Tiny N64 Controller Comes With Hand-cramp Guarantee

April 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Just looking at this little thing makes our hands ache. But [Kirren] did do a great job of building an N64 controller inside a tiny project box. It’s not a mod, but a ground-up build based on a PIC 16F628 microcontroller.

It has most of the buttons found on a standard controller, and he assures us that you can play most games without missing the ones that didn’t make it into the design. You can just make out the analog stick to the left, but that silver ring on the right is actually a 4-direction tactile switch which stands in for the C buttons. He’s also included Start, A, B, R, and Z.

The link above goes to his Wiki, and there are more than enough details if you’re interested in doing this yourself or just understanding how everything works. Check out his writeup on the protocol, and you can even get a copy of his code. There’s also a video demo after the break which shows [Kirren] playing some Bond with the controller. Continue reading “Tiny N64 Controller Comes With Hand-cramp Guarantee” →

Sip-and-Puff Ipod Dock Highlights Assistive Technology

April 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Check it out, a Sip-and-Puff Arduino shield. This is an assistive technology that allows the physically challenged to control things using a plastic air tube. Different combinations of sucking (Sip) or blowing (Puff) differentiate between control commands.

In this case the device is used to control an iPod dock, but [Bob Johnson’s] Kickstarter project seeks to put the Sip-and-Puff functionality out there so that it can bridge the control gap no matter what the need. One example that he mentions in the video after the break is a Morse Code keyboard.

This shield uses a pressure sensor to receive input from the plastic tubing. But we’ve also seen it done using mechanical pressure switches. That technique is what was used in the Sip-and-Puff Kayak build.

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Time To Get Serious About Going To LayerOne

April 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

This year’s LayerOne Hacking and Security Conference is right around the corner. But it’s not too late to attend. You can still get a block-rate hotel room if you register by the end of April, and registration for the two-day event only costs a hundred bucks. It’s scheduled for May 26th and 27th in Anaheim California.

As usual, the Speaker lineup is quite impressive. Everything from Android Malware to embedded exploits and botnet adventures will be discussed. And then there’s the perennial favorite lock picking and hardware hacking villages. Did we mention badges? We’d bet it was this pick-and-place machine which helped assemble this year’s pile of badges. We haven’t seen any word on what they might include, but there’s a hacking contest so plan to pack your tools.

AVRphone Is A Barebones Touchscreen Cellphone

April 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

This little device is a prototype cellphone based on the ATmega128 microcontroller (translated). It boasts a 2.4″ touchscreen display which serves as the keypad, and uses the SIM100S module which takes care of the GSM radio communications. But the hardware isn’t the only attractive part. Judging from the screen shots a fair amount of time went into building the user interface too.

We seem to have a bounty of cellphone builds recently. This one is quite clean, and boasts a smaller footprint, and larger screen than this barebones example. There is a white paper available if you’re interested in digging a little deeper than the overview post. But it’s written in Czech and we didn’t see a way to provide a machine translation other than copying the text from the PDF file and pasting it into a translator.

Coating Technique Makes Glass You Can’t See

April 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Some of the deep thinkers over at MIT have come up with an interesting hack for ordinary glass. If you coat it in a special way it becomes nearly invisible. This is only one of the effects of the coating, but brings images of people walking through glass walls to our minds.

Joking aside, this is really very useful. The images above show a microscopic view of the cones that are applied during the coating process. They prevent the surface tension on a drop of water from being broken, and you can see the clip of water actually bouncing right off the glass in the video after the break. This also means it acts as a non-stick coating for dirt, grime, and even fog. Anyone who’s taken a tropical vacation will know that taking a picture outside with a camera that’s been in an air-conditioned room results only in a snapshot of a foggy lens. This coating could change that. But it’s also got a lot of potential with the glass panes covering solar cells. If they can’t get dirty, and there’s virtually no glare, you should see a performance boost. It’ll be interesting to see how long this takes to come to market and what the first products to use it might be.

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Giant Space Invaders With Road Barriers And No Moving Parts

April 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

This is space invaders on the large-scale. To give you an idea of just how big this is, that’s a street lamp to the left. It’s being played on the side of a building, but it’s not really done the easy way. We’ve seen gaming on the sides of buildings by using projectors, but this one is more like a classic LCD handheld game… just really really big.

Each of the game pieces is hung in place on a black backdrop. The invaders themselves are molded-plastic road construction barricades. The shield area on the bottom is made op of center-lane dividers. All of the pieces are wired with lights that can be addressed by a central controller. As you can see after the break, just one button gets the action under way.

This is along the same line as the Christmas Light game we saw several years back. If you’ve got some extra strings of lights and don’t mind building a controller we think you should add a little fun to the neighborhood with your own giant installation. Just don’t forget to send in some pictures.

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Zen Rock Garden Table Uses Magnets And Sand

April 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

[Nick] is working on a prototype of a coffee table sand plotter that draws patterns in sand a lot like a zen rock garden.

[Nick]’s zen rock garden uses a magnet to draw a ball bearing across the sand in interesting patterns. The build uses 3D printed gears and laser cut parts to rotate the table around and move the magnet along a radius of the circle. During the first test of the prototype, the ball bearing jerked around but this problem was solved by adding a piece of foam under the sand. Power is supplied through a slip ring in the base, and the table is controlled through Bluetooth.

Speaking of magnet-and-ball-bearing zen coffee tables, we ran across this video of a more professional-looking prototype that was the basis for a successful Kickstarter campaign. Like [Nick]’s prototype, the entire build relies on magnets and a ball bearing to move sand around in patterns. Because this zen table uses an XY axis instead of [Nick]’s polar setup, drawing logos is a lot easier math-wise, lthough it doesn’t look quite as cool as a circular rock garden.

After the break you can see these zen rock garden coffee tables in action.

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