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Nachimir in the UK has found a way to use empty plastic milk bottles in an artistic and aesthetic manner - by converting them into individual lamps that can be addressed individually by an Ardiuno-style board. This allows the freedom to create all sorts of on/off controls, flowing lights or other patterns that can be imagined. Here is a short demonstration of them in action:

The number of lamps that could be controlled will depend on the number of free I/O pins available on the particular Arduino board. One can always use shift registers to expand the available output pins, or consider using an Arduino Mega-compatible board such as our Freetronics EtherMega:

... which gives you 54 digital output pins, and using the onboard Ethernet you could also have the lamps respond to content collated from the Internet. Or if you are using a smaller style of board, our EXPAND modules:

can be daisy-chained to provide more digital outputs. However, for more information on how to make your own lamps, read Nachimir's excellent instructions and design notes in his page. 

 Dan Wagoner has designed and built a very neat implementation of the "Hangman" game using an Arduino, external circuitry and a neat enclosure. Although it is easy to prototype various projects on the bench, it's great to see Dan convert this game into a usable product that can "live away from the bench". Now to see it in action:

To make your own version, we have a range of Arduino-compatible boards such as our Freetronics Eleven, the Arduino Uno-compatible with onboard prototyping area, and an LCD Keypad shield that lend themselves perfectly to this type of game:

For more information, the Hangmanduino sketch and other details, visit Dan's site here. 

 Mario Lukas created this novel entry for a design competition using parts from old CDROM drives, an Ethernet-enabled Arduino and other odds and ends - a simple device that prints characters (from the C64 character set) onto toilet paper:

Although the printer was made for toilet paper, it also opens up other opportunites - for example, a home-made permanent data logger or artistic patter creator. 

To get started with your own version, a great start would be with the Freetronics EtherTen - the only Arduino Uno-compatible with onboard Ethernet, microSD card interface and optional PoE:

However, for more information and detailed construction images, visit Mario's website. (Opens in Google Translate)

Using "One Arduino, twelve piezo sensors, two speakers and a lot of duct tape" Alice Zappe and Julia Läger took an umbrella and converted it into a musical umbrella that turns falling raindrops into 8-bit sounds. For example:

Certainly something fun and a unique use of an Arduino board. There is a short wiki about the umbrella here, and it would seem that the piezos are being used as knock sensors to create values to generate sounds with. 

To build embedded projects such as the musical umbrella, a great start is our Freetronics LeoStick, one of the smallest Arduino-compatible boards on the market - also with onboard RGB LED and piezo:

Once again Mike Cook has published another very useful and well-documented project, describing an intelligent transistor tested based around an Arduino and external circuitry. Using a lot of analogue switches via 74HC4066s, the tester can measure for every combination of base, collector and emitter. Once the transistor pinouts have been detected, the gain is then measured and display. See it in operation in the following video:

Truly an innovative and imaginative piece of equipment that will be useful for electronics enthusiasts. It could also be modified to display the results on an LCD module, thereby negating the need for a PC. To get started with your own tester, consider using a Freetronics Eleven, our Arduino Uno-compatible with onboard prototyping space - and an LCD Keypad shield:

Finally, for more information and Mike's detailed tutorial, visit his site. 

Next in our series of articles about using old drive technology comes the "Moppy", an Arduino-based interface between 3.5" floppy disk drives and a MIDI keyboard. Using some simple circuitry the motors of the drives can be controlled to create various sounds, as demonstrated in the following video:

For those looking to make their own Moppy, the files are available on their github page. And if the world of Arduino is new to you, consider using our Freetronics Eleven - the Arduino Uno-compatible with onboard prototyping space for your own circuits:

Fellow Melbournian Wouter Walmink from RMIT decided that a normal bike helmet wasn't good enough, and instead designed one that apart from being totally unique, also indicated the movement of the cyclist as well. Using an Arduino board as the base, his LumaHelm helment is unique and certainly solves his problem. See more in the following video:

Once more projects such as this show how much you can do with the Arduino system and some imagination. For those looking to replicate this project, a good start would be with our Freetronics LeoStick - one of the smallest Arduino-compatible boards on the market; and our AM3X accelerometer module - perfect for motion and tilt detection:

Both are very small and easy to implement in your own projects. Futhermore, you can find out more about Wouter at his website here. 

 After renovating some Commodore 64 computers, "bisrhythm" found themselves with a few extras that were beyond repair. So instead of  gathering dust in the cupboard, they have been modified to work with more contemporary PCs.

As the C64 keyboard is an 8x8 button matrix, the conversion was quite simple. The use of a virtual-USB library finalises the task and works well. Even the power LED can be illuminated for maximum realism. 

When reproducing your own C64 keyboard there isn't that much circuitry to add to the keyboard. Therefore the use of one of our Arduino-compatible boards such as the Freetronics Eleven, and a ProtoShield would solve the problem nicely:

So if you have your own C64 in terminal condition and want to convert it to a keyboard, the instructions, sketch and notes can be found here. 

 Joe Desbonnet has made what can only described as the most inexpensive way of interfacing an Arduino board with an Android phone bar yelling at it and hoping for a response. In his project, he uses a meter of enamelled copper wire, a resistor and a diode to send data at a speed that makes you wish for a telex machine. 

In all seriousness, Joe's project is certainly novel and out of the box - the data is sent by creating a low-frequency signal through the coil which is them detected by the magnetometer in the Android phone and measured with a simple app. You can see it in action here:

If you have an Android phone or similar hardware, this is a simple and expensive experiment to try out for fun. If you want to make your own rendition - you could build the external circuit and coil onto a protoshield, such as our inexpensive ProtoShield Basic for Arduino:

In the meanwhile, Joe has made all the instructions, code and notes available on his site here. 

If you still have some ATAPI-interface CDROM drives kicking around from the late 1990s - don't throw them out, as they can be used as simple audio CD players. The people at single valve have created a circuit that interfaces an Arduino board via some I2C port exapnders to control the drive, and also retrieve playback information. A natural extension to this is adding infra-red remote control, which is simple to achieve using the library and an IR receiver module.

To take this one step further, an LCD module could also be used to display the playback information and times. So the next time you see an old desktop PC awaiting council cleanup - consider picking it up and making a CD player out of it. 

In line with that suggestion, a great start would be with our line of Arduino-compatible hardware such as the Freetronics Eleven, some protoshields and our LCD Keypad shield:

For more information and complete construction details, visit the ATAPIduino webpage here.