Unless you're into creating electronic-based projects, you may not be familiar with the Arduino 8-bit microcontroller project, but it's being used in some very inventive ways by bright folks who want to build high-tech gadgets like DIY Drones and breathalyzer microphones.
Wired's Priya Ganapati took an in-depth look Arduino recently, and says its maturity and strong community are largely responsible for the project's success. "Arduino’s popularity means it’s easy to get started. Companies such as Adafruit, SparkFun and Liquidware not only sell chips, but they also host blogs that suggest ideas on how to use your Arduino while providing extensive project plans to guide you in completing your creations," he writes. Lets take a look at two projects that use Arduino as the basis for their gadgetry.
Scooterputer
Kurt rides around town on a scooter and decided he'd like some warning before its battery needs recharging. After a little tinkering, he created the Scooterputer, a small TouchShield device that attaches to his scooter via ethernet cable and alerts him just how much voltage is left in his battery. It would have been a cool enough gadget if Kurt had stopped there, but he didn't. By the time he got done adding features it, it also included:
Time and date
Temperature
Lean gauge with resettable max L-R indicators
Current speed
Resettable max speed indicator
Odometer
2 resettable trip meters
Latitude and longitude readouts
Compass heading readout
GSM/GPRS quad-band cellular module
Kurt posted a very detailed explanation of how he built the Scooterputer on his Web site so you can see for yourself how it's done. He even included the schematics and links to where he purchased his supplies so you can try your hand at building one yourself.
Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope
Why use a magnifying glass to view something up close when you can use your very own electron microscope instead? The brainchild of Chicagoan Sacha De'Angeli, the scanning tunnel electron microscope (STM) riffs on a similar project started many years ago.
"I was trying to make a ferrofluid, and I sort of built a cool recipe to do it, but I wasn't exactly sure if I made the actual nanoparticles," De'Angeli told Popular Science's Geeta Dayal. "You can't tell what they look like without an electron microscope. Obviously a $30,000 machine isn't something I can afford for a hobby. I found these projects where people had built scanning tunneling electron microscopes for really not very much money. I started this project I found, that dates back to 2003 by John Alexander, and I started to modernize it a bit."
De'Angeli presented his microscope project at the Open Science Summit in California last week, and now it's back to the drawing board to tie up the details. He hopes to make images and plans for the device publicly available in the next few months. In the meantime, check out the video Dayal includes in his article of a digital-to-analog test De'Angeli recently performed.
Intrigued by Ardino and want to learn more? Watch for an upcoming documentary from Laboral Centro de Arte about the project. It's going to be released later this summer. Meanwhile you can check out the trailer now.
Tags: arduino, microcontroller
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