Open Hardware/Modding: Arduino and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 20, 2023

• Arduino Day 2023 set for March 25th

  Arduino Day, the annual celebration of the Arduino ecosystem of hardware and software, has been announced for March 25, 2023.

• A 3D-printable, Arduino-controlled star tracker great for astrophotography | Arduino Blog

  Most modern digital cameras are perfectly capable of capturing photos of the stars. But many of them have trouble collecting the small amount of light available in a short amount of time, which means that you need to leave the shutter open for 30 seconds or more to get a decent exposure. That presents a problem, because the Earth rotates. As it does, the light from the stars leaves trails in your long-exposure photo. To overcome that issue, Ondra Gejdos designed this 3D-printable star tracker.

  The purpose of a star tracker like this one is to move the camera in the opposite direction of the Earth’s spin in order to keep the stars still in the frame. That lets astrophotographers keep the shutter open as long as they need to to get proper exposure without star trails. The “OG-star-tracker” mounts to a standard tripod and the camera attaches to it. A single stepper provides rotation, and it is up to the user to set the angle properly for their position on the planet.

• Tool-Less Arduino Uno + Ethernet Case w MicroSD Holder by mlavallee - Thingiverse

  Download files and build them with your 3D printer, laser cutter, or CNC. Thingiverse is a universe of things.

• Scamp - a self-contained Forth computer

  Scamp is a self-contained Forth computer that you can use as the computing engine for your projects. It’s easy to interface, and easy and quick to program using Forth, the world’s best embedded programming language.

• HackSpace magazine issue 63 — HackSpace magazine

  Flying machines: humans have always dreamed about flight, but with our puny arms and lack of feathers it’s something we’ve struggled with. No more! Join us as we explore the best, cleverest and most innovative home-made flying machines. Icarus would have been proud!

• The overengineered Solution to my Pigeon Problem :: Max Nagy

  I built a wifi-equipped water gun to shoot the pigeons on my balcony, controlled over the internet by a python script running openCV reading the camera image of my old iPhone.

• The overengineered solution to my pigeon problem

  The brains of the operation is a Python script using OpenCV. It compares the current image to the normal background. If the average amount of change of all pixels is above some threshold, it fires the water gun.