Hack a Day » sync

SNES controller dock for Dell Streak

Mike Szczys — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:40:25 +0000

The Dell Streak is an Android tablet. [Collin Meyer] wanted to use an original SNES controller to play emulated games on the device. What he came up with is a controller that is a dock for he handheld.

Several things have to come together to make this happen. The Streak uses a standard PDMI dock that connects to a computer via a USB connection. [Collin] repurposed a sync cable by connecting a couple of pins on the dock connector which forces the device to use USB host mode. From there he used a Teensy microcontroller to convert the SNES controller into a USB device (very similar to this hack). The Teensy and shortened sync cable find a new home inside the SNES controller body and, in the video after the break, it looks like he used something like sugru to add a bit of support for the Streak.

Filed under: android hacks

Linux iPhone sync draws near

Mike Szczys — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:00:52 +0000

[Emuboy] lets us know about some software advances that will make iPhone and iPod Touch syncing possible under Linux. Apple made big changes to how the iPhone syncs compared to legacy iPods. Locking out all communications other than through iTunes was surely part of their motivation. This has left Linux users out in the cold with shoddy sync capabilities which should be coming to an end. If successful, syncing will be be possible with phones that have not been jailbroken.

One of the biggest hurdles in reverse-engineering the new protocol is the non-standard way in which the devices communicate over USB. The usbmuxd developers have been working to implement communications and now have a Release Candidate for the 1.0.0 version. Along with testing of this package, libgpod is now being updated to play nicely with the new database format and hash of the iPhone.

This isn’t quite at the plug-and-play level of convenience yet but if you’re comfortable working with Linux packages you should be able to get this working and help report any bugs you might find. But if you’re tired of open source playing cat and mouse with Apple you can always switch over to a device based on Android.

Posted in iphone hacks, linux hacks

Multi-screen video with Ipod

Mike Szczys — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:30:33 +0000

[Marco Tempest] has developed some software called MultiVid that allows synchronized video across multiple iPhone or iPod Touch devices. For this to work, all of the devices must be connected to the same WiFi network. Playback can be controlled from any one of the iPhones/iPod Touches or from the Mac running the controller software. There is of course the option of connecting to larger monitors through a video output cable. The app also supports OSC. We’ve embedded the example video as well as a video detailing the software setup after the break.

The client software is available at the apps store and controller software can be downloaded from [Marco's] website. Both are free which is our favorite price point.

Example video of MultiVid in action

How to setup and use MultiVid

[Thanks tommEE]

Update 9/6/09: We contacted Marco because this app was MIA from the App Store. He responded promptly to let us know that his app is “still in approval limbo”. He’s going to contact us when it is approved and we’ll be sure to pass on the update to you.

Posted in iphone hacks, ipod hacks, video hacks

Synchronizing Fireflies NG

Eliot — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:05:00 +0000

[Alex] from Tinkerlog has revisited an old project with Synchronizing Fireflies NG. Fascinated by how fireflies blink at same rate and synchronize with each other, he built a digital version. Each board has an RGB LED and a phototransistor or photoresistor. A ping-pong ball is used as a diffuser. The blink rate is controlled by an ATtiny13v. The board power can be daisy chained, but each firefly mote operates independently of the others. The microcontroller has a fixed flash rate and monitors for other flashes. It attempts to sync by flashing earlier. The color of the LED expresses how satisfied the firefly is with its current sync. You can see a video of eight fireflies attempting to self organize embedded below.

3D video with consumer cameras

Eliot — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:30:00 +0000

While perusing our photos from the Hooptyrides, Inc. tour you may have noticed [Eric Kurland]‘s two handed stereoscopy rig. It’s constructed from two consumer grade Sony DV cameras. The problem with using two separate cameras to make stereo images or video is that a lack of clock sync will make objects appear out of their true position because of differences in framerate. To solve this problem Damir Vran?i? developed the 3D LANC Master. It reads the crystal frequency from one of the cameras and writes to the ram of the other camera using Sony’s LANC protocol. This constant monitoring keeps the clocks within +/- 3ms. The control box also has buttons to power on, zoom, and record in sync. The 3D LANC Master plans are completely open source and work with a large number of Sony cameras. We have more photos of Eric’s rig after the break.