Arduino Projects: Getting Started

Arduino Hacking - What's Possible

The popularity of the Arduino as a development platform has meant that it finds use in some pretty amazing projects across the globe - and here's a small selection to get you thinking about what you could build with your new-found skills.

aRSSduino

The aRSSduino is actually my very own little Arduino project, designed to display RSS feed entries on a 16x2 LCD display over a USB connection. Rather than acting as a stand-alone device - although with the purchase of an Arduino Ethernet Shield it certainly could - it relies on a back-end program written in Python to download, decode, and transmit the RSS entries to the display. A modified back-end also allows it to display Twitter messages. It's by no means a particularly complicated project, but demonstrates the flexibility of the platform and its beginner-friendliness: the basics of the aRSSduino were built on the first day of playing with the Arduino.

The Virtual USB Keyboard

One of the sample projects in Practical Arduino, the Virtual USB Keyboard allows you to connect the Arduino to your PC and use if for text entry, creating either a hotkey system for rapid access to your favourite macros or a 'chording' keyboard that allows you to type rapidly with just a single hand. Building on the basic techniques, it's possible to add things like a joystick to produce custom game controllers featuring the Arduino board at their heart.

The Meggy Jr. RGB

Demonstrating that it's possible to build something fun from something simple, the Meggy Jr. is a hand-held games console built around the same ATmega 168 that made up the older versions of the Arduino Duemilanove. Although its low-resolution 8x8 RGB display isn't going to offer a high-definition gaming experience, it's certainly an easy platform to start developing for - just fire up the standard Arduino IDE and start writing your own games.

Steampunk Secret Knock Lock

One of the most visually stunning Arduino-based projects around is also one of the simplest from a circuit perspective: the Steampunk Secret Knock Detecting Workshop Door. Building upon a simple piezoelectric knock detecting circuit, the beautifully over-engineered iris hides an Arduino which listens for a certain pattern of knocks and then uses a relay to trigger an electromagnetic lock.

The Open Source Satellite Initiative

The aim of the Open Source Satellite Initiative is certainly bold: to give everyone the ability to launch their very own low Earth orbit satellite. With full instructions on how to make a - surprisingly cheap - Arduino-powered satellite, this is a project for true stargazers - although you're left with the issue of getting your creation into orbit yourself.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

If space is a little high to aim, combined with a few extra components, the Arduino platform is powerful enough to create your very own unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV - a fully automated spyplane capable of flying to GPS co-ordinates and snapping pictures or video before returning safely to base, and for a fraction of the cost of a Predator drone.

As you can see, there are plenty of people developing projects based around the Arduino plaform out there - and if you've come up with a project that you think makes good use of the Arduino or one of its many variants, tell us about it over in the forums!