Month: May 2006

Helium Balloon Aerial Photography

May 10, 2006 by 19 Comments

aerial photography

So, you’ve got an itching desire to inflate 150 helium balloons, but have no idea what to do with them afterwards? Well, readers Stefan and Michel decided to build a simple aluminum frame to mount a cheap digital camera and do some aerial photography. Instead of building a complex timing system they just attached a strong motor from a security camera. It’s powered by a AA and is geared really low so it only triggers the shutter every 12 seconds. They deployed the rig from the fortifications surrounding Wilemstad in the Netherlands. There are several pictures of the city (and the occasional envious child) on their site. If you follow the “continue reading” link you’ll see a couple more pictures of the camera mount.

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Roomba Midi Interface

May 9, 2006 by 8 Comments

todbot has developed a MIDI interface for the Roomba. RoombaMidi is an OSX application that acts as a virtual MIDI interface. It can be used by any standard MIDI sequencer and supports up to a 16 vacuum orchestra. It can even turn the vacuum motor on and off for a bass drum effect. I guess the circuit benders have a brand new toy on there hands, but who will be the first great Roomba artist?

[thanks Mike Kuniavsky]

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RFID Enabled Deadbolt

May 8, 2006 by 25 Comments

rfid door

We saw Amal Graafstra, the author of RFID Toys, at Maker Faire. Even though we spent most of the time at his booth poking at the RFID tags embedded in his hands we did remember him mentioning that he would be releasing a free bonus chapter. The first chapter of the book shows how to connect an RFID reader to your home automation system for front door access control. The free bonus chapter describes how to build a standalone system for operating a single deadbolt. The Powerbolt deadbolt he chose makes this project pretty easy since it already has marked solder pads for open and close. A BASIC Stamp 2 is used to read the tags and operate the lock.

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Bluetooth A2DP Speakers

May 7, 2006 by 20 Comments

bluetooth speakers

[Simon Elkrief] was tired of waiting for manufacturers to produce a set Bluetooth stereo speakers so he built his own. Stereo over Bluetooth is handled by the A2DP profile which isn’t very common. Simon had to perform a registry hack to activate it on his HTC Wizard. OS X still doesn’t have support for it. He used the Bluetooth receiver out of a pair of broken Logitech headphones and wired it directly to a set of powered speakers. Now he can stream stereo sound from his phone to the speakers. He plans on developing an even better set in the future.

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Microcontroller Design Final Projects

May 6, 2006 by 10 Comments

hard drive clock

Bruce Land let us know that the final projects for EE476 Microcontroller Design, a class he teaches at Cornell, are online now. You may remember some of last years projects: P-P-P-Palm, Big Red Juice Mixer, wireless telemetry. This year’s projects include a Reflow oven controller, an RFID security system, and an autonomous helicopter plus many, many, more.

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ITrip Mini Universal Mod

May 5, 2006 by 10 Comments

itrip mini

[josh mason] is in the process of converting his iTrip mini FM transmitter (cache) so that it will work with any device. The iTrip uses the iPod’s accessory port for power and control. The acc. port is what Apple used before settling on a standard dock connector. After he cracked open the iTrip, Josh compared it to an earlier hack we featured and noticed that the wiring was backwards which explains why the acc. port devices won’t work on different generations. He’s got a new headphone jack attached but still needs to construct a power supply. If he wasn’t making the device universal, he could get 3.3V out of his nano’s dock port.

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Luxeon LED Bike Headlight

May 4, 2006 by 15 Comments

luxeon headlight

[Ian] built this headlight for his commuter bike. It is based around the Luxeon Star LED which is supposed to be equivalent to a 5W halogen. He mounted it to an aluminum frame and used a Fraen narrow lens. It’s powered by a pack of 4 rechargeable AA batteries. He’s got a list of improvements he would make. The first one is a better casing since his looks terrible compared to Suzy Jackson’s sexy light.

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