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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

I really like how this kind of technology is finally very cheap and even usable for non-experts.

However, why is it that this kind of electronics is only ever used to irrigate plants, open/close doors or windows and maybe control lights in a room.

The arduino platform seems very popular, yet where are the really amazing projects? It really seems like it's just some kind of Lego for grownups. I bought some of this stuff too and it is cool to play with electronics, but it seems to me this stuff is merely good for learning electronics and just a fun hobby.

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I've done some fun stuff with Arduinos, but sadly when I try to post it here it never makes it to the front page. For example check out this smart cocktail shaker project that uses Arduino & Android with a kitchen scale: http://learn.adafruit.com/smart-cocktail-shaker

Cool project, this combined with a database where you told it what ingredients you had available and it told you all the drink recipes that are you can possibly make would be killer for learning new drinks at home. Furthermore, also suggesting ingredients you should add to your bar next to maximize the number of new recipes available to you would be amazing. Add the ability to keep track of what you tried and your ability to add star ratings per drink would be an amazing product. I can think of few better ways to explore the world of cocktails and keep track of what you really enjoy in a drink.

In general, thinking about amazing embedded projects of reasonable scope is quite hard.It's like inventing a new product. You can see phenomena this also is final year undergraduate projects in electronic engineering - very few are "amazing".

But still, some nice ones:

http://www.instructables.com/id/20-Unbelievable-Arduino-Proj...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/11-ard...

What sort of project do you have in mind, for example?

There's a pretty sizeable community that uses them to fly model aircraft: http://ardupilot.com/

There was a post today about making your own keyboard on HN today; I think that qualifies? But otherwise I tend to agree with you, from what I've seen so far.

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