Arduinos are excellent for beginner and intermediate robotics projects. They are powerful enough to be able to give the basic commands the robot needs to function, while keeping their limited resources focused on the tasks at hand. This eliminates interference or resource drain from other programs running in the background.

Check out the official Arduino tutorials site to learn how to get started with your new robotic minion – er, friend!

K’Nex Wall-Following Robot

Projects don’t always need expensive, specialized parts. This Instructable uses K’Nex building toys, an Arduino, and some wheels for an inexpensive beginner’s project.

SCARA Robot Arm

Robot arms are a more advanced project, but worth it. This four-axis arm by How To Mechatronics uses 3D printed parts, an Arduino Uno, and a CNC shield to bring their project to life.

DIY Drone with GPS

Combining a couple of Arduinos with an inexpensive quadcopter frame and GPS shield (plus a few other things) allows you to have all the fancy functions, without the fancy price. You can find all the details on Instructables. See it fly in step 14!

From Hi-Fi to headphones, one of the drivers of innovation is sound quality. Unfortunately, Arduinos don’t have the raw processing power for really good audio, but they can add an audio element to your existing projects. This allows for experimentation and practice, to work up to adding better audio quality to your future projects.

Electronics Lab has a fantastic audio component review and tutorial section, giving you the information you need to complete your projects.

Voice Fan Manipulation

Denny George grew up fascinated by the weird sound of his voice when he spoke through a moving fan. This project records the effect, allowing you to manipulate your own voice for fun and (perhaps) profit.

Happy Birthday Song with Arduino Code

The Happy Birthday song, perhaps the most famous example of copyright overreach, is once again in the public domain. Therefore it can legally be used in projects like this one by Spark Buzzer, that recreates the tune using an Arduino, some code, and a small speaker.

One of the most exciting trends in the past decade is the rise of the Internet of Things, physical objects that can receive instructions through the Internet. From the farmer’s field to the fridge and even the entire home, these items are allowing for a more interconnected future.

Tronixstuff has dozens of useful, no-nonsense tutorials, including one that teaches you how to use the EEPROM and another that deals with timing, both crucial to the success of IoT projects.

Garduino

Known for his insightful videos on civil engineering, Practical Engineering also has an Arduino-powered herb garden. With a sprinkler system, an Arduino, and a bit of programming, he can set an automatic program to water his plants, even while he’s in the office or on vacation.

Christmas Lights

If you want to emulate those music-synced complex Christmas light setups on YouTube, you can easily run into the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. This project by TomHammond reduces the cost to an Arduino and some code. The more lights, the merrier!

Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional with a print farm, machines like 3D printers, CNC machines, laser etchers, and others can be pretty pricey, even for base models. Luckily there are workarounds, including DIY builds where you supply the motors yourself, and program everything with an Arduino.

CNC

Using some materials to hand, some skilled woodworking, and an engineering degree, JohnnieT is able to create parts for other machines like 3D printers. Machines making machines making machines. Check out the Instructables tutorial to get started building your own CNC machine with an Arduino!

Plotter

Sometimes you need to draw, rather than create or cut. Plotters take the gantry setup common with FDM 3D printers and CNC machines, but instead of extruding or cutting, they draw two-dimensional shapes on paper. Ardumotive_com made theirs out of an Arduino and a couple of stepper motors.

Once upon a time, computations and recording took up more floor space than the cafeteria did at NASA. Now, anyone can put together an inexpensive and portable data tracking kit, whether they need it for examining how many animals lope through the woods, or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

If you need some advice, the r/duino subreddit is a great community to get help with your projects.

Portable Altimeter & Weather Station

Antielectron has made a device will track your elevation and give a barometric, temperature, and humidity reading. Great for hikers or mountain climbers outside the range of a cell network.

Digital Thermometer

For something a little closer to home, this thermometer project by Ali Hamza is great for learning the computation and data recording ropes, as it’s easily verifiable by local weather stations or Internet sites.

These days, a computer that can’t connect to others is almost useless. Most Arduinos come with built-in networking capabilities, usually in the form of an Ethernet port. These allow for more varied uses, such as IoT and data-logging projects.

Random Nerd Tutorials has an extensive collection of Arduino tutorials, including a large section dedicated to connectivity. Check it out to learn the ins and outs of connecting your project to the Web.

ESP8266 Networking Microchip

Just because most Arduinos have networking capabilities, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. This project by Harsh Mangukiya shows you how to program the ESP8266 networking microchip, a workhorse of the network world. This in turn will give you wireless connectivity if you didn’t already have it on your Arduino board, which will be much faster and more reliable to boot.

Visual Network Threat Level Indicator (V2)

Increasingly, our lives are centered around the internet, and that presents more opportunities for criminals (or worse, marketers!) to get access to our vital information. Anti-virus programs are all well and good, but wouldn’t it be better to be able to see how many access attempts are thwarted? Instructable user Joe certainly thought so, and this threat level project does just that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFEFiljwH_o

3D printing has revolutionized the medical industry. Microcontrollers have the same potential for cutting costs and improving lives. While no machine can replace a doctor (yet), it’s possible to bring expensive medical equipment from the hospital into the home.

Though it’s certainly not a medical degree, you can even become officially certified in Arduino programming and electronics by taking the exam at Arduino Education.

Heart Rate & Body Temperature Logger

One of the most important ways to keep healthy is to keep track of your biorhythms. If you know what your baseline is, in theory, you will be able to tell when something changes drastically. This project by Rucksikaa Raajkumar keeps a log of your heart rate and body temperature so you can monitor any fluctuations.

Breathing Stethoscope for Medical Training

Medical training is expensive, time consuming, and sometimes not true to real life. One problem in particular is patient simulation: The actor may say they have a particular ailment such as difficulty breathing, but their chest sounds free and clear of obstruction. J Scott Christianson and Chris Sanders have developed a stethoscope that mimics the sounds of various lung, heart, and other health problems, allowing student doctors to hear what they’re supposed to without needing to find patients with the actual condition.

Ever since President Reagan declassified the Global Positioning System in the 80s, corporations have been including it in phones, cars, unnecessarily complex clocks, and even in Nativity scene statues. So why not in your projects? Making your own GPS tracker can teach you coding, how to work in an established framework, and where you are in the world (in more ways than one)!

Makezine, the website of the Make magazine, has thousands of tutorials, product reviews, and posted projects involving Arduinos, GPS components, and everything associated with them.

Elderly Emergency Alert with GPS

As the number of elderly needing assistance rises, new and cost-effective solutions are required. Francisco Moreira has created this low-cost GPS tracker with an emergency button that can be operated by someone lost and in distress.

GPS Tracker

This simple GPS tracker by sistemasymicros is great as a low-cost Lojack tracking system, allowing you to finally answer the age-old question: Dude, where’s my car?

Technology is subject to fads and trends like fashion, so why not make fashion upgrade-able like technology? The Lilypad is an Arduino-compatible board you can sew onto clothes or other fabric, providing light, sound, vibration, or even input from your body like button presses.

Project IOT has an excellent Lilypad tutorial to learn the components, purposes, and programming of the maker community’s most fashionable circuit board.

Neopixel Earrings

Hilal Güngör has created light-up earrings from a Lilypad board, to wow your friends (or just yourself). These would be great for New Year’s Eve!

LED Strips for Cosplay

Lilypads aren’t the only option for wearable electronics. Kamui Cosplay is a pair of professional cosplay designers who tour conventions and sell books on their website. This project uses an Arduino to run a strip of colored LED lights, and can be incorporated into props, costumes, or other uses.

The final use for Arduinos is also the primary purpose of these boards: to teach people how to connect with the world around them on a deeper level. Programming a pair of light-up earrings shows that beauty can be found in math as well as jewelry, and a DIY blood pressure cuff shows that essential equipment need not always be expensive and hard to source.

The 1995 movie Hackers told its audience to “hack the planet” – Adafruit can teach you how to.

Pinball Machine

Old school arcade and pinball cabinets can be pricey. Fortunately Bob Blomquist has the solution: Build it yourself!

Guitar Pedal

Electrosmash has a YouTube channel all about making your own music components like amps and pedals, bringing affordability and self-reliance to musicians around the world, if not talent. You can find the instructions for this project on Hackster.

RC Car with Joystick Controller

There’s a special joy in making toys for children. This project by Andriy Baranov will allow you to do just that, even if the child in question is yourself!