Cameron tipped us to a circuit simulator for Android devices. It looks a lot like the java based circuit simulator we wrote about a few weeks ago.  Everycircuit seems like a useful tool if you want to play around with electronics anywhere you find yourself. Unfortunately it seems to only support abstract level simulation models, not actual real components.

[via] dangerousprototypes.com

Circuit simulator for Android devices - [Link]

by Mauricio Martins, Tiago Rorke, Filipe Cruz, Tiago Farto and Ferdinand Meier

Nuclear Taco Sensor Helmet Gameshow is the name of our project entry for the 48h hack project of Sapo Codebits 2011. The aim of the competition was to develop a project during 48 hours and present it in 90 seconds to a live audience. Out of over 80 proposed projects, 65 were presented live.
We won the 1st place of the public voting.

Abstract

The 48h project consisted of building a helmet device with humidity, temperature and fluid intake sensors, used to record and measure the reaction of nuclear taco victims of Codebits 2011 Nuclear Taco Challenge. The sensors and servos are connected by Arduino. 6 timelapse videos were recorded documenting the user experience. The 1:30 project presentation was in the style of a Japanese gameshow using OpenFrameworks. The host displayed using face substituion technology in realtime.

Motivation

Our motivation to develop this project was the following:

• Do something fun with sensors and Arduino, that would show people how easy it is to use these things.
• Showcase applications of recent Face Tracking and Face Substitution technology.
• Do a presentation format that would not leave anyone indifferent to our project.
• Bring attention to the creative community we have in the Audiência Zero hacker spaces in Portugal (LCD in Porto / Guimarães, xDA in Coimbra, altLab in Lisbon), in hopes of getting new members.
• Take home some new hardware.

Video of Presentation

Before Codebits

Concept

At Sapo Codebits 2010 the event organizers held a nuclear taco challenge during one of the nights of the event. Many brave attendees spent their last day of the event in severe discomfort, cursing their idealized bravery. No members of our team were brave enough to take on the nuclear taco challenge but the memories of everyone else suffering lingered on with us. Then one day a lightbulb was turned on inside Mauricio Martins‘s head when he saw a tv comercial for MEO featuring Ricardo Araujo and an “all American” beer helmet.

The idea Mauricio had awaken inside his head was to use his Arduino and sensors expertise to pimp that beer helmet into a nuclear taco sensor device of some sort. He began looking for the pieces required.

By the way, if you want to learn how to use Arduinos for random projects, there are some workshops at altLab on a regular basis.

Read more

sustburbia.blogspot.com writes:

Back in July I was contacted by Nikki of fizzPop Hackspace in Birmingham about making very low cost Arduino clones on stripboard. I hadn’t really given it much thought until I realised how easy it would be to make an Arduino compatible device on stripboard (or breadboard) for something less than a fiver!

I’ve tried to standardise the design, to make use of the ATmega328 pin-out – which lends itself for an efficient layout.
Here’s a couple of recent boards – one is a controller for a spark ignition system, and the other is a general purpose layout – just the Arduino in the corner of a vast expanse of prototyping board.

Below is the prototype spark ignition controller. It is based on the Atmel ATmega328 microcontroller and uses the standard FTDI USB to serial cable as a means of

Arduinoids – The Rise of the Machines - [Link]

electronics-lab.com writes:

The MHVBoard is an Arduino clone kit, which does away with a second chip for USB comms, and instead uses V-USB to talk directly to the main microcontroller.

The kit has been designed to run soldering workshops, and is completely hand-solderable, even by complete newbies (all through hole components except for 1 large pin soltage regulator).

Programming is done via the USBAspLoader bootloader, which presents itself to the computer as a USB ASP programmer, which AVRDude knows how to talk to. Patches for the Arduino environment to teach it about this board are also included.

Since the chip directly has USB support, projects can easily emulate low-speed USB devices using the V-USB library. I have integrated USB Keyboard support into ourMHVLib runtime library, and others have written similar libraries for the Arduino environment.

The MHVBoard also has a prototying area available, and our members have successfully used this for various interfaces (displays, nunchucks, etc). I have also built a software controllered 3V->5V boost regulator (using the MHVlib driver) in the proto-area so I can run off LiPos, but that is another project

Other unique features include a 20MHz clock (instead of 16MHz on other Arduino boards), as well as breadboard compatibility. A right angle connector can be mounted along the edge, allowing the whole board to be installed (standing vertically) into a breadboard, with all pins broken out.

MHVBoard – an Arduino Clone - [Link] [Via]