Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Gustavo Brancante is working on a very interesting project that let you control a prosthetic arm with your muscle movement using open source technology with InMoov Hand (which can be 3D printed), Arduino Uno R3, and Olimex Electrocardiography electromiography shield (SHIELD-EKG-EMG). This is called a Myo-Electric Prosthesis. Gabriel wrote a tutorial to use his “open arm” which I’ll summarize here. On the hardware front, you’ll also need a UDP compatible Wifi Shield configured as a UDP server with a fixed IP in the same LAN as the smartphone, and 57600 bps. TouchOSC (for smartphone and Workstation) is used with the following layout for calibration and feature selection. Finally load the program below to your Arduino board: Once everything is connected together, you should be able to do that: The demo looks impressive, but this is still work in progress, and next step will be to use a four channel EMG instead […]

$34 BLEduino Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Arduino-Compatible Board

After RFDuino, here’s another tiny low cost Bluetooth 4.0 SMART development board compatible with Arduino. BLEduino board is the merger of Arduino Leonardo and Bluetooth module, features Atmel ATmega32u4 MCU, Nordic Semi nRF8001 for BLE, and includes an on-board USB programming interface. Key features of BLEduino board: MCU – Atmel ATmega32u4 @ 16 MHz with 32 KB flash, 2.5 KB SRAM, and 1 KB EEPROM Power Supply – 5V.  Onboard 5V & 3.3V regulators I/O: 21x GPIO Pins 6x PWM Channels 12x Analog Input Channels Serial Communication – UART, SPI, I2C LED – RX/TX for serial communication, LED for Bluetooth connectivity Bluetooth – Version 4.0 with Low Energy sypport via Nordic Semi nRF8001. Expected range: at least 24 meters Dimensions – Around 22.8 x 43.2 mm Kytelab, the company behind BLEduino, also provides “Shield-Shield”, a baseboard that translates BLEduino’s pin layout into the traditional Arduino layout, and allows you to […]

$25 Babuino Stick & Board Let You Control Your Devices with Your Smartphone and Vice Versa

Babuino Stick and Babuino Board are tiny low cost Arduino-compatible USB dongle and board featuring Atmel AVR MCU, and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR connectivity. Both have basically the same hardware, but Babuino Stick is more suited to control a computer or Smart TV via your smartphone, and Babuino Board can be used for robotics and automation projects. The device can also be used to control your smartphone (e.g. to write SMS) from your PC or Mac. Here are the specifications of these “Babuini”: MCU – Atmel ATXMega128A1 @ 32 MHz with 128KB flash program memory, 8KB boot code section, and 8KB SRAM. Master/Slave selectable Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR module Infrared transmitter and receiver USB – micro USB (board) and USB port (stick) User and reset push-buttons Headers (Board only) – ICSP pins, ADC & DAC, PWM, I2C & SMBus, SPI and UART LEDs – Bluetooth and User LED for both, […]

$59 Digitstump DigiX is an Arduino Due Compatible Board with Wi-Fi and Mesh Networking

The DigiX, by Digistump, is hobbyist board with an Atmel SAM3 Cortex M3 MCU @ 84 MHz, embedded low power Wi-Fi (b/g/n) and mesh networking,audio output, USB on the go support, and the company claims it is 100% compatible with anything that works with the Arduino Due, with some extra I/Os for a total of 99 I/O pins. The hardware specifications go as follows: MCU – Atmel AT91SAM3X8E 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 Processor @ 84 Mhz with 96KB SRAM, 512KB Flash Connectivity On-board 802.11b/g/n WiFi Module (FCC/CE Approved) On-board nRF24L01+ wireless module (removable) – 2.4Ghz band 99 I/O Pins including 12 PWM, 12 Analog Input, 2 Analog Output (DAC), CAN bus, 4x UARTs, 2x I2C, SPI, JTAG, DMA and more. Audio – 3.5mm stereo jack USB – micro USB OTG port Misc – On-board RTC, user LED Power Supply – 3.3V, 3.4-5.5V (LiPo Ready), 5V, or 6-16V input (on-board buck regulator) (Max?) Power […]

Souliss Automation and IoT Framework Makes Your Home Smarter

Souliss is an open-source framework written in C/C++ for the Internet of Things and home automation that runs on Arduino boards, or other Atmel AVR MCU based boards, and let your control lighting, heating, or anything else you can think of via your Android device, or switches connected to your board(s). You can get started with Souliss in 3 steps: Getting the building blocks, for example: Arduino, Olimex, or other AVR boards (See list of supported boards) Relay boards ON/OFF Switches, Lights, etc… Wi-Fi router Download and load Souliss to an AVR powered board controlling real things such as lights. Monitor and/or control via Souliss Home Automation App for Android. A detailed getting started guide is provided on Souliss Google Code page. Internally, the framework is composed of three parts: Souliss, an application level layer, MaCaco, a communication protocol and vNet, a transport layer. I’ll skip details in this post, […]

Arduino Unveils the Arduino Robot at Maker Faire

On top of announcing its first Linux powered board, Arduino also announced its first official robot at Maker Faire Bay Area called “Arduino Robot”. The robot comes with 2 wheels and  two boards: The Motor Board controlling the motors. The Control Board reading sensors and deciding how to operate. Each board, based on Atmel ATmega32u4 MCU, is programmable like any other Arduino board using the Arduino IDE. Control board specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega32u4 @ 16 MHz with 32KB flash, 2.5KB SRAM, and 1KB EEPROM External Storage – 512 Kbit EEPROM (I2C) + SD card reader for FAT16 formatted cards Display – Full color LCD over SPI communication I/O interfaces: 5x Digital I/O Pins 6x PWM Channels 4x Analog Input Channels  (of the Digital I/O pins) 8x Analog Input Channels (multiplexed) Misc – 5 keys keypad, Knob potentiometer attached to analog pin, 8 Ohm speaker, digital compass “Playground” – 3x I2C […]

$69 Linux Powered Arduino Yún Board is Designed for the Cloud

Massimo Banzi announced the Arduino Yún, the first of a  family of Wi-Fi products combining Arduino with Linux, at the Maker Faire Bay Area. The company used the name Yún (云), meaning “cloud” in Chinese, as the purpose of this board to allow connection to web services directly from Arduino. Arduino Yun Specifications: MCU – Atmel ATMega32u4 @ 16 MHz (same as the one used in Leonardo board) with 2.5KB SRAM and 32KB flash SoC – Atheros AR9331 MIPS-based Wi-Fi SoC running Linino, Arduino’s own Linux distribution based on OpenWRT. It’s the same chipset as in TP-Link WR703N router. Storage – microSD card slot USB – micro USB connector + full USB host port Connectivity – Ethernet + Wi-Fi 14 digital input/output pins (of which 7 can be used as PWM outputs and 12 as analog inputs) Arduino Yún ATMega32u4 can be programmed as a standard Arduino board by plugging it […]

Microchip Unveils 2 Arduino Compatible Boards, and a Prototype-Friendly PIC32 MCU

Microchip Technology has announced several new tools,  expanding its Arduino compatible chipKIT platform ecosystem, based on Microchip’s 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers (MCUs) available in  low pin count SOIC or SPDIP packages. Digilent’s chipKIT DP32 board features basic I/O and interface components, including a prototyping aera, user buttons, and a potentiometer. The board (part # TDGL019) costs $23.9, and should be available on May 17 at microchipDIRECT. The chipKIT Fubarino Mini board, from a partnership between FUBAR Labs and Schmalz Haus, provides another option for Arduino-compatible development with 32-bit PIC32 MCUs, using a smaller form factor. The board is supposed to be available today for $19.95 on microchipDIRECT, but I could not find it yet. If you don’t want/need a development board,  the company also provides PIC32MX250F128B MCU in PDIP package (28-pin) preprogrammed with chipKIT USB Bootloader.  This MCU, clocked up to 40Mhz, includes 128 KB Flash and 32 KB RAM, as well […]

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