Hackaday announces a hardware contest; the winner goes to space

Hackaday has announced an open hardware design contest today for the worldwide community of hackers and the grand prize winner will receive a free trip to space or $196,418 cash. We want the next evolution of connected devices to happen now and we want it to be Open. Why shouldn’t Hackaday be the biggest cheerleader, encourager, and enabler for the cause of Open Hardware? Build a piece of hardware that moves past the rut of “Internet-enabled refrigerators” and billion dollar thermostats (we couldn’t resist). Think big, come up with a piece of hardware that has the potential to change the lives of many.

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A very simple posture sensor for your chair

If your job involves sitting in front of a computer for long hours everyday, a poor posture might result in neck, shoulder, and back pain. Sitting up straight helps to get rid of some of these problems. This ATtiny85 based posture sensor uses the HC-SR04 ultrasonic ranging module to sense the position of your head while you are sitting on a chair, and generates an acoustic alarm if you are not sitting up straight. [via]

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Turn your Arduino board into a digital multimeter with this shield

Here is an instructable that describes a DIY shield which would convert your Arduino board into a multifunctional digital multimeter. This shield can be used with “Arduino” UNO und Duemilanove boards, and can display the measurements on a 16X2 character LCD and/or on the serial monitor window on PC. This digital multimeter Arduino shield has the following features: voltmeter ranges : 0-10V; 0-30V; 0-100V ampmeter range : 0-500mA  ohmmeter ranges : 0-1KOhm, 0-250KOhm diode, LED, continuity tester LED functionality tester transistor Beta meter

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chipKIT Project 4: Digital light meter

A light meter is used to measure the intensity of illumination in a given area. It is widely used in schools, warehouses, factories, hospitals, office buildings, museums, art-galleries, parking garages, stadiums, and many more, to measure and maintain proper lighting levels. The intensity of illumination is usually expressed in Lux or foot-candles. As the 4th project in our chipKIT tutorial series, today we are going to build a digital light meter using the chipKIT Uno32 board and the BH1750 digital light sensor. This project uses Digilent’s chipKIT Basic I/O shield for displaying the measured light intensity in Lux, foot-candles, and Watts/m^2 units.

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Noodle: A new robotic sensing project using Raspberry Pi

Noodle is a Raspberry Pi based prototype machine that has capabilities of sensing the surrounding space with its audio and video sensors, and of reacting to the sensed activities in the vicinity. The Noodle can respond with words, images, and sounds, and can also be programmed to take decisions, if required. The Noodle is Wifi-enabled and uses a camera and a microphone for visual and audio sensing. This instructable describes the construction of Noodle, including setting up the Raspberry Pi, connecting all the electronics, and creating the enclosure. While Noodle is currently in an early stage with the basic framework

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