Rachel Dipirro and Jonathan Lo made an interesting Talking Multimeter Project for their Cornell University ECE 4760 Final Project. The multimeter is built around a PIC32MX250F128B. This is not a robust product that will be replacing your desktop multimeter since the range is not that great. For example it can just read resistance between 0 and 50K and voltage up to 10 volts. This range is fine for lots of work and the measurement front end could easily be swapped out with a high resolution ADC to greatly enhance this.

The multicolor LCD display is a great way to display the output and the number pad is perfect to control the system but of course the heart of this project is the voice output. The speech synthesis is performed by transmitting data to an external Microchip MCP4822 SPI DAC, the samples that are played are 16kHz samples that were compressed and stored onto system flash.

Tiny Circuits have made a playable Tiny Arcade Cabinet kit. The environment is a tiny custom Arduino system. It is stackable and of course very small.

“The Tiny Arcade lets you relive the golden age of video games with an arcade cabinet that fits in the palm of your hand.  Originally launched on Kickstarter!

• Beautiful, vibrant full color OLED screen  
• Games are free and open source – play community made games or write your own
• SD card expansion slot – download new games and insert card (or get a preloaded microSD card here)
• High quality joystick and two push buttons
• Built-in speaker with volume control knob and rechargeable lithium battery
• USB port for charging and game development
• Clear and Black Acrylic
• Arcade stickers to decorate your cabinet
• Electronics based around the same 32-bit ARM processor as the Arduino Zero “

There are lots of POV displays out there, lots have multi color LEDs that can display some impressive images. Gelstronic has built this  3D POV Display that has lots of tech going on. The addressable LEDs are setup in strips of varying heights. When spun this allows the display to create 3D images in color. A Parallax Propeller microcontroller powers the main display while an Arduino Pro Mini works with the ESC to keep things turning properly. To get power to the spinning portion of the board a wireless power module is used, this module can get about 10 watts of power through the air gap which is plenty for the LEDs.

When you think of a robot in your house you probably think of a Roomba. I want to see a milti function robot that is capable of doing more. Automation is great when it can do complex tasks unaided that help us out. Just imagine coming home to the dishes done, the floor cleaned and a cold beverage presented to you when you sit in the couch. This sounds like it could be the future if the Mini Spot gets developed.

This Edge Lit 481 Digital Voltmeter Display totally makes me want to build a clock with this mechanism. Can you imagine talking a measurement with this meter that oscillates, it would make a ton of noise. I can see this being great help if you were siting on a stable reading and waiting for something to avalanche.

Via: Hackaday

“These early NLS digital meters used a resistor dividing network and stepper relays to select the display digits. If you see one of these in operation you will hear a lot of mechanical relay noise as the range and digits are selected.”

 
jehugarcia shows us what is Inside the TESLA Model S Battery. There are lots of bolts holding the battery pack together. Why are they ripping apart this huge battery? To make smaller battery packs to power other electric cars. As you can see from the video this pack is built like a tank. It is not meant to be services since it is all glued together. With a bit of elbow grease they can get into it though. Nice to see they are taking lots of precautions when working with the discrete modules since they hold a ton of energy and could cause some major destruction! This obviously wouldn’t be worth it to take a new battery apart but this one was taken from a crashed car where the battery survived.  If you want some of these modules for your project you can get them at EV West.

This Gesture Controlled Lamp is powered by Raspberry Pi. An infrared camera is connected to the Raspberry Pi allowing the system to monitor for wand movements since the wand has an IR LED build into it. OpenCV is used to decipher the wand movements. There are a few simple gestures that are recognized to magically control the light.

Via: Make

“After a recent trip to Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter, my daughters and I decided to create a project that could use the interactive wands from the theme park, at home, to control our own props and gadgets. We called it Raspberry Potter because it was powered with a Raspberry Pi. We demonstrated the project last year at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Mini Maker Faire and this article — Ollivander’s Lamp — is the latest extension of that project.”