Project14 | The Birthday Special: Open Arduino Projects: Part 4!

19 Mar 2020

Enter Your Project for a chance to win a Nano Grand Prize bundle for the most innovative use of Arduino plus a $400 shopping cart!

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Arduino is celebrated its 15th Birthday on March 21st, 2020! We'll be up to sending 25 Nano Boards (5 different Flavors) for project proposals that use them!	Project14 is celebrating its 3rd Birthday with a NanoRama Celebration that began the day before Arduino Day! Help us celebrate by submitting an Arduino Project as a Birthday Present!	Winners Announcement will be on Geek Pride Day on May 25th 2020. It also happens to be the anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie. A New Hope was released on May 25th, 1977!

Project14 | The Birthday Special: A NanoRama Open Arduino Competition!

Submit a Blog in NanoRama or tag your post NanoRamaCH for a Chance to Win!

This special event celebrates the 3rd birthday of Project14 and the 15th birthday of Arduino with an Open Ended Arduino project competition that kicks off the day before Arduino Day on March 21st, 2020. The NanoRama project competition is a follow up to Arduino Day 2020: NanoRama: We're Giving Away Different Nano Boards for Projects that Use Them! We also launched an Arduino Fundamentals: Part I: Quiz where you can test your knowledge (or argue over) your knowledge of Arduino. We will also have a round ups of the last two Arduino project competitions to celebrate Arduino Day in what has turned into an annual tradition.

Arduino Day 2020 Round Ups:

We're also aware that this is difficult time around the world, the Covid-19 Virus has upended life as we know it.

Your project can also include a Fighting Germs project as suggested in Project14 | Fighting Germs: Win a Thermal Imaging Camera, a Germicidal Lamp, and a Shopping Cart with Matching Charity Donation!

Simply tag your post FightingGermsCH and NanoRamaCH if your Fighting Germs project uses an Arduino.

The Grand Prize

Every Nano Board	Plus a $400 Shopping Cart

Your Chance to Win a Nano Classic, Nano Every, Nano 33 IoT, Nano BLE, and Nano BLE Sense!	Plus a $400 Shopping Cart to Do Cool Stuff with Your Boards!

First Place & Finisher Prizes

Three First Place Winners Receive a $200 Shopping Cart to Any of Our Stores!	Finisher Prizes
3 First Place Winners Receive a Nano BLE Sense plus a $200 Shopping Cart!	We have up to 20 Nano (Classic Boards) to Giveaway for Amazing Projects!

The Projects:

Arduino Powered MSE-6 (Mouse Droid) by jomoenginer

This project won the top prize in the Open Arduino competition so that right there tells you its not an ordered list. Project14 chose to celebrate its birthday by celebrating Arduino Day with an Open Ended Arduino competition while also paying homage to the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope. If memory serves correct, jomoenginer discovered he was the Grand Prize winner the same night he took his daughter to a Star Wars Movie. The alignment of all these events was the Arduino Powered MSE-6 (a.k.a. Mouse Droid). For those of you who are not familiar, this is the little wheeled droid that Chewy roared at causing it to run off scared in A New Hope. Apparently, there is a whole Mouse Droid Builders group and many examples of how to build this but most seem to be Radio Controlled. His intent was to create a completely autonomous MSE-6 that can self navigate an area, as well as, go to a designated location. Based on Star Wars lore, these were maintenance droids used to perform minor repairs or as messenger bots which were voice activated to open and deliver a private message. His version would include WiFi (and/or Bluetooth) where the Droid could be accessed remotely and given instructions for its next task. To do this he set up a Mouse Droid webpage that was hosted on the Arduino Yun. He was able to send a message to the Yun TFT screen, play the Mouse Droid sounds as well as control the droid by moving it Forward, Backward, Left, Right and Stop. He added the ping sensor to the front but didn't use the sweep servo due to space. To create the body of the Mouse droid he used black foam board. This was cheap and easy to work with, although he did some work to get the shape he was looking for. He took a few sheets and cut the individual pieces he needed. After hot cluing the pieces together, the Mouse Droid shape started to take form. With the chassis and the body together, it was time to put the guts (electronics) in the Droid. This included the Arduino Yun, Ardiuno UNO, Seeed TFT Screen, Speaker, 7.2 to 5 volt regulator, Steering servo, Photon Speed 2 Motor, and ESC.

Arduino Powered MSE-6 (Mouse Droid)

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Recommended Products:

Product Name	Quantity
Arduino Yun	1	Buy NowBuy Now
Arduino Uno	1	Buy NowBuy Now
2.8' TFT Touch Shield	1	Buy NowBuy Now
7.2 to 5 Volt Regulator	1	Buy NowBuy Now
Parallax Ping Sensor Board	1	Buy NowBuy Now
Robotics Chassis	1	Buy NowBuy Now

Product Name
DuraTrax Photon Speed 2
Horizon ESC 60A ESC (Electronic Speed Controller)
Black Foam Board
Pluggable USB Audio
Speaker

A simple but scary gift of The Monster Book of Monsters (Harry Potter) by beagles

This is a very simple project for beginners like beagles ... or anyone going to a Harry Potter fancy dress party and in need of a prop!

She used an arduino uno, a motor shield and wheels

This project introduced her to the motor shield and wheels... new bits of kit for her.

A simple but scary gift of The Monster Book of Monsters (Harry Potter)

Exploding Kittens Soundboard by fvan

Don't worry, he didn't really make any kittens explode ... Exploding Kittens is a card game he plays frequently, which he find to be a lot of fun. There's no coding involved in this particular project, as the default sketch on the TouchBoard takes care of all the needed functionality. Based on the card, I drew the kitten on a piece of wood and cut it out using the jigsaw. After a bit of sanding, he applied grey paint to the front and when dry, applied the details using black. The electronics are simple. The Touch Board (originally launched via Kickstarter) is an Arduino compatible board, offering capacitive touch sensing and mp3 play out, making it perfect for this project. Using conductive paint, four pads were created, each capable of triggering a different sound effect. The board supports up to twelve touch points, should you want or need even more sound effects. Copper tape connects the pads to the Touch Board. No programming required, as explained earlier!

Exploding Kittens Soundboard

"I chose this, not because I don't like cats but, because it was fun. It is also very adaptable and could easily be used with different designs and sound effects at any public event/stall/fair. Frederick's video was also particularly fun to watch as he sped through the whole project." - Community Member Judge

Product Name
The Touch Board
conductive paint
copper tape
wood

Cyber Chicklet by dougw

Cyber Chicket

NTSC/PAL Video Display Shield by Wolfgang Friedrich's Blog

NTSC/PAL Video Display Shield

Intermittant Wipers by mcb1

This one started about 30 years ago.

Way back when making electronics was something you did.

There was no internet, no online shoppping like it is now, manufacturing was for the big boys and you recycled stuff to get parts you wanted to use.

He spotted an article in a magazine where someone had added Intermittant Wipers to a vehicle.

It saved you having to turn the switch ON, then turn it OFF, back On, Off, etc.

This one was a bit more clever.

You pressed the Start button and it wiped.

If you pressed the Start button within a certain time, it continued wiping at that time period (between the first and second press).

When the conditions changed, you pressed the stop button and if you did nothing else it would stop.

If you pressed the Start button, it would use the time between Stop and Start for the wipe interval.

Intermittant Wipers

BirthdaySpecial: MEGATRON32 - AVR Dev Board by sunnyiut

This blog post celebrated ARDUINO Day and Project14 Birthday.

However, sunnyiut doesn't use Arduino in every project because he is more comfortable with the raw use of Microcontroller. But he has an appreciation for the way Arduino changed the concept of open source hardware and firmware. The most glorious part of Arduino is that it owns the heart of everyone from enthusiasts, hobbyists to professionals.

To pay my tribute to Arduino he decided to share an old project based on AVR microcontroller, Atmega32.

This project does not directly related to Arduino, but stays with the themes suggested for Birthday Special.

MEGATRON32 - AVR Dev Board

Wordclock by mcb1

The electronics is based on an Arduino, some latches, RTC and LED strip lights.

These are fitted inside a housing to illuminate the various words that spell out the time.

It's a rather simple concept, and often the very clever ideas are simple.

The enclosure consists of a number of acrylic strips along with a front panel that has a cut graphic that spells out the words.

The front panel can be customised, and can be any language required, so it's a truly global product.

Wordclock

ArduTrx - a 2-meter-band ham radio transceiver with Arduino by bernhardmayer

ArduTrx - a 2-meter-band ham radio transceiver with Arduino

ArduTrx is a 2-meter-band ham radio transceiver which uses an Arduino as precessor board. bernhardmayer made the Arduino shield with the Dorji DRA818V transceiver module (http://www.dorji.com/docs/data/DRA818V.pdf). Together with an Arduino board and a SainSmart LCD Keypad Shield (https://www.sainsmart.com/products/lcd-keypad-shield-for-arduino-duemilanove-uno-mega2560-mega1280 ) you can build a complete ham radio transceiver and start communicating. This project does not only give some basic functions to communicate with the DRA818V, it moreover has all the fuctions for a completly usable transceiver.

RobotBobLet by dubbie

RoboBobLet#8 : The Final Assembly

The journey for RoboBobLet for the Robot with Wheels challenge came to an end when there was no more time left. Before finishing his project, dubbie added a V53L0X laser rangefinder to the 3D printed front piece added to the front of the Pixy camera and connected everything to the Nano. Apart from one head-scratching moment when one of the mounting pillars for the strip board was shorting two of the SPI signals (which prevented the Pixy camera collecting data) this final assembly went together quite easily. The video below shows the operation of RoboBobLet using the Pixy camera to avoid a blue object. He did not use the laser rangefinder data as he just didn't have enough time left to create the programme. The video shows that it detects the blue object and then turns away from it. When the object is out of view the mobile robot continues to move forwards.

Unfortunately RoboBobLet suffered an injury a short time later when the table he was on collapsed and he was crushed by a larger robot. Regretfully this damaged two of the continuous rotation servo motors so that they are erratic in operation. This means that RoboBobLet can randomly change direction at any time if the damaged motors stop operating correctly. If you listen carefully you can hear the gears crunching when RoboBobLet is moving forwards. He will need to get some more continuous rotation servo motors to fix this problem.

RobotBobLet

Long Shower = Candle Power by Sean_Miller

This project is a good example of how you can use electronics to promote water conservation. If you're like to take long showers and find that you can easily lose track of time when you're taking one then you'll appreciate this project. It's a shower timing device that uses bathroom lights to signal to you when you've been in it too long. If you don't get out of the shower, the lights turn off, and stay off. This project was done with an ESP8266 microcontroller, perfboard, a water temperature probe, 4.7 K resistor to pull the probe chip data line high, two tactile switches, a 3.3V power source, the Arduino IDE with ESP8266, 3.3V FTDI cable, and a smart light switch or bulb.

The two sensors are connected to inputs of the feather, and the water pump is controlled by an output signal from the feather. There are two built in LED’s on the feather:

Red: used to indicate that the soil is dry enough to warrant watering
Blue: Used to indicate that the bucket is empty (requires a refill of water)

There are three criteria which all have to be met in order to turn on the pump (and water the plant):

There must be water in the bucket
The lack of moisture in the soil must be greater than a specified threshold value
A specified minimum amount of time must have elapsed since the pump was last turned off while watering.

Any one of the following criteria will cause the pump to be turned off:

No water left in the bucket
The moisture level of the soil is higher than a specified threshold value (this criteria also triggers starting of the timer which keeps track of the amount of time that has elapsed since the pump was turned off).

Long Shower = Candle Power

"Why isn't he trying out for Ben Heck's replacement" - Community Member Judge

"A very documented and entertaining look at a simple approach to saving water by limiting shower time." - Community Member Judge

"Was a unique approach and would have been cool to have it regulate a switch on the shower to turn it off I thought it certainly was one of the more unique ideas in the group. Was well scripted video and well presented with great explanations." - Community Member Judge

Remote (Water) Temperature Monitoring by ntewinkel

ntewinkel wanted to keep track of the water level in his pond so he could get a warning when it needed topping out but wound up making a hummingbird feeder instead. Two things made him go a different route: 1, it's winter and the rain keeps the pond topped up continuously; and 2, I have a temperature sensor already hooked up and giving nice variable data for testing. He’s got hummingbirds that overwinter here, so they depend on the feeders being available through the winter. The problem is that when the weather gets really cold the feeders can freeze up. One solution locals often use is to hang a light bulb underneath it.

He started out with some very big and ugly tin cans with highish wattage light bulbs under them, but refined it to use a smaller neater setup later, with a smaller lightbulb like the ones used in salt lamps. Originally he had to use a Digispark Oak but after this did not work he used an ESP-01, one of the least expensive WiFi enabled Arduino boards available, instead. The trickiest part of programming the ESP-01 are the physical connections required to hook it up to the Arduino IDE. After finding some useful diagrams and instructions with some trial and error to do some extra figuring, he found a way to connect and program his ESP-01 using a USB serial adapter set to 3.3v and a mess of wires. He was happily surprised at how well this project turned out for him, and how useful it actually ended up being. He’ll likely be doing more temperature logging of this sort for other purposes later - like keeping track of my holiday trailer interior temperatures (summer and winter both), maybe checking up on pond water conditions, and who knows what else. In addition to temperature logging, it would also not take a lot of changes to record anything else required.

Remote (Water) Temperature Monitoring

"Great build and steps. Excellent cross checking to verify results" - Community Member Judge

dubbie over 4 years ago

Ahhhh, RoboBoBlet! My first ever Element14 Project14 competition (at least I think it was). Great. Mobile robots and Nanos - what could be better.

Dubbie
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