What sort of projects do people want to hack with at Howduino?  You're more than welcome to bring your current project along with you, but we expect lots of you will be looking for something to do.  Use this page to brainstorm ideas about what we could build.

Inspiration

There are loads of hardware hacking projects around on the Internet.  Add links to your favourite projects here to show the rest of us what's possible...

• Top 40 Arduino projects of the Web
• Thom's laser-pointer chasing toy Mini
• Adrian's twitter-watching, bubble-blowing Bubblino
• An RFID-controlled music player
• Make your plants talk on twitter
• Morning monster alarm clock and blind-opener

Beginners Projects

Ideas for projects that someone with little or no hardware or software experience could get up and running.  We'll probably run at least one of these projects in a workshop format to help people get started.

[word of caution: I've just started installing the arduino IDE on my computer and it is rather large - if you haven't already got it on your machine, make sure you leave plenty of time to get it unzipped and installed. Definitely something to do before you come to Howduino! nikki]

• Basic toy hacking.  Bring along a simple electronic toy and make it respond to twitter like the one in my Alertuino talk [suggested by Adrian McEwen]
  • I 'd like to give this a go. How about hooking it up to a circuit-bent furby? http://www.vimeo.com/4459775 (might need to trigger a few switches in sequence...) nikki
  • I've been playing with a wired up panda and steam-powered meters, so I'd be up for some toy abuse [TimD]
• LED throwies.  If we can get hold of some of the strong magnets, these are a pretty simple but cool project [suggested by Adrian McEwen]
• A Bristlebot
• Camera Triggers - most decent cameras have a remote trigger function which is usually quite easy to wire up to an Arduino, then the camera can be triggered by a whole host of different kinds of sensors, or be triggered in sync with some other action
  • This I'd be really up for working on, have had  a vague idea in my head for a project that relies on cameras triggered by some sort of external stumulus for a while, but never managed to finish it, as my electronics knowledge didn't seem to be up to the task. Let me know if you'd like some help! --TimC
  • I probably won't be doing this myself but happy to help you out, if you're using a Canon SLR the two key components are a 2.5mm stereo jack and an optocoupler, a dual optocoupler if you want to control focus and shutter. Shouldn't cost any more than £1 altogether :) - Thom

Suggestions for hacks that someone/some people could do

Even if you have no idea whether they could be done

• Light that will switch on when council is doing rubbish/recycling run (could be stuck to bin or in kitchen) (my fault: @hubmum)
• Some kind of thing to go on a bike that will alert cyclists to areas of danger, i.e. high accident zones (data is available for this)... could go on cars too for that matter telling them to keep an eye out for cyclists (my fault: @hubmum)
• Would anyone be willing to try and create a copy of Adrian McEwen's Drawbot? (You can see it in action on the Howduino homepage!) I belive that if some of us worked as a group we could have it made during the day. Adrian can you possibly let us know a parts list before hand? - Adam

  That's not Adrians drawbot, it's just a photo I found on flickr, but funnily enough I have been planning one using the same concept, I wanted to get the basics done before Howduino so people can play with it and create interfaces - Thom 

  I'd be interested in working on this but I'd need someone to point me in the right direction on stuff to buy/read before the day - Nick

  There's more info about the Drawbot over at http://www.as220.org/labs/drawbot/, including some code for the Arduino to control it. It looks like it's just a couple of stepper motors using the bipolar stepper motor circuit from Tom Igoe. So you'd need two stepper motors, two 1K resistors, an L239D dual H-bridge chip and two NPN transistors. You can often salvage stepper motors from floppy drives, CDROM drives or hard drives, but the one I pulled out of a CDROM drive recently was a bit tricky to solder wires to. Or you could get the motors and controller chip from here for about £17 - Adrian