Magic 8 Thing Answers All Of Your Burning Questions

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

magic_8_thing

[Pete] was hard at work putting off a repair job for a friend, and wondered how much longer he could possibly procrastinate. With no fellow humans in earshot to which he could propose this question, he thought it would be great if he could ask a Magic 8-ball for an answer. Alas, he doesn’t have a Magic 8-ball, so he would have to build one if he wanted his answer.

Continuing to delay the repair job, he scrounged around his house and dug up an ATmega328 to control the 8-ball and a LCD panel to display the sage-like responses. He wanted the 8-ball to be as authentic in operation as he could, so he had to locate some sort of sensor that would register if the device had been shaken. With no accelerometer at hand, he opted to use a mercury tilt switch that he scavenged from an old thermostat. He wrote some software to display the responses from the original Magic 8-ball when shaken, then he threw the components together in a small plastic case.

As you can see in the video below, his Magic 8-thing works just like the original, sans the dark fluid and icosahedron. If you were wondering, he did finally ask the 8-thing whether he had procrastinated long enough on his initial task – the response: “Yes”

If you’re in the mood for more Magic 8-ball shenanigans, check out these posts!

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POV Business Card Is Guaranteed To Get You Noticed

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

Some say that handing out business cards is an antiquated practice due to the ubiquity of smart phones which can be used to trade or record contact information in mere moments. Instructables user [sponges] however, doesn’t agree and is pushing a “business card renaissance” of sorts with his POV business card.

Hand-built in his basement, the cards feature a handful of SMD LEDs that display his name, followed by his phone number when waved back and forth. Constructed to be nearly the same size as a standard business card, his verison uses a PIC to manage the display as well as a tilt sensor to monitor the card’s motion. His walkthrough is quite thorough, and includes tutorials for each of the steps required to build the card. He discusses constructing your own etching tank, converting a laminator for PCB transfer purposes, building a solder reflow oven controller, as well as hacking an aquarium pump for use as a vacuum-powered pick and place.

The end result is a sharp looking business card that ensures you won’t forget meeting him. Keep reading to see a video of the card in action.

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HERF Gun Zaps More Than Your Dinner

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 76 Comments

Instructables user [Jimmy Neutron] had an old microwave sitting around and figured he might as well gut it to build a high-energy radio frequency (HERF) gun.

The concept of a HERF gun is not incredibly complex. Much like your microwave at home functions, a high voltage power source is used to drive a magnetron, which produces micro wave radiation at 2.45GHz. These waves are then guided away from the magnetron using a waveguide, towards whatever the target might be. These waves then energize the target in a similar fashion as the water molecules in your food are energized during cooking.

[Jimmy] has not quite finished his HERF gun as he still needs to build a waveguide for it and then safely mount it for use. In the meantime, check out the pair of HERF guns we found in the videos below.

As a parting note, we must stress that building a similar device is dangerous, very dangerous – especially if you do not know what you are doing. Microwaves contain high voltage components, and exposure to microwave radiation can be deadly under certain circumstances. Stay safe!

Looking for more microwave fun? Check these out!

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Clever Hack Tethers A Kinect Sensor To The PS3

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 5 Comments

kinect_for_ps3

Now that Kinect has been hacked to work with just about everything from robots to toaster ovens, someone finally got around to tweaking it for use on the PS3.

[Shantanu] has been hard at work writing code and experimenting with some preexisting Kinect software to get the sensor to talk to his PS3. The Kinect is hooked up to a PC, which captures all of his movements with OpenNI. Those movements are mapped to PS3 controls via NITE, a piece of middleware used for interpreting gestures into commands. All of the captured button presses are then relayed to the PS3 over a Bluetooth connection using DIYPS3Controller.

As you can see in the video below, the solution works pretty well for what should be considered pre-alpha code. He has been able to map several custom gestures to button presses, and the Kinect does an overall decent job tracking his limbs and translating their movements to on-screen actions. The actual in-game use is a bit rough at the moment, but aside from the infancy of the code, you have to remember that these games were never meant to be played with the Kinect.

It’s a job well done, and we can’t wait to see where this project goes.

Looking for more Kinect fun? Look no further than right here.

[via Kinect-Hacks]

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Freedombot Explores Your Fridge

March 21, 2011 by Chris Nelson 10 Comments

Freedombot is a neat little robot designed for exploring magnetic surfaces. It has two whiskers for detecting objects in its path and two rare earth magnets which allow it to stick to your fridge.

Overall Freedombot may not be anything revolutionary but its builder [skater_j10] does a good job of covering topics which my be interesting to robotics beginners. For example he goes through the process of modifying some HiTec HS- 55 Micro Servos for continuous rotation which allows them to act as the wheels. To control the bot he uses two 555 timers wired up in astable mode to generate the needed PWM for the servos. The proximity sensors are simple limit switches with some wire soldered on to the end. The end result is a neat little robot for roaming the front of your fridge. See a video of it in action after the break.

This happens to be [skater_j10]’s entry into the 555 timer contest. Unfortunately the deadline has passed for new entries but be sure to swing by and check out some more awesome 555 hacking.

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Simple Robot Knows Its Bounds

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

table_top_bot

The [Dallas Personal Robotics Group] recently put together a set of tutorials for their members, including the build process of a table-top robot, they call the Tiny Wanderer. The bot can be constructed pretty easily, and is meant as an introduction to robot building.

The small servo-driven bot uses simple edge sensors to ensure that it doesn’t fall off a raised surface. The sensors were built using a small IR LED and photo transistor, which is partially isolated from the LED by a piece of shrink tubing. An ATiny micro-controller takes two measurements of the amount of IR light entering the photo transistor – one with the LED on, the other with the LED off. The difference of these measurements is compared to determine if the edge sensors are hanging off the side of the table. The logic used here is pretty simple – the difference will be high if the sensors are hovering over a surface, due to reflected light, and low if the sensors are hanging over open space.

The writeup contains templates for building the bot’s structure, as well as source code and schematics for all of the electronic bits.

Be sure to stick around to see a video of the robot in action.

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People-tracking Orb Demo Makes Us Want To Build Our Own

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

kinect_eye

Earlier this week, we came across a video of an orb-based eyeball that would follow you throughout the room, based on data gathered from a Kinect sensor. Try as we might, we couldn’t find much more than the video, but it seems that the guys behind the project have spoken up in a recent blog post.

[Jon George] of The Design Studio UK explained that the person-tracking eyeball visualization was built using a PC, a Kinect, and a product called the Puffersphere, which projects a 360 degree image on the inside of a glass orb. A panoramic image is converted for use by the special lens inside the sphere by applying a filter which warps the image into a circular shape.

After the image has been created, a simple Windows app is used in conjunction with the OpenNI framework that allows the image to follow you around the room.

The only problem with this fun little project is the price of the sphere – we’re not sure what it is exactly, but rest assured it is more than we are willing to pay for such a toy. We’re thinking there has to be a way to simulate the orb’s effect to some degree using cheaper hardware. It’s possible that it could be done using a small-scale DIY version of this spherical mirror projection build, though it consists of concave half-spheres rather than full orbs.

In the meantime, take a look at these two videos of the orb in action. Don’t worry – we know you were totally thinking about the Eye of Sauron, so the second video should not disappoint.

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