Project Showcase '14 The logo is a derivative of the Arduino Community Logo licensed under Creative Commons license CC-SA-BY-NC 3.0 


Update: Winners Announced

The winners of the contest have been announced. Please see the Meta post for details.

To celebrate 10 years of Arduino, we are proud to announce the first event ever on Arduino Stack Exchange.


  Get your boards and soldering equipment out, dig out the ICs and
  resistors. The first Arduino Stack Exchange contest is just round the
  corner. We will be looking for interesting projects that are built
  using Arduinos. The contest is aimed towards sharing, discussing and
  providing feedback on projects that you and other members are working
  on. See announcement post


Details:


The prize is an official Stack Exchange t-shirt
Limit two entries per person. If more than two are provided, only the first two will be considered. 
Clones are allowed.
Projects for consideration will be accepted through March 29th, 2014 at 4:00 UTC. The question will still remain open in case someone wants to show off their project they made on Arduino Day 2014.


Visit the Meta post for discussion about this event and further information.

Answer Format

You may post up to two projects (as two separate answers) as entries for the contest. All extra entries will be deleted. Consider following the following template for entries:


  Project Title
  
  Very Brief Description
  
  Description
  
  What is your project? What does it do? What problem does it solve?
  
  Design
  
  Things to include in this section:
  
  
  Schematics and other design documentation. Fritzing is a good tool for drawing breadboard schematics like the one shown in the
  project logo above.
  Components used to build the project
  Pictures or video
  
  
  Conclusion
  
  Final thoughts. What did you learn from doing this project? What would
  you do differently if you had to start over?


You can copy/paste the following text if you want to use this template.

# Project Title
**Very Brief Description**

# Description
What is your project? What does it do? What problem does it solve?

# Design
Things to include in this section:

- Schematics and other design documentation. [Fritzing][8] is a good tool for drawing breadboard schematics like the one shown in the project logo above.
- Components used to build the project
- Pictures or video

# Conclusion
Final thoughts. What did you learn from doing this project? What would you do differently if you had to start over?


Prizes

There are two prizes! The winner will be the submission getting the maximum number of upvotes (downvotes do not count) and will get a Stack Exchange T-shirt*! There will be something for the runner-up as well. The runner-up will be decided at the discretion of the event organizers.

*Certain restrictions may apply. International shipping may take a few weeks. 

Where do I submit my projects?

Post your projects as answers to this post.
Stateful questbox

A GPS powered box that makes you visit a few spots before opening

Description

It is similar to questbox, but it stores a small amount state of information in EEPROM, so you have to visit two or three different places before it opens.

Design

Needed hardware:


Arduino Uno
Reverse Geocache Version 2 (or a protoshield)
GlobalSat EM-406A GPS module
2×8 blue LCD with connector header and cable
Hitec HS-55 servo motor
4-40 push rod and clevis for latch (some versions provide a Z-bend rod instead)
2 AA battery holder
Metallic push button with embedded blue LED and 4-pin cable
Pololu low voltage switch
Pololu 5&nbsp;V boost regulator
JST connector for EM-406A GPS module
Straight and right-angle header pins for the display, servo, and pushbutton connectors
Two resistors for current limiting and display contrast adjustment
Two small capacitors for power smoothing
larger capacitor for display contrast circuit


Total hardware cost: 137$ + shipping

Aditional materials:


A nice box
Epoxy glue, wood to cover pieces, tools


You can find assembling instructions in sundial page (you can buy most materials from them)

I will upload stateful code and post a link here, unfortunately I wont get all need hardware on time, so this is just an idea :)

Code written so far:


Persistent state machine library


Inspiration:

Conclusion

Learned how to integrate many components and libraries all toghether, I'll have to travel a bit to test it :)

Budget can be cut quite a bit changing the concept a bit:


Change GPS with a numerical keypad: the 'player' has to guess/obtain a code instead of traveling to a location
Polulu switch and regulator can be exchanged for a latching relay with capacitance coupling