Year: 2011

Think You Can Take Kinect To The Next Level? Check Out Kinect Accelerator

November 21, 2011 by 16 Comments

kinect-accelerator

If you’ve got a crazy ingenious idea for Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, but don’t have the means to make your dream a reality, the Kinect Accelerator just might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

Microsoft, having performed a complete 180-degree turnaround from their initial stance on Kinect hacking, is embracing developers more than ever with this new program. They are offering a $20,000 along with development space to ten startup companies, in hopes of turning out some incredible Kinect applications. At the end of the three month program, each group will have the opportunity to present their creations to a group of angel investors, which is a fantastic opportunity.

Obviously competition to gain entry into the program will be pretty fierce, but if you think you have what it takes, get your application in now. Judging by the Kinect Accelerator FAQ section, this looks to be something geared towards small tech startups rather than individuals, but it never hurts to give it a shot.

Power Strip Hack Reduces Standby Electricity Consumption

November 21, 2011 by 31 Comments

computer-standby-circuit

For years, [Rasmus] has left his computer connected directly to the mains power so that he can turn it on via Wake on Lan. While powered down, it would still continuously consume about 6W of electricity, but now that he didn’t need it to be on standby so often, he wanted to make it more energy efficient.

In Denmark, where he lives, many people use power strips that have an onboard USB cable. These strips are meant to reduce the standby power consumption of PC peripherals such as monitors by powering on the mains sockets only when the computer is active. He decided the easiest way to cut his standby energy consumption to 0W would be to power his computer via this strip as well.

While it sounds great in theory, it presented a sort of chicken/egg problem. If the computer needs to be turned on for the power strip to recognize it, then how could he also supply power to the computer from the same strip? His solution was a small circuit that would charge up while the computer was running, and still hold enough juice to kickstart the PC’s boot process, thus turning on the power strip.

It really is an ingenious way to go about things, nice job!

Simple Touch Sensors With The Arduino CapSense Library

November 21, 2011 by 10 Comments

Ever thought of using touch sensors on your projects but didn’t because it would be too much work? [Paul Stoffregen] proves that it can be pretty easy if you use the CapSense library for Arduino. Here he’s created three touch sensors, connecting them to the Teensy microcontroller with two resistors each. The larger resistor (looks like 4.7 megaohms here) sends a signal through the copper pad which is read by the secondary pin. Here that pin is protected from electrostatic discharge with the 1k resistors. The microcontroller takes a reading by measuring how long it takes the voltage to change on the input pin.

Since the CapSense library takes care of the timing involved in these readings, all you have to do is decide how your program will react to the numbers that are coming in. In the video after the break [Paul] is echoing the timing figures back through the serial monitor to get an idea of what the data looks like. He experiments with touching the copper directly, and touching it through a piece of clear tape.

We’ve seen the CapSense library at work before in this interactive exhibit piece.

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Siri Proxy Adds Tons Of Functionality, Doesn’t Require A Jailbreak

November 21, 2011 by 24 Comments

siri-proxy

[Pete] has an iPhone 4s and loves Siri, but he wishes she had some more baked-in capabilities. While the application is technically still in beta and will likely be updated in the near future, [Pete] wanted more functionality now.

Since Apple isn’t known for their open architecture, he had to get creative. Knowing how Siri’s commands are relayed to Apple thanks to the folks at Applidium, he put together a proxy server that allows him to intercept and work with the data.

The hack is pretty slick, and doesn’t even require a jailbreak. A bit of DNS and SSL trickery is used to direct Siri’s WiFi traffic through his server, which then relays the commands to Apple’s servers for processing. On the return trip, his server interprets the data, looking for custom commands he has defined.

In the video below, he gives a brief overview of the system, then spends some time showing how he can use Siri to control his WiFi enabled thermostat. While the process only works while Siri is connected to his home network via WiFi, it’s still pretty awesome.

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Black Friday Deals And Contest Giveaways

November 21, 2011 by 7 Comments

Winter is coming, and it’s a great time to start accumulating parts and tools to keep you occupied with projects during the dark and cold days ahead.

Black Friday

We got a tip from Pololu about their planned Black Friday deals, and thought we’d check with some of the other parts suppliers that cater to the hobby market too. Here’s what we found:

  • Adafruit Industries Black Friday – Get 10% off of your purchases made any time on Friday if you use the code ‘BLACK’ (12:00am-11:59pm — we’d guess this is Eastern Time) – UPDATE: Get 10% of Monday 11/28 with the code ‘CYBER’.
  • Pololu Black Friday – many items are available at a great discount plus extra savings using their Black Friday coupons. Sales run midnight on Thursday morning through 11:59pm on Monday night (Pacific Time, 11/24 through 11/28)
  • UPDATE: Sugru – we just got an email about a special offer for this moldable material. Now through December 19th you can get your fourth pack for free using the coupon code: YAYCHRISTMAS

We did hear back from SparkFun. They don’t have a Black Friday deal planned, but they are planning on Free Day 2012 happening some time early in the year! We’ll keep our eyes open for details, but if you hear about it before we do send us a tip.

Make also got back to us. No specific details about Black Friday, but we’re told they have some type of deals in the works.

Digikey and Mouser didn’t get back to us in time for this post.

Laser Cutter Giveaways

Do you want a laser cutter to call your own? Yeah, so do we. If you come up with a really cool project perhaps you can win one. It looks like there’s two contests a contest going on right now that is giving one away to the grand prize winner.

  • Build Lounge is giving away a 40W CO2 Deluxe Hobby Laser Cutter to the best project based on light (community votes).
  • Instructables – Oops…. we waited too long to post about this one as the contest closed on the 14th, sorry. But chances are good this will come around again. For now, you’ll have to be satisfied at viewing the entries that made the finals.

Stroboscope Project Uses Optical Drive Motor And Arduino

November 21, 2011 by 11 Comments

In the quest for a diy laser cutter made from DVD burner parts (that hack’s still in the works) this guy ended up with a junk box full of optical-drive leftovers. He put some of that surplus to good use by building this stroboscope. As the media spins, the white LED just out of focus in the foreground strobes to freeze the little black figure in the same place. The effect, as seen in the video after the break, is a dancing figure created by the optical illusion.

This is the same concept as that amazing 3D rowing skeleton build, but scaled down greatly. Each of the silhouettes seen above are slightly different, showing one pose that makes up a frame of the overall animation. They’re laser cut, but some careful paper-craft could probably accomplish the same thing. Assuming you could keep them from warping when spinning at high speeds.

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Experimenting With An Air Muscle And Sensor Feedback

November 21, 2011 by 29 Comments

Check out this setup that [Ruenahcmohr] is using in his air muscle experiments. The orange mesh contains an air bladder that is connected to a hose on the right side. The bladder can be filled, or emptied with two solenoid valves not seen here (but you can get a good look in the video after the break). The muscle attached to chain on the other end and is kept under constant tension by a spring. The chain bends 180 degrees around a gear which is connected to a potentiometer. This gives feedback to the ATmega32 which controlling the whole thing. This way, the slider seen above can be used to control the apparatus.

We don’t know if [Ruenahcmohr] has a use in mind for this setup, but it certainly looks promising! We’ve seen these air muscles used for haptic feedback before, but right now we’re drawing a blank when it comes to ideas. What would you use it for?

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