Category: Nano

Giving a teenage pet turtle a synthetic pizza-ordering voice

If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of some degree of training. Training is really just taking advantage of an animal’s natural inclination to adapt for survival, which is something all living organisms do. With that in mind, YouTuber Bao’s Builds constructed a box to give […]

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If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of some degree of training. Training is really just taking advantage of an animal’s natural inclination to adapt for survival, which is something all living organisms do. With that in mind, YouTuber Bao’s Builds constructed a box to give his teenage pet turtle a synthetic voice capable of ordering pizza.

The turtle, Lightning, just reached its 18th birthday and Bao decided that this would be the perfect gift. Like those mats covered in buttons that really smart dogs press with their paws to talk, Bao wanted Lightning to have a device with buttons assigned to specific requests, like “feed me” or “play with me.” Turtles aren’t quite as intelligent as border collies, so Bao decided the device only needed four buttons — turtles have pretty modest wants and needs, anyway.

Aside from the buttons themselves, which are standard arcade buttons, the key hardware components for this project are an Arduino Nano, a generic sound module, and a speaker. That sound module stores audio clips on an SD card to play whenever the Arduino makes a request. It also has a built-in amplifier, so it can feed a signal directly to the speaker. The sound clips contain realistic AI-generated voices: one for requesting food, one for requesting pets, and one for expressing love.

The final button orders pizza, which is the favorite food of teenage turtles (mutant or otherwise). That works by playing a sound file that tells an Amazon Echo to have Alexa place an order at Dominos. 

Sadly, Lightning seems to have struggled to grasp the concept — maybe Skinner was wrong, after all. But that’s probably a good thing for limiting the Bao’s Dominos budget.

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Exercise while you game with this interactive treadmill add-on

Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of virtual reality headsets, gaming is still done with relatively limited movement unless one has access to an expensive VR walking/running setup. As an effort to get more physical activity in, Iacopo Guarneri has developed a motion-capturing add-on that can be […]

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Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of virtual reality headsets, gaming is still done with relatively limited movement unless one has access to an expensive VR walking/running setup. As an effort to get more physical activity in, Iacopo Guarneri has developed a motion-capturing add-on that can be worn while on a treadmill, stationary bike, or elliptical to control in-game actions.

The wearable device itself is comprised of two components: an Arduino Nano and a six-axis MPU-6050 inertial measurement unit (IMU), which captures changes in velocity and orientation. Both of these parts are housed in a custom 3D-printed case that can be attached to the user’s back via a strap. In the sketch, the Nano continuously reads motion data from the IMU, packs it into a serialized representation, and sends it over serial to the host machine for further processing.

Unlike how running in a video game is performed by holding the left joystick up, the accelerometer outputs a sine wave in the Z-axis while the user is bobbing up and down, which necessitated the use of a smoothing function to prevent sudden stops and starts. Turns, however, are much simpler, as the user’s left or right tilt can be directly translated into sideways motion. Once both axes have been calculated, the virtual gamepad’s inputs are updated with the new values and sent to the game.

You can read more about Guarneri’s project here on Hackster.io.

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This miniature monorail stays upright with the help of gyro stabilization

Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is actually a very wide beam. The car’s load tires (often literal truck or trailer tires) roll on top of that beam and guide tires clamp the sides of the beam, preventing the car from getting tippy. But […]

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Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is actually a very wide beam. The car’s load tires (often literal truck or trailer tires) roll on top of that beam and guide tires clamp the sides of the beam, preventing the car from getting tippy. But what if the rail were more like a conventional train track? In the case of Hyperspace Pirate’s monorail model, active gyro stabilization is the key.

Nobody has really produced a working full-scale gyroscope-stabilized monorail system since first conceived by Louis Brennan in 1903, because the idea simply isn’t practical at that size. Active gyroscope stabilization requires a lot of energy and is quite complex. If anything goes wrong, disaster is just around the corner. But on a small model scale, such considerations are much less relevant.

Hyperspace Pirate took advantage of that fact to create a shrunken-down version of the 20th century experimental monorail that travels along a 24″ track. It uses a control moment gyroscope (CMG) to keep the car upright on the single narrow rail. A CMG like this one uses a spinning mass’s inertia to resist torque that would change the axis of rotation. If you’ve ever played with one of those gyroscope hand exercise balls, this works in a similar manner. This monorail utilizes two of them to counteract side-to-side tipping, while cancelling out the tendency of them to reduce forward-backward tilting. 

The challenge with this design is that it requires active actuation of the individual CMG flywheels, which is a major reason why it would be impractical at a full-scale. But Hyperspace Pirate was able to solve that problem by using an Arduino Nano board to tilt the spinning flywheels using servo motors. It does so in response to any tipping, which it detects using an MPU6050 IMU sensor. 

With some added outrigger weights, similar to a tightrope-walker’s pole, Hyperspace Pirate was able to build a monorail that seems to work fairly well. 

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Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands

A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab went back to the workbench to add voice control […]

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A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab went back to the workbench to add voice control capabilities.

ElectronicLab was using an Arduino Nano to control the electric jack motor in response to button presses, so he already had most of the hardware necessary to make the system smarter. He just needed the Arduino to recognize specific voice commands, which he was able to achieve using an ELECHOUSE Voice Recognition Module V3.

That voice recognition modules supports up to 80 voice commands, but ElectronicLab only needed a few of them — just enough to tell the chair which direction to move and how far to go. The module came with a microphone, which ElectronicLab was able to attach outside of the 3D-printed enclosure where it could pick up his voice.

But there was still one problem: the movement was very slow. The jack was designed to lift a car, so it uses a high-torque motor with a 10:1 planetary gearset to drive a hydraulic pump. ElectronicLab didn’t need that much torque, so he welded the planetary gears to give the motor a direct 1:1 ratio. Sadly, that was a mistake. The hydraulic oil can’t flow fast enough to keep up, so the motor pulls way too much current for the driver.

Still, the voice control was a success and so ElectronicLab can simply swap out the motor.

Perhaps in the future ElectronicLab can even consolidate the components using the speech recognition-capable Nano 33 BLE Sense Rev2 or Nano RP2040 Connect…

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Patrol the pool with this Arduino Nano-powered DIY RC submarine

There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other vehicles. Maybe that reflects our natural fears and phobias, or maybe it is a result of our curiosity about the mysterious depths. Maybe it is simply that most of us will never get the chance to ride in a submarine. But […]

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There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other vehicles. Maybe that reflects our natural fears and phobias, or maybe it is a result of our curiosity about the mysterious depths. Maybe it is simply that most of us will never get the chance to ride in a submarine. But you can get some of the experience with a model, like 15-year-old Ben Kennedy did with this DIY RC submarine.

This is a remote-controlled submarine built entirely from scratch and it is very impressive. It is a 500mm-long vessel loosely modeled after the Soviet (and now Russian) Akula-class submarine. But the resemblance is entirely superficial, as the Kennedy’s design is 100% original. 

The hull and most of the rest of the parts were modeled in Autodesk Fusion 360 and then 3D-printed. An Arduino Nano board receives radio signals from a Flysky FS-i6X transmitter controller via a Flysky iA10B receiver. The Arduino then controls the various systems that allow the submarine to move through the water.

Four small aquarium pumps move water in and out of the ballast tanks to control buoyancy. A single brushless DC motor, which is naturally waterproof, provides thrust. Two waterproof MG995 servo motors actuate the rudders for yaw and pitch, which are necessary for diving/surfacing and steering. Most of the hull isn’t watertight, so Kennedy placed a waterproof plastic bag inside the hull to protect the Arduino and the lithium battery that provides power. 

Kennedy tested the sub in his family’s backyard pool and it seems to have performed nicely. He posted his design files and code, so anyone can build their own RC submarine. 

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