Play the short video above to see what it looks like with 4 modules
In 1970, John Conway came up with a 1-player game called Game of Life. The Game of Life is a mathematical game that simulates ‘colonies’ that grow or die based on how crowded or lonely they are and is known for the way it creates a beautiful organic display out of randomness.
Here is a design for a simple electronic project that plays Conway’s Game of Life. Make one kit and keep it on your desk, or attach multiple kit modules together to create a large display.
Originally created by Dropout Design, this revision adds a few extra features. You can build the boards from the schematic and open source firmware, or buy full kits from the Adafruit shop. The kit is very easy to make and an excellent first electronics project. It is perfect for workshops since at the end everyone can connect their completed module together.
Features:
Each kit displays a 4×4 grid (16 LEDs)
Connect as many kits as youd like, in any configuration, to create a larger game board
Runs off of 2 AA batteries, but can be easily modified to run off of USB or wall-wart power
On/Off button to save power, also for resetting the display
Automatically resets if the colony has died or stagnated (regeneration)
Here is an example of how to make a cool Internet application using the XPort shield I recently released. This is very simple, but its a good example of getting and outputting data. Basically the Arduino serves up a webpage with a bunch of nice javascript code that allows you to select a color. It also displays a “current color” (in this case a light green)
When you click "Submit" on the page, another request is made to the XPort/Arduino, this time with a GET command ?color=#xxxxxx with the color information. The Arduino looks for this command, parses the color requested and calls analogWrite() on the three LEDs to change them into that color.
Want to try it out? Go to -> http://ladyada.net/make/eshield/colorpickerfwd.html which will forward you to the correct IP address (since I dont have DNS for my home network). The XPort can only receive one connection at a time so if you cant get thru, please be patient!
Want your Arduino to check email? How about sending a twitter (which can then be easily forwarded to a phone via SMS)? Or grabbing data from a website? There are so many possibilites for projects that connect to the Internet to get data, now there’s an easy way to do it with an Arduino.
This shield allows you to add and use an XPort or XPort direct(+) Ethernet module (they cost only US$30-$50) using any 4 pins. All of the TCP/IP stack awfulness is done for you in the module so its super easy to just connect to any server.
Arduino is a great starting point for electronics, and with a motor shield it can also be a nice tidy platform for robotics and mechatronics. Here is a design for a full-featured motor shield that will be able to power many simple to medium-complexity projects.
2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos with high-resolution dedicated timer - no jitter!
Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or interleaved stepping.
4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, 4.5V to 36V
Pull down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up
Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (10-22AWG) and power
Arduino reset button brought up top (Diecimila only)
2-pin terminal block to connect external power, for seperate logic/motor supplies
oPossom totally rocked my socks with a simple hack to turn a Minipov3 kit into an IR code receiver. The kit is modified to store incoming IR signal into the EEPROM which is then spit out via the serial port to a custom program that then translates it directly into a code for TV-B-Gone kits.
Here is a preview of the motor shield for Arduino that I’m workin’ on…it can drive 2 hobby servos as well as up to 2 steppers or 4 bidirectional DC motors.
WinAVR was compiled with a 2 year old version of libusb (v0.1.10) instead of the most recent version (v0.1.12), which means that it is incompatible with the original driver that I posted up on the USBtinyISP download page. Thus if you want to use the latest WinAVR, you must uninstall the driver and then reinstall the older (v0.1.10) version which is now available on the download page.
Otherwise, youll get a nasty surprise:
as the device seems to be working, but avrdude can’t “find” it!
If you don’t want to reinstall the driver, you’ll have to replace the avrdude.exe and libusb0.dll with the modified versions (also available and described in detail on the download page).
The other bad news is that I made some mistakes in the code that make it incompatible with 64-bit. Hopefully I will get that tested/fixed for the next revision…not having a 64 bit machine makes it a bit annoying to debug!
Thinking about the Arducopter project I posted about yesterday, as well as the RepRap project…I thought how useful it would be to be able to wire up a Boarduino without any soldering or breadboard. Then I remembered the terminal blocks I used for MidiSense!
Terminal screw-blocks allow lightweight ultra-quick prototyping: just tighten the little screws to add or remove components! Use Phoenix brand 0.1″ terminal blocks, part 1725672 (4-position), 1725698 (6-position), 1725711 (8-position), 1725724 (9-position)
Here’s an example I soldered up. You cant use huge wires, but for most small projects with 20-ish gauge wire it should be just fine!
Here is a ’standalone’ light sensor (CdS cell, pullup resistor to Analog In 0, VRef tied to 5V)
One of the reasons I designed my own Arduino clone is so that people who wanted to design wearable or portable (ie small/lightweight) projects would have a nice and slender alternative. jordi’s original helicopter used an Arduino Diecimilla, but for weight reasons he decided to go with a Boarduino for rev 2, but even that didn’t get away without a lot of hacking….
