Month: January 2010

Fun Theory Grant Is 25k For A Fun Project

January 7, 2010 by 21 Comments

First the bad news, it’s too late for you to apply for this grant. The good news is that you can vote for the projects you think deserve money to do some good.

The Fun Theory is the group that produced the musical subway stairs and the bottle bank arcade. Now they’ve put out the call to arms on the Internet for submissions that make life more fun and our communities better places. All of the submissions for the fun-theory-award are in and available for your perusal. Some of the most popular submissions include a vending machine that uses recycled cans to play a slot-machine game, a hand sanitizer that makes funny sounds when used, and putting a giant crossword puzzle at bus stops to encourage ridership and make waiting more fun.

[Thanks Matthew][see Matthew’s entry in the contest]

[cash photo credit]

SparkFun’s Free Day Is Nearly Upon Us…

January 7, 2010 by 624 Comments

As I’m sure many of you already now, today is January 7th. While that might not have any real significance normally, today this means that our favorite hobby supplier, SparkFun, is giving away up to $100,000 of electronic goodness. We know we have our shopping carts filled to the brim, and we’re sure that most of you do too. With the start of Free Day being roughly 10 minutes away, we recommend that everyone man their shopping carts…. This should be interesting…

Max/MSP Accelerometer Beat Control

January 7, 2010 by 3 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/8222312%5D

[Ryan] let us know about his Max/MSP Controller. Inside the device is an ADXL 335 accelerometer and 6 push buttons wired to an Arduino. The input data is sent to Max MSP, a sequencer controlling 5 audio tracks, correlating to 5 of the buttons. The 6th button controls delay. What we really liked was how the accelerometer modified the speed of the beat in the X-axis, and the delay intensity with the Y-axis. Whats next? We think gesture recognition might be something fun to try, but [Ryan] is unsure. We’ll keep you up to date.

Pong, For Real

January 6, 2010 by 22 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5mjx1iYt5g]

Over at EvilMadScientistLaboratories.com they’ve asked a question that many of us have never thought to ask. What exactly is Pong supposed to be? Instead of assuming it was ping pong like the rest of us, they decided to build a literal physical  interpretation. They may have taken some liberty, using solenoids as the paddles, but the end effect is quite nice. Watching them play actually looks both challenging and fun. There’s a great writeup about the construction, so be sure to check out the project page.

Reverse Engineering The Telly Terminator

January 6, 2010 by 17 Comments

[Oliver] received the Telly Terminator as a gift and decided to take a closer look at it. This key fob has two buttons; one shines an LED like a flashlight and the other turns off televisions. Sound familiar? Yeah, it made [Oliver] think of the TV-B-Gone as well.

He cracked open the case to find just a few components. The brain behind the IR signals is a Helios H5A02HP. Only a few pins are used for outputs so he connected a logic analyzer and recorded the signals. His writeup covers the process quite well. He takes a known IR transmitter protocol and compares it to the capture from the logic analyzer. It turns out that the fob generates 46 different signals and with further analysis concludes that there’s a chance the code used here is from an older version of the TV-B-Gone source.

CES Update: January 6th, 2010

January 6, 2010 by 6 Comments

It’s just about time for CES (as we’ve mentioned once or twice), so we thought we would update you on our latest goals and ideas for the show.

This year [Caleb Kraft], [Nick Caiello], [James Munns], [Devlin Thyne], and [Brett Haddock] will be covering CES. We are currently looking for some good places to go if we get a chance to break away from the show, and while we won’t make any guarantees, we’d love to meet some of our readers! Please direct all ideas for your favorite eatery to our Contact Page. Keep an eye on our Twitter page (@hackaday) for CES updates and what your favorite writers are up to, where we are eating, and other possible chances to meet up with us.

We are also still looking for Las Vegas Hackerspaces to visit, so let us know and we would love to cover it!

Be sure to check out our updated interest list after the break, and keep sending in what you want to see!

Continue reading “CES Update: January 6th, 2010” →

Pulse Oximeter

January 6, 2010 by 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdN5IRVJOXI]

[Mike] is building his own Pulse Oximeter which uses light to measure the oxygen saturation in blood. One collateral benefit of this measurement is that pulse rate can be calculated from the same data. The parts used for the detector include a red LED, infrared LED, and a TSL230R light intensity measuring chip. As explained in the video above, each LED is shined through the tip of your finger and onto the light sensor. The IR LED is used as a baseline and compared to the red LED, which has some of its intensity absorbed by the red blood in your finger. This is a pretty approachable biometric concept so you may want to start here before moving on to more involved biometric interfaces.

[Thanks Russ]