Featured Adafruit Community Project

Quite a few people are creating jack-o-lantern projects now in preparation for Halloween, here’s one from Matt Heilman after our own heart. And check out his electronic flickery candle test below as well — a great idea for applying a little electronics know-how for this Halloween classic.

There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 64,028 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!

From the Google+ Community

(Note: Google+ login required.)

Manoel Lemos shared: “Arduino IoT Energy Monitor: And my project is evolving. I did some enhancements on the user interface and it is showing more information in a more friendly way. In this screen we can see the instant total power consumption of the house and a bar graph with the history of the last 24 hours. Next I’ll work on a few more visualization modes.” (read more)

Brian Gardner shared a BDG Customs Circuit Bitz ADK 2012 Micro Android Open Accessory board in Acrylic case: “We started working with our ADK 2012 board again, we made a case for it and added some of our Circuit Bitz LED strips to it. Next we are going to start working on controlling with a android device over bluetooth.” (read more)

Mike Barela shared build documentation from his projects working with the FLORA, including this great project: “Nearly ready to sew in: Flora, VS1053, amplifier, neo pixel, and Lipo. Should be recognizable to some. #electronichalloween” (read more)

Ali Wiseman shared: “Take one Arduino Nano clone, mix in an 74HC595, and some code (Thank you Adafruit and Google), sprinkle a few resistors and wires and top with some Pumpkin decorations. The result? A happy 5yr old.” (read more)

Mark Miller shared: “Made this to test out my home made actuators for automating parts feeds and delivery methods. The yellow hopper hold a dozen pieces of plastic that are pushed out onto the conveyor, make their way across and then gravity drop to a pusher that slides them into a chute. It was fun to build, and fun to watch and went together without any surprises or problems. The structure and most of the project was made from lexan/acrylics and painted. The components are modular and it all just snaps together, so I can store it away in smaller form. The electronics are on a drawer slide for access, and the controller is up front for making changes in case I add on later, want to slow things down(ot speed them up) The conveyor is stepper driven and uses a bunch of leftover gears in a chain fashion to drive the rollers. The terminator figures were an afterthought, but seemed fitting they stand there while I made the video. Now back to making more machines……” (read more)

Eugenio Petullà shared: “#DaftPunk Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo Helmet. Just an Arduino Mega, 2 pots, some resistor and a bunch of different leds! Schematics and projects will be uploaded soon on Instructables.” (read more)

william foster shared: “i added two light sensors and a little bit of code.
and made my light seeking robot.” (read more)

Community Projects from the Adafruit Blog

Rick Winscot (@rwinscot) shared a talking robot! #RoboBatali: “Fusion Friday with @TheChew and @adafruit … #RoboBatali” (read more)

Mike Mackley shared his Conference Pi: “This is my final year project for my bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering. The Conference Pi project involves designing a Raspberry Pi based voice conferencing system using mostly off the shelf components. The case, which houses the microphone array was designed in Autodesk Inventor and printed on a Makerbot Replicator 2. The design was inspired by existing VoIP devices.” (read more)

Cabe Atwell shared his “Scary Door” pi powered halloween effects door. He’s gone ahead and posted everything needed to make this yourself: “My goal was to create pro-haunted house level effects on the cheap. I wanted something that would be different every time you see it. Planning to combine visuals and sound, I created the monster behind the door effect. Through the window of the door, the viewer can see what might be happening behind the door. One time the viewer goes through might have a monster in the window trying to get through the door. The next time it would be a normal scene inside a house followed by the “monster pop-up” scare. Variety is my goal. It can turn a stale effect into one of constant apprehension.” (read more)

Terry Burton shared this great eBookmark project with us from 7Electrons, created as he said “with lots of parts from Adafruit”: “The process of creating the bookmark involved wood carving, software development in C on an Atmel 8-bit processor, and hand wiring of all the electronics, LEDs and battery with fine wire. 16 tiny surface mount LEDs shine through the opaque face and the mcu remembers where you left off in your reading. In an era where bookstores are dying and libraries are collecting cobwebs, our piece is a bridge between analog and digital….” (read more)

Carlinhos Brown, Lucas Werthein & Kyle McDonald’s ElectroAxé: “In January 2011 I spent new years in Bahia and was introduced to Carlinhos Brown by a close friend. Knowing that Brown is one of the most talented percussionists and musician we have in Brazil, we talked about creating a full body suit with ten sensors, which were activated each time they were hit, acting as percussion instruments on Brown’s body. The project, called EletroAxé, consisted in 10 drum pads developed with laser cutting and CNC techniques, piezo sensors, electronics, Arduino, and Processing. It was a collaboration with myself and Kyle McDonald and it was managed/ produced by Acere F.C. It involved transmitting wireless midi data, a great amount of work in production design, code, and infinite testing.” (read more)

Mrsayao shared a Sims PlumbBob tutorial: “After years and years of “wanting” to make the green plumbbob from The Sims series, I finally did it! The cool part about the “costume” is that you can wear whatever you want and still be a Sim! I used Dan’s instructable, at this link here, in order to get an idea how I wanted to wire the LEDs. I was able to leave the light on for about 6 hours straight without changing the 2 9V batteries. A word of caution, this costume is meant to be worn at night, the light is faint when seen in the daylight, see the 2nd pic what happens when a flash is used. I used 3 LEDs and stuck to the typical 350mA current specified by the manufacturer. Adding more current will simply burn them out faster so don’t do that =)” (read more)

Joe Larson re-created the pieces for the out-of-print 1956 game Troke and shared them on Thingiverse: “A coworker friend of mine when introduced to Thingiverse out of the blue said “I know something I’ll bet you can do” and told me about this old game he played with his family, Troke. Old game is right, Troke is from 1956 and way out of print. The basic idea is it’s similar to chinese checkers except in this game instead of jumping you stack your pieces to gain new moves, possibly dragging your opponents pieces with you further from their goal. In the original game the pieces were drilled out and painted dowels. But this is 3D printing, and simple cylinders are just too simple. On the other hand I almost put too much detail into the little things. Almost….” (read more)

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