Year: 2009

Stantum’s High Precision Multitouch

February 19, 2009 by 9 Comments

touch

We love keeping track of new interaction technologies and this new touchscreen by Stantum looks especially promising. Engadget shot a hands-on video with it at the Mobile World Conference. It’s a resistive screen, so it can be used with both fingers and styluses (unlike capacitive screens). It’s sensitive enough that you could use a brush too. The screen supports any number of multitouch points and does pressure sensing based on the size of the detected fingertip. The touch detection is actually more accurate than the screen can display. Stantum is hoping mobile manufactures will pick up their input framework for inclusion in new devices. The resistive touchscreen was built to Stantum’s specifications (it won’t work with current phones), but they say it wouldn’t be hard to go into mass production.

Segway And Input Filtering

February 19, 2009 by 25 Comments

seg

[Kerry] is building a segway type vehicle for a senior project. Though it doesn’t appear to be done yet, there is some good work finished. As with any balancing bot, it relies heavily on input from a gyroscope, and at least in this case, an accelerometer. That data can be very messy. The sensitivity of the sensor means that people often end up with vibrating or drifting in their projects. [Kerry] has put some work into finding a method of smoothing that results in fast, accurate, but smooth reaction. You can see a video of some comparisons between methods after the break.

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Bristle Bot Controversy

February 19, 2009 by 66 Comments

bristle

When the Bristlebots were released back in 2007 by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, we all thought they were pretty cool. Apparently someone at Klutz did too. They have released a book, with the title “Invasion of the BristleBots”. The bots seem to be identical and the name is identical. There is no mention of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories anywhere in it. [Phillip Torrone] has attempted to contact Klutz and the book publisher Scholastic directly to find out more information.

[Windell] and [Lenore] from EMSL had this to say:

“This is the first that I’ve heard of it. Frankly, I am a bit offended. Klutz makes some nice things, and I’m surprised that they wouldn’t have contacted us, asked permission, or at least given us credit. (Locomotion by ratcheting bristles isn’t remotely new — it occurs in nature — but the name ‘Bristlebot’ is surely ours, and I don’t know of any prior implementation with a toothbrush.)”

You probably know EMSL from their other projects such as the Peggy and Meggy jr. How would you feel if a project you did was published without credit? Would you care or not?

Vacuum Former Toy

February 18, 2009 by 24 Comments

vacuum

Vacuum formers are still fairly rare in our community, so it was a surprise to see that in the 1960s Mattel marketed one as a toy. It used a hot plate to mold plastic sheets into various shapes. The design was updated by Toymax in the early ’90s to use a light bulb heating element to make car bodies, like some sort of manly Easy-Bake Oven. The home-built machines we’ve seen are a much larger scale. In 2005, we posted [Ralis Kahn]’s version that employed an electric grill as the heating element. [drcrash] has since built on those plans, hoping to develop an even cheaper device.

[via Gizmodo]

Temperature Sensing Munny

February 18, 2009 by 7 Comments

munny

Here’s another nerdy present that was built for Valentine’s Day. [João Silva] created a temperature sensing Munny. A Munny is a vinyl toy made to be customized. Other than these Munny speakers, we haven’t seen them in many electronics projects. The LM35CZ temperature sensor has an analog output that connects to the ADC on the ATtiny15L. The microcontroller changes the RGB LED’s color based on the temperature: blue for cold, green for comfortable, and red for hot. It only flashes every three minutes to conserve the power in the coin cells. His one-off circuit board also includes an ISP header for programming. The Munny’s head looks like it does a great job diffusing the light.

Dirk’s Accident

February 18, 2009 by 57 Comments

fingermag

Warning: this link contains graphic images depicting removal of a fingernail by giant freaking magnets. [Dirk] likes to collect odd things. A few of those odd things, just happen to be massive Neodymium magnets. Even though he was really really careful, somehow two of them ended up close enough to attract each other. After a brief flight, the two collided with his finger tip in between them. It is probably still there now.

We know these things can be pretty dangerous and usually warn people when doing projects that require them, like building a wind turbine.

LCD Repair

February 18, 2009 by 42 Comments

lcd

[Andrew] sent us this great breakdown of an LCD monitor repair. After his wife’s monitor developed an issue with rippling in the picture, he was forced to decide between trashing it, or fixing it. He decided for the latter, possibly to his wife’s disappointment. The rippling image could easily be attributed to a failed filter in the power supply. Knowing that capacitors are a prime suspect in these cases, he tore in, looking for failures. He found that there were, in fact, 2 bad capacitors on the back light circuit. After replacing them with newer, higher quality ones, the monitor was as good as new.