Water Droplet Sculpture Using LEDs And Arduino

March 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This water sculpture can stop drops of water in mid-air. This is accomplished by flashing LEDs to illuminate the droplets at just the right time. But it’s not limited to blinky lights alone. The top of the frame has eight nozzles, each fed by its own pump. An Arduino controls the pumps and the lights making it possible to create different motion effects by adjusting how events line up. For instance, the image above shows just two of the water nozzles on, but in the video after the break it appears one is dripping downward while the other is dripping upward.

Alas, there’s few build details for this but the source code is available for downloading. If we were going to build one of these ourselves we’d probably try to regulate the drips using some solenoids built from scratch. How would you do it? Leave your ideas in the comments.

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All About PS3 SixAxis Controller USB Communications

March 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Austyn] is currently working on reverse engineering a PlayStation 3 SixAxis controller’s USB communications. You may be thinking that this has already been done but [Austyn] was unable to find useful source code so he’s started his own project called libopenaxis.

The process he used to sniff out USB communications makes for an interesting read. He utilized GlovePIE to get the USB request block for the controller. With that in hand he grabbed the Python script used in a DIY Kinect hacking tutorial to start dumping controller data. With each keypress the script reads out the full data packet, which is used to figure out how the data structures are organized.

The project has come as far as knowing all of the data types, but right now the purpose for the majority of those variables is unknown. Hopefully the blanks will be filled in over time. Two things are for sure; if you’re interested in writing Python code that can communicate with PS3 controllers this is a great source of info, and the Kinect hacking that was so fun to watch over the last few months is still bearing fruit.

DIY Flower Bouquet Guaranteed To Get You Dumped On Valentine’s Day

March 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 36 Comments

led_flower_bunch

[Erik] is a broke engineer.

When this past Valentine’s day rolled around he didn’t have any cash to buy a gift for his girlfriend, so he had to get creative. Every girl likes flowers, but unless he was going to give his lady some day old daises from the grocery dumpster, he would have to make them himself.

He started by bundling together and bending some T-shirt hangers into stems. He then wrapped them in the green & green/white wire pairs from some Cat-5 cable to give them some color. An old keyboard was sacrificed to create the flower petals and leaves, which were presumably colored with markers before being glued to the end of the hangers. He added a reed switch to the flower pot, which illuminates the LEDs he installed under the petals when a magnet-bearing cardboard placard reading “Love Erik” was placed near it.

How did his girlfriend like them? Well, let’s just say she’s no longer in the picture. He didn’t tell us if the bouquet was the reason, only that she’s gone. (though we happen to think it’s pretty cool).

Keep reading to see a quick video demonstration of the light-up bouquet.

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Kinect Hacked To Work With Garry’s Mod Means Endless Hours Of Virtual Fun

March 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 37 Comments

garrys_mod_kinect

[John B] is a software engineer and had some spare time on his hands, so he started messing around with his Kinect which had been sitting unused for awhile. He wanted to see what he could create if he was able to get Kinect data into a virtual environment that supported real-world physics. The first idea that popped into his head was to interface the Kinect with Garry’s Mod.

If you are not familiar with Garry’s Mod, it is a sandbox environment built on top of Valve’s Source engine. The environment supports real-world physics, but beyond that, it pretty much lets you do or build anything you want. [John] found that there was no good way to get Kinect data into the software, so he built his own.

He used OpenNI to gather skeletal coordinate data from Kinect, which was then passed to some custom code that packages those coordinates inside UDP packets. Those packets are then sent to a custom Lua script that is interpreted by Garry’s Mod.

The result is just plain awesome as you can see in the video below. Instead of simply playing some random game with the Kinect, you get to design the entire experience from the ground up. The project is still in its infancy, but it’s pretty certain that we’ll see some cool stuff in short order. All of the code is available on github, so give it a shot and share your videos with us.

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Rigol Oscilloscope Teardown And Repair

March 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

[Hotsolder] encountered a bad encoder in his Rigol Oscilloscope, so he opened it up in order to replace the damaged part. According to him, it was quite an adventure, so he documented the disassembly and component swap for the benefit of anyone else out there that might have to do the same.

The teardown is in the form of a slideshow, which is available on his site. The images are all pretty well annotated, so you should be able to follow along quite easily if you happen to be tearing one apart yourself. There’s not a ton of exotic things to see inside the scope, it pretty much contains what you would expect to see if you cracked one open.

The encoder replacement went off without a hitch, and he even took pictures of the defective one to discuss how it works.

It’s definitely a quick and interesting read if you are simply curious about oscilloscopes, or if you happen to need to dismantle yours.

[Thanks, oakkar7]

Laser-cut Noise Maker Resembles Violin

March 10, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

This looks very much like a violin but it sounds very much like someone abusing a family of cats. [Ranjit] came with the idea of building a violin using laser cut parts. It doesn’t follow the normal curved shape we’re used to seeing with string instruments. This is because the parts were all cut from flat stock, including the sides of the instrument. The boxy shape that resulted invokes visions of early video game objects and is why this is called the 8-bit violin.

After the break you can see a video of [Bre Pettis] playing the laser-cut instrument. It’s pretty bad, but not in that five-year-old picking up an instrument for the first time sort of way. Yes the best violinists spend a lifetime honing their craft, but they also play on instruments hand carved by master Luthiers who also spend a lifetime perfecting their skills. Don’t get us wrong though, we think it’s just as much fun as that 3D printed guitar.

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Domo Kun Robot Achieves Balance Sans Gyroscope

March 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

Every time it tips over, the FSM kills a kitten

Most self-balancing robots use some sort of circuitry like gyroscopes or accelerometers to keep them upright. Some bots however, can achieve nearly the same effect by far less complicated means.

Meet the Domo Kun wobbly bot, created by [Chein]. The robot is essentially a pendulum, where the pivot point is even with the wheel axle. The base of the robot is loaded with batteries, motors, and weights, all of which keep the robot relatively steady while zooming about the room. A light balsa wood frame was fitted to the top of the metal chassis, and a thin cardboard Domo Kun shell was mounted on top of that. The robot is driven using the remote control circuitry that he stripped from a toy car. He also mentions that the positioning of the batteries and weights is key to getting the robot to balance and roll properly – something that took several attempts to get just right.

Now if he could only program it to autonomously chase kittens…

Be sure to check out the pair of videos we have below of the robot chassis in testing as well as the final product.

[via HackedGadgets]

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