MindKits News and Blog

Secret door knocks need to get a new look, here's a Arduino project that gives it a new version. This project uses suction cups to the door, so you don't need to make holes on a door, and if you want, move it to another door.
Guest Blogger: William George
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This years' project by Jamie Maloway spurred from every engineering student's basic need for caffeine combined with the outrageous price of on-campus coffee, both coupled with the perpetual need for convenience and a high level of geekiness.
The ultimate project goal was to take a ordinary, off-the-shelf automatic drip coffee maker and hook it up to the Internet with a nice little web interface that you could easily get at with a mobile phone or from a PC.
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If you're like me and spent hours and hours in front of a TV as a youth with blobs and sprites racing across the screen to approximate things in real life - often note very well - then you'll remember the accompanying tunes blairing out as you race, jump or weaved across levels. They're a cross between a cricket on LSD and a guitar in a blender but they're happily burned into my brain. 
Well these fine Arduino folk have created a chip tune demo on an Arduino and all you'll need is an arduino, a speaker and some power. Check it out.
Source Link Here
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It brings me endless entertainment to see how just the little touches can breath personality and life into what would otherwise be a void of character and bring a smile to our faces as a result. This little yellow robot just brightens my day and I hope it brightens yours too. 
If you'd like to build one you can check out some code and instructions here. Read More...

Phwoar, 'Blinky' the all purpose 'must do' project for anyone beginning with Arduino just had a dose of Christmas cheer. This festive beginners project injects arduino knowledge into unsuspecting beginners while they have fun building a Blinky Christmas tree. Source Link Here 

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Possibly not the future of DJing but a very way to experience music in a new way. Play a vinal 'record' disc in one of four locations to induce the aural delight. Source Link Here
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You know this is a CLOCK, right. New age clock that looks cool at home or work.
How many timepieces can you program at your leisure, unfortunately you can't make the real world of time to go backwards, but get mesmerised from the LEDs!
Watch the video if you're not sure what clock to buy, or just because your interested!
(Guest Blogger: William George)  
Click 'Read More' for a video of it in action
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Lets use a old fridge for something! Putting together some hardware, we can get a flash Web Interface that can check the temperatures in- and outside of your fridge where your home-brew fermentation is going. The video gives you more detail about this project and that it can be used for more than just making beer!
(Guest Blogger: William George)  
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This is to help kids of all ages explore electronics with play dough. It can show you how electricity works in a more simple way, and too make things more safer, the dough that you make can use gluten-free flour. We have the colored (Conductive) dough above that helps the flow of electricity from the batteries through the dough to the LED and going back to the battery lighting it. We do have to make sure the coloured dough in this circuit do not touch each other, thats where the white (Insulating) dough comes in, electricity does not past through this, as you see the image with all the dough packed, just makes this tidier. Videos can be found here  from making the dough to making a squishy circuits, even using Arduino to make Squishy sounds!
(Guest Blogger: William George) 
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This CoolCircuits project can help a lot of people, even the handicapped/disabled. We all would like some new cool age device to do things for us, the keyboard hasn't changed for agos! This wearable glove connected to an Arduino, has many ways to work for the person, one is that it can work as a mobile keypad (having multiple points/switches on the palm) so you can type a letter. There is lots more you can do with this, follow the video link to see more about this great invention.
(Guest Blogger: William George) 
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Exerpt from LifeHacker:
"If you're looking for a good Arduino starter project and you have the tools and time to get the job done, here's a great seasonal activity that will help you build your skills and join your house's holiday light display to a global network of lights, all synchronized and controlled by Twitter."  Read More...

Quote from Geek.Com
"Before you throw out those old floppy drives you had stored in a box in the garage, you may want to take a look at a code project that breathes new life into those doorstops. How so you ask? By making sweet, sweet music for gaming geeks across the world. Introducing Moppy, a musical floppy controller that was written to run on an Arduino Uno."
Original post here Read More...

Auti is designed to develop positive play behaviours, making it easier for them to interact with other children, as well as teaching them broader social skills. Auti addresses speaking, touching, and collaborating skills. Each area is developed through an evolving sequence of interactions and responses. Auti shuts down in response to negative behaviour such as hitting or screaming, but quickly responds to the slightest positive interaction. Each sensor can be adjusted to respond appropriately to each child’s individual characteristics, making Auti immediately compatible with the child.
  
Auti from Helen Andreae on Vimeo. Read More...

BlackBerry are telling us that their PlayBook is the simplest device to interface with Arduino. We thought we'd take a deeper look and from the looks of this project, they're not far off.
Build an Arduino powered radar with a cool green radar fader screen.

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Getting Arduino to talk to AIR and bring together the best of the physical computing world with awesomely powerful AIR apps has brought pain to the masses - and probably kept me from making my millions in home automation until now. Here's a genius solution that lets you build apps that'll talk directly together without a proxy in between.
Check out the project page here
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Thanks Hack-a-Day for this one.
The guys over at brainwagon just finished up ANGST, the Arduino n’ Gameduinio Satellite Tracker, a build that displays 160 different satellites in Earth orbit on any SVGA monitor. Read More...

John (@Farmgeek) Hart has built an Arduino powered wireless (wifi) water tank measuring rig that takes a measurement and sends the results 300m back to his warm cosy home where it get graphed in all its splendid glory (we all love graphs right?).
It's a stunning display of a set of simple solutions to what seems like a complex and daunting project - it's also something that I've been asked about by MindKits customers frequently. So, here's the solution to dry tanks, cold walks out to measure water levels and global warming. Read More...

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Quote from the site: "Not exactly a keyboard, but I'd argue that a data logging scale is an input device... In any case, this is a project I did a while ago (~2 years ago). Start with a cheap bathroom scale from Ikea, then strip out all the hardware except for the load cells. Add in the following:" Check out the source article here  Read More...

Arduino modder Matthew Garten took his previous watch, a stingray hide "Biopunk Edition," and wrapped it with pseudo steampunk. It's an acquired taste, to be sure, but a temperature-sensing watch is handy if you're dealing with heat (or steam!). There's also a range-finding feature, Breakout, a trackball and a 128x128 OLED display. The whole kit, a DIY project if we've ever seen one, runs about $250. The temp-sensing functionality can be seen in Garten's Biopunk watch. And yes, he's got a sword at his hip.
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