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Posts Tagged ‘Arduino’

Carnegie Mellon student shows that 64 pixels is enough for Mario (video)

There are 2,073,600 pixels in a 1080p TV, yet Carnegie Mellon student Chloe Fan has blown our minds by showing that you only need 64 of them to have a little fun with Super Mario Bros. She wired an Arduino to an 8 x 8 LED matrix through a breadboard, then scaled the first level of the game down to a resolution that makes the 160 x 144 resolution Game Boy look positively high def. The controls are similarly simplified: one button to move Mario (the slightly more orange dot) right, and a second to jump. She also wired up a separate board to play the game’s theme song, as you can see in the embed below, but be aware: the video ends before the theme song does, meaning you’ll be humming it to yourself all day long.

Continue reading Carnegie Mellon student shows that 64 pixels is enough for Mario (video)

Carnegie Mellon student shows that 64 pixels is enough for Mario (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Arduino and accelerometer harmoniously come together in DIY music controller

Look, Physical Computing can be a drain. Particularly when your Summa Cum Laude status is hinging on you acing the final. We’re guessing that one Ryan Raffa managed to pull off a pretty decent grade, as his final project is nothing short of delectable. In a (presumably successful) attempt to wow onlookers and professors alike, Ryan cooked up an audio controller that utilized an ADXL 335 accelerometer (for motion sensing) and an Arduino board that communicates serially with Max MSP. The controller itself boasts inputs for five tracks and the sixth button applies a delay to all of the tracks; he was even kind enough to host up the Max MSP and Arduino code (it’s there in the source link), and if you’re interested in hearing what all the fuss is about, be sure to hop past the break and mash play.

Continue reading Arduino and accelerometer harmoniously come together in DIY music controller

Arduino and accelerometer harmoniously come together in DIY music controller originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vote Now For Your Favorite Web Products of 2009

Over December we have published ten Top 10 lists for the best products of 2009, in categories ranging from Consumer Web Apps to Real-Time Technologies. Now we’re opening up our selections for you to vote on. We’ve embedded a poll below, with all 100 products that the ReadWriteWeb team selected.

We invite you to vote for your favorite web products of 2009. You can select up to 10 products. If you don’t see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we’ll count that as a vote too.

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We will announce the top 10, along with the full results, at the end of this week.

Note: the poll is randomly ordered, but can can also view an alphabetical list below.

What are your best products of 2009? (multiple choice)(polling)

Top 100 Web Products of 2009, Alphabetical

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Arduino-packin’ Didgeridoo features 17 effects controls, drones with the best of ‘em (video)

Continue reading Arduino-packin’ Didgeridoo features 17 effects controls, drones with the best of ‘em (video)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Arduino-packin’ Didgeridoo features 17 effects controls, drones with the best of ‘em (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Webcycle provides pedal-powered internet, reason to dodge browser-enlarging Flash sites

Need an excuse to get some cardio into your life? Can’t live without ye old internet? Thanks to Matt Grey and Tom Scott, the answer to your weight loss woes is pictured above. The aptly-titled Webcycle is essentially a sensor-laden fitness bike that requires users to pedal faster in order to snag more throughput. An Ubuntu-based laptop is wired up to an Arduino and an array of sensors that allow more bits and bytes to seep through based on how hard the rider is working. A simple slow pedal is all it takes to load mobile pages and text-heavy sites, but if you’re hoping to actually watch the video after the break, you’ll certainly need to kick things up a notch. Pure brilliance, we say.

[Thanks, Yoda]

Continue reading Webcycle provides pedal-powered internet, reason to dodge browser-enlarging Flash sites

Filed under: Laptops, Internet

Webcycle provides pedal-powered internet, reason to dodge browser-enlarging Flash sites originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Musical Memes, Choosing A Netizen Anthem

There are a number of perfectly worthy anthems for the wired generation. Kraftwerk’s Computer Love might suffice, or the Ataris’ Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start captures the essence of devoted Konami Contra fans. But a real anthem rallies a movement. It’s the kind of song that is not only widely accepted, but it inspires people to change their lives and behaviors.

The hippies have Blowin’ in the Wind, the children of disco have Stayin’ Alive and the GLBT community has I’m Coming Out. But what do modern day netizens consider their anthem? What gets us grooving in our guilds, cranking out our code and soldering up a mean arduino? Below are some of the top musical memes and anthems from recent years. If you got suggestions for a netizen anthem, leave them in the comments below.

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Love and Longing – Code Monkey: While Jonathan Coulton is perhaps one of the greatest geek anthem musicians with songs like Re Your Brains and That Spells DNA, Code Monkey still manages to top the list with its universal themes of a struggling underdog and unrequited geek love. The song actually became the theme for G4’s now defunct Code Monkeys TV series. It also spurred a number of YouTube mash ups including Mike Booth’s World of Warcraft machinima video.

Pursuit of Knowledge – Free Software Song: Richard Stallman is best known as the founder of the GNU Project and father of the Free Software Foundation. A truly brilliant developer, Stallman has been writing folk songs about technology for more than a decade. His Free Software song based on Bulgarian “Sadi Moma” helped define the musical genre of “filking” – a type of folk music generally created by science fiction & fantasy fans. The song is a tribute to free culture and copyleft software licensing.

Bootstrapped Success – Crank That Soulja Boy: In early 2007, DeAndre Ramone Way, also known as Soulja Boy, was a little known rap artist with a number of tracks released on YouTube and music community SoundClick. Thanks to his Crank That Soulja Boy hit, by 2009 Way was a Grammy Award nominated artist with a record deal and his own production company. According to a Yahoo’s Music blog post from May 2009, “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” has sold over 4,183,000 digital downloads in the United States, becoming the third highest-selling song ever. The song became an internet sensation after the dance tutorial video received more than 40 million YouTube views. Thousands of new videos have since been uploaded to YouTube in tribute to this anthem of a bootstrapped star.

Resurrected Oldies: A number of songs written by music superstars have since become geek anthems. Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up was resurrected after 20 years when the act of tricking individuals into listening to the song or Rickrolling became a popular meme. The Astley meme became so widespread that Astley himself Rickrolled the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving parade in 2008. Meanwhile, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” although always a popular rock ballad, got it’s first taste at video meme-dom in a “Team Cyprus” video that was wildly criticized as an ostentatious display of wealth during one of the country’s worst economic slumps in history. The song has since been featured in an a cappella version on the season premiere of Glee. The squeaky-clean Glee version debuted at number four on the Billboard charts.

Celebrated Amateurs: Tay Zonday’s “Chocolate Rain” first became viral via 4Chan and has since landed the mahogany-voiced baritone features on Good Morning America, Jimmy Kimmel Live, a spot on Lily Allen’s Freeloader Nation Tour, and several endorsement deals. Also an overnight sensation, Gary Brolsma or “the Numa Numa Guy” is best known for his animated YouTube lipsync to Moldovan band O-Zone’s “Dragostea din tei.” Brolsma has since been featured in a South Park episode and videos for the Bare Naked Ladies and Weezer. While neither of these songs make strong direct political or social statements, the fact that they are so widely embraced, is a testament to the web’s spirit of playfulness.

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