Jotting down some ideas that may come to fruition in the near future.
Vacuum Robot
A
robot about the size of a UPA regulated disc that goes around the house
vacuuming the floor. Sounds awesome!!! Yesh. But they have those
already. They're called Roombas. Hella expensive IMO. I want to simplify
the design a bit and have it run on solar power. How can you do that?!,
you may ask. Since the Sun is outside, and the robot is indoors... Yeah
we have an obvious problem. One way to do it is to have the Solar
Panels on the roof or mount it somewhere in direct sunlight and just
extend the wires down to like a charging station for the robot to
recharge its batteries. Lots of algorithms, programming, testing, and
more programming needed to make the robot SMART. The idea is good and
would make for a great project, but not very realistic for a hardware
engineer with little programming experience.
IR Activated, Note-Playing, Light-Making Instrument
I saw this project on SparkFun and wanted to make a similar project (Illumitune).
Although
the tutorial is excellent and well thought out, the goal was to make it
easily maintained for the next guy in charge of the exhibit. I will
definitely keep it simple and make a mini mockup model of the thing.
Infrared light gets emitted from a device and the device senses when
something goes over the sensor, sort of like a motion detector. The
sensor outputs a voltage to the Arduino which then turns ON the LEDs
lights and sounds to a MIDI. Pretty neat right?! I see the pricetag of
this project anywhere from $110 for just the infrared sensors to $150 to include a MIDI device to control synthesizers, music devices, etc... Every child loves an interactive light-up and sound-making toy! My half birthday passed about a week ago...Just saying...
Data Logger
This
one is awesome. Just logging data from a sensor to a SD or microSD
card. They have these already, but I would like to apply it to different
applications. Like logging temperature, sunlight, air pressure, or
whatnot. It will be mostly used for debugging and information gathering.
An idea here is to log the direction the sun takes in the sky using
photocells, and adjust/rotate the solar panels accordingly to get the
most sunlight possible. Data logger = research assistant.
Video Recorder
Who doesn't want to see the skies that your RC helicopter sees? or how about a kite, RC car, the people who go into your supply closet and steal your goodies, or the everyday life of a dog collar.
To see the world through a different perspective can be exciting. I found one such video recorder seen here FlyCamOne eco V2. I believe it is an ECO (engineering change order) which is why it's Version 2. Just attach this bad boy with a good set of lightweight batteries and you're ready to record to a microSD card. One thing to keep in mind is the weight when using it with a flight application. It is only 15grams but the battery will weigh down the helicopter or kite much more so. So pay attention to battery weight and size matters.
