Berlin-based Brazilian artist and technologist Luiz Zanotello has made a kinetic artwork called A Habitat of Recognition, which reads and writes an ore made of iron and silica particles.

Luiz Zanotello is a Brazilian artist and designer based in Berlin. For his master degree in Digital Media at the University of the Arts Bremen, Zanatello created a work called A Habitat of Recognition. The artist explains that the work “enacts an infrastructural imaginary where an ore of granule particles (silica and iron) is written and read as a granular record”.

The reading of the ore and writing of the record is realised by the sensing, sorting and separating of an ore made of a mixture silica (non-magnetic) and iron (magnetic). Zanatello says that this sorting mechanism “resembles the processes that occur on the sorting of vast landscapes into mineral ores.”

A Habitat of Recognition is controlled with a pair of Teensy 3.1 boards, plus a number stepper and servo motors controlled with a Theremino driver board. The hardware and code used to create this artwork have been documented over on the Arduino website, and you can see more images, videos and read more about the concepts on Zanatello’s site.

Image and video above from Ferreira Zanotello, L. G. (2017) A Habitat of Recognition. Full thesis available on his website.

Forum user MJS513 wanted their rover to send information to a base station while on the move, so they used a Teensy 3.5 to set up Mavlink messaging.

MJS513 upgraded their DIY rover communications with MAVLink, a Teensy 3.5 and APM Planner. MAVLink is a way for unmanned vehicles such as rovers and drones to talk with a base station. By using this protocol in with a Teensy 3.5, MJS513 was able to to send data from their rover to APM Planner, an open source ground station.

Instead of having to send data to the serial monitor and process it all later, this project allows MJS513 to view live data and issue commands to their rover. Check out the YouTube video to see it in action. The source code has also been released on MJS513’s GitHub.

Laserr has made a collection of homemade electronic instruments that draw inspiration from musical traditions around the world.

Drawing inspiration from traditional musical instruments from around the world, Laserr (forum user) has made a collection of homemade electronic instruments using the Teensy 2.0 and Teensy ++.

The first set of reworked world instruments includes a bulbul tarang (also known as an Indian or Panjabi banjo), a guzheng (a stringed instrument from China that dates back over 2500 years), a didgeridoo (an aboriginal Australian wind instrument), an erhu (an ancient two stringed instrument from China) and a hurdy gurdy (a drone folk instrument popular in Medieval Europe).

Each of the five instruments makes creative use of capacitive touch to trigger and modulate sounds designed in Native Instruments’ Kontact 5 software.  As well as recreating the sounds of each of the five instruments, Laserr has come up with ways for players to add in texture to their  performances with controls for effects including tremelo, vibrato, tone and rhythm.

Another nice touch on some of the instruments is the option to include accompanying sounds, such as wind chimes with the guzheng or piano with the erhu. It’s also lovely to see some of the quirks of these instruments recreated in the electronic versions, for example the charming inclusion of a hand crank on the hurdy gurdy.

You can find more information on this impressive collection of experimental electronic instruments by watching Laserr’s YouTube video above, and you can also read the original forum post. Laserr has also created a second collection of DIY electronic musical instruments which you can check out by watching the video below or on their YouTube channel.

Monta Elkins at Fox Guard made a festive holiday ornament to hang on the tree.

Using the digital to analog converter (DAC) pins on a Teensy 3.5 Monta was able to display a drawing of a holiday tree on a Tektronix T32A oscilliscope.  He went old school in the design process and first drew the design on graph paper to plot the coordinates for the design.  Then wrote some code to  draw lines between the coordinates to create the tree.

Okay, maybe it’s a *little* heavy to hang on a tree, but it is festive!

Ben Forta has made a festive, animated Chanukah light display featuring a menorah and dreidel game.

The two displays total over 4,500 NeoPixel LEDs.  Both displays are built on aluminum frames covered with chicken wire to allow wind to pass through (survived 60 MPH winds).  Each display is controlled by a Teensy 3.2 paired with an OCTO Shield.  All fo the electronics, power feeds, and data connections are housed in a pair of waterproof boxes.

Happy Chanukah!

 

Chip Audette and the folks at Tympan has developed a fully open source hearing aid development platform.

Hearing aid technology has been closed technology with access only available to those working in the industry and Chip set out to change that.  What began as an experimental project has now become Tympan, an open source hearing aid development platform.

The Tympan platform uses a Teensy 3.6 and the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities of the Teensy Audio Library to implement dynamic range compression – amplifying quieter sounds while not making louder sounds any louder.  Chip has a great explanation of the need for dynamic range compression in this blog post.  He follows it up with details on how he implemented it in this blog post.

The Tympan units are affordable devices that allows users to program and customize their own hardware to best suit their hearing needs without having to go to a technician each time an adjustment is needed.

The Tympan hearing aids are OSHWA Certified.  Code, schematics and KiCad files are available on GitHub.

Wyatt Olsen built an incredible electronic drum set that that is fully portable and customizable.

Looking to get back to playing drums, Wyatt decided to create Dum Master, an electronic drum set.  The first rev was functional but had a few problems such as difficulty in getting accurate velocity sensing and the need for a separate computer to play the sounds.  Notable improvements with Rev 2 of the project include using peak detection hardware and using a Teensy with an Audio Shield for playback.

Additional details can be found on the Drum Master website.

Code for the project has been published on GitHub.

Delta Space Systems has developed a flight computer for launching rockets into high altitudes.

The Omega flight computer features 2 pyro channels, 2 servo outputs for thrust vector control, data logging, altitude measurements, and a gyroscope.  This latest version of their flight computer upgrades from using a Teensy 3.2 to a Teensy 3.5.  The increased processing power allows for additional data logging to make more accurate TVC (Thrust Vector Control) movements.  They were also able to eliminate the SD socket and flash chip from the design which contributed to a significant weight reduction.

UHF made TSynth, an awesome sounding four note polyphonic synthesizer.

Inspired by the Teensy-Synth series by Notes & Volts, UHF set out to make his own synthesizer using a Teensy 3.6, Audio Shield, and the Audio Library.

 

This synth is packed with features including four voice polyphony with two oscillators per voice.  Check out the forum post for a full list of features on this incredible project.

 

Mohit Bhoite made Bubble Punk, a nifty little sculpture to measure temperature and humidity.

Along with a Teensy-LC, the sculpture uses an Adafruit SHT32-D sensor breakout board, a vintage HP5052 7415 7 segment display, and a WS2812B LED to light it up.