Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from Arduino Blog
Not a lot of thought went into the “mouse droid” in the first Star Wars movie. It was just a bit of cute world-building, created by putting a box on an RC car. But it became a fan favorite and that in-universe model, the MSE-6, appears throughout subsequent movies, TV shows, and video games. All […] The post This mouse droid knows how to party appeared first on Arduino Blog.
Arduino® Project Hub has featured a lot of DIY handheld consoles on this blog over the years. Most of them are impressive, and most of them require at least some custom hardware – a purpose-designed PCB, a specialized connector, a part you can only get from one supplier. They’re great projects, but they can feel […] The post Build your own handheld retro console with the Arduino® UNO™ Q board appeared first on Arduino Blog.
Most machines warn you before they fail. A motor begins to vibrate differently. A pump slowly drifts out of balance. A bearing develops a new mechanical signature. A cooling fan starts producing frequencies that were not present during normal operation. These changes can appear well before a complete breakdown. The challenge is detecting them early, […] The post How to achieve cost-effective predictive maintenance with the Arduino® UNO™ Q board appeared first on Arduino Blog.
There was a time when computers were exciting and fun. Now most of them feel like commodity appliances — no more interesting than a washing machine or a toaster. Joe longed for the good ol’ days of 8-bit personal computers, so he used a trio of Arduino development boards to design his own “fantasy computer.” […] The post The Pinecone DAISY-1 is a fantasy 8-bit computer that exists in reality appeared first on Arduino Blog.
More in technology
Water-resistant microneedles made from food-grade silk could deliver vaccines to help prevent the spread of disease in aquaculture.
I love Letterboxd, but I hate how they show you the cast on the web app. Here's the cast of The Batman on the web. I mean, that's them, but I'm often going to this page wondering who played someone, and that is an
If you visit, someone someone will inevitably tell you: “The Day of the Dead parade isn’t a real tradition!
In short: I use iOS Shortcuts to run a Mastodon bot. I run a Mastodon bot that posts random quotes from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. (The writing in that game is so charming!) I used to run it off a server, but for the past few days, it’s used an iOS Shortcut on my phone. How it works The bot is called Ulrira, named after a beloved Link’s Awakening character. Ulrira (the bot, not the character) samples a line from the text dump, then makes an HTTP request to post it. Here’s a screenshot of the full thing: As you can see, everything here is hard-coded, from the server credentials to the file name. (It probably wouldn’t be hard to make this more generic, but I didn’t bother.) This used to be a short, hand-written Bash script. I used the new AI-powered Shortcut creator and prompted this into existence. I said something like, “Here’s a Bash script. Turn this into a Shortcut.” Like a lot of LLM output, it wasn’t quite right, but it was useful for getting started. Shortcuts doesn’t seem to have an elegant way to express something like “run this every 6 hours”, so I created four additional scheduler Shortcuts that call the main one. They run at 12am, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. That means there are five shortcuts in total: one to actually make the post, and four to schedule the main Shortcut at different times. Why do it this way? I didn’t want to pay for my server anymore, nor did I want to maintain it. When I went looking for alternatives, they either (1) cost money (2) had some significant limitation (for example, GitHub Actions requires me to update the repo every 60 days). This solution runs on a device with high uptime and is effectively free. If you’re a pro software genius, you might complain that this is not reliable! It doesn’t work if my phone is offline, for example. Or what if I change timezones? But in the words of Link’s Awakening: You’re good! You’re a pro, aren’t you? ………… Well, beat it! Pros aren’t allowed in here! Follow the bot here.
