DIY Projects

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If you are considering entering the Arduino Day Challenge this year, you will need to submit your project to the Arduino team by March 24th, 2021 for a chance to win the Arduino hardware and prizes on offer. The Arduino Day 2021 Challenge will award the top 10 community projects that stand out for their creativity and innovation.

” The contest is open to everybody, whether you’re a beginner, a pro user, a student, or an artist. Everyone’s welcome to join the contest and share their innovative projects, big and small, with the rest of the community. We’ll select 10 projects that we feel demonstrate the most creative, innovative ideas, and send them an awesome Arduino Day box packed with our favorite boards, kits, and goodies, to a value of around €250 EUR/$280 USD. Moreover, the videos of the best projects will be featured on the official Arduino Day live stream that will take place on March 27th across all our channels! “

We’re excited to announce that this year’s Arduino Day contest (you can apply with this form) will be all about highlighting the incredible creativity of our community. This is our way of thanking our amazing users, whose passion, innovation and vision inspire us every day. Inspiration and community participation have never been more vital than during the pandemic, so this year we’ve made a special effort to instill a feeling of inclusivity and bringing people together. So the whole event this year has been given a theme of “undistancing”. We want Arduino Day to encourage people to collaborate, and create as one; to close the distance between us all virtually, until we’re all able to get back together physically.”

For more information and to submit your entry jump over to the official Arduino blog by following the link below.

Source : Arduino

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Top News

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Sparkfun has launched a new Sparkfun Thing Plus Quicklogic EOS S3 Arm eFPGA board via the Crown Supply website this month making it available to purchase from $39 with worldwide shipping available. Preorders placed now will start shipping out to customers at the end of May 2021. The SparkFun Thing Plus QuickLogic EOS S3 board is equipped with SparkFun’s Qwiic connect system, designed to make prototyping and development more enjoyable. Features of the Qwiic connect system include:

– Tons of expansion boards: There are over 150 Qwiic-compatible expansion boards to choose from, including everything from RFID readers to displays to keypads.
– No soldering: Qwiic cables (4-pin JST) plug easily from development boards to sensors, shields, accessory boards, and more, making easy work of setting up a new prototype.
– Polarized connector: There’s no need to worry about accidentally swapping the SDA and SCL wires on your breadboard. The Qwiic connector is polarized so you know you’ll have it wired correctly every time, right from the start.
– Daisy chain-able: It’s time to leverage the power of the I²C bus! Most Qwiic boards will have two or more connectors on them, allowing multiple devices to be connected.

“Betweeen the onboard Li-Po battery connector and charging circuitry, wake-on-sound PDM microphone, and low-power, three-axis accelerometer, this Thing Plus board is ideal for wearable and voice applications. The strong firmware support for the the microphone and accelerator make it easy move sensor data into the embedded FPGA. From there, use SensiML, TensorFlow Lite, or other tools to train and run embedded machine learning algorithms specific to your application. As with all our prototypes, the boards pictured here have a black PCB, but all production boards that will actually ship to backers will come in SparkFun’s standard red PCB color.”

Specifications include :

• EOS S3 MCU + eFPGA SoC
  • Arm Cortex-M4F Microcontroller
    • up to 80 MHz operating frequency
    • up to 512 Kb SRAM
  • Embedded FPGA (eFPGA)
    • 2400 effective logic cells
    • 64 Kb RAM
• Feather Form Factor
  • Breadboard-compatible 0.1″ (2.54 mm) pitch headers – all headers are pre-soldered
  • 2.75″ x 0.9″ (70 mm x 22.9 mm) footprint
  • All 20 Feather-defined GPIO + 14 additional GPIO
• Interfaces
  • SWD programming connector for use with USB-TTL converter
  • USB data signals are tied to eFPGA programmable logic
  • UART available via I/O headers
  • I²C available via I/O headers, and Qwiic Connector
  • I²S
  • SPI
• Storage: 16 Mbit SPI NOR flash – GigaDevice GD25Q16CEIGR
• Sensors
  • Accelerometer – STMicro LIS2DH12TR
  • Digital pulse density modulation (PDM) microphone with Wake-on-Sound (WoS) feature – Vesper VM3011-U1

For full details on all specifications, sensors and supported software jump over to the official Crowd Supply project page.

Source : Crowd Supply

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Hardware, Top News

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If you are interested in building your very own Raspberry Pi weather station capable of recording all the main metrics such as temperature, pressure and humidity. You’ll be pleased to know that the YouTube channel Explaining Computers has created a great tutorial showing how you can use a BME280 sensor to record data to a spreadsheet. Once you have your sensor up and running you can start expanding your Raspberry Pi weather station to be displayed on a small 4D Systems 4DPi-35 display as in the image above. Details and code for doing this are available via the Hackster.io website by following the link below.

“We use this sensor on our Enviro+ environmental monitoring board, but it’s such a nice sensor that we thought we’d pop it onto a breakout! The BME280 is a great sensor for monitoring conditions around your home. If you’re an iOS user, then there’s a Homebridge plugin for the BME280 to let you use the sensor for home automation and monitoring. It’s also compatible with our fancy Breakout Garden, where using breakouts is as easy just popping it into one of the six slots and starting to grow your project, create, and code.”

Source : Hackster.io :  YouTube

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Photographers searching for an affordable camera crane, allowing you to quickly position your camera in a wide variety of different angles to expand your creativity, be interested in a new project by photographer Ivan Miranda who has created his very own 3D printed camera crane from scratch. Check out the video below to learn more about the camera crane he created to replace is traditional tripod set up.

“I got tired of moving and swapping my tripods around so I decided to make a camera crane from scratch, because that’s the most fun. I used a big aluminium profile as a boom and designed, 3D printed and assembled a bunch of parts to make it work to my advantage. The base is a quick job out of Plywood and it rolls on a set of casters but the shop floor is a bit of a mess so those are only to move it around and not for fancy travelling shots.”

” I added a very cool feature that makes the camera stay pointing in the same direction so it can be used also as a slider to take fancy shots. It can go from ground level up to almost 3 meters high and the camera can tilt 90 degrees up and down from the horizontal. The camera mount is attached to a mechanism that makes it stay level with a fine adjustment near the camera. It has a coarse and a fine counterweight that combined weigh around 20kg.”

Source : YouTube

Filed Under: Camera News, DIY Projects, Top News

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Raspberry Pi enthusiasts or astronomers looking for a project to keep them busy this weekend may be interested in a new Raspberry Pi mini GOTO Telescope created by Instructables member Greg_The_Maker. Using a Raspberry Pi 4 model B and the recently launched HQ camera specifically designed for the Raspberry Pi mini PC. Together with a 300 mm mirror lens and geared stepper motors the small telescope provides full GOTO support with tracking as well as GPS, wireless connectivity and more. Check out the video below to see the Instructables project in action.

“The sky is a fascinating place, but the real interesting stuff resides far beyond the thin atmosphere. The Universe, the Milky Way and our Solar System is where it’s at. To be able to peer far out through the sky and observe the galaxy and beyond, one needs a telescope. This Instructable follows my journey as I develop a miniture GOTO telescope. We’ll look through some of the research I perform, glimpse at my design process, observe the assembly & wiring processes, view instuctions for the software configuration and then finally step outside to scope out the cosmos.”

Source : Instructables : Adafruit

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If you are interested in learning more about how you can use your Raspberry Pi and machine learning to expand your projects, you may be interested in a new tutorial published to the Hackster.io website. The tutorial takes approximately four hours to complete and has been classed as a big skill level build using a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B mini PC. Check out the video below for an introduction into the proof of concept tutorial.

“TensorFlow Lite allows you to take the same ML models used with TensorFlow (with some tweaks) and deploy them in mobile and IoT edge computing scenarios. There are obvious downsides with minimal compute power and less accurate results. However, what you can accomplish with a tiny processor sipping tiny amounts of power is still quite staggering.”

Source : Hackster.io

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Raspberry Pi enthusiasts looking for a new project to keep them busy this weekend may be interested in a Raspberry Pi CNC plotter created by Stratos Botsaris. The code for the Raspberry Pi CNC plotter has kindly been made available to download via GitHub using the link below.

“I had seen people on the internet creating and using CNC plotters and always wondered how these machines work. I was mainly interested in way the CNC machine translates the G-code instructions into movement that drives the stepper motors. I wanted to find out the internal workings of this.

I started experimenting with one stepper motor with a Raspberry Pi,” he says. “Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have salvaged one stepper motor from an old printer and another one from an old scanner. In the beginning I had to find out how stepper motors work and how to connect one to Raspberry Pi.

Then I tried to drive the stepper motor by writing a small program in Python and run it on Raspberry Pi. Once I managed to make this work, I got very excited and this gave me the push to continue with controlling two stepper motors at the same time. This was the most tricky part because I had to find a way to move the two stepper motors in parallel if I ever wanted the CNC plotter to draw a diagonal line. I had been trying several algorithms in Python for a long time, but eventually the simplest one worked how I wanted.”

The code for the Raspberry Pi CNC plotter is now available to download via GitHub using the link below.

Source : MagPi : GitHub

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Jim engineering student at RIT Jim Heaney has created a new binary decoder kit which he has launched via Kickstarter. The project has already raised its required pledge goal thanks to nearly 100 backers with still 23 days remaining. The kit not only shows you how to SMD solder and practice your binary skills and also allows you to learn electronics. The AtTiny 1616 in the binary decoder kit comes pre-programmed and ready to go once assembled.

Backer early bird pledges are now available for the inventive project from roughly $15 or £11 (depending on current exchange rates). If the Binary Decoder campaign successfully raises its required pledge goal and fullfilment progresses smoothly, worldwide shipping is expected to take place sometime around June 2021.

“This kit will guide you through techniques to identify and solder all kinds of SMD components, including microcontrollers, LEDs, resistors, capacitors, and fuses. Along the way, you’ll learn tips and tricks on how to incorporate SMD components into your own DIY projects. “

“No need to worry about flashing the code to the microcontroller, the included AtTiny 1616 comes pre-programmed and ready to go! Want to challenge yourself and write some new, awesome code for it? No worries! The source code is available open-source, and the AtTiny can be re-programmed with Arduino code through the UPDI programming port.”

“Once complete, the kit serves as a quick and easy reference for 8-bit binary numbers. Input a number to see the binary equivalent, or type in 8 bits to see the base-10 number! Want to add a cool look to your binary decoder? I am also offering a Special Edition PCB as an add-on that has a clear silkscreen. This will allow you to see all the copper traces that make up the PCB.”

For a complete list of all available early bird pledges, stretch goals, extra media and full specifications for the Kit, jump over to the official Binary Decoder crowd funding campaign page by following the link below.

Source : Kickstarter

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YouTube channel Hacksmith Industries has published a new project featuring that of element and creation of a DIY Mandalorian flamethrower gauntlet as part of their HACKLORIAN series which will create a wide variety of different gadgets armour and weapons from the Disney Mandalorian TV series.

Unfortunately Disney has not released any confirmation on when the highly anticipated Mandalorian season 3 will premier on their Disney+ streaming service, but as soon as more information comes to light we will keep you up to speed as always. On a positive note this gives you plenty of time to create your very own Mandalorian flamethrower gauntlet ready to wear at the premier of Mandalorian S3 hopefully sometime later this year or early in 2022.

“In our HACKLORIAN series, we’ll be making all of Mando’s gadgets, armor, and weapons! Make sure to become a YouTube member to see the videos before anyone else! Next up… The Blaster and Spear — and then, his helmet! “

Source : Hacksmith Industries : Adafruit

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If you’re interested in building your very own Pico mechanical keyboard you may be interested in a new project which uses Fritzing and CircuitPython, published to the Adafruit blog. The guide provides complete instructions together with complete component lists for everything you need to complete the project and uses a RaspberryPi RP2040 Pico loaded with CircuitPython.

CircuitPython is a programming language designed to simplify experimenting and learning to code on low-cost microcontroller boards. With CircuitPython, there are no upfront desktop downloads needed. Once you get your board set up, open any text editor, and start editing code.

“With lots of pins, the RaspberryPi RP2040 Pico makes for a great brain of a mechanical keyboard/macro pad — no scan matrix required. Up to 26 keys can be used with direct GPIO pins. You’ll learn how to make your own PCB design in Fritzing to send off for fabrication. A 3D printed or laser cut case finishes it off in style. Once you’ve built your own custom keyboard from scratch, run over to Reddit r/mechanicalkeyboards and show it off!”

Source : Adafruit

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