Matthew Venn and members of the Bristol (UK) Hackerspace have published details of a fun project that uses an Arduino board and the contents of old floppy disk drives. The combination of the two results with spiral-drawing devices that can create an interesting variety of circular artworks. The Arduino controls the stepper motor previously used to rotate the disk, and a market pen is mounted on the read-write head. With some extra work you could control that to allow for more detailed drawings. Nevertheless, the project is explained and demonstrated in the following video:
So next time you see an old PC on the side of the road, grab the floppy drive then visit here. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When experimenting with various items and an Arduino, it can be difficult and time consuming to mess about connecting wires of various sizes to the board. As you can see the coffee machine hacker has chosen our Freetronics Terminal Shield for Arduino - which neatly solved the problem:
Apart from having a larger than normal prototyping area, there are terminal blocks for every Arduino pin, three LEDs for general use and a reset button on the shield. Great for experimenting and fast I/O connections - so order yours today.
