Day: October 27, 2009

CNC Used To Make 3D Video Using One Camera

October 27, 2009 by 23 Comments

3d-video-one-camera-cnc

[Gabriel] is making 3D movies using only one camera. This should be impossible because true 3D needs to be stereoscopic, with images from different perspectives for each eye. He’s worked this out by mounting the camera on a CNC gantry and programming it to make two passes along slightly different paths. He’s plotting the camera paths using SketchUp and a plugin that exports paths as CamBam files, automatically adjusting for perspective. The two videos are then merged using Stereo Movie Maker.

We’ve embedded both a 3D video as well as behind-the-scenes filming video after the break but you’ll need the red and blue 3D glasses to view the former. It’s not too much of a stretch to tweak his methods and use this for stopped motion video where one button press takes a frame for each eye. Now, who will be the first to bring us a Star Wars remake filmed in stopped-motion 3D using the original action figures? Continue reading “CNC Used To Make 3D Video Using One Camera” →

Football Hero

October 27, 2009 by 17 Comments

footie

For Kasabian’s new single Underdog, they decided to do something original. After dreaming up a Guitar Hero style controller powered by soccer football players, they set out to make it happen. Using 5 wall mounted pressure sensors connected to a microcontroller, they hooked up the rig to a computer running Frets on Fire (an open source Guitar Hero clone) with a custom version of their single. After an afternoon of practice, the team was able to 5 star the song, and while this isnt the only or most complex Guitar Hero hack, we would love to have this in our house.

Video after the break.

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These Midi Controllers Stink!

October 27, 2009 by 10 Comments

BeatShoes-midi-controller

Well, maybe saying it stinks is too harsh. But if you build a midi controller out of an old pair of skate shoes you can be certain that they smell. [Thobson] put odor issues aside and added four force sensitive resistors to his shoes (one in each heel and one under the ball of each foot) for a creation he calls BeatSneaks. As force is applied to the resistors, they become less resistive. This change in resistance is measured by the ADC inputs on an Arduino and used to trigger midi events via USB. There’s video after the break, and [Thobson’s] has provided the schematic and code that he used for his addition to a growing family of unusual musical interfaces.

Does this make tap dancing cool again?

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Piecax The Poltergeist Reinvents The Knock Block

October 27, 2009 by 13 Comments

piecax-the-poltergeist

[AndyGadget] built a haunted box as part of his Halloween preparations. This follows in the footsteps of the Knock Block we saw earlier this month but makes several hardware changes. He’s replaced the solenoid with a DC motor that rotates an arm to do the knocking. He’s avoided any CNC work by using a softwood box from a craft store as the enclosure. For control circuitry he’s used an 8-pin PICAXE Microcontroller that ‘listens’ for knocking on the box via a piezo buzzer. It will mimic knocks back to you, and if it hears the right combination The Addams Family theme song is played. This useless machine will make a great office conversation piece and with this simplified design it’s much easier to build than the Knock Block. See it perform after the break.

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BigDog’s Bipedal Brother

October 27, 2009 by 28 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67CUudkjEG4]

Boston Dynamics is at it again. This time, they’ve created a creepy biped with a natural gait. It may look very similar to BigDog, because it really is almost the same system. Named PETMAN, this biped system is being designed to help test chemical protection suits. This bot can stress the suit by walking, running, and even crawling in a room filled with poison gas. Not only can PETMAN walk, run, and crawl, but it can also sweat and change its temperature.  That’s pretty cool. Like BigDog, the most impressive part is when they give it a shove and it recovers with a motion that seems almost organic.

Digital Tuner Reverse Engineering

October 27, 2009 by 32 Comments

hvr-1600-i2c-sniffing

Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet] tipped us off about some reverse engineering of the HVR-1600, an analog and digital television encoder/tuner. The project was spawned when [Devin] noticed his Hauppauge HVR-1600 didn’t tune channels in Linux quite as well as it did in Windows. He had a hunch this was due to improper initialization settings for either the tuner chip or the demodulator.

To fix this he used two test points on the board to tap into the I2C bus. Using a logic analyzer he captured the command traffic from the bus while running Linux, then while running Windows. By filtering the results with a bit of Perl, and comparing them by using diff, he tracks down and finds the variation in the commands being sent by the two drivers. After a bit of poking around in the Linux source and making the necessary changes, he improved the tuning ability of the Linux package.

[Devin’s] work looks simple enough, and it is. The difficult part of this process is being smart enough to know what you’re looking for, and what you’ve got once you’ve found it.

Parts: ChronoDot RTC Module (DS3231)

October 27, 2009 by 18 Comments

ChronoDot

Macetech’s ChronoDot is a Real Time Clock module for projects requiring highly accurate time keeping and measurement. The ChronoDot uses the DS3231 chip, which features a TCXO to compensate for variations in temperature which affect normal oscillators, like the ones in most microcontrollers. The DS3231 uses simple I2C commands and registers for storing and retrieving time, but also features a variable output that goes all the way down to 1.000 hz for low power, interrupt style timekeeping applications. With the provided watch battery, the ChronoDot can keep time in idle mode for up to 8 years.

Normally the ChronoDot comes mostly assembled, requiring you to only solder on the watch battery. However, due to a manufacturing mistake, Macetech is selling a version with the header pins on the wrong side they call the ChronoDoh. This module is currently nearly half off the regular price of $14.99, which makes it a great low cost addition to a project. Macetech has sent us a couple of these modules to demonstrate how functional they still are.

Continue reading “Parts: ChronoDot RTC Module (DS3231)” →