[Eric] just told us about the watch he developed that displays info from a BlackBerry via Bluetooth. The watch displays updates, message alerts, incoming call information, and… tells time. Setup and control is handled with the BlackBerry keypad. The device is charged with a micro-USB connection and will last for about four days without a recharge. We’d chalk up the rather long battery life to the use of an OLED display, which will use less energy when a portion of the display is left black.
So why is it here? Well, he’s got a couple of blog posts that detail two of the final prototypes that you might find interesting. What else? Oh yeah, his original prototype used an Arduino with a Nokia 3310 LCD display. For those of you who continually call the Arduino a worthless toy, looks like it’s good enough to use when taking a product to market.
They’ve provided a schematic for the device but we didn’t see any board artwork or pictures of the internals so you’re on your own for board layout. The libraries needed to use the bluetooth connection with homebrew software are up for download. This should provide a nice way to use the DS with a Bluetooth GPS module, or perhaps as a discrete Bluetooth sniffer and spoofer.
In April we saw a pretty creative way to add GPS to an iPod by using a homebrew accessory. The new app is a better solution because it utilizes the larger screen and more functional UI of the iPod touch. We’re glad to see this come along because we’d rather not upgrade to the iPhone 3G just to get GPS support. roqyGPS has a fairly long supported hardware list, which should make it relatively inexpensive to pick up a GPS module either on sale or second-hand.
We’ve got a video of the release candidate after the break. As always, we’d like to hear from anyone already using this so please leave your thoughts in the comments.
Everybody loves microcontrollers, including the Arduino, allowing you to create whatever you imagine. That is unless you want to hack together something wireless. Originally you had to rely on the expensive XBee protocol or other wireless options, but no longer. Hobby Robotics found an extremely cheap transmitter and receiver and wrote a quick guide for wiring them up to an Arduino. Now your wireless projects can come to life, as long as you are within 500 feet and don’t mind 2400bps; minor trade offs compared to the gains of wireless freedom. Final note: You aren’t limited to Arduino, we would love to see someone modify this to work with a PIC or other microcontroller.
The folks at SparkFun were startled by how small USB bluetooth adapters had become so they split one open. They noted a few interesting design features. It has a small folded trace antenna on the board edge. The metal USB housing acts as the RF shield. The bluetooth IC is an AS3620QA. Now we wonder what those tiny Buffalo drives look like inside.
Yo dawg, we heard you liked accelerometers… Apparently people have been wanting this for a while. We’re not completely sure why, so we’ll wait and see what gets done with it. [Ubiq_01] has connected a WiiMote to his iPhone and is using it to control and OpenGL application. He has released a tutorial (which seems to be down currently) if you want to try to reproduce it yourself.
[Bill2009] has made some nice progress on a control panel for his motorcycle over at the arduino.cc forums. It can show speed, tachometer readings for the wheel and engine, as well as indicate the current gear. He reads the square wave coming off of his tachometer input and pulses from a reed switch mounted on the wheel to calculate all this. To top it all off he can monitor the data via a Bluetooth module attached to the board, which is much better than trying to balance a laptop on your knees while cruising down the highway. He is working on getting the size down so that he can mount the whole assembly inside of his motorcycle. He also plans to add new software features like wind resistance calculations and0 to 60mph timing.
Though we usually think of Wii projects when we see him, [Johnny Lee] is showing us some Bioloid fun. He’s decided to pick one up to play with, wanting to write his own control programs for it. Unfortunately what he found was that it doesn’t do wireless communication for control. Even after installing a bluetooth module, he found it was only used to trigger different predetermined motions. After some research, he found how to connect the bluetooth module to the main PC link which allows him direct control of the Bioloid via the PC. Unfortunately, the communication speed leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s a good start. We’ll keep our eye on this one.
[emuboy] sent in this neat hack where he converted a GPS dock to bluetooth (google translated). He has an ipaq rz1710 and a Kirrio GPS cradle. Apparently there were annoying problems when inserting the ipaq into the cradle. He decided that he would much rather just connect via Bluetooth. After tearing apart the cradle, he found the documentation for the GPS chip online. He ordered a bluesmirf bluetooth modem and got to work. The end result is something that could be concealed in his car and just connected to when he gets close enough.
We spotted this odd piece of geek couture on DVICE today. It’s a bracelet that displays incoming calls via Bluetooth and also vibrates. The intended use is kinda interesting, but we wonder what else could be done with it. Could you update it with any text you want by creating fake caller ID messages? You could have your laptop in your backpack and have the bracelet update when it finds an open access point or any other sort of notification. The display shows the word “Connecting” in pictures, but apparently only displays numbers for incoming calls. It also includes a button to reject calls.
Do you have a project that needs a wireless display? Are there other options like this? At $25, this might be worth a try.
