Featured Adafruit Community Project
Luc Gallant shared his Talking C-3PO Project in the Adafruit Forums!
My desire to do this project was based on having a life size C-3PO bust, and it constantly looking at me, saying nothing. I just needed it to talk. Plus, I liked that such a project would have both software and hardware interaction.
Project Objective: Allow visitors to make C-3PO talk from both his quotes from all six movies, as well as being able to speak sentences based on the words extracted from the movie quotes. The user would use either their smartphone or our media center tablet to visit a website hosted on a computer of some sort, and when the user selects quotes or types in his/her own sentences, they would play out at the C-3PO bust itself. Note that the way I’ve done the software and the methodology I used, could be applied to any bust or talker project desire, should you so have the stubbornness to proceed…
There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 80,865 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!
This Week’s Edition of Adafruit’s Electronics Show and Tell!
From the Google+ Community
(Note: Google+ login required.)
Eric William shared: “Making some electronics project cases. Just because we can 🙂 Cheers! 3D Printing Some Electronics Project Parts” (read more)
Amber Petchey shared: “Just over a month ago, I was challenged by a friend to make chainmail. So I grabbed my pliers, some spare wire from a roll of zinc mesh, and I got to it. I’m quite pleased with the end results – it takes hours to do a small swatch, comes with a simply brutal learning curve, but is epic level rewarding. :D” (read more)
S. Blake Brienz shared: “Some months ago, my 5 year old dishwasher quit draining the waste water. Not being super excited about buying a new one I decided I could take an hour and try to fix it. I originally suspected it was the pump, reading on the pump I could see it was 120v AC. Awesome I could make a pig tail and plug it straight in, to my surprise it worked! To my horror, that meant I had to find what wasn’t working. Since the machine still cycled but left the water in the bottom, I figured it wasn’t the control board. I connected a toner and used an inductive pickup to see which relay controlled the wastewater pump. I desoldered the relay and found the coil side of the relay showed no continuity. I connected a 12v source to be sure. No clicking is a bad sign. By this time it had been three days, my sweet wife said I needed to start washing the dishes, by hand. I had already sourced the replacement relay but it hadn’t arrived. Having no desire to wash dishes by hand, it was time to improvise. I went to RadioShack and found a single throw relay that would work, problem was the pins didn’t fit the holes in the board. Enter, the rats nest pictured here. The relay had to be where it was to meet space requirements inside the dishwasher. So using two sided tape and packing tape I placed the relay on its side, and ran leads to where the pins were originally. Astute eyes can see Cat5e and speaker wire were employed. The temporary solution worked great, and a year later I finally got around to putting the spec replacement in. So the pictures are from what I actually removed and re-installed today. Oh and with the money I saved I bought a Hakko soldering iron. Soldering those wires last year with a cheap Sears pistol iron about killed me. So two less than $5 relays were obviously way cheaper than the replacement board $140. Or a new dishwasher $350+. Even when you include the price of the Hakko I came out ahead….” (read more)
Arun Jeevaraj shared: “led cube on three controllers.. makes a 3d diagram.. soldered by my buds.(i like to give all credits to them). or can show cool andimations. i coded the controllers. a work of 8 hours straight. next idea is to make an analog clock and calendar out of it.” (read more)
Daniel Would shared: “I quite like when auto-awesome does it’s thing when I’ve been taking pictures and video of a project.” (read more)
Matthew W shared: “Yesterday, I completed a project that uses shift registers and an Attiny85 microcontroller to create a counter on a 7-segment display. This morning, I tried making it post a scrolling message, but I ran into a couple issues… I completely avoided any unreadable letters like M, K, and W so that limited the words I could use. The original code couldn’t fit on the Attiny so I stripped it down to display just “Adafruit” over and over.” (read more)
Richard Freeman shared: “working on a motion controlled predator turret. this is where i am right now. using arduino and some python…. this video I was demonstrating on my laptop, but I made this to use with my raspberry pi. works very well… runningaverage, accelstepper, afmotor libraries included. the github here.” (read more)
Piotr Maliński shared: “I just made a test of my idea of “pushing” buttons via solid state relay (I used LAA110; transistors would work too) to make a key chain camera work like if a human would push the buttons to record or take a picture 😉 It works – so instead of a camera module you could use a camera… or any other device controlled by buttons :)” (read more)
Matthew Keeter shared: “Here’s my DIY mp3 player. It plays music off a microSD card, runs on a lithium-polymer battery, and charges/transfers files over USB. It’s also got a custom case printed on a stereolitography machine, so the resolution and surface finish is excellent. Sure, there are a bunch of DIY mp3 players out there, but this project stands out in terms of polish — it’s a complete package, and all the design files are open-source and freely available.” (read more)
Bill Owen shared: “Almost finished with custom PC” (read more)
Community Projects from the Adafruit Blog
f varas-genestier shared a RasPi Telescope project using our PiTFT Mini Kit: “This is a really low cost astrophotography device implementation, simple to build and not intended to do complicated (i.e. long exposition, tracking) photography. My main inspiration to build it was my nephew.” (read more)
Made by Many has developed an at-desk indicator for their office bathroom using a raspberry pi, pi t-cobbler breakout, and more! The indicator, made from LEDs, signals whether the restroom is occupied or unoccupied and is visible throughout the office. Not only does it prevent useless walks from their desks to the bathroom throughout the day, it also provides employees with a sense of privacy often lost to the office environment. “Fiona and Raffi began fiddling with a Raspberry Pi to see if they could come up with the bare essential hardware & software. From there (with my near-non-existent knowledge of electronics) I was able to extrapolate on what they had created to add a few more switches and LEDs. We soon had a circuit that resembled the end result….” (read more)
Dave Hunt shared the incredible PiPhone project, featuring the PiTFT: “Working smartphone based on Raspberry Pi, Adafruit PiTFT touchscreen display, and a SIM900 GSM/GPRS module. All suitably powered by a DC-DC conveyer and a Lithium Polymer battery. See my site for more information. Source code at github” (read more)
Robert Linhart shared his Carbot project on Show & Tell Last week — here are more details about his Carbot: Cardboarduino Cardboard Arduino Robot: “I wanted to see what I would come up with building a robot on the cheap. I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve learned from this project. I’ve really enjoyed building parts and after critical review re-designing them. This repo contains SketchUp drawings and Arduino Sketches I designed. I’ve approached this projects in steps and plan to add to it in a modular fashion, building the robot, control movement, add sensors and algorithms….” (read more)
Heath Young shared his Blue Wall Defender Arduino Game in the Adafruit Forums: “I have created a game using an Arduino Mega 2560 and 6 x 12mm Diffused Thin Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801. The Blue Wall Defender: Defend your blue wall against the invading Red and Green dots that are trying to destroy your wall. The wall has 6 hit points and each enemy takes 1 off. The enemy’s can not harm you only the wall. There are three buttons the middle one(Number 2) will start the game and shoot, the other two will move you up and down. (read more)
Bob Coggeshall shared a shot of his “Teletype Driven By a Raspberry Pi” project that he had shared on the “As Seen on Show and Tell!” (read more)
Instructables user p3nguin made this gorgeous glowing crown using our 60 Neopixel ring! “I love some of the new wearable stuff that’s showing up on Adafruit, Hackaday and Make Magazine. When I saw Adafruit’s new 60 LED Neopixel Ring, I knew exactly what I wanted to build for my daughters… I had made a previous attempt at head wear for the Father-Daughter dance last month but out of failure comes inspiration. Presenting the Laser Crown for the princesses in your life! The Laser Crown is stunningly bright, lightweight and comfortable. It has no visible wires, USB chargeable, completely programmable, lasts 1-6 hours, has a replaceable battery, expandable, compatible with most arduino type microcontrollers and can be built in an afternoon. And you get to use a laser cutter… Oh, and the princess gets to look stunning!” (read more)
Here’s an architectural model project created by JayJo on Thingiverse — who also shares many projects in the Adafruit Community as Rifle Creek! Residential Model by JayJo @ Thingiverse: “A Residence in Breckenridge, CO.” (read more)
Johan shared “Meet Lili, a Robot Lamp” featuring the Adafruit NeoMatrix: “I created a friendly robot, her name is Lili, she’s funny motorized little lamp that interacts with people around her. Adafruit’s NeoMatrix is a central item of this project, and an amazing product!” (read more)
Young Money: Seven Successful Entrepreneurs Under Age 17 – Businessweek. Nicely done Thomas! “Thomas has developed more than 20 iOS apps, 9 Android apps, and 3 Google Glass apps. His 2011 TEDx talk on kids teaching kids to program has been viewed more than 3 million times.” (read more)
Check out the cosplay interview with Jen Yates of EPBOT by Adafruit’s Amy Ratcliffe: “Jen Yates of Epbot has been impressing me with her how-tos and crafty skills for a couple of years. She not only comes up with creative ways to approach cosplay, she makes it look simple. Jen is especially skilled when it comes to designing steampunk apparel and accessories. Her detailed tutorials always make me sit back and think, hey, I can do that too – or at least I can try. Her encouraging nature is the kind of attitude that inspires others to dive into cosplay and see what happens. She was kind enough to spend time answering some of our questions about her cosplay history….” (read more)
Check out previous Community Corner posts here!
Community Corner! Sharing and celebrating the creative community: Show and tell, Ask an Engineer, mailbag, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, “Makers, hackers, artists & engineers. Sharing, learning and celebrating making!