First Hovering Ornithopter NAV

July 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 24 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cov7-XWUa18&w=470]

DARPA has awarded an extension to AeroVironment for their work on the Nano Air Vehicle project. The prototype seen above, called Mercury, is an ornithopter which means it flaps it’s wings. It is the first to show controlled hovering. Look closely, there’s no rudder or tail. Mercury uses the two wings for both lift and control. Ornithopters themselves aren’t new, we’ve even covered them before. Usually they use the flapping wings for propulson and a tail to steer as they travel like an airplane. We would really love to see some detail shots of Mercury.

[via slashdot]

Twittering Keylogger

July 1, 2009 by Zach Banks 16 Comments

[Kyle McDonald] sent in his latest project, a software keylogger that twitters what you type. He wrote it using C++ and OpenFrameworks. It logs each keystroke, then it posts to twitter 140 characters at a time. To protect himself, he set up a whitelist of private strings like passwords and credit card numbers that would be stripped before posting. If the twypewriter followed him, his keystrokes could be recreated.

[thanks Kyle]

Mixed Voltage Interfacing With The Bus Pirate

July 1, 2009 by Ian 7 Comments

oc.470.iii

Most of the parts we use operate at 3.3volts, but we still run into a lot of old 5volt stuff, and an occasional 2.5volt or 1.8volt part. This post explains how to use the Bus Pirate’s open collector pin mode to interface with parts at different voltages.

We’ve got more details and some example scenarios below the break. Yup, this is another Bus Pirate post. It’ll all be over soon though, because there’s a few days left to get your own Bus Pirate for $30, fully assembled and shipped worldwide.

Continue reading “Mixed Voltage Interfacing With The Bus Pirate” →

The Snow Clock

July 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

Snow days are great, but generally you still have to wake up to find out if it is a snow day. [insingertech] decided to make a system to solve this problem. He made an alarm clock that would automatically de activate if school is cancelled. What a pleasant surprise it would be to just wake up and find that you had been allowed to sleep in. It is using an Arduino and a python script to control the state of the alarm based off of an online school closing announcement. You can download the software from the instructable.

Custom Car Door Keypad

June 30, 2009 by Zach Banks 25 Comments

carkeypad

[Michael] has a keypad in his previous car’s door and he missed it enough to hack one into his Dodge Caliber. He bought a Ford keypad and mounted it inside his door with some custom electronics. He started with an Arduino nano to receive and authenticate button presses. This then splices into wires in the door that control the door lock. The program has a 5-digit code to unlock the door, but simply pressing 1 twice will lock the doors. He also implemented a lockout feature to prevent people from brute-forcing the combination. Although it isn’t wireless, it’s significantly simpler.

[thanks Michael]

Massive LED Screen Project

June 30, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILHGU1qJzY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.basicmicro.com%2F&feature=player_embedded]

The folks over at basicmicro.com are working on a massive LED display. They currently have one 32×32 RGB panel working. It displays 50 fps at 140 hz but the one above is only running at about 24 fps. The final display will be 40 of these panels. This thing is going to be massive. We have to wonder how this compares, financially and performance wise, to the commercial signage that displays videos.

Parts: SPI EEPROM (25AA/25LC)

June 30, 2009 by Ian 11 Comments

3EEPROM-SPI

Microchip’s 25AA/25LC EEPROMs are data storage chips with a simple 3-wire interface. The 25AA/LC is an SPI version of the common 24AA/LC I2C EEPROM. It comes in capacities of 128bytes to 128kilobytes. We looked at the smallest, the 128byte 25AA010A.

There are Bus Pirate demonstrations for most types of serial EEPROMs. Check out our previous 1-wire (DS2431) and I2C (24LC1025) EEPROM posts.

Continue below to see our test circuit and a demonstration of the 25AA010 EEPROM. We used the Bus Pirate to play with this chip from our PC. For a limited time you can get your own Bus Pirate, fully assembled and shipped worldwide, for only $30.

Continue reading “Parts: SPI EEPROM (25AA/25LC)” →