Build a Battery Tester

An Arduino can be used to test the life of any battery with less than 5 volts, Boxall says. So, for a quick way to see how much juice your AAA, AA, C, or D batteries have left, build this Arduino-based battery tester, which can display battery life via a string of LEDs.

Roll the Dice

The next time you're playing Monopoly, take a technological steup up from rolling plastic cubes by making Boxall's Arduino electronic die, which chooses a random number between 1 and 6 and displays it via a corresponding LED. At least when you go directly to jail you'll have a cool creation to pass the time.

Control Traffic

Build a working model traffic signal. It not only displays red, yellow, and green for each direction of oncoming traffic, but also includes a sensor to see a car approaching the one-lane road, which switches the light to green if there's no traffic coming from the opposite direction.

Stop the Clock

Two pushbuttons, a breadboard, a couple of resistors, and some wires are about all it takes to turn an Arduino unit into a stopwatch.

Create a Keypad Lock

Put Arduino to work protecting your secrets. This project is a keypad-controlled lock that will allow the user to select a six-digit secret code and lock out anyone without it.

Your Own Tank Robot

Now we're having fun. Last year PopMech published plans to build your first robot, a rolling little character based on an Arduino unit. Boxall's project will help you build a more rugged pint-size vehicle. The tank robot uses a small motor for each tread to climb over obstacles.

GPS Receiver

Where the heck are we, anyway? With an Arduino, a GPS shield kit by SparkFun, and a few other key ingredients, you can create a small receiver to tell you your longitude and latitude at any given time.

Keep Time

You know from the stopwatch project that Arduino can keep time. You know from the GPS-receiver project that it can be hooked up to an LCD display. Put those two features together to build this Arduino digital clock.

Mechanical Twitter

Everyone's on Twitter now—even Hillary Clinton. So why shouldn't your Arduino tweet? Here's how to make it happen.

Arduino Texter

Perhaps you don't want your mechanical creations to share their thoughts with the world at large. Instead of programming an Arduino to tweet, follow these directions to let it send texts to a phone.

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