21 October 2012

Arduino – Looking Outwards

Beer Keyboard combines Arduino and Raspberry Pi

At the recent Webstock 2012 conference, Prague-based brewery Staropramen funded a Robofun Create project that produced a “Beer Keyboard”. The keyboard consisted of 44 cans of Staropramen which served as the “keys”. Visitors of the conference could enter Staropramen’s contest to win a trip to Prague only by typing in their email address with the beer keyboard. The would gently pressed each beer can to input a letter. R0bofun placed capacitive controllers as the base of the board. These controllers worked with the Arduino to record user-input, which was then routed through a Raspberry Pi to the TV.

While I do not endorse alcohol consumption, this piece I found to be a very cool combination of the Arduino, Raspberry Pi and metal cans.

Found @: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/16/beer-keyboard-combines-arduino-and-raspberry-pi-and-beer/

Video Game Shields / Mods for Arduino

I am a big fan of video games and am interested in being a part of the video game industry in the future, so I scoured the interwebs for video game related Arduino creations. I figured instead of just showing you one video game related use of the Arduino, I would show you a few. The first two video game shields really caught my attention and I am tempting to purchase at least one of them.

Gameduino:

The Gameduino is a shield for your Arduino. It allows you to connect it to a VGA monitor and speakers. It makes your Arduino into an 8-bit game system. There are tons of preinstalled items like hundreds of sprites, smooth scrolling, multi-channel stereo sound. Cost: $53

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voWWytKXF9g&w=420&h=315]

Found @: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2084212109/gameduino-an-arduino-game-adapter

GAMBY:

GAMBY (Games for Arduino, Made By You!) is a shield for your Arduino. It gives your Arduino a monochrome LCD, 4-way directional pad, buttons and speaker. Making your Arduino into the classic hand held game system. Cost: $25

Found @: https://tindie.com/logicalzero/gamby-arduino-retro-gaming-shield/

Touchscreen Version of Josh Freeman’s Crepuscular Life (aka a twist on Conway’s Game of Life):

Made with an Arduino and Touchscreen OLED screen. I thought this piece was really interesting because we had just talked about Conway’s Game of Life in class and then I found this adaptation of it relating to what we were going to study next. I think this really nicely shows how things can come together. The fact that it is touch screen adds greatly to it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_lqg_xruX0&w=420&h=315]

Freeman’s Code @: http://code.google.com/p/ironcoder/source/browse/trunk/entries/ironcoder_5/individual/Josh%20Freeman%20-%20Crepuscular%20Life/README.TXT?r=17

Breakout Game made with Arduino, OLED display & Joystick:

A Breakout mod made using an Ardunio, OLED display and a joystick. Another interesting tie-in to what we have done in class recently. A Breakout recreation using Arduino. I thought this was a very well done game for the hardware limitations at hand.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZlZTxnp2oI&w=560&h=315]

Source Code @: http://martinrov.wordpress.com/game-blocks/