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Do you want to create gadgets like Q?
DarthDimi
Behind you!Moderator
What you need
Do you want to equip yourself with a self-made motion sensor, alarm system, automatic door lock? Do you want your device portable and ready to be used anywhere? You do realise you can make such things, don't you?
Of course you can, but surely you need to be an engineer, an inventor, an electrician or expert in electronics and software?
Wrong! Thanks to the Arduino microcontroller, a modern toy for grown-ups, you can fix it all with little or no prior technical training or knowledge. The Arduino circuit is preprogrammed and ready to play. A starter kit can be bought all over the world (just google-search for it) for a very fair price. It comes with all the basic tools like LEDs, an engine, a display, a temperature sensor, ... Optional extras are usually very cheap and can be purchased online.
the Arduino microcontroller
I'm sorry but I know nothing about electronics or programming
That's quite okay. The point of the Arduino kits, the reason the Arduino was made in the first place, is to make electronics accessible to those among us who know nothing about it! Most starter kits come with a booklet that takes you step-by-step through the basics: which plug goes where, what are all those fancy pins for, what kind of weird codes do I need to type down in order to make all this stuff do what I want it to do? The more you learn about these things - and you learn pretty fast, trust me - the more you can piece together your own tricks.
Of course I'd be lying if I told you that it doesn't make it easier if you know a few things about electronics and C/C++ programming. But it really isn't mandatory!
An additional benefit is that all of these things are open-source. The Internet is all but saturated with Arduino amateurs sharing with the world their circuits and programs for free! So even if you can't figure it out yourself, your desired alarm system may very well be copied from the first website that shows up after a quick search.
You know when fathers buy their sons LEGO or similar toys, only to end up playing with the toys themselves? The Arduino is the next step in all of this. It's more than a toy; it can actually be usefully applied. Just an hour ago I built my own temperature reading device. It cost me under fifteen minutes to find the proper programming and build the circuit. Now I can detect the hottest and coldest spots in the room, meanwhile asking my laptop to register temperatures every 0.1 seconds (or as often as I want); I can have one or two or three LEDs burning depending on how high the temperature has risen, and much more. I've also ordered a small infra-red motion sensor for less than the cost of a pizza and with it, I can have an alarm go off when someone tries to sneak up on me.
Q's lab
Q built a lot of fancy stuff for Bond. Naturally not all of it can be built with the Arduino. But here are a few simple systems everyone of you can build:
* make a sound or flash a light when someone approaches you within a certain distance of your choosing;
* auto-bolt the door of your room at your command like Peter Parker in the recent Spider-Man films;
* perform all sorts of measurements including physical (temperature, light, sound, ...) and chemical (carbon monoxide concentration, pH, ...) parameters and have your system respond to certain values by making a noise or something;
* build a robot that can balance on just two wheels, pour you a drink, hand you a tool;
* is it getting too dark in the room? - tell the Arduino to switch on the lights automatically;
* ...
One of the funniest things I've heard of is a bunch of students who put a methane sensor underneath their professor's pillow and every time he silently farted, some funny text messages were automatically projected on a large screen for all the students in the room to read.
The point of this thread?
I don't know if some of you are familiar with the Arduino. Perhaps you are willing to explore its possibilities through a starter kit, like I have, or you know people who are already into this stuff. If so, you might want to experiment a little bit and then build your own 007 gadgets. In this thread we can exchange pictures or little movies of our circuits and the simple programming behind it. We can inspire each other to devise our own Q-ish gadgets. I'm actually curious to see how many among us are into these modern toys and creative enough to build cool stuff. ;-) I'm rather still a newcomer to the game myself so I need more practice before I can post something useful. But I was hoping I could learn from some of you. :-)
Do you want to equip yourself with a self-made motion sensor, alarm system, automatic door lock? Do you want your device portable and ready to be used anywhere? You do realise you can make such things, don't you?
Of course you can, but surely you need to be an engineer, an inventor, an electrician or expert in electronics and software?
Wrong! Thanks to the Arduino microcontroller, a modern toy for grown-ups, you can fix it all with little or no prior technical training or knowledge. The Arduino circuit is preprogrammed and ready to play. A starter kit can be bought all over the world (just google-search for it) for a very fair price. It comes with all the basic tools like LEDs, an engine, a display, a temperature sensor, ... Optional extras are usually very cheap and can be purchased online.
the Arduino microcontroller
I'm sorry but I know nothing about electronics or programming
That's quite okay. The point of the Arduino kits, the reason the Arduino was made in the first place, is to make electronics accessible to those among us who know nothing about it! Most starter kits come with a booklet that takes you step-by-step through the basics: which plug goes where, what are all those fancy pins for, what kind of weird codes do I need to type down in order to make all this stuff do what I want it to do? The more you learn about these things - and you learn pretty fast, trust me - the more you can piece together your own tricks.
Of course I'd be lying if I told you that it doesn't make it easier if you know a few things about electronics and C/C++ programming. But it really isn't mandatory!
An additional benefit is that all of these things are open-source. The Internet is all but saturated with Arduino amateurs sharing with the world their circuits and programs for free! So even if you can't figure it out yourself, your desired alarm system may very well be copied from the first website that shows up after a quick search.
You know when fathers buy their sons LEGO or similar toys, only to end up playing with the toys themselves? The Arduino is the next step in all of this. It's more than a toy; it can actually be usefully applied. Just an hour ago I built my own temperature reading device. It cost me under fifteen minutes to find the proper programming and build the circuit. Now I can detect the hottest and coldest spots in the room, meanwhile asking my laptop to register temperatures every 0.1 seconds (or as often as I want); I can have one or two or three LEDs burning depending on how high the temperature has risen, and much more. I've also ordered a small infra-red motion sensor for less than the cost of a pizza and with it, I can have an alarm go off when someone tries to sneak up on me.
Q's lab
Q built a lot of fancy stuff for Bond. Naturally not all of it can be built with the Arduino. But here are a few simple systems everyone of you can build:
* make a sound or flash a light when someone approaches you within a certain distance of your choosing;
* auto-bolt the door of your room at your command like Peter Parker in the recent Spider-Man films;
* perform all sorts of measurements including physical (temperature, light, sound, ...) and chemical (carbon monoxide concentration, pH, ...) parameters and have your system respond to certain values by making a noise or something;
* build a robot that can balance on just two wheels, pour you a drink, hand you a tool;
* is it getting too dark in the room? - tell the Arduino to switch on the lights automatically;
* ...
One of the funniest things I've heard of is a bunch of students who put a methane sensor underneath their professor's pillow and every time he silently farted, some funny text messages were automatically projected on a large screen for all the students in the room to read.
The point of this thread?
I don't know if some of you are familiar with the Arduino. Perhaps you are willing to explore its possibilities through a starter kit, like I have, or you know people who are already into this stuff. If so, you might want to experiment a little bit and then build your own 007 gadgets. In this thread we can exchange pictures or little movies of our circuits and the simple programming behind it. We can inspire each other to devise our own Q-ish gadgets. I'm actually curious to see how many among us are into these modern toys and creative enough to build cool stuff. ;-) I'm rather still a newcomer to the game myself so I need more practice before I can post something useful. But I was hoping I could learn from some of you. :-)
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Comments
I don't have a very big knowledge in electronics wiring but I would say I'm a simple craftsman. Not experienced but have some skills. After all I did manage to make non functional replicas of the remote mines used in GoldenEye. ;)
And built this "Shrink Ray" prop for a high school short film.
I love building random things out of various parts I have lying around.
I couldn't even begin to tell you everything that went into making it. There are some things I added to it that I don't even know what it's from. This is how it looked in the finished film from 2010.
Unfinished and bare, but served it's purpose well. ;)
Here is the Shrink ray back in 2012. I added a dimmer timer on the top of the multimeter that "powers' the device and gave it an internal light. (Thanks christmas lights.)
And here we are in the bookend of 2014. It's come a very long way as I've finally got a table for it. The saying "One man's trash is another person's treasure." Really applies to it. My shrink ray prop has been made from parts either thrown away or stuff I got at my local goodwill. I've added so much more that here's a short video I made showing it off recently.
I once made a pressure sensitive alarm buzzer for a middle school project but that's about how far my knowledge of electronics go. My projects have limited functions. Like my GoldenEye mine replicas. They aren't finished since I haven't tried getting LED lights for them but I like them how they are. I work around certain aspects.
In the picture of the shrink ray all lit up. The christmas light is plugged in and the light in the front nozzle is a simple light ring.