Nano 33 IoT – DIY Database

This maker designed a custom flight controller for his supercapacitor-powered drone

Basic drones are very affordable these days—you can literally find some for less than the cost of a fast food drive-thru meal. But that doesn’t mean drones are easy to control. That is actually quite difficult, but manufacturers are able to work off of established reference designs. In a video that perfectly illustrates the difficulty, […]

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Most airplane designs have inherent aerodynamic stability. Even without power, they can continue to glide. Even helicopters have some inherent stability in the form of autorotation. Quadrotor drones do not—they need constant power and very frequent motor control updates just to stay aloft. Even the slightest control error will result in catastrophic failure. Despite knowing the challenge, The Tinkering Techie wanted to try making his own flight controller.

Aside from the custom flight controller, this drone is also unique for its power storage. Instead of conventional lithium batteries, it has a bank of supercapacitors. Those can fully charge in seconds—though they don’t store energy well over long periods of time.

The job of the flight controller is directing power from the supercapacitors to the motors (brushed DC motors, in this case) in a very precise manner. An Arduino Nano 33 IoT board oversees that process and The Tinkering Techie chose it because it has onboard sensors useful for a quadcopter, including a gyroscope and an accelerometer. A custom PCB hosts the Arduino and the supercapacitors, while a simple 3D-printed frame ties everything together.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a success story and The Tinker Techie ultimately failed to achieve stable flight. The are many potential reasons for that, but one of the most glaring was the use of brushed DC motors, which can’t respond as fast as brushless DC motors can — an important factor for a drone.

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This Flip-Pelt wearable concept enables ultra-fast thermal feedback in VR

The post This Flip-Pelt wearable concept enables ultra-fast thermal feedback in VR appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on your arm? Or the cold of chilly water? Engineers around the world have been trying to make that happen, but there is a big problem: temperature changes are slow. The immersive effect diminishes when the thermal feedback lags behind the virtual cause. That’s why a team from South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology turned to motors to dramatically speed up the process.

The Flip-Pelt wearable device relies on Peltier elements to create heating and cooling effects, which is a common strategy for thermal feedback. Peltier elements use electricity to produce thermal transfer, heating one side of the element while simultaneously cooling the other side. By placing a Peltier element against the skin, it is possible to create a cooling or heating sensation on demand.

But it takes a long time to reverse the thermal transfer — changing a side of the Peltier element from hot to cold is too slow to be useful for VR thermal feedback. So, the Flip-Pelt prototype doesn’t even bother. Instead, it keeps the Peltier elements going in just one direction and physically swaps the side of the elements that touch the user’s skin.

The prototype Flip-Pelt device contains eight Peltier elements arranged in two rows along the inside of the user’s forearm. Eight servo motors, controlled by an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board, can flip the elements from the cool side to the hot side in response to events in the VR world. The Arduino also controls the Peltier elements themselves through H-bridges, so it can adjust the power going to each.

While this is relatively complex, it does create almost instant changes in perceived temperature.

You can read more about the project in the team’s published paper here.

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Get notified of impending floods with this Arduino Nano 33 IoT-based display

As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric rivers have only intensified, and with them, large amounts of flooding that pose serious risks to life and property. Jude Pullen and Pete Milne, therefore, have responded by creating a “physical app” that can show the potential for flood dangers in real-time with […]

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The Arduino Nano 33 IoT powering the Flood Alert device sources its data from the UK Environmental Agency’s API to get statistics on an area’s latest risk level along with an extended description of what to expect. Initially, the electronics were mounted to a breadboard and housed within a cardboard enclosure, but a later revision moved everything to soldered protoboard, a 3D-printed case, and even added a piezoelectric buzzer to generate audible alerts.

For now, the Flood Alert’s sole source of data is the aforementioned API, but Pullen hopes to expand his potential data sources to include “hyper-local” sensors that can all be aggregated and analyzed to give a much more precise view of flooding in a smaller area.

To learn more about Flood Alert and its myriad applications to local communities and beyond, check out Pullen and Milne’s well-detailed Instructables tutorial.

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BrainPatch.AI: How a British neurotech startup built a working prototype fast, using Arduino Nano 33 IoT

The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and effective non-invasive interfaces that can deliver tiny milliamp currents to the right stimulation location on the head, neck or body. One example of the new players in this field is BrainPatch.AI, a Cambridge-based neurotech startup, which has developed an […]

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BrainPatch co-founder and CEO, Dr Nickolai Vysokov, explains: “Our innovative headphones are designed to gain indirect access to the vagus and the vestibular nerves via electrodes placed just behind the ears. The vagus nerve regulates the ‘rest and digest’ response of the nervous system, and stimulating it is known to lead to reduction of stress, improvement of heart rate variability, better communication between the mind and the body, and an improved overall state of wellbeing in general.”

Prototyping at mind-bending speed

Ordinarily, the time and effort required to produce a range of working prototypes would take larger companies years to accomplish, let alone a startup, which is why BrainPatch.AI chose to use a range of Arduino boards for their initial designs and testing. What began as a simple Arduino UNO-based circuit quickly evolved into an AI-enabled neuromodulator, leveraging the Arduino Nano 33 IoT’s built-in internet connectivity. Mobile devices are connected to the board via Bluetooth® Low Energy to allow precision protocol delivery and ability to adjust the protocol through Python® and integration with other devices. Altogether, the capability to leverage Arduino’s vast collection of libraries and hardware ecosystem ensured rapid progress could be made in a cost-effective manner.

Finding like-minded partners is the key to success!

As a leading startup in the emerging neurotechnology space, BrainPatch.AI had the opportunity to meet with Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi at Hardware Pioneers Max 2023 in London. The team was eager to demonstrate how effective their neuro stimulation device is, and to share how integrating Arduino hardware enabled them to move quickly – and can also be the go-to solution for many other startups and neurotechnology enthusiasts in the future. Nickolai adds, “Arduino is simply the best solution for any hardware / middleware / software startup prototyping, and we were blessed to have Arduino products and third-party libraries available when we needed them the most, to kickstart the process of transformation from ideas onto the physical objects. And now, we are ready to share our technology and our libraries with the world and other startups. If you are a co-founder of a startup, you must try our device when you get overstretched and overstressed. It’s life changing – and all thanks to Arduino.”

The current iteration of the company’s e-Meditation and VR enhancement products along with more information about the science behind non-invasive neuromodulation can be found here on BrainPatch’s website.

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