Hasta La Gadget!

Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology may lead to better mobile gadgets and perhaps even the rise of new kinds of devices, thanks to its low power consumption and cost. But like NFC – another technology with huge potential – as of now only a handful of consumer devices support this technology. But thanks to a small company, tinkerers can incorporate BLE to their projects. All they need is the BLEduino.

Made by Kytelabs, the tiny BLEduino board is based on the Arduino Leonardo. That means it will work with Arduino shields and code. Watch the video below to see examples of devices that can be made using BLEduino.

Imagine that. You can make your own Bluetooth controller! Pledge at least $34 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a BLEduino as a reward. In case you want to make sure that your BLEduino will work with all of your shields, the higher reward tiers also come with Shield-Shield, an attachment that was also invented by Kytelabs. Shield-Shield makes the BLEduino compatible with both the old and new pin layout of Arduino shields.

The Rapiro Robot Kit lets you have a little assistant follow you around the home.

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Electric vehicle charging stations aren’t cheap: one of the most affordable Level 2 (240V) units sells for $450 and only supplies 16A. Electric Motor Works (EMW) — which is best known for its electric conversion kits — wants to change this with JuiceBox, a 15kW Level 2 EV charger that costs just $99 in kit form (plus $10 shipping). The device, which is launching on Kickstarter today, supplies up to 62A and operates on both 120V and 240V. It’s built around an Arduino microcontroller and EMW is making both the hardware and software open source.

But wait, there’s more! The company is also crowdfunding a Premium Edition of JuiceBox ($199 in kit form) which adds time-of-day charging, a color LCD, ground-fault plus output protection (for outdoor use) and a unique enclosure (hopefully as funky as the one in the picture above). While the DIY kits only require basic assembly and soldering skills, you’ll be able to buy fully assembled versions for $100 more. At $329 (shipped), a ready-to-use JuiceBox Premium Edition undercuts other similar charging stations by several hundred dollars. The catch? You’ll have to supply your own cables (or buy them separately from EMW), including one with a standard J1772 EV connector. Hit the source link below to check out the campaign, and take a look at the PR after the break.

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: EMW (Kickstarter)

Writing code for an Arduino-friendly board is relatively easy; creating the board is the hard part, unless you live and breathe electrical engineering. If HackEDA has its way, however, the design process could be almost as easy as window shopping. Its new Kickstarter-backed project lets tinkerers choose from a list of parts and get a made-to-order board without knowing a lick about PCB assembly — algorithms sort out the finer details. While the initial effort includes just 36 combos based around an Atmega328 processor, contributors who want tangible hardware can pay anything from $30 for a bare board through to $10,000 for the first stages of mass production. The truly committed will have to wait until December for the finished goods, but those willing to try HackEDA can use its existing web tool for free.

Filed under: Misc

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Source: Kickstarter, HackEDA

Here’s a neat greentech idea currently seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter. SunnyBot is a microcomputer-powered robot that continually tracks the position of the sun, angling its on-board mirror so that it keeps reflecting the sun’s rays onto a fixed point of your choice. The basic idea being to harness solar energy for use as an indoor light-source when rooms might otherwise be in shade, or to target the sun’s heat where it’s needed — for warming a room or heating a swimming pool or nurturing indoor plants, and so on.

SunnyBot’s creators — an Italian startup called Solenica — say the bot can also be used to improve solar charging performance by concentrating the sun’s energy. A single SunnyBot redirects 7,000 lumens to the location of your choice (equivalent to a single 500W halogen lamp). The reflective range of the device is up to 200 meteres away, with an accuracy error margin of as little as 0.1 meter over 30 meters.

Obviously, the SunnyBot needs to be able to see sun in the sky to work — so residents of Iceland in December are going to find it brings them very little light relief. But amplifying the effects of sunlight in countries when sunshine is not so plentiful is one application its creators envisage for the device. In countries where sunshine is plentiful, the bot’s use-case is better targeting of the sun’s natural energy to improve the human environment.

Inside the sun-tracking mirror-wielding bot, itself powered by a row of solar cells, is a dual-axis, integrated microcomputer with an optical feedback system. The current SunnyBot design is a prototype, so its technical specifications will be tweaked as the startup moves to industrial production, with additional elements intended to be added to the design to improve durability, such as a custom enclosure for the mirror to support and contain it, and also the use of injection moulding for high quality body and mechanical parts.

Solenica is also planning to offer an open source version of the SunnyBot — called SunnyDuino – that, for a small price premium, will come with an additional Arduino-compatible controller and SDK so bot owners can hack in to the device to develop their own functionalities for its targeted beam of light and heat.

Solenica is aiming to raise £200,000 ($312,000) via Kickstarter to step up to industrial manufacturing so it can bring the device market. It also plans to spend some of the money on marketing SunnyBot, as it ramps up to license it to global manufacturers. It says it believes it can ship the first production run of the bot in time for the 2013 holiday season.

SunnyBot will be assembled in Italy, with macro components produced in different locations, including the electronic boards in Cambridge, U.K.; microcontrollers in Arizona, U.S.; and mechanical parts in Modena, Italy. The consumer cost per bot looks likely to be several hundred pounds. There are a limited number of Kickstarter pledges costing £199 ($310) which include one device. Solenica’s Diva Tommei adds: “We are hoping, after the project is over, to decrease costs of production and therefore the price of the robot. We want SunnyBot to be a household object that anyone can afford.”