VGA Message Board Displays SMS Without A Computer

June 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Achu Wilson’s] latest creation is a VGA message board which is written to via SMS text messages. This doesn’t sound too interesting at first, until you find out he’s doing this with a microcontroller rather than a PC. All of the complexity is in the code that drives the VGA. He managed to do it without any jitter while using an 8-bit microcontroller.

But first, the cellular side of things. A GSM modem takes care of connectivity. To communicate with the modem [Achu] used an ATmega8. He mentions the he could have used a much smaller uC, like an ATtiny, but this is what he had lying around. When a message is received the ATmega8 feeds the characters to an ATmega16 which is driving the VGA monitor. Rather than deal with the analog voltages necessary to run a color display he simply ganged the three color lines together and drives them from one of the microcontroller pins. This results in white and black which correspond to voltage or no voltage.

You can see him showing off the system in the clip after the break.

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Hackaday Links: May 11, 2012

May 11, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

Three days of work in 5 minutes

[Celso] bought himself a Ultimaker kit and put together a time-lapse video of him putting it together. There’s a lot of work that goes into these machines, but being able to print a nearly perfect cube on the first run is nearly magical.

How about a CNC mill, too?

The folks over at Inventables have put together a tiny CNC mill kit designed from the fruitful mind of [Edward Ford]. The Shapeoko mill is designed around the Makerslide linear bearing system, so you’re getting a lot of precision very easily. Here’s some more info on the Shapeoko

Update the firmware on your RasPi

[Hexxeh] has been playing around with the Linux images for his Raspberry Pi, so he needs to reinstall the firmware on an image quite a lot. He wrote a tool to automate this task, but it should be useful for RasPi users that want to keep kernel and firmware up to date. You can get the rpi-updater at [Hexxeh]’s GitHub.

Your robotic barista is still always on the phone

Zipwhip is a company that provides a bridge from your phone to your computer so text messages can be displayed on your desktop. To show off their tech, they created a text enabled espresso machine. Everything on this robotic barista is automatic: the cups are grabbed from a warming tray with a servo arm, coffee is automatically brewed, and the last three digits of your cell phone number are printed on the foam to identify each cuppa. Check out the video; action starts at 1:30.

Awesome reading material

If you’re looking for something to read on that fancy tablet computer of yours, here’s every issue of New Scientist from 1956 to 1985. The early 60s issues say fusion power plants are about 50 years away, so we should be just fine in a couple of years.

Giving Siri The Keys To Your House

October 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

We haven’t really covered many hacks having to do with Apple’s newest iPhone feature Siri. We’d bet you’ve already heard a bunch about the voice-activated AI assistant and here’s your chance to give it the keys to your house. This project uses Siri to actuate the deadbolt on an entry door in a roundabout sort of way.

This is really just a Siri frontend for an SMS entry system seen in several other hacks. The inside of the door (pictured above) has a servo motor mounted next to, and attached via connecting rod with, the lever-style deadbolt. An Arduino equipped with a WiFly shield controls that servo and is waiting for instructions from the Google app engine. But wait, they’re not done yet. The app engine connects to a Twilio account which gives it the ability to receive SMS messages. Long story short; Siri is sending a text message that opens the door… eventually. You can seen in the demo after the break that the whole process takes over twenty seconds from the time you first access Siri to the point the bolt is unlocked. Still, it’s a fine first prototype.

There’s a fair amount of expensive hardware on that door which we’d like to see converted to extra feaures. [CC Laan] has already added one other entry method, using a piezo element to listen for a secret knock. But we think there’s room for improvement. Since it’s Internet connected we’d love to see a sensor to monitor how often the door is opened, and perhaps a PIR sensor that would act as a motion-sensing burglar alert system.

Don’t need something this complicated? How about implementing just the secret knock portion of the hack?

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The Partyscroller LED Display

September 5, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 16 Comments

As [Plasma2002] put it, “Those jumbo screens at concerts that display your text messages can be a lot of fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the same thing for your own parties or social gatherings?” The answer to this question came in the form of this hack, a scrolling marquee sign that guests simply had to text to get it to display messages. Apparently guests at the party loved the device, and who wouldn’t?

More importantly for [HAD] though, is that [Plasma2002] decided to show everyone how it’s done. He gives us an overview of the process via a nicely illustrated block diagram, then breaks everything down into the actual code used. A Google voice account is used as the dial-in number and everything is kept anonymous. A “bad-word” filter is used to keep everything semi-appropriate.

Really a cool device, and one that we hope will show up at hacker’s parties everywhere. Who knows, maybe something like this could enjoy mainstream success as well. Check out the video after the break to see this device in action! Continue reading “The Partyscroller LED Display” →

Only Losers Text Message On Cellphones – This Guy Carries His Own Teletype For That

August 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

Yes, that’s an SMS text messaging device. [Mdziewie] decided that texting on a regular cellphone was too boring and decided to build himself an old-school SMS gateway. Here’s a translated link but the formatting of the forum post gets screwed up with the machine translation.

The device he’s using is an ASR-33 Teletype machine, which was introduced to the market in 1963. It is connected to a GSM modem via an ARM microcontroller, the STM32F103. This chip, along with a few electronic components, let [Mdziewie] design an interface that doesn’t require alteration to the ancient hardware. The forum post linked above includes video of this sending and receiving texts. It’s awesomely loud as it hammers away at the paper, and seems to work as expected.

If you hunger for one of your own but don’t have half-century old equipment there’s still hope. Find yourself a typewriter and turn it into a teletype machine.

SMS Controlled Irrigation

February 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Mhkabir] built an irrigation system that communicates by text message. The concept is simple, sending a text message to the system will cause it to switch on the water pump.

Many times we see text message manipulation via the Internet, or using a GSM module. But in this case an inexpensive cellphone is used as the communication interface. The vibration motor has been removed and those connections are monitored to signal incoming messages. Wire leads were soldered to the keypad contacts which allow an Arduino to send out text messages when there is a problem with watering. This isn’t an iron-clad system, as any incoming message will trigger the system and outgoing messages are limited to saved drafts. But a bit of creative programming and we’re sure more functionality could be squeezed out of this hardware.

Keyless Entry Via SMS

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Billy’s] work got new keys which he didn’t want to carry around with him. Instead he built this system to unlock the door via text message. It is based around a Spinneret Web Server which drives a servo motor. He’s rigged up a pipe hanger to add some leverage to the lock’s knob. We’re surprised that the servo has enough power to do the job here but the video after the break shows there’s really no problem. On the communication side of things [Billy] set up Twilio to wait for text messages from an approved list of senders, then used an HTML form to issue the unlock commands to the webserver.

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