We love alternative inputs. They can revitalize an old classic or add a twist to most any mundane task. Here, we see a perfect example where the game Punch Out for the NES is being controlled by a punching bag type thing. The impact sensors were made by hand, and wired to a PC game pad. They were mounted on some foam, allowing for a nice mushy punching surface. There’s some feedback too, when your character is hit, a custom script detects the change in the sprites color and sends a signal to an Arduino. Right now, it just lights an LED, but the goal is to signal a strobe to make you flinch. This looks like it would be fun to play with, especially if you were to make it a little more high impact. You can see a video of them lightly assaulting it after the break.
[Chris Paget] is going to be presenting at ShmooCon 2009 in Washington D.C. this week. He gave a preview of his RFID talk to The Register. The video above demos reading and logging unique IDs of random tags and Passport Cards while cruising around San Francisco. He’s using a Symbol XR400 RFID reader and a Motorola AN400 patch antenna mounted inside of his car. This is industrial gear usually used to track the movement of packages or livestock. It’s a generation newer than what Flexilis used to set their distance reading records in 2005.
The unique ID number on Passport Cards doesn’t divulge the owners private details, but it’s still unique to them. It can be used to track the owner and when combined with other details, like their RFID credit card, a profile of that person can be built. This is why the ACLU opposes Passport Cards in their current form. The US does provide a shielding sleeve for the card… of course it’s mailed to you with the card placed outside of the sleeve.
Technology exists to generate a random ID every time an RFID card is being read. The RFIDIOt tools were recently updated for RANDOM_UID support.
[Xenonjon] wanted to make a Heads Up Display that he could use while maintaining the ability to see. The most logical choice was a monocular set up. He had an old Eye-Trek laying around and decided to sacrifice it to make his Heads Up Display. Combining a screen from his TV glasses and a wireless security camera setup, he was able to achieve an untethered monocular HUD. This has a multitude of uses, from displaying vital information, to home made night vision, or just watching TV while you work.
There’s plenty of good pictures and information there. The final result is a pair of safety glasses with the display and a pack that you have to put on your belt that holds batteries and the wireless receiver. It seems as though it isn’t horribly cumbersome, but we’d have to try it for a while to say if it would be ergonomically sound.
Sometimes, it can be very difficult to find a partner to play pong. Lets face it, pong just isn’t worth playing alone. Someone has come up with the perfect solution, a robot built specifically for playing pong. It watches the “ball” with a web cam and presses the appropriate buttons on the keyboard with its tentacle like arms. It is vaguely reminiscent of the switchboard operators from Men In Black, and definitely overkill for the job. You may notice there seems to be some performance issues with their game of pong. I doubt that the game itself is that taxing, but the same computer is controlling the robot as well.
Ruin & Wesen are a two person shop creating specialized music gear. As part of their recent MIDI Command development, they got into case manufacturing. They purchased a mini CNC mill to cut the aluminum cases. Unhappy with the software options provide [Wesen] decided to write his own G-code generator. G-code is part of the numerical control used to command CNC machines. He implemented his interpreter using the language he’s most familiar with: Common Lisp (not surprising if you notice the website’s backend). The post covers the design philosophy used and some of the problems that came up. We look forward to future releases since the interpreter can generate milling code using processing.org sketches and cut PCBs directly from Eagle.
You may remember Ruin & Wesen from when they shared their Eagle layout videos.
[les robots] had a defective Eye-Fi card on his hands and when a replacement was sent, he was told to destroy the original. What better way to ‘destroy’ something than opening the case? The Eye-Fi is an SD card with a builtin WiFi radio so it can upload images while remaining in camera. One version uses Skyhook’s location service to geotag photos. You can see a few photos of the dismantled card on Flickr. The board is manufactured by Wintec. The wireless side is handled by Atheros’ ROCm, the same low power Radio-on-Chip module you would find in a mobile phone. The flash memory comes from Samsung and the antenna is along the back edge, where it has the best chance of getting signal.
[Jacob] wanted to play some sega games on his PC and felt like the experience just wasn’t complete while using the keyboard for input. He had an old MadCatz controller laying around, which could have probably been connected fairly simply, but he really wanted it to be wireless. A wireless keyboard was sacrificed, and the wireless genesis controller was born. To make it, he disassembled the keyboard to take the controller chip out. After tracing out and soldering switches to the leads, he installed it in his genesis controller.
