Capacitive touch plants
Here’s a proof of concept for using plants as a capacitive touch sensor. The sensor is simply a hunk of double-sided copper clad board attached to a microcontroller. But it seems to be able to sense what part of the plant is being touched. [Thanks Fabien]
Adding wireless charging to a Nokia N900
This hack is quite common, but it’s still fun to see what hardware is being outfitted with an inductive charger. This time it’s a Nokia N900 that’s ditching the charging cables.
Wii carrying suitcase from a plastic tackle box
This Wii carrying case (translated) looks great and cost just a few bucks. It started as a tackle box for carrying around your fishing lures. But a bit of creative cutting and there’s a place for everything.
Browser based schematic and board layout
There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to circuit design. Circuits.io offers in-brower schematic design and board artwork layout. [Thanks ADIDAIllinie (and a few others)]
Bender-o-lantern
Halloween rapidly approaches and we hope that [Tim’s] carving of Bender in a pumpkin will inspire you to send in your own Halloween projects.
A plant capacitive sensor? FOUL!
Disney Research!? FOUL x2!
I think “capacitive” might be a misnomer on the plant project. Basically a theremin with a plant acting as the antenna, I recon.
Uh Theremin is the original capacitive sense project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin#Operating_principles
Both antennas are each variable capacitors with the hands.
And yes, that’s what the plant is using. Water conducts electricity, and the plant has a bit of that in it.
D’oh! I did not know that, and I’m embarrassed. I always thought they were RF-based!
They are that too. It uses RF based oscillators, and the variable cap changes the frequency. Check out the wiki link, it’s got pretty good descriptions of how it works.