Voice Activated LED Mask

Be the life of the party this Halloween with a voice (and music if it’s loud!) activated LED biohazard mask. Everybody knows that a genius conceptual Halloween costume will make you the star of the party. Sure you could be one of the millions of people to wear a caricature Trump mask this year, or you can be original with this DIY project!

Materials required:

• 1 – Anti-Dust Paint Respirator Mask
• 1 – Arduino Nano
• 1 – KY-038 Microphone Sound Sensor Module
• 2 – 5v LED’s
• 1 – Perf Board
• 1 – 9v Battery
• 1 – 100Ω resistor
• 1 – 1″ Biohazard sticker (optional)

Steps:

1. Take apart the biohazard mask filters and empty out the contents
2. Wire LED 1 and 9v battery into one of the filters, pulling wires through the respirator air passage ways. If you make the wires the correct length, you can easily tuck them beneath the rubbery plastic liner
3. Solder your nano and other components to the perf board (see circuit diagram below). I left the KY-038 sound module free from the board so that I could easily position it and make adjustments to the sensitivity via the on-board potentiometer.
4. Connect the wiring from the 9v power supply and the LED.
5. (Optional) Slap a biohazard sticker on the front, and voila!

Check out the video above to get a look at how I did it!

Here is the circuit:

(simply put your desired amount of LED’s in parallel, I used one in each filter. Using 2 or more in each filter will drain your battery a bit faster, but might make it a bit brighter)

Here is the Sketch code:

int LED = 3;
int mic = A0;
int brightness = 0;
int fade = 5;
int level = 30;

}


Did you make one? Feel free to link to your costume pics in the comments.

Did you like it? Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog and be notified every time I create something new!

The post Arduino Nano Voice Activated (sound sensor) LED Halloween / DJ Mask appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

Agar.io is another great online massively multiplayer browser game/app utilizing socket.io. You start out on a large square grid as a cell around 38-45 mass (It seems that sometimes you spawn on top of mass particles, so you can get a little bonus right from the start if you are lucky). There are little hexagonal particles of mass that spawn randomly on the map, and you gain mass by gobbling up these small bits of mass. It’s sort of like Pacman meets Odell lake. You can also gain mass by eating smaller cells, so when you start the game you are on the very bottom of the food chain!

Agar.io Beginners Guide

Objective – In FFA the object is to gain mass until you reach the leaderboard to show off your massiveness! There are also daily missions which give you coins and “DNA” if completed. In Rush mode the object is to be the largest cell when the timer expires.

Viruses – Viruses are the green spiked circles, and spawn at random around the map. A virus can be a safe haven for a cell of smaller mass. For cells larger than the virus, running into a virus will cause the cell to split up into 16 different pieces. This can be a good if you are able to keep all your cells because when you are in 16 parts you can eat viruses, but more commonly this can be your downfall. When nearby cells spot a cell being split by a virus, a frenzy of sorts begins. Cells from all over the map will risk there little cell lives just to try and get a piece of you, often times at their own peril.

Cell bursting on virus – Agar.io

Mass Ejection – Press ‘W’ on the keyboard to eject mass in the direction you are traveling. There are many reasons to eject mass, but most commonly it is used to transfer mass from one cell to another. If you see two opposing cells doing “feeding” each other in FFA, watch out, this is most likely a team! (Teams dominate FFA, go figure).

Split Mass – Press ‘Space’ on your keyboard to split your cell in half, ejecting one half in the direction you are traveling. The most common reason one would opt to split in half is to “eat” another cell. Make sure you are more than twice the mass of the cell you are trying to eat, or it will fail and you will either not be able to eat the cell you targeted, or if you overestimated your mass by too much, the cell you target can even eat you! Another common use for this function is to avoid being eaten entirely! When being hunted by larger cells a well timed split will insure that only half of you is eaten, and you will live to see another day! If your cell is smaller than 38 mass, you will not be able to split).

Strategies – There is one strategy that works fantastic for me most of the time. This method involves spending about 5 minutes or so farming mass particles and avoiding all larger cells, and maintaining a friendly relationship with cells in your size range (chasing a slightly smaller cell is usually fruitless, and will likely get you both killed!). Also it’s wise to keep in mind that when you are a small cell, you are a huge target! Trust no one! In the video below I’ll show you how to use this strategy to make it onto the leaderboard in about 10 minutes.

Of course one of the most popular strategies is the social game in Agar.io. Feed the right cell and you might have made a friend for life (of your cell)! But watch out, there are those who will eat you even if you do feed them. A good sign that a cell is willing to cooperate is if they eject some mass back at you in exchange. Also beware of traders though! About 50% of the cells that try to make friends, do so only to eat cannibalize their friends! This is a strategy that I don’t really recommend, as it may be a quick boost, but generally you will make an enemy for life by doing so, and getting revenge is one of the sweetest things to do in Agar.io!

With a good teammate it’s easy to dominate the map!

Hacks/Cheats – It’s likely that some bad hacks exist for this game, but I’m not going to be covering any hacks of that sort. There are “legal” hacks that I will focus on instead. The most common being using your name field to communicate to other cells with language or symbols. A popular use of this is for teams to use a “tag” on the beginning of their username, so that they can easily be identified as a teammate no matter what skin the cell is using. For example a couple popular groups are “MK” and “FBI”, and when they play they generally have a large team working together to easily dominate the entire map for hours on end! Another popular use is to mention teams in your name. Usually a cell with the name “team” is willing to cooperate, but still watch out for the predators, not every cell named team is actually friendly!

Another simple hack is to log on every hour and collect 20 free coins. When you want to play, if you have a couple hundred coins you can pick up a nice boost that lasts for an hour, which can be very helpful!

Now to the good stuff! If you want a real edge over the competition, you might decide that using ‘W’ and ‘Space’ are not the easiest keys to use. Sometimes you really have to mash that ‘W’, and sometimes you have to be very precise! Using a programmable input emulator we can change those keys to whatever keys we like! I am using GlovePIE, an old but still working PIE utility. FreePie is another one. There are others out there, let us know in the comments if you know of any other good PIE’s! The script I like to use is making the left mouse button work as ‘W’ in addition to ‘W’. If you need to eject some mass quickly, you can mash both the ‘W’ key and the ‘LMB’ and eject an incredible amount of mass very quickly! Download the Agar.io GlovePIE script.

Pro Tips – Now that you know the basics, here are a few pro tips to remember:

• The longer you hold down Space to split your cell, the further you will eject half your mass. This is helpful for reaching cells that are far off.
• You probably shouldn’t trust anyone unless you know them personally. Agar.io players are treacherous!
• If a cell that is slightly larger than you has almost encapsulated you, don’t split, don’t eject mass, just stay on course and try to direct your cell into the particles in your path. Your opponent will be unable to collect any particles while following you, so after collecting enough particles, you will grow bigger than the cell chasing you. My my, how the tables have turned! This is also generally a sign that you are up against a newb, most vets know that the smaller cell is faster!
• When you are small, sometimes you can find a giant cell and use it as parasitic host of sorts. Most large cells won’t risk trying to come too near to a giant cell so it can be a safe haven at times.

If you like this guide please subscribe to my blog! See you on Agar.io!

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A tank top for your hard working slaves. Now if your slaves wander too far, your neighbor will know to blow their head off and send ’em on back home.

Support this skin by visiting Steam and voting “Yes” and adding it to your favorites it:

“Slaves”, also known as “Workers” in Rust are players that do utilitarian work, such as gathering wood and stone. Using slaves in Rust enables clans to build large bases fast. The concept is simple really, generally it involves finding some players with little experience who are interested in joining up with your team/clan, or just trying to get a decent start in the game without getting killed so easily. Depending on who you slave for you can generally rank up to a normal clan member eventually after hours of hard slaving!

If you play Rust and are interested in working as a slave to help build some of Rusts largest and most badass monuments and buildings, add me on Steam and I’ll give you the details, such as our current server and such. If you are a dedicated and hard worker we will even pay you in skins (which are worth actual money)!

It’s not always bad to be a slave in Rust, but watch this hilarious video by faceless as they wrangle some fresh slaves for trade on the market XD

Some tips for fellow slave masters:
-Don’t ever let your slaves into the treasury until after so many hours, about 10% of the volunteer slaves are actually trolls looking to reck your base! (true fact)
-Don’t give your slaves guns, it makes it too easy for them to kill you and take yours, slaves should be equipped with hatchets and pick axes and if you are a kind slave master, a “Slave Tank Top”.
-Don’t kill your slaves and laugh at them. While this may be entertaining to you, I find that usually your slaves will get bored of this behavior and eventually move on.

If you have any ideas for future skins/mods, hit me up on Steam, or by email, or leave a comment below!

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The Funduino analog water sensor is an inexpensive, easily obtainable sensor module with many use cases. I purchased mine from the Good-Module Ebay store for just under $1 USD. You can find these modules available from other sellers on Ebay as well with similar prices.

There are a lot of uses for this sensor module. It can be used to detect the presence or absence of water, accurately gauge the water surface level, or you can even accurately gauge the volume of water present by using a volume measurement device such as a measuring cup in conjunction with the analog water sensor module. This makes it the Funduino analog water sensor a versatile component! Be careful not to confuse this module with a digital boolean water sensor which will only return a true or false value rather than an integer.

Hooking up the module to an Arduino is simple. Connect the positive to 5v, the negative to ground on the Arduino, and the analogue out to one of the 5 analog pins on the Arduino Uno. This module can also be connected to 3v, so it is virtually compatible with every type of Arduino as well as many other development boards.

Water Sensor Arduino Sketch

int h20 = 0;

void loop() {
int i = analogRead(h20);
Serial.println(i);
delay(1000);
}

This sketch is set up to view the values (the integer i) returned by the sensor in the serial monitor. You can easily use this value to set triggers. For example in a project that I built using this sensor module, I have it set to switch off a water pump if i is less than 100. This protects my pump from operating while not fully submerged.

Some other projects you might consider this module for may be:

1. Water leak detection
2. Automatic plant watering
3. Rain fall meter

If you utilize this sensor in a project that you want to show off, feel free to post a link in the comments!

The post Funduino Analog Water Sensor for Arduino Test and Review appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

The RCWL-0516 microwave radar motion sensor module is a low cost sensor that has been newly added to ICSTATION inventory. There is quite a lack of information on the module online, at least not that I could find, so I’m compiling what I could find and posting it all here in this article.

Distance Test

RCWL-O516 Arduino Circuit

RCWL-0516 Arduino Uno Circuit

We only use 3 of the 5 header pins in this project.

• 3V3
• GND – [connects to ground]
• OUT [connects to digital input]
• VIN – [connects to 5v]
• CDS

The 0516 is a flexible module that can easily be used in conjunction with many MCU’s and even without a microcontroller at all. It can handle anywhere from 4v-28v in, which it then converts and outputs 3.3v to the 3V3 pin. This pin can be utilized for a multitude of tasks, such as an LED to indicate power, or even to supply power to a mini 3v based MCU.

Change the resistor value to decrease sensitivity. I have a 220Ω resistor in the circuit which shouldn’t impede the sensitivity too drastically, I’ll play around with some other values and update with my findings.

RCWL-O516 Arduino Sketch

Click to enlarge


int ip = 8;
int val = 0;
int led = 13;

}


To make the reaction time faster you can reduce the delay time from 1000 to something like 100. This will also allow the sensor to pick up smaller movements. Conversely you can increase the delay to help keep small movements from triggering (this is a simple but not perfect way of accomplishing this effect), and make the circuit conserve more power.

Disclaimer: I could not find an official datasheet on this module, so I’ve had to make some guesses here. I’m not responsible for any damage this could cause to your Arduino or sensor module! If you choose to try this yourself, don’t blame me when you spontaneously combust!

For even more info check out the git by Joe on it here which is still in the works (as of jan 2107) but it looks like he’s keeping it up to date with new findings: https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516/

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After a recent hospital visit, I was given a disposable spo2 sensor to monitor my oxygen saturation and pulse which is standard practice these days. Rather than let the nurse toss my sensor afterwards, I decided to take it home and tinker with it. It would be pretty neat to have my own spo2 monitor at home, never know when it could come in handy! I am especially interested in the applications that it can be applied to in the gaming world, such as fitness gaming, so I created a Unity asset that can handle the readings and graph the results, much like an ECG.

A couple of you have asked for more details about the project so here’s everything I have so far (work in progress).

I couldn’t find much on the exact sensors that Masimo uses in their resposable SP02 sensors, so disclaimer: I’m just sort of winging it here, there is definitely more info needed to perfect this project… That being said, without wasting any more time, here is the project:

Project materials:
-Arduino Uno R3
-Masimo Universal Resposable SPO2 Pulse Oximeter
-Breadboard
-10k resistor
-220 resistor
-330 resistor

SPO2 sketch:


The circuit:

This handy tool I made in Unity reads the data we send to the serial com and graphs it for us in a manner that emulates an ECG.

Download Unity3D SPO2 grapher for Windows

You’ll notice that I commented out a few lines in the sketch. Enable these lines if you would rather plot your graph using an online tool such as FooPlot rather than the realtime Unity3d made monitor.

If you have any information to contribute for the advancement of this project, leave a comment or contact me and I’ll be sure to keep this article up-to-date with new findings! If you have any questions go ahead and leave those in the comments as well and I’ll do my best to answer any.

The post Arduino + SPO2 Pulse Oximeter + Unity3D – Teardown Tuesday appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

Day 12 of 12 Days of Arduino! On the 12th day of Arduino, I present our final project of the series: Glorious Spambot! I printed out some wheels , and fashioned some wheels out of bottle caps, and an axle out of a spray tube, a paperclip and a ballpoint pen. I found the wheel model on Thingiverse. There are a ton of wheels on Thingiverse that will work great, or if you don’t have a 3d printer, I’ve found that plastic bottle caps will do the trick!

Watch Spambot on his first official voyage:

Spambot Sketch

The code hasn’t changed much from yesterday’s I just commented out some of the debugging stuff.

The mission of GloriousSpambot.org is simple, to create one or many useful, fully functional, open-source designs utilizing recycled and used parts and affordable components such as a Spam can, and to spread the word about it! Most robots on the market are for entertainment purposes, I want to see future iterations of Spambot that can

• Detect Smoke/Fight Fires
• Vacuum/Sweep/Dust
• Monitor Pets/Children
• Home Security
• Elderly Care
• Home Automation
• Companion, Helper and Friend!

That might seem like quite a leap from the current iteration of Spambot, but you all saw what Spambot was 5 days ago: a pile of scraps! The possibilities are endless. By next month, the plan is to have Spambot doing tasks on the PC including making friends on social networks, and playing video games!

That wraps up my 12 Days of Arduino series but the project will continue at www.GloriousSpamBot.org Make sure you check it out and like/subscribe for updates also follow on Twitter @GloriousSpamBot

If you want to help out with the project, Tweet a message to @GloriousSpamBot and you will get a reply. For now it will be me, but in the near future Spambot will be in the beginning stages of automation including communicating with humans!

Edit: it’s only been a little while since the announcement of Spambot, and already quite the following from around the world, over 1500 followers @GloriousSpamBot! Awesome! Thanks for the support everyone You can also help by clicking over to Youtube in the video above and liking/subscribing! Also thanks to @Nick Gammon for the link to the alternative TIP120 datasheet and @Due_Unto for the expert advice, @JohnLincoln for the link to transistor heatsink mounting kit

Also to help out make sure you use this link to order components from ICStation. All proceeds will go directly back into development!




Happy Holidays!

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]]> https://kevingulling.com/2016/12/12-days-of-arduino-day-12-glorious-spambot-robot-for-under-50/feed/ 1 1433 https://kevingulling.com/2016/12/1409/ Fri, 23 Dec 2016 20:21:39 +0000 https://kevingulling.com/?p=1409 Welcome back to Day 11 of 12 Days of Arduino! Today I backtrack a bit and tie up some “loose ends” with the design. The HC-06 that I am using states that it needs 3.3v on the rx, not 5v as I had it set up yesterday. We’ll want to comply with this to avoid […]

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Welcome back to Day 11 of 12 Days of Arduino! Today I backtrack a bit and tie up some “loose ends” with the design.
The HC-06 that I am using states that it needs 3.3v on the rx, not 5v as I had it set up yesterday. We’ll want to comply with this to avoid damaging any components. A simple way to go about this is to create a voltage divider using a couple resistors. I use this handy tool that does all the math for you to figure out what resistance resistors are necessary to get our voltage down to 3.3v: Voltage Divider Calculator. I ended up going with a 1k and a 2k resistor to obtain close to 3.3v.



Pro Tip: You won’t find this in most tutorials or datasheets, the heatsink tab of the TIP120 is directly connected to the Collector.

Because of the heat sink I had connected to both the Tip120’s, when the circuit would close it would also close the circuit to the transistor that was also connected to the heatsink. So unfortunately I had to remove the cool looking heat sink which honestly was probably complete overkill in the first place, more aesthetic than functional, so it’s probably for the best! That being said.

Parts:
-Arduino Uno R3
-Motor
-Fan
-Jumper Wires
-Breadboard
-Spam Can
-2x TIP120 transistors
-HC-05 or HC-06
–3d printed core
-1k resistor
-2k resistor











All code on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


#include

#define rxPin 0
#define txPin 1

int motor = 3;
int fan = 5;
int incomingByte[2];
boolean motorBool = false;
boolean fanBool = false;

SoftwareSerial bluetooth(rxPin, txPin);

void setup() {
pinMode(rxPin, INPUT);
pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (motor, OUTPUT);
pinMode (fan, OUTPUT);
bluetooth.begin(9600);

analogWrite (motor, 0);
analogWrite (fan, 0);
}

void loop() {
if(bluetooth.available()>0){
while(bluetooth.peek() == 'A'){
//bluetooth.println(bluetooth.peek());
bluetooth.read();
incomingByte[0] = bluetooth.parseInt();
bluetooth.println(incomingByte[0], DEC);
if(incomingByte[0] == 1){
motorBool = true;
bluetooth.print("motor:");
bluetooth.println(motorBool, DEC);
}
else if(incomingByte[0] == 0){
motorBool = false;

}
else if(incomingByte[0] == 2){
fanBool = true;
bluetooth.print("fan:");
bluetooth.println(fanBool, DEC);
}
else if(incomingByte[0] == 3){
fanBool = false;

}
}

while(bluetooth.available()>0){
bluetooth.read();
}
}

if(motorBool == true){
analogWrite (motor, 255);
bluetooth.print("motor:");
bluetooth.println(motorBool, DEC);
}
else{
analogWrite (motor, 0);
bluetooth.print("motor:");
bluetooth.println(motorBool, DEC);
}
if(fanBool == true){
analogWrite (fan, 255);
bluetooth.print("fan:");
bluetooth.println(fanBool, DEC);
}
else{
analogWrite (fan, 0);
bluetooth.print("fan:");
bluetooth.println(fanBool, DEC);
}
delay(1000);
}

I didn’t have time today to get as much done as I would like, so tomorrow will be a big day! That or I may have to extend it to day 13… Tomorrow I’ll put everything together and we will take Spambot for a stroll!

Support future projects by shopping at ICStation:





Day 12 →

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]]> 1409 https://kevingulling.com/2016/12/12-days-of-arduino-day-10-robot-bluetooth-connection/ Thu, 22 Dec 2016 19:46:57 +0000 https://kevingulling.com/?p=1387 Welcome back to 12 Days of Arduino Day 10. Today we finish the core and connect to a remote computer via bluetooth. Everything has been pretty simple up until this point, so if you are a beginner you might want to watch some tutorials on YouTube and read up on the HC-05 and HC-06 before-hand. […]

The post 12 Days of Arduino Day 10 – Robot Bluetooth Connection appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

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Welcome back to 12 Days of Arduino Day 10. Today we finish the core and connect to a remote computer via bluetooth. Everything has been pretty simple up until this point, so if you are a beginner you might want to watch some tutorials on YouTube and read up on the HC-05 and HC-06 before-hand.





Parts:
-Arduino Uno R3
-Motor
-Fan
-Jumper Wires
-Breadboard
-Spam Can
-2x TIP120 transistors
-HC-05 or HC-06



Bluetooth Sketch

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

#define rxPin 0
#define txPin 1

int motor = 3;
int fan = 5;
int incomingByte = 0;

SoftwareSerial bluetooth(rxPin, txPin);

void setup() {
pinMode(rxPin, INPUT);
pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (motor, OUTPUT);
pinMode (fan, OUTPUT);
bluetooth.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
if(bluetooth.available()>0){
bluetooth.print("I received: ");
bluetooth.println(incomingByte, DEC);
}
analogWrite (motor, 255);
digitalWrite (fan, HIGH);
delay(1000);
}

Pro Tip: If you have issues uploading your sketch, unplug the Bluetooth module from the rx/tx pins.

Support future projects by visiting our affiliate ICStation for electronics components:





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]]> 1387 https://kevingulling.com/2016/12/12-days-arduino-day-9-robot-core-coolant-system/ Wed, 21 Dec 2016 20:31:04 +0000 https://kevingulling.com/?p=1375 Day 9 of 12 Days of Arduino! So I couldn’t wait to get our components hooked up to the core, aka the spam can so I jumped ahead of schedule a bit so we can see the robot start to take shape! Don’t worry though, there’s more to this surprise! Make sure you catch Day […]

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Day 9 of 12 Days of Arduino! So I couldn’t wait to get our components hooked up to the core, aka the spam can so I jumped ahead of schedule a bit so we can see the robot start to take shape! Don’t worry though, there’s more to this surprise! Make sure you catch Day 10-12, and if you’ve missed it, go back and check out the “Keyduino“.





Parts:
-Arduino Uno R3
-Motor
-Fan
-Jumper Wires
-Breadboard
-Spam Can
-2x TIP120 transistors




One motor for the driver and one for the cooling

int motor = 3;
int fan = 5;

void setup () {
pinMode (motor, OUTPUT);
pinMode (fan, OUTPUT);
}
void loop () {
analogWrite (motor, 255);
digitalWrite (fan, HIGH);
}
This old fan that I scrapped off a GPU from the turn of the millennium has seen better days. It was not responding to anything less than 12v therefor I simply gave it a digitalWrite to HIGH, so I’ll likely be swapping this out in the future, and switching back to pulse width modulation. I’m not sure if there is any difference in digitalWrite() with a value of HIGH and analogWrite() with a value of 255, maybe someone can shout that out to me @KevinGulling and I’ll make an update here.

I know a lot of you have been following along and that’s great! Show your support by giving a like or retweet, it’s highly appreciated Thanks! Hope you are looking forward to tomorrow, things are starting to get fun aren’t they?

Check out ICStation for low price electronics kits:





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