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Who has not wanted build a robotic hand at some point in their life? Well this is exactly what instructables member njkl44 has done! Not only does this animatronics hand look totally awesome, it actually emulates the movements of the hand that is inside the “control glove”, making a spectacular effect.

The control glove uses a number of flex sensors to determine the position of each finger and sends this information to the animatronic hand. If this sounds like the kind of project you would love to make you can find out more at the following link or in the video below.

 If you are looking to get started making your own custom Arduino projects, why not check out our own ProtoShield for Arduino. The ProtoShield is an excellent tool to turn your temporary, breadboarded project into something more permanent. ProtoShield fits directly onto an Arduino board and has a large general purpose area in the middle where you can solder on your own parts to create a durable, long lasting project! The ProtoShield is a high quality, corrosion resistant gold plated PCB and represents great value at only $3!

To find out more about our fantastic ProtoShield’s check out the product page. Planning on building your own animatronics hand? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.   

At Freetronics we love to see the projects our customers are working on.  This week we would like to give a big shout out to Keiran who seems to be making great progress learning Arduino. Keiran has built his own pool temperature monitor! You can read more about the temperature monitor, and share your own creations over on our forum.  

 If you are looking for a rapid-use LCD to use when recreating Keiran's project why not check out the Freetronics LCD & Keypad shield. The shield contains a bright 16x2 character LCD and five buttons that can be read from only one analog input pin:

Did I mention that you can play games on your LCD Shield? Check it out!

To find out more or to order checkout the product page.

For many families the TV is an important part of the living area, however it can be very desirable to keep your TV hidden away when it is not in use. Not only does this keep your TV protected but it also prevents kids watching TV when they aren’t meant to! A great solution to this problem is to have a TV lift cabinet which keeps your TV hidden but at the push of a button you lifts your TV out of the cabinet so it can be used. To find out more about how you can build your own TV Lift Cabinet checkout the following link.    

When you use motors in your Arduino project you will almost certainly need a H-Bridge motor driver. A H-Bridge allows you to easily control the direction of your motors from within your code. Our own Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield is a perfect solution to this problem, allowing you to drive two DC motors or a stepper motor.

The Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield features PWM control, selectable current limits and a prototyping area to add your own parts. To find out more check out the Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield page.

To keep up to date with the latest news, projects, product announcements  and to let us know what you think of this project follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Any New Year’s party is incomplete without some sort of countdown to welcome in the new year! Although you could easily use an app on your phone, nothing beats the satisfaction of making your own! This is exactly what The Soldering Station has done using a seven segment display and an Arduino Uno.

The instructions are very thorough so you should have no trouble getting your countdown timer ready in time for the 31st of December! To get started checkout the following link.  You can see the kit in action in the video below.

If you are thinking about getting started with Arduino, but don’t know where to get started, our Experimenter’s Kit is a great way to learn the basics.

The kit includes a wide range of parts including a servo, sensors, lights, buttons, a sound module and more. Importantly, a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to ensure that the kit contains everything you need to get started with Arduino. All these great parts would be useless without some form of instructions which is why we have developed a comprehensive project and instruction booklet to get you started. Check out the product page to find out more.

Working on a cool project you think we should know about? Inspired to start making your own countdown timer? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.  

Like to keep track of when it has last rained? With this tutorial from theorycircuit you can learn how to interface between an Arduino and a rain sensor.

Once you have done this the possibilities are endless. You could record data about how often and at what times you get rain, or even use the rain sensor as an input to your home automation system. For example you could automatically fire up your heater or close your windows when rain is detected! To get started learning about detecting rain with Arduino check out the following link.

If you are looking for a very straight forward way to get started with Arduino our Thinker Shield is a great option.  The shield is ideal for beginners and includes a number of buttons, a buzzer, LEDs and more so that you can get started making all sorts of cool projects! Not only this, but you can find a fantastic project guide on our website! Checkout the product page to find out more. Our Thinker Shield would make a great Christmas present!

A fundamental aspect of many home automation projects is the ability to connect an Arduino to the internet so that all sorts of inputs and outputs can be controlled from anywhere in the world.  A crucial part of this is to set up a MAC address for your Ethernet connected Arduino. A MAC address is a unique identifying number that is needed in the data link layer of a TCP/IP network. To find out more about how to setup MAC addresses checkout the following link.

If you are thinking about making your own internet connected Arduino projects, but don’t know where to get started with Arduino, our Experimenter’s Kit is a great way to learn the basics.

The kit includes a wide range of parts including a servo, sensors, lights, buttons, a sound module and more. Importantly, a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to ensure that the kit contains everything you need to get started with Arduino. All these great parts would be useless without some form of instructions which is why we have developed a comprehensive project and instruction booklet to get you started. Check out the product page to find out more.

With Christmas fast approaching now is a great time to build a Christmas light controller and add some spectacular effects to your lighting display. Controlling LEDs is something that Arduino is particularly good at which makes it perfect for controlling Christmas lights. There are many potential projects and combination of colours and patterns that are possible. The following link gives some great tips on making your own lighting display.   

Have you been reading about cool projects like this and would like to understand more? Looking for a great gift?  Checkout our Experimenter's Kit for Arduino:

The package includes a wide variety of parts, sensors and modules including: a servo motor, lights, buttons, switches, sound, sensors, breadboard, wires and more. Furthermore a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to make this an extensive hobby experimenter, inventor and starter kit. The kit also includes a great project and instruction booklet, plus access to a supporting web page and software examples. To get started or for more information and to order, checkout the product page.

Unlike flawed human drummers, this Arduino powered robotic drum kit never slows down or speeds up! Randofo from instructables has modified his entire drum kit so that it can be controlled over USB on his computer.

The drum kit has a one set of motor controlled drumsticks for each drum or cymbal. Each of these sets of drumsticks is controlled using an Arduino Uno and a motor shield. This is a very impressive project, but also a project that is certainly able to be completed by someone willing to put int the time and effort. The results definitely are fantastic! To find out more check out the following link.  

When you use motors in your Arduino project you will almost certainly need a H-Bridge motor driver. A H-Bridge allows you to easily control the direction of your motors from within your code. Our own Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield is a perfect solution to this problem, allowing you to drive two DC motors or a stepper motor.

The Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield features PWM control, selectable current limits and a prototyping area to add your own parts. To find out more check out the Dual Channel H-Bridge Motor Driver Shield page.

We are very excited have just received a shipment with lots of new stock, just in time for Christmas! Items back in stock include our Experimenter’s Kit, USB Droid, Red dot matrix display, PoE Injector, NDrive Module, Accelerometer module, Piezo Module and our ESP-01 Shield which is designed to make adding WiFi to your Arduino as easy as possible. There has never been a better time to start a new project! If you are struggling to think of project ideas have a browse through our blog.

Already working on  a project you want us to feature in this blog? Know someone who has been anxiously waiting for one of these products to come back in stock? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.   

Some of our products, particularly our EtherMega contain a top loading SD card holder. Unfortunately top down SD card holders can be quite unintuitive to use as they operate in quite a different fashion to traditional holders.

We have put together some instructions to help you master using a top loading SD card holder in no time! Check out the instructions at the following link to get started.  

The EtherMega is a great “fully-loaded” Arduino-compatible board. Apart from being completely Arduino Mega2560-compatible, it includes a full Ethernet interface, a microSD card socket, full USB interface, optional Power-over-Ethernet support and still has a circuit prototyping area with extra I2C interface pins. So if your project is breaking the limits, upgrade to the EtherMega today.

Working on a cool project you think we should know about? Have an idea for next week’s “Skill Sunday”? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.