SchmartBoard is giving away one new SchmartBoard SMT Arduino Prototyping Shield. To enter, visit the SchmartBoard giveaway page and fill out the registration form. You only need to enter once to have a chance to win every month that the contest runs.
The Louisville hackerspace released an Adruino Dashboard app a few weeks back. They have just release a new update that removes the need to install processing.org.
A graphic interface for the Bus Pirate is a common request. Pirateship was the first to be released more than a year ago. It hasn’t been actively developed, but the source code is now available and hopefully someone will make an improved version.
Dangerous Prototypes Bus Pirate
I’ll pay 2BTC to anyone that contributes a useful/requested update to this utility in the next 30 days.
This robot kicking the beer can around in this video is known as DARwin-OP. This the result of an Open Platform Humanoid Project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States and developed by RoMeLa at Virginia Tech with collaboration with University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University and Robotis Co., based on the award winning DARwIn series humanoid robots in development since 2004.
If you want to build your own version, publicly open CAD files for all of its parts, and instructions manuals for fabrication and assembly are available on-line for free.
Or if you are in a rush. You can special order from Trosson Robotics for $12,000! A little pricey for my taste.
Kenneth Finnegan built a thermocouple with USB and serial interface:
This is a device that takes a thermocouple temperature input, converts it into a digital value, and then spits out the temperature on a serial port, which you can then feed into a computer, or another microcontroller. This is a useful device for any time when you want to be able to monitor or log a temperature.
All CAD files and a link to DorkbotPDX’s group PCB order are included if you’d like to have your own set of board made for this or other projects.
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Minibloq is a programing environment that uses a graphical interface to “build” Arduino code a block at a time.
Code components are dragged and dropped into place on one side of the screen, while the source code is generated on the other half. This helps gently introduce those people new to the Arduino on how to write actual code, a little bit at a time.
Miniblog is very similar to the Modkit project but is stand alone and completely open source and expandable. This makes the language easy for beginners and children alike to program the Arduino and learn C.
[Julián] is working hard to ensure that his application works well on OLPC and other classroom-oriented computers to ensure it can reach as wide an audience as possible.
The first release of the application will be available soon for download. So check the download page on [Julián]‘s blog frequently for the first release!
A site completely dedicated to Arduino Shields. A great public resource that will be constantly updated to see what shields are available for the Arduino. The site includes the license status for each shield. There is even a bounty for submitting new shields not currently in the database. So, head on over and win a Freetronics ProtoShield Basic!
