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Arduino is often thought of as a beginner's platform, largely due to the incredible ease with which someone who has no electronics or programming experience can get started with making things blink or burble. It should be remembered, though, that it's also a very powerful platform - and that's not something that Blackmagic Design, a TV and cinema specialist, has forgotten in using it at the heart of its latest creation. The Blackmagic 3G-SDI is designed to make it as simple as possible for people to create customer interfaces to devices speaking Blackmagic's SDI Control Protocol. Connected to an Arduino,...

The Atmel microcontrollers on which many Arduino and compatible boards are based are rightly famed for their low power drain, in particular when using interrupts and the chip's built-in sleep functionality. Sometimes, though, low-drain isn't enough - which is why Instructables user Hase has published a schematic for a zero-drain Arduino-compatible standby circuit. Designed as part of a project to convert a small commercial van into a camper, to drive a custom dimmable 30W LED lighting system, Hase's circuit is designed to entirely eliminate the standby power drain of the Arduino. "The problem: onboard devices for vehicles (cars) typically draw...

Driving a clock with a microcontroller, Arduino or otherwise, may seem overkill when a simple timer circuit is enough - but when you're building a clock as unusual as Danté Roumega's latest creation, it makes a certain twisted sense. Where a traditional clock moves hands over a fixed face, Danté's version moves the face behind a fixed hand. Danté's clock, while not the first based on the design, is a great introduction to crazy clock design: a stepper motor and controller are connected to an Arduino Micro, and linked to a cardboard wheel with a 72cm circumference. By programming the...

The Arduino is a great device for prototyping, but when you've got your build down-pat and are ready to produce a handful - whether you're farming PCB production out or doing it by hand - it's time to think about scaling down. The most common way to get an Arduino prototype production ready is to transfer your sketch to a bare AVR microcontroller - but actually programming said microcontroller can be something of a pain, typically involving rats' nests of wiring in a breadboard with your target chip annoyingly nestled dead centre. Maker Steve Charlesworth's latest Instructable aims to help...

Seeing an Arduino used to power an automated irrigation system is nothing new, but seeing one used to power a learning irrigation system in what its creator calls an "artificial neuron" implementation is a new one on us. Alexander Troshkov's latest Instructable, though, is worth reading even if you're not interested in automatic plant watering systems for its great description of a simple artificial intelligence. Based on what Alexander laughingly describes as the result of having "visited a whole class of [a] neurology course," the Arduino-powered "artificial neuron" works in the same way as its biological equivalent: decisions are made...