[TVMiller]’s description of his project is epic enough to deserve a literal copy-paste (something our readers often praise us about). In his own words, “Having discovered several spare Midichlorians in my liquor cabinet, I trained and applied them to opening a large cumbersome gate. The FORCE motion travels through my inner what-nots and is translated by the Pebble Classic accelerometer toggling a command sent to the (Particle) Cloud (City) which returns to the Particle Photon triggering a TIP120 to fire a button on an existing RF transceiver. May the ridiculous hand gestures be with you, always.” Thus was born the Gate Jedi , and you’ll need exactly 47 Midichlorians, and some other trivial parts, to build one.
The Pebble watch hooks up to his android smart phone. A Pebble (android) app sends the accelerometer data to the Particle (previously called Spark) cloud service. From there, the data is pushed to the Photon IoT board which runs a few lines of code. Output from the Photon turns on a TIP120 power transistor, which in turn triggers the existing RF trans receiver that opens the Gate.
This looks way cooler than the Light Sabre hacks. Check out the video of him summoning the Force. And if you’d like to do more, try integrating gesture controls with this Pebble Watch hack that turns it into a home automation controller.
I can see this having some practical applications
I imagine that this would look nice for Powerpoint presentations :D
I was thinking of doors in controlled facilities where you wouldn’t want them opening just on proximity but you don’t want to touch anything either when you do.
What about RFID?
Love it
At first I thought that it was samyk’s open sesame, which would be extra cool.
A camera with biometric recognition and gesture recognition would be far more secure, and probably use less parts. That way if the zombies get your watch they are still not going to be able to get into your compound, unless they peel your face off and copy your moves. https://youtu.be/nrhrO4e9oiU?t=81
This is fun… my wife thought my gesture for “flipping off the light” was a bit immature.
Uh ooh, perhaps you should use your hands or feet next time?
So he’s out, swats at a fly and people can rob his place? Makes sense.
Among other private activities that has the gate open close open close open close open close open aaaannnnndd close
Dice?
Sharpening a shaving razor on leather…probably?
it is awesome …say ..when u are working in New York office and want to open the gate in Miami ..
Actually did in fact open the gate for a co-worker while I was across town. If you are in public, the secret is to also then curse out loud; people then forgive your hand gesture technology