haptic

44 Articles

AI-Powered Snore Detector Shakes The Pillow So You Won’t

October 14, 2023 by 18 Comments

If you snore, you’ll probably find out about it from someone. An elbow to the ribs courtesy of your sleepless bedmate, the kids making fun of you at breakfast, or even the lady downstairs calling the cops might give you the clear sign that you rattle the rafters, and that it’s time to do something about it. But what if your snores are a bit more subtle, or you don’t have someone to urge you to roll over? In that case, this AI-powered haptic snore detector might be worth building.

The most distinctive characteristic of snoring is, of course, its sound, and that’s exactly what [Naveen Kumar] chose as a trigger. To differentiate between snoring and other nighttime sounds, [Naveen] chose an Arduino Nicla Voice sensor board, which sports a Syntiant NDP120 deep-learning processor and a built-in MEMS microphone. To generate a model that adequately represents the full tapestry of human snores, a publicly available snoring dataset — because of course that’s a thing — was used for training. Importantly, the training data included samples of non-snoring sounds, like sirens and thunder, as well as clips of legit snoring mixed with these other sounds. The model is trained with an online tool and downloaded onto the board; when it detects the sweet sound of sawing wood three times in a row, a haptic driver board vibrates the pillow as a gentle reminder to reposition. Watch it in action in the brief video below.

Snoring is something that’s easy to make light of, but in all seriousness, it’s not something to be taken lightly. Hats off to [Naveen] for developing a tool like this, which just might let you know you’ve got a problem that bears a closer look by a professional. Although it might work better as a wearable rather than a pillow-shaker.

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Exploring The Hall Effect For Haptic Feedback PS4 Joysticks

January 26, 2023 by 10 Comments

Modern gaming console controllers aren’t without their annoyances — Joy-Con drift, anyone? The problems might stem from design deficiencies, but we suspect that user enthusiasm and the mechanical stress it can introduce might play a significant role as well. Either way, [Marius Heier] decided to take a look at what would be required to build a better joystick and came up with some interesting results.

The first video below lays the basic groundwork, with a bunch of experiments with 3-axis Hall effect sensors, specifically the Texas Instruments TMAG5273 and TMAG5170. They’re essentially the same sensor with different interfaces — SPI for the 5170 and I2C for the 5273. Using just one of these sensors, he was able to build a joystick with the usual X- and Y- axis control, but also with a rotary axis. What’s more, he built a motorized version using two NEMA 17 steppers to mechanically drive the stick back to center.

The joystick is bulky, but it looks like he’s got plans for a much smaller one with [Carl Bugeja]-style PCB motors that should fit into a PS4 controller. That’s the subject of the second video below, which uses a different Hall sensor — an Allegro A1304 — and is mainly concerned with getting the output of a non-motorized but considerably miniaturized joystick stick talking the language that the controller expects. It’s not a simple process, but it seems to be coming along nicely, and we’ll be watching progress closely.

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Seeing If Cheating At Chess The Hard Way Is Even Possible

October 11, 2022 by 35 Comments

With all the salacious stories about a cheating scandal rocking the world of championship-level chess, you’d think that we’d have delved into the story at least a bit here on Hackaday, especially given the story’s technical angle. But we haven’t, and it’s not because we’re squeamish about the details of the alleged cheat; rather, it’s because it’s just too easy to pun your way through a story like this. The lowest-hanging fruit isn’t always the sweetest.

But, we’ll give it a go, and play this one completely straight as we look at an experiment to determine if it’s even possible to cheat in the specific way that has been alleged. For the uninitiated, 19-year-old grandmaster [Hans Niemann] stands accused of cheating, possible through the use of a remote-controlled sex toy secreted in his rectum. The idea would be for an accomplice to use the toy, which contains a vibrating motor that’s controlled by an app either via Bluetooth or WiFi, to send suggested moves to [Niemann] based on a chess-playing AI’s analysis of the game.

Whether [Niemann] cheated or not is not the concern here, but rather [Captain Steel]’s experiment is just a first-pass look at whether it would be possible to cheat using the proposed technology — and most importantly, not get caught. He tried to replicate the scanning regime [Niemann] is now subject to at tournaments based on the allegations to see if a stand-in for the sex toy — a haptic motor attached to an ESP32 — would be detectable through various thicknesses of flesh. Rather than showing the same dedication to craft that [Niemann] is alleged to have shown, [Captain Steel] used slices of baloney as a stand-in for human flesh. He then tried scanning for RF emissions from the device through increasing layers of luncheon meat. We won’t spoil the results, other than to say that baloney turns out to actually be good for something.

We’ve covered another less-invasive method of cheating before, which given the results above is probably more likely to be discovered.

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An In-Depth Look At The Haptic Smart Knob

June 24, 2022 by 22 Comments

At Hackaday, we love those times when we get a chance to follow up on a project that we’ve already featured. Generally, it’s because the project has advanced in some significant way, which is always great to see. Sometimes, though, new details on the original project are available, and that’s where we find ourselves with [Scott Bez] and his haptic smart knob project.

Alert readers may recall [Scott]’s announcement of this project back in March. It made quite a splash, with favorable comments and a general “Why didn’t I think of that?” vibe. And with good reason; the build quality is excellent, and the idea is simple yet powerful. By attaching a knob to the shaft of a brushless DC motor and mounting a small circular LCD screen in the middle, [Scott] came up with an input device that could be reprogrammed on the fly. The BLDC can provide virtual detents at any interval while generating haptic feedback for button pushes, and the LCD screen can provide user feedback.

But how is such a thing built? That’s the subject of the current video, which has a ton of neat design details and build insights. The big challenge for [Scott] was supporting the LCD screen in the middle of the knob while still allowing the knob — and the motor — to rotate. Part of the solution was, sadly, a hollow-shaft motor that was out of stock soon after he released this project; hopefully a suitable replacement will be available soon. Another neat feature is the way [Scott] built tiny strain gauges into the PCB itself, which pick up the knob presses that act as an input button. We also found the way button press haptics are provided by a quick jerk of the motor shaft very clever.

This is one of those projects that seems like a solution waiting for a problem, and something that you’d build just for the coolness factor. Hats off to [Scott] for following up a sweet build with equally juicy details.

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Hackaday Links: May 15, 2022

May 15, 2022 by 7 Comments

It may be blurry and blotchy, but it’s ours. The first images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy were revealed this week, and they caused quite a stir. You may recall the first images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy from a couple of years ago: spectacular images that captured exactly what all the theories said a black hole should look like, or more precisely, what the accretion disk and event horizon should look like, since black holes themselves aren’t much to look at. That black hole, dubbed M87*, is over 55 million light-years away, but is so huge and so active that it was relatively easy to image. The black hole at the center of our own galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is comparatively tiny — its event horizon would fit inside the orbit of Mercury — a much closer at only 26,000 light-years or so. But, our black hole is much less active and obscured by dust, so imaging it was far more difficult. It’s a stunning technical achievement, and the images are certainly worth checking out.

Another one from the “Why didn’t I think of that?” files — contactless haptic feedback using the mouth is now a thing. This comes from the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie-Mellon and is intended to provide an alternative to what ends up being about the only practical haptic device for VR and AR applications — vibrations from off-balance motors. Instead, this uses an array of ultrasonic transducers positioned on a VR visor and directed at the user’s mouth. By properly driving the array, pressure waves can be directed at the lips, teeth, and tongue of the wearer, providing feedback for in-world events. The mock game demonstrated in the video below is a little creepy — not sure how many people enjoyed the feeling of cobwebs brushing against the face or the splatter of spider guts in the mouth. Still, it’s a pretty cool idea, and we’d like to see how far it can go.

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Haptic Smart Knob Does Several Jobs

March 13, 2022 by 64 Comments

A knob is a knob, a switch is a switch, and that’s that, right? And what about those knobs that have detents, set in stone at the time of manufacturing? Oh, and those knobs that let you jog left to right and then snap back to center — that can’t be modified…right? Well, you likely know where this is going, and in the video below the break, [scottbez1] shows off a new open source haptic input knob that can be all of these things with just some configuration changes!

The list of possibilities is long: virtual snap points, virtual spring loading, virtual detents, virtual end points. It’s a virtual smörgåsbord of configuration options that make this haptic smart knob a one stop shop for all of your knob needs. This is all possible because the knob contains a high resolution magnetic encoder chip that has a single degree resolution. The sensor is coupled, through software, to a brushless DC motor. The round LCD gives visual feedback as well.

As [Myself] on the Hackaday Discord channel noted, having configurable spacing and strength for detents, springs, and stops, is nothing short of incredible. Being able to reconfigure the knob at-will means that it can become context sensitive. It’s wonderfully unique and it’s open source, so you can make your own with the information available at GitHub.

And according to its creator, the only thing the Haptic Smart Knob can’t do is do your taxes or blend your margarita. Well, it’s open source, so perhaps some of our more enterprising readers can submit just the right pull request.

This isn’t Hackaday’s first Motorized Volume Knob feature, but it might be one of the neatest we have seen so far. Thanks to [mattvenn] on the Hackaday Discord server for the great tip!

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