Humberto from Nerd Kits has built a DIY Sous-Vide Cooker. They are not touching any high voltage with their design, instead they are using a dimmer switch to power a crock pot and simply turn the dimmer switch with a small motor that is controlled using a microcontroller. A few small temperature sensors provide feedback so that the water bath temperature can be kept at the desired level. We have seen this method of interfacing with high voltage before with the Adafruit soldering skillet design.

 Here is a great looking Open Hardware High Resolution 3D Printer. I think we will see a lot more 3D printers this year! The more the merrier since I would love one but I currently can’t justify the cost. With this kickstarter you could have one of these for under $2500. You can read more about it on the project site.

Via: Electronics Lab

“Specifications

 Building a robot requires many things but movement is something that is common in all robots. There are many motor options when building a robot but no matter what type of motor you select they can’t be powered directly from microcontroller pins since most pins can only provide 20 or 25mA of current. The solution is quite simple, the microcontroller simply needs to send a signal to a motor driver chip and you let the motor driver chip do the high current work that is needed when dealing with motors.  Chris from PyroElectro written a great tutorial on how to control robot motors.

 ”The microcontroller that we will use for this part of the Building A Robot series is the PIC 18F252 8-bit microcontroller. It is manufactured by microchip, and most of my tutorials/projects on this website use the PIC. The motor controller IC that we will use is the same as some other tutorials, the SN754410NE Quadruple Half-H Driver.”

Thanks to EEWeb for featuring an interview they did with me on their site.

The Microchip dspic33f  is used for this Self Balancing Robot that chayben from Australia put together. Bluetooth modules are used to achieve communication link between the robot and the computer running Matlab. On the computer you are able to see the many tiny changes that are needed to keep the robot upright.  The stacked round disk PCB design looks and works great in this design.

“Processor: Microchip dspic33f
Sensor: bma180 & itg3200
Sensor Fusion: modified complementary filter
Controller: PID
Motors: DC motors with Quadrature Encoder (not yet utilised)
Telemetry Module: Bluetooth to UART “

We have featured some Wall-e builds in the past, you can see by the video above that Mike Senna’s Wall-e Build is coming to an end. He just posted a video of the current state. It is almost complete and is looking great! He has built some cool macro modes that allows some pre-programmed movements to be done while he drives the robot around.

 Blair Kelly has designed a fun looking RC car. It has an Arduino mounted in the car, there are a number of sensors that allow Blair to drive the car around viewing the drive on a computer screen. There is even force feedback so when the car goes over a large bump or bangs into something he can feel it. With a head mounted display this thing would be very immersive. The camera is mounted so that it can be moved from right to left. I can just imagine what it would feel like if this right and left camera movement was linked to head movements when wearing a head mount display!

Via: Make

When someone rings your doorbell wouldn’t it be nice to know about it when you aren’t home? Well this project will do just that. Pressing the doorbell will send a message to your cell phone and send you a picture of who is there. You often hear that robbers often ring the doorbell to make sure no one is at home before breaking in. I am thinking that a few of the Arduino outputs could be purposed to spray a water gun and turn on a siren. 

Thanks for the tip Clement.

 ”How does it work ?

• 1. When the doorbell is pushed, the Arduino sends an HTTP request to the PushingBox API.

• 2. PushingBox launches the user’s scenario and gets a picture from the web camera.

• 3. PushingBox sends a Push notification to the user’s phone and a mail message with the picture attached.”

The ECE 4760 Final Projects are here! Check out this DIY Digital Saxophone that was designed by Brian Wang. His design uses an omni directional microphone that is mounted in a tube to reduce background noise. The player blows into the tube and the microphone pics up the wind noise to know when the player is blowing. This signal is amplified and fed into a microcontroller. Buttons are positioned on the body just like a real Saxophone has and while the player is blowing pressing different key combinations allows for different notes to be played.

Check out this great looking Binary Burst Clock that Mike Szczys from Jumptuck has built. At first glance you might be a bit confused on how to read the clock but it is actually quite simple. Mike ordered the boards from Seeed Studios and had a good experience and it was cheap! In this design a MCP7940 RTC chip is keeping track of time with the help of a coin cell mounted on the back of the board. An ATtiny84 is controlling the board, it is mounted on the back of the board also so in these pictures it isn’t visible (see the full project page to see pictures of the back) .

Via: Dangerous Prototypes