Biking through Google street view

[Aki] wanted to do some stationary cycling to get in shape. Unfortunately, his stationary cycle is located in his garage which doesn’t supply much inspiration or amusement. His solution was to build a VR rig so that he could ride around inside google street view. He has rigged a simple sensor to his wheel to determine his speed and he’s … Read the rest

Single-wing flight based on maple seed aerodynamics

one-winged-flight

The Samara Micro-Air-Vehicle is a product of over three years of work at the University of Maryland’s Aerospace Engineering Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory. The Samara is an applicant in the DARPA nano air vehicle program. Unlike the ornithopter we saw in July, this vehicle uses only one wing for flight. A small propeller on a rod mounted perpendicular to … Read the rest

Battery capacity tester

battery-capacity-tester

[Moris_zen] built a device to accurately measure the capacity of batteries. He needed to have an accurate measurement for the batteries he uses in a RC airplane. Knowing the discharge time allows him to fly the friendly skies while avoiding crashes from lost communications.

He based the tester around the Arduino platform. Instead of using a pre-built Arduino board … Read the rest

EyeWriter is the fruit of the KanEye project

eyewriter-project

The EyeWriter is an open source eye tracking initiative. This is the mature version of the KanEye project we covered in April. Collaboratively developed by Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, and the Graffiti Research Lab, they seek to aid a friend of theirs who suffers from the degenerative muscle disease ALS.

They’ve come a long way … Read the rest

Farewell microblog

lmc6042-4x (Custom)

[Nico]‘s microblog has been a regular source of inspiration since we were introduced to it last year. Aside from posting various technical thoughts and reviews, [Nico] won our hearts over by going through the trouble to strip chips and photograph them for our pleasure. Browse through his archive and download what you want, because he’s shutting down. The posts have … Read the rest