Using not much more than an Arduino, a piece of metal shim, and a bunch of wire, Instructables user sketchsk3tch built this Arduino Magstripe Emulator, which purportedly can spoof a magnetic card reader into thinking a card has been swiped.
If you’ve been needing some extra space for your microcontroller program, then you might want to take a look at Wayne Holders’ latest project, Magnetic Core Memory for Arduino.
Create your own drawing and animation software-and learn basic programming and electronics skills at the same time. This engaging 5-week online course introduces you to two simple tools: Processing, a programming language for visual thinkers, and Arduino, a hardware platform for working with electronics. You’ll learn how to use these tools together to build something useful right away.
Brian Dwyer built this nifty 2-axis light follower using the infrared camera from a Wiimote, a couple of servos, and an Arduino.
OSCON this year will be a delight for anybody interested in working with hardware. A full open source hardware track offers a range of talks to get you started with hardware hacking, and gives a great insight into the current options for prototyping.
Jared Bouck is the driving force behind Sprout Board, an Arduino breakout board that lets you plug in a Duemilanove and a shield and provides a panel-mount set of screw terminals, all in a rack-mountable form factor. The prototype application for the SproutBoard is a DIY server room monitor that can be configured to provide remote temperature and humidity, motion, liquid water, smoke, room entry, and mains power monitoring. Local monitoring options include an LCD display and an audio alarm module. They’ll sell you the Sprout Board itself, in kit form, for $50, or a complete bare-bones server monitor with a fully assembled and tested Spout Board, an Arduino, an Ethernet Shield, a serial LCD display, a wall mount chassis, and a temperature/humidity sensor board for $250, which is about 1/5th the price of a comparable commercial system.
Eric Ayars made this tidy Arduino-Controlled Physics Lab Fan-Cart for simple physics demonstration.
