updates, exactly?
OTA updates refer to the process of delivering code updates to IoT devices remotely, without the need for physical connections or manual interventions. This can be achieved through wireless communication protocols such as Wi-Fi®, cellular, or Bluetooth®.
The process typically involves uploading the updated firmware or software to a server, and then pushing it to the target devices over the internet or a local network. The device then updates itself without the need for manual intervention.
#2: Why do we need OTA?
Firmware updates are essential for IoT devices to maintain their functionality, security, and relevance over time. However, traditional methods of firmware updates, which require physical access or manual intervention, can be costly, time-consuming, and impractical in many scenarios.
OTA updates make it easier to keep devices up-to-date, bug-free, secure and capable of adapting to evolving requirements throughout their lifecycle.
#3: What types of devices benefit from OTA updates?
OTA updates are particularly critical for the following scenarios:
IoT devices deployed in remote locations or difficult-to-access areas, such as industrial equipment, medical devices, or agricultural sensors.
High-value devices such as industrial robots or complex medical equipment, and critical infrastructure systems – such as power grids, water treatment plants, or financial systems – which demand frequent security updates and patches to ensure the highest level of protection against cyber threats.
Smart home devices like thermostats, security cameras, or voice assistants, which often undergo frequent software updates to introduce new features or enhance user experiences.
Devices with limited power or resources: IoT devices with constrained power or computational resources, such as wearables or environmental sensors, can benefit from OTA updates that minimize power consumption and extend battery life.
Systems that require continuous operation and minimal downtime, such as financial systems (ATMs, point-of-sale terminals), healthcare systems (electronic health records, medical imaging equipment).
#4: What are the main challenges in using OTA updates for IoT?
While OTA updates offer numerous benefits, there are several challenges and issues to consider in order to mitigate any risks or avoid potential pitfalls.
Device heterogeneity: IoT devices come in various forms, with different hardware and software configurations, making it challenging to develop and deploy updates that work seamlessly across all.
Connectivity and bandwidth limitations: Some IoT devices may have limited or intermittent internet connectivity, or operate on low-bandwidth networks, which can make it difficult to deliver large firmware updates.
Security concerns: OTA updates introduce potential security risks, such as unauthorized access or malicious code injection, if not implemented with proper security measures (we’ll explain more at #6!).
Scalability and management: As the number of IoT devices grows, managing and deploying OTA updates to large fleets can become a significant challenge.
Simplicity: Many OTA systems require complex infrastructure or elaborate operations. Finding the right platform to simplify the process can be challenging.
#5: What are the benefits of over-the-air updates?
Despite the challenges, OTA updates offer numerous benefits for IoT devices:
Increased device lifespan: By enabling remote updates, OTA updates can extend the usable lifespan of IoT devices, reducing the need for frequent replacements or costly on-site maintenance.
Deployment of bug and security fixes: OTA updates allow for the prompt distribution of bug fixes, security patches, and vulnerability remediation, ensuring that IoT devices remain secure and up-to-date.
Improved device performance and functionality: OTA updates can introduce new features, performance enhancements, and functionality improvements, keeping IoT devices competitive and valuable for users.
Reduced maintenance costs: By eliminating the need for on-site visits or device replacements, OTA updates can significantly reduce maintenance costs associated with IoT deployments.
Enhanced user experience: With seamless updates and continuous improvements, OTA updates can enhance the overall user experience by providing the latest features and addressing issues promptly.
#6: Are OTA updates safe?
Security is a legitimate concern when it comes to OTA updates, as they can potentially introduce vulnerabilities or be exploited by malicious actors. Hackers, for example, can potentially exploit the update process to gain unauthorized access or introduce malicious code. However, with proper security measures in place, OTA updates can be safe and secure.
When choosing an OTA update solution for your IoT devices, look for features that ensure encrypted transmissions and secure authentication protocols, such as encrypted communication channels, secure boot mechanisms, code signing, and secure authentication and authorization processes.
#7: What do makers typically use OTA updates for?
OTA updates are particularly beneficial for makers working on IoT projects in various scenarios.
Home automation: Smart home devices like lighting systems, thermostats, and security cameras can benefit from OTA updates to introduce new features, fix bugs, or enhance functionality.
Gardening: IoT devices used for monitoring and controlling garden systems, such as automated irrigation solutions or greenhouses, can be updated remotely without disrupting the growing environment.
Devices hidden inside wall boxes or cabinets: IoT devices installed in hard-to-reach locations can be easily updated without the need for physical access.
Outdoor monitoring: Environmental monitoring devices deployed in remote or inaccessible areas, such as weather stations or wildlife tracking systems, can be updated wirelessly without requiring on-site visits.
#8: What are the typical use cases of OTA for enterprises?
OTA updates are equally crucial for enterprises deploying IoT solutions across various industries:
Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications: In industrial settings, OTA updates can help maintain and enhance IoT devices used for process monitoring, predictive maintenance, and automation without disrupting operations.
Agriculture: IoT devices used in precision agriculture, such as soil moisture sensors, weather stations, and automated irrigation systems, can be updated remotely to improve efficiency and crop yield.
Automotive and transportation: Connected vehicles and transportation systems can benefit from OTA updates to enhance safety features, improve performance, and address security vulnerabilities.
Healthcare and medical devices: OTA updates can ensure that medical IoT devices, like wearables or implantable devices, remain compliant, secure, and up-to-date with the latest software and firmware versions.
For enterprises with large-scale IoT deployments, orchestrating mass over-the-air (OTA) updates is a critical capability, enabling them to seamlessly roll out new firmware or software versions simultaneously across their entire fleet of devices.
#9: What is OTA in Arduino?
Most of the applications described above can be implemented using Arduino boards, popular among makers and increasingly adopted by enterprises worldwide. The Arduino Cloud seamlessly supports these boards and offers a comprehensive and secure solution for their OTA updates.
And there’s more! The Arduino Cloud is a powerful platform that can be used to monitor and control devices across many applications, from personal hobbies at home to energy management solutions in the factory.
Arduino Cloud OTA is designed to be both secure and robust. It uses end-to-end encryption to protect firmware updates during transmission, ensuring that only authorized devices receive updates. Additionally, the cloud-based platform provides a centralized management system, allowing users to track and monitor updates in real-time. Finally, it ensures that firmware updates are delivered efficiently and reliably, minimizing the risk of errors or failures.
To perform an OTA firmware update for a board supported by the Arduino Cloud, such as the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, simply follow these steps:
1. Add your device to the Arduino Cloud. 2. Create your Thing, configure your network credentials and develop your code. 3. In the Cloud Editor, select OTA (over-the-air) as the programming method. 4. Compile your code clicking on the VERIFY icon. 5. Upload your new firmware to your device.
The Arduino Cloud will handle the rest, securely delivering the new firmware to your device(s) over the air, without any physical intervention required.
Note: The first programming must be done via USB cable. After that, provided that the board is connected to the Arduino Cloud, OTA can be used.
ESP32 is a very popular hardware architecture for IoT because it’s compact, affordable and powerful. And ESP32 boards are fully supported by Arduino Cloud, so you can follow just a few simple steps to perform OTA updates on their firmware: the process is similar to the one we saw at #9 for Arduino boards!
1. Add your device to the Arduino Cloud as a “third-party device.” 2. Create your Thing, configure your network credentials and develop your code. 3. In the Cloud Editor, select OTA (over-the-air) as the programming method. 4. Compile your code clicking on the VERIFY icon. 5. Upload your new firmware to your device.
That’s it! The Arduino Cloud will deliver the new firmware to your device(s) over the air, without any physical intervention required.
Note: The first programming must be done via USB cable. After that, provided that the board is connected to the Arduino Cloud, OTA can be used.
If you’re ready to upgrade your IoT projects, explore the Arduino Cloud today. Arduino Cloud is a secure and user-friendly all-in-one IoT solution to create from anywhere, visualize your sensor data with unlimited IoT dashboards, receive alerts on your phone … and of course, deploy OTA updates.
Earlier today on the Official Xbox Podcast episode, hosts Malik Prince and Jenn Panattoni spoke with President of Oxide Games, Marc Meyer, and Head of Ara for Xbox Game Studios, Brian Stone, as they stopped by to share more in-depth details on Ara: History Untold, including new details on its multiplayer and – best of all – to share a release date: Ara: History Untold will launch this September 24, 2024, for Windows PC, Steam, and will be available on day one with PC Game Pass!
Watch the full podcast below – the Ara: History Untold section begins at 1:58:
As they detail in the interview, the team at Oxide really wanted to make Ara distinctive in the historical grand strategy genre, by looking across the landscape of strategy games to identify common pain points they could address and explore ways they could shake things up. There are many things the team is excited to talk about when it comes to Ara and we’ve highlighted some of the biggest news elements to come out of today’s segment.
Playing in a Living World
One of the standout elements of Ara: History Untold that’s immediately clear from the footage shown during the Official Xbox Podcast segment, and its screenshots, is just how beautiful and detailed the world looks. At a high level, you can easily see how the regions are divided, making them distinguishable from agricultural versus industrial, as well as resource deposits.
“Ara, at its core, is a classic turn-based historical grand strategy game that spans the scope of human history from ancient times all the way up to the modern era and beyond,” explains Stone. “But it’s also a game that (Oxide) has been really pouring a lot of modern elements into it. They’ve made the look of the game something completely unique that you’ve never seen before.”
Diving in closer, however, you see that this is a “living” map with massive amounts of activity from planes flying overhead, garbage trucks going down the street, children playing in playgrounds, to wildlife living in dense jungles. It brings character to this game world and lets you connect with it in a way that you may not have before in other grand strategy games.
“This is all randomly generated every time you build a new game. Every time you play again, you will get a different world. It’s going to be full of all these different biomes,” Meyer explains. “It’s the living world; it’s full of all types of interesting things we want the players to notice and to see… And it’s a resource. That’s part of the game. It’s something you will harvest and get things from, and you will establish your nation here and you’ll use that resource to improve the lives of your people and your citizens.”
Multiple Paths to Victory with Unique Leaders
Because there’s so many ways to play through Ara, it was important for the team to make sure there were leaders for every playstyle, and we were shown that during the Official Xbox Podcast segment. There’s a variety of traits that help define who these Leaders are, inspired in part by how they existed in the world.
“Each of the leaders has sort of this unique hero trait that that sets them apart from everyone else,” explains Meyer. “They’ve got these set of traits that they share with each other and they kind of dictate a little bit of the underlying pieces of their personality and they dictate how they’re going to get along with each other… It lets us have a huge variety in the different leaders that we offer and so that playing each one of them is very different.”
Ultimately, the goal of Ara is, through your own means, to become the most prestigious nation on Earth. And you can do that across a lot of different types of gameplay strategies, from military conquest to religious victories to industry. Or become a beacon for other nations through prestige. “There are almost unbound ways to kind of go invest in kind of what you’re building from that first little village,” says Stone.
“As your nation grows, and as you gather people, you’ll gain claims that will let you take over pieces of land and grow your empire and find new places to build and new resources to exploit,” Meyer adds. “And so, it’s all this self-fulfilling system where you grow so that you can grow more, and you can get more land and you can get more resources. And then you take those resources, and you refine them through our crafting system to produce amenities that will improve the quality of life of your people.”
Multiplayer and Simultaneous Turns
In many grand and turn-based strategy games, multiplayer sessions can be a challenge — trying to wrangle a dozen players in a single game can be a daunting task. But Oxide might have a solution here. They call it “Simultaneous Turns” and it involves all players resolving their Turns at the same time. While not wholly new to the genre, the way simultaneous turns are implemented in Ara is truly unique.
“The way that works is you submit your actions, and everyone else in the world submits their actions at the same time, and then they all get resolved together,” explains President of Oxide Games Marc Meyer. “It’s not a situation where if you go first, you get to get the claim; the person who goes second doesn’t get the claim. In this model, everyone goes at the same time. So, in multiplayer you really have a fair chance at everything.”
“We’ve built all of that turn processing in the Azure Cloud, which means that it’s all there, all running, all the time,” adds Head of Ara History Untold for Xbox Game Studios Brian Stone. “Anybody in any game can hot join, in or out. You can run games at any pace you want. If you want to play a game like one turn a day or one turn every 30 seconds. It doesn’t matter. You can do that. You don’t need to worry about who’s hosting — it’s like almost unlimited flexibility in terms of how you play.”
“We really wanted to remove all the barriers for multiplayer,” says Meyer. “You can jump in and out of as many games as you want. You can take your turn when you have time and wait until it gets submitted. If your friend decides he doesn’t want to play anymore, an AI can come in and take over for him, it doesn’t mean the end of your entire world if you’re playing online and you don’t want to do that, you can stop, and you don’t have to worry about destroying the game for everyone else who’s playing.”
Check out the entire Ara: History Untold deep-dive episode on the Official Xbox Podcast to hear more information around the details mentioned here as well as seeing the game in action. Look for Ara: History Untold to launch on Windows PC, Steam, and with PC Game Pass on September 24, 2024.
To get the full benefit of the Google ecosystem, it’s important that you have the ability to sign up for multiple Google business products at the same time. That’s why you’ll now find a more intuitive signup process for deploying Google products for work alongside Android Enterprise.
If you’re an IT admin signing up for Android Enterprise, you can now use your corporate email address instead of a personal Gmail account. This can reduce the risk of lost or deleted accounts and improves overall credential management, requiring fewer sign-ins and creating a more unified experience across your Google business products and services.
As part of this tighter integration, you can also now perform certain setup tasks centrally through the Google Admin console, such as syncing users and configuring single sign-on (SSO). These selections apply to multiple Google product deployments, saving you time and ensuring consistency across your IT environment.
And if you’d like to add additional Google products like Chrome Enterprise Upgrade for Chromebooks, Chrome Browser Cloud Management or Google Workspace to your Android Enterprise account, you no longer need separate registrations. During signup, or later in the Google Admin Console, simply select the products you want to add to automatically enable them for your workforce.
Finally, the improved signup experience will allow you to bind multiple enterprise mobility management (EMM) instances to your organization’s account, making it easier to use testing and production environments in parallel or transition to a new EMM vendor.
Improved employee experiences
Google’s apps and services can help you get work done, and Android lets you do it on the go. Previously, Android Enterprise users often had limited access to these services. But now, IT admins can more easily enable a range of Google services for employees, including Google Workspace on their Android devices, so they can stay productive on the move.
One of the most exciting aspects of tighter integration between Android Enterprise and Google’s other platforms and services is the ability to create better cross-device experiences. Tighter integration unlocks a range of enterprise features similar to Android’s Better Together initiative, but with the added security and management that you’ve come to expect from Android Enterprise and IT admin control. These features include:
Deepening the integration between Google’s other enterprise products and Android also lays the foundation for AI-powered productivity at work. For example, Gemini for Google Workspace offers business access to Google’s most capable AI models with security and privacy controls for businesses. Users can get help from Gemini directly in the Gmail app, or through the standalone web app at gemini.google.com, with more experiences coming to mobile soon. In fact, the Gemini mobile app will soon be available across all Android Enterprise devices in the coming months, including fully-managed devices and those using an Android Work Profile.
If you want to learn more and are new to Android Enterprise, visit our Solutions Directory to find an EMM partner to help you sign up and get started. If you’re a current Android Enterprise customer, stay tuned for updates from your EMM partner as these updates begin to roll out later this year.
Slowly but surely, the enigmatic Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is revealing itself to us, only to pose new questions as we peel back the layers on this unique game. Recently, Capcom shared some new background details on the festering Seethe, creatures of lore who pose a threat to the Maiden, Yoshiro, and the villages she’s protecting.
This past weekend at Summer Game Fest Play Days, I was among the first to try out a lengthy demo of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, before sitting down with some of the game’s creators to answer all of the “what did I just see?” types of questions which came tumbling forth.
This special demo was set early in the game, in an area called Myoko Pass; the developers explained that we’ll be spending a lot of time in the mountainous region. “The story takes place and also concludes on Mount Kafuku” explained Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. “Many of the Japanese folklore and mythologies have backgrounds where it takes place on mountains, and that’s where [we] got the inspiration.”
If you’ve seen a trailer for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, your reaction may have been along the lines of “this looks cool, but how, exactly, do you play it?” Fortunately, the game’s loop sets itself up early: taking control of masked guardian Soh, players earn crystals by purging defilement throughout the village (hold the B button down whenever you see something… disturbing). This often releases a villager in the process; crystals can be spent to assign them more martial roles to take on at night – when things go from weird to worse.
You’ll need to balance building up your battalion with an even more important task: using crystals to clear a path through the defilement for Yoshiro, the maiden you’ve seen dancing in trailers, to proceed through the village towards a tainted Torii Gate – the titular Path of the Goddess. Soh’s crystal harvesting and direction of Yoshiro and the villagers takes place during several real-time minutes of daytime. Once night falls, it’s time to make the best of a perilous situation.
As soon as it gets dark, the defiled Torii gate starts spitting forth pint-sized, almost cute enemies, based on Yokai of Japanese folklore, all making a beeline for Yoshiro. While they don’t move too quickly, they come in large numbers, and from multiple directions.
Not a problem – Soh is a capable warrior who employs a graceful “Sword Dance” action system, inspired by traditional Kagura dance. The result evokes a sort of “Capoeira with blades” moveset.
I directed Soh back and forth, elegantly slashing my way through dozens of monsters, occasionally pausing to direct my axe-wielding villagers to hold down choke points. While Yoshiro took a hit or two, generating all kinds of alarm on screen, she made it through the night. By sunrise, I had earned enough crystals to pave a path for Yoshiro all the way to the Torii gate, where she purged that part of the village of defilement.
This opened up a tent, serving as a base from which to prepare for the next battle. Inside, Yoshiro presented Soh a Tsuba guard, granting a new power to battle the Seethe called Suzaku’s Flame, with the promise of more to come.
Seeking a greater challenge, I next challenged a boss. Before heading off to battle, Yoshiro supplied a bounty of crystals, with which I trained a posse of four woodcutters to help even the odds. Soon, Gakinyudo, a giant version of the mobs I had been facing in the village, came bursting into the clearing. I assigned three villagers to surround the abomination, reserving one to guard Yoshiro. We were dealing out significant damage when Gakinyudo summoned more tiny versions of itself to swarm the battlefield.
That’s when Gakinyudo got the best of me, sending Soh sprawling to the earth. Interestingly, that’s not game over – Soh become a floating spirit, still able to direct villagers and keep the pressure on the beast. After a few agonizing seconds as a non-corporeal being, Soh respawned back on the battleground, sword in hand! This made it clear that, in a real way, Soh isn’t the main character, it’s Yoshiro; if she is slain, the mission has failed.
This time, I made better use of Soh’s dodge roll, and before long, Gakinyudo was dispatched. Soh was rewarded with boons to his health, and even new roles to assign villagers, such as Archer, for the battles ahead.
And there will be plenty more fights; this is a big mountain, and daylight is already burning. Fortunately, we won’t have to endure many more dark nights until we get our hands on Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, something that the developers eagerly look forward to.
“Having it on Game Pass on day one allows an opportunity for many people to want to challenge themselves to take on this new gaming genre, to experience this new gaming experience,” Director Shuichi Kawata told me. Producer Hirabayashi added, “When you first play it and then you progress through it at the beginning, it kind of takes a little bit of time to get used to it. But as you progress through it and beyond the very first difficulties, you really get the feeling of the new gaming experience that this game has to offer. So we are looking forward to that.”
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess will be available on July 19 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be able to play the game from day one. In addition, this title is compatible with Xbox Play Anywhere, allowing cross-play and transfer of saved data between Xbox and Windows 10/11.
Want even more options? There’s also a new setting that lets you adjust your dynamic background color without changing your profile color.
Easily Connect Your Xbox to Your Wireless Networks
Switching between Wi-Fi networks just got a whole lot easier for your Xbox. You can now remember up to 10 wireless networks that you’ve used before and hop on them without typing the passwords again. It’s also easy to forget and disconnect from the wireless networks you’re done with. No need to remember the Wi-Fi from your trip – unless you plan to go back! To check this out, go to Settings > General > Network settings > Manage wireless networks > Manage my networks.
Manage Your Subscriptions Directly From Your Console
You can now update your subscription plan or turn on recurring billing within your console settings. Go to Settings > Account > Subscriptions, select your subscription, and then choose Change subscription. Once you’re there, you’ll be able to select the options that work best for you.
Some Experiments You Might See on Your Console
We’re always experimenting and looking for ways to make your console experience even better. This month, you may notice updates such as the ability to find people using console search, updates to the Game Pass page layout and style, and additional information to search card results and flashcard store buttons. As we roll out these experiments, a random subset of players will be able to give them a try.
Xbox Wireless Controller Firmware Updates
Starting today, we’re rolling out a firmware update for your Xbox controllers. If you use the Xbox Adaptive Controller, you’ll have expanded support for more connected USB accessories. This update will better support full functionality of some accessibility peripherals. Each port now supports up to 12 buttons, a second stick, and a hat switch.
You’ll also see improvements to wireless disconnects for the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 when a headset is attached to its 3.5mm audio port. Plus, you’ll get some other bug fixes to make your gaming smoother. Grab this update from the Xbox Accessories app on the Xbox console or your Windows PC.
PC Gaming | Xbox App on PC Experience Updates
New Game Pass Sub Navigation Menu Is Now Available for All Players
Back in April, we announced that we had started previewing this new menu with a subset of players. Today, we’re excited to share that all PC players can now enjoy these new navigation options inside the Xbox app on PC.
The Game Pass tab will now display options to directly access all games from Xbox Game Studios, EA Play, and Riot Games that are available in the catalog. EA Play is included with both PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate, and both Game Pass memberships also give you access to exclusive Riot Games benefits.
With Game Pass, you can access all of the benefits above, and enjoy incredible new games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will be coming to Game Pass on day one later this year. Game catalog and benefits vary by plan.
Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) Updates
Managing Game Data for Cloud Gaming
We have enhanced features to support players in managing their game data on Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta). Now you can self-manage game data and cloud saves for titles that are played on browser at xbox.com/play, from the Samsung smart TV app, and on other supported cloud-gaming devices. This is a vital tool to use for troubleshooting when corrupted data prevents gameplay, or to reset a game to its original state when you want to start a game from scratch. You can find instructions on how to manage game saves when using Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) on our support page.
Mouse and Keyboard for Cloud Gaming Is Now Available for All Players
Last month, we announced that we started rolling out mouse and keyboard support for cloud gaming on Edge and Chrome browsers and the Xbox app on PC. These features are now available to all players. To access this feature on the Xbox app on PC, simply select the Cloud Gaming tab and navigate to the Play with mouse and keyboard collection, which includes all games supporting mouse and keyboard.
Help Shape the Future of Xbox
Stay tuned to Xbox Wire for future updates and all the latest and greatest Xbox related news. For support related to Xbox updates, visit the official Xbox Support site.
We love hearing from the community, whether you have a suggestion for a new feature that you’d like to see added, or you want to give feedback on existing features that could use some improvement. We’re always looking for ways to improve Xbox experiences for players around the world. If you’d like to help create the future of Xbox and get early access to new features, join the Xbox Insider Programtoday by downloading the Xbox Insider Hub for Xbox Series X|S & Xbox Oneor Windows PC. Let us know what you think!
Mini Dexed ports the concepts of the digital synthesiser to Python and Raspberry Pi, and is the brainchild of Simon Peter (aka Probono), who describes it as a ‘Dexed FM synthesiser similar to 8x DX7 (TX816/TX802) running on a bare-metal Raspberry Pi (without a Linux kernel or operating system)’ to produce eight tones. Voices can be programmed using a DX series editor using MIDI sysex.
Emphasising the importance of Yamaha’s DX7, composer and MusicRadar journalist OSC Steve argued: “it’s possible to categorise 1980s music into two eras; the pre-DX7 era and the post-DX7 era, such was the widespread use of this new instrument and its distinct timbral character”.
Bringing DX7 to life
Probono has been experimenting with Raspberry Pi, for home automation and 3D printing as well as digital music, since its launch in 2012. He began the Mini Dexed project because he was keen to make a “real musical instrument” rather than something that felt like a computer. He is in awe of the original developers of FM synthesisers and says Mini Dexed “stands on the shoulders of giants”. To recreate their sounds he was looking for a commonly available, inexpensive microcontroller with lots of computing power and is “using Raspberry Pi more like an embedded microcontroller than a regular computer”. Quick boot times, small code size and overall simplicity are further hallmarks. The project began in 2022 during a discussion in the Circle project, when Probono asked for guidance on how to go about integrating an existing synthesiser engine. Another maker, Rene Stange produced Circle, a library for code that runs it in a bare-metal Raspberry Pi environment, while Holger Wirtz ported the Dexed synth engine for use with microcontrollers, creating a framework specifically for this scenario.
Future sounds
Mini Dexed is a flexible platform for experimenting with electronic sound. Once it had been ported for microcontroller use, Probono deliberately built Mini Dexed around Raspberry Pi and commonly available, inexpensive hardware components. He says a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 version could be created for less than €50. Hardware choices and whether to use a dedicated audio DAC are down to individual makers’ preferences, while suitable connections for the audio partly depend on which Raspberry Pi you’re using. Those that can be configured to use USB Gadget Mode instead of USB Host mode (currently Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 but not yet 5) allow MiniDexed to be used as a USB MIDI device and accept audio streaming from MIDI keyboards, for example. “As someone who is interested in experimental music, I could imagine hooking up all sorts of sensors via MIDI to Mini Dexed, in order to create an immersive soundscape that changes as its surroundings change.”
Mini Dexed has also been extended to work with external DACs (making it usable with Pico and Raspberry Pi 1 and 2, too) as well as adapted to support 16 voices by blogger Kevin, who has contributed to this fantastic synth’s development and raised its profile. Probono specifically mentions the potential of Raspberry Pi Pico which Kevin was able to implement: see magpi.cc/picodexedgit or magpi.cc/dx7usbdongle.
“While the project can be built without any extra hardware, a simple display and a rotary encoder and/or some buttons make it much easier to use, and an inexpensive digital to analogue converter increases sound quality significantly.” Probono says “The real cost is the time invested into developing, building, refining, testing, discussing – and the MiniDexed community collectively has put in, and is still putting in, a lot of time and effort, which I am very grateful for.”
“I am still trying to wrap my head around how to design sound from scratch using FM, it’s probably a learning journey for a lifetime.”
Mecha Break will be available in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, with a closed beta test coming only to Xbox Series X in August 2024.
The game features three distinct game modes: 6v6 Battlefield mode, 3v3 Arena mode, and up to 60-player PvEvP (unavailable for the upcoming beta).
Experience an arsenal of unique mechs with diverse playstyles and customization; play how you want and master your mech’s abilities.
Oozing with high-tech style and full of fast-paced battles, Mecha Break is multiplayer mech-based shooter that puts you in the pilot seat of your very own towering mech as you dive into a clash of steel and plasma unlike any other. Now, after two successful closed beta tests on PC, developer Amazing Seasun Games is proud to announce that Mecha Break’s next closed beta test will be coming to Xbox Series X in August 2024!
While the impressive mechs and break-neck speed of Mecha Break’s combat is the flashy initial draw, the room for personal expression through cosmetic customization and diverse combat tactics will let you build an attachment to your favorite mech. The full release game will feature three distinct game modes: 6v6 Battlefield mode, 3v3 Arena mode, and up to 60-player PvEvP.
Mecha Break features customizable mechs, player-created mech pilots, a wide array of mech and weapon types, and three distinct game modes where you can discover an array of attacker, brawler, defender, sniper, and support mechs each with unique playstyles and toolsets.
For the upcoming closed beta test in August on Xbox Series X, the highlighted game modes will be the 3v3 Arena mode and 6v6 Battlefield mode. Here you’ll work together with your team and engage in intense aerial and ground combat as you fight for the objective. Employ strategic tactics for close and long-range encounters, unleash devastating firepower, cleave mechs in half with giant melee weapons, and rain missiles upon the battlefield as you and your team fight to win.
Strategic planning is key in Mecha Break, so effective communication with teammates will be essential to lead them to victory. Prepare for adrenaline-pumping battles, lightning-fast maneuvers, and explosive firepower. Experience the colossal power and thrilling movement of your towering mech. Mecha Break’s closed beta test on Xbox Series X will begin in August 2024. Stay up to date on all Mecha Break news on Discord, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).
Mecha BREAK
Amazing Seasun
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
Mecha BREAK is a multiplayer mech game that allows players to choose from diverse mechs, customize appearances, and battle colossal war machines on treacherous terrain. Get ready for the ultimate showdown—blitz, brawl, blaze!
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