Turning Anyone Into A Casuality

August 16, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

Triage

EMTs and other first responders don’t just sit around waiting for a disaster to happen. If they need to train for a disaster – environmental, terrorist, or otherwise – they put together a mass injury simulation, or their version of a war game. As you can imagine, coordinating one of these simulations is a nightmare, but [David] came up with a way to simulate a casualty with a few XBees, a Parallax Propeller, and a few RFID cards.

This triage training simulator consists of an ‘acting coach’ on each simulated victim that includes a speech-to-text module that speaks instructions into the actors ear, a pulse simulator and a readout for vital signs that correspond to twelve major injuries. When an EMT triages a victim, they swipe an RFID card for each medical procedure they perform – intubating is one card, while a bandage is another – and all this is sent back to the coordinator’s tablet.

The coordinator has direct control over each of the actors through a two-way radio link, and can initiate changes in each victim, monitor a paramedic’s responses, and “escalate” the situation by setting off another simulated bomb.

All this is created with off-the-shelf hardware, vastly reducing the cost of this type of training device. An amazing application of what we usually consider to be just robot parts, and we’re happy for [David] to share it with us.

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Long Distance PS3 Controller

June 19, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

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Sony’s DualShock 3 controller can be seen in a number of projects here on Hackaday. There’s a reason for this: it’s easy to sniff the Bluetooth signals coming out of this controller and make any electronics project do your remote control bidding. Bluetooth has a fairly limited range, though, so what happens if you’d like to use this very comfortable and very functional controller over a mile or so? Just replace the mainboard of the controller with a new design using an Xbee radio. It’s a great project from the workbench of [Marcel] and looks to be just the solution for an awesome Xbee remote control.

The Sony DualShock 3 controller is designed around a single main board for the bulk of the electronics and analog sticks with three daughterboards used for every other button on the controller. [Marcel] took the main board out of his controller and stated to reverse engineer the thing, keeping the USB charging, PC communication, force feedback and LED indicators. Instead of Bluetooth as in the original circuit, [Marcel] used a 60mW XBee radio, allowing him to control just anything connected to another XBee radio with a range of up to a mile.

[Marcel]’s new main board is a direct drop in replacement for the original DualShock 3 mainboard, and the only modification to the controller is drilling a small hole for the new antenna. It’s a great piece of kit for RC vehicles of any kind, and it’s fully programmable for whatever robotics project you might have in mind.

Thanks {Roel] for sending this one in.

Quadruped Walks Of Four Legs, Rolls On Four Treads

May 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

tracked-quadruped-robot

This robot doesn’t know if it’s a walker or a tank. It’s the brain-child of [Marc Hamende] who works as a mechanical engineer by day and mad roboticist at night. The best place to find full details is by digging into the long thread he’s been posting to for about six weeks. It will give you a pretty good snapshot of his approach, starting with SolidWorks renderings of the project, and adding in assembled components as he brings the project together.

The mechanism for each foot is fascinating. He milled the white pieces which stack together to encapsulate the motor that runs the treads. These assemblies pivot to bring the metal rod serving as a walking foot in contact with the ground. But they also make it possible to adjust the treads to deal with rough terrain. A Propeller chip drives the device, with an Xbee module to communicate with the controller.

Don’t miss the video after the break. You’ll hear some skidding as it makes turns, but [Marc] plans to add code to adjust motor speed in order to compensate for the inside/outside differential issues. He’s also posted an image album over at Flickr.

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Quadcopter Brain

February 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

quadcopter-brain

This project is the warm center of [Alan Kharsansky’s] thesis in Electronic Engineering. It’s an all-in-one control board for a quadcopter. This is the second iteration of the board, the first version he actually etched himself. As you can see after the break the firmware is not quite ready for prime-time. But that doesn’t stop us from appreciating the design choices he’s made.

You can see the effort he made to keep the board symmetrical which will help when it comes time to balance the aircraft. At the center of the PCB is the jewel of the sensor array, a combination accelerometer and gyroscope. This location will help easy the trouble of designing PID algorithms to drive the four propellers. Also included in the sensor array is a magnetometer for navigation, and a barometric pressure sensor which can be used as an altimeter. There are four multipurpose connectors used to drive the motors and provide feedback to the boards. He also included two more sets of pads on the board (without their own connectors) in case he wants to add more motors in the future. The quadcopter can be controlled from a base station via the XBee module.

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Webmote: Control Anything With Web-based Remote

December 14, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

control-anything-from-the-web

We’ve seen a lot of projects that let you control all of your devices from a smartphone. But this universal web-based remote control system looks like the most versatile we’ve seen yet. The project is called Webmote as the controls are served up as a web interface so that you’re not limited to say an Android device. The UI can be customized by choosing what buttons you will use and where to place them on the display. You can get a good feel for this by viewing this G+ album. Setup is made a bit easier thanks to an add-on system that has predefined layouts for common things like controlling XBMC.

The hardware seen above is the business end of Webmote. It’s an Arduino with an IR receiver, IR LED, and an XBee module. For your common home entertainment devices you can teach the system your codes using the IR receiver. The IR LED is used to transmit those codes back, and the Xbee gives you the ability to control X10 (home automation) devices. Right now the setup requires the hardware be connected to a server via USB, but it shouldn’t be hard to set up some type of wireless alternative.

High Tech Tagging Adds Graffiti To Poles

November 23, 2012 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

[Akira] looks to increase his urban canvas by tagging poles which some custom hardware. If you’re looking to add some art to a lamp post, height becomes a problem. That’s where this little guy comes in. The remote-controlled pole climber includes a marker that leaves a trail as the device climbs and descends.

The rig clamps around a pole, with omnidirectional bearings on three sides of the four-sided frame. That last side is occupied by a rubber wheel mounted at a bit of an angle. When the motor turns the angle of the wheel causes the jig to rotate around the pole and climb at the same time. To come back down the motor is simply reversed. Xbee modules are used to make a rudimentary wireless control with a button for up and another for down. It looks like the marker is also mounted on a servo but we didn’t see a way to control when it is actually touching the pole. Perhaps you can figure it out by studying the clip after the jump.

We’ve seen projects that climb poles before. Among our favorites is the one that takes your bicycle with it.

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EVE Radio Breakout Board For The Raspberry Pi

November 17, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

The Raspberry Pi is an excellent tool to build the ‘Internet of things’ we’ve been hearing about, but there’s still the issue of connecting the Raspi to other devices. The EVE Alpha – a breakout board for several wireless radio modules for the Raspberry Pi – hopes to change that with their Kickstarter campaign.

The idea behind the EVE is to provide a link between low-power radio modules found in a few of the microcontroller projects we’ve seen and the Raspberry Pi. It does this by simply serving as a breakout board, taking the GPIO pins on the Raspi and connecting them to solder pads for a few of the many radio modules currently available.

Already the EVE supports the RFM12B wireless tranciever, a Z-Wave module, 868-915Mhz SRF modules, and has a breakout for an XBee module, allowing the EVE to communicate using one of the many different XBee boards. There’s also a battery-backed real-time clock and temperature sensor thrown in for good measure making this board the perfect building block for an outdoor weather station or solar array.

It’s an awesome idea, and if you already have a few radio modules, incredibly cheap; just the PCB is only £6, and a board with all the SMD components is only £20.