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5 Amazingly Cool Open-Source Electronic Projects

By Brett McKay (from The Art of Manliness) on February 29, 2012

Have you ever had those moments when you thought, "I really wish my plant could Tweet me when it needed watering," or "Man, I would give anything to be able to play a song for my beloved on a laser harp?"

No? Okay, maybe I'm the only one. But in the slim chance that you too want to hack your environment to do pretty much whatever you want, allow me to introduce you to the wonderfully hack-tastic and open-source world of Arduino.

What is Arduino you ask? According to Arduino's official homepage, Arduino is an "open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software." Put another way, an Arduino is basically a small USB board with a microchip and various inputs for sensors (the hardware) that can be programmed using Arduino's computer language to do really cool things (the software).

Here's what a basic Arduino board looks like:

You can attach different sensors to an Arduino that can detect certain conditions in the environment like light level, temperature, or even moisture, and create a computer program that controls how objects in your environment react to those conditions. For an easy to digest overview of how Arduinos work, check out this webcomic.

Working with an Arduino can definitely be a fun and rewarding hobby. There's a passionate community of geeks doing really cool things with Arduinos and sharing their ideas with others. If you're interested in learning about programming and electronics, I highly recommend checking it out.

To show you the infinite and fun uses of an Arduino, we highlight five really cool projects you can do once you've mastered the basics of working with this wondrous little computer board.

Botanicalls Tweeting Plant
Do you have a hard time remembering to water your house plants? Instead of checking your plants every day to see if they need watering, let your plants tell you if they need some more H2O. This Arduino project from Botanicalls will allow your plant to send you a Tweet when it needs watering. By connecting moisture probes to your Arduino USB board and programming your Arduino with some ready-to-go code, you'll be getting tweets like "Water me please!" or "You didn't give me enough water," from your plant.

If you're looking for other Twitter/Arduino projects, check out the Twitter Enabled Coffee Pot and the Kitty Twitty Cat Toy.

Fortune Teller Robot
Magic 8 Balls are sooo twenty years ago. It's time to update the handheld fortune-telling device for the 21st century. With an Arduino board and a bit of ingenuity, you can. This project uses a simple LCD screen, a button, and some LED lights encased in an old cigar box to create a fortune-telling robot that displays a fortune, along with a lucky number, whenever someone pushes the button.

Mute Annoying Celebrities With "The Enough Already"

Are you tired of having to hear about Donald Trump or Snooki every time you turn on the television? Make Magazine contributor Matt Richardson was, and decided to harness the power of the Arduino to silence news about the annoying celebrities who had taken over his TV. By adding a Video Experimenter Shield to the Arduino board, you're able to pick up and decode the closed captioning transcription track that is transmitted along with the TV's picture signal. Using a bit of programming to detect certain keywords like "Snooki" or "Donald Trump," you can tell the Arduino to mute your TV for 30 seconds whenever those keywords show up in the closed captioning track.

Haunted Mansion Singing Busts
My wife loves Disney's Haunted Mansion ride. Love is probably an understatement. She's obsessed with it. When we went to Disney World a few years ago, she rode it four times in a row right before the park closed. With an Arduino, some peripherals, and a bit of jiggering I can let my wife experience the iconic Haunted Mansion Singing Busts right in the comfort of our home.

Now I just need to find a host to complete my homemade Haunted Mansion. A ghost host. Bwahahahaha!

Laser Harp
When I was a kid I imagined we'd all by flying around on hover boards and playing music on laser harps while wearing white robes. Sadly, hover boards are still a Marty McFly fantasy and the comfort of white robes hasn't been embraced by the masses (though, perhaps the Snuggie is a stepping stone on the slippery and glorious path to robe-dom).
But thanks to the Arduino and a few creative minds, we do have laser harps.

Software designer Steve Hobley designed an eerily beautiful green laser harp that acts like a MIDI controller. To pluck the "strings," you simply move your hand over the light beam and block it. Here it is in action:

You can buy the design plans for this futuristic masterpiece on Steve's site.
For more Arduino project ideas, check out the official Arduino site as well as Make.com's Arduino section.

Do you know about any other cool Arduino projects? Share them with us in the comments!

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Founded in January 2008, The Art of Manliness is a blog focused on reviving the lost art of manliness. With over 7 million monthly page views, The Art of Manliness represents a new kind of magazine for men, one that focuses on helping men become better citizens, fathers, husbands, friends, and simply all around better men. Husband and wife team, Brett and Kate McKay head up the up the blog. They live in Tulsa, OK.