Day: June 13, 2016

Hackaday Prize Entry: Project Man-Cam

June 13, 2016 by 20 Comments

With cameras, robotics, VR-headsets, and wireless broadband becoming commodities, the ultimate, mobile telepresence system – “Surrogates” if you will – is just one footstep away. And this technology may one day solve a very severe problem for many disabled people: Mobility. [chris jones] sees great potential in remote experiences for disabled people who happen to not be able to just walk outside. His Hackaday Prize Entry Project Man-Cam, a clever implementation of “the second self”, is already indistinguishable from real humans.

Instead of relying on Boston Dynamic’s wonky hydraulics or buzzing FPV drones, [chris] figured that he could just strap a pan and tiltable camera to a real person’s chest or – for his prototyping setup shown above – onto a utility cart. This Man-Cam-Unit (MCU) then captures the live-experience and sends it back home for the disabled person to enjoy through a VR headset in real time. A text-based chat would allow the communication between the borrowed body’s owner and the borrower while movements of the head are mapped onto the pan and tilt mechanism of the camera.

Right now, [chris] is still working on getting everything just right, and even if telepresence robots are already there, it’s charming to see how available technology lets one borrow the abilities of the other.

The HackadayPrize2016 is Sponsored by:

Open Source SLA Printer Software Slices From The Browser

June 13, 2016 by 7 Comments

Resin-based SLA printers need a different slicing algorithm from “normal” melted-plastic printers. Following their latest hackathon, [Matt Keeter] and [Martin Galese] from Formlabs have polished off an open source slicer, and this one runs in your browser. It’s Javascript, so you can go test it out on their webpage.

Figuring out whether or not the voxel is inside or outside the model at every layer is harder for SLA printers, which have to take explicit account of the interior “empty” space inside the model. [Matt] and [Martin]’s software calculates this on the fly as the software is slicing. To do this, [Matt] devised a clever algorithm that leverages existing hardware to quickly accumulate the inside-or-out state of voxels during the slicing.

[Matt] is stranger to neither 3D mesh manipulation nor Hackaday. If you’re just getting started in this realm, have a look at Antimony, [Matt’s] otherworldly CAD software with a Python interface to get your feet wet with parametric 3D modeling.

Life-Size Vu Meter Gets The Party Started

June 13, 2016 by 5 Comments

There’s nothing better than making a giant version of one of your hacks. That is, other than making it giant and interactive. That’s just what [Est] has done with his interactive VU meter that lights up the party.

The giant VU meter boasts a series of IR detectors that change the colors and modes of the meter based on where the user places their hands. The sensors measure how much light is reflected back to them, which essentially function as a cheap range finder. The normal operation of the meter and the new interactivity is controlled by a PIC16F883 and all of the parts were built using a home-made CNC router. There are two addressable RGB LEDs for each level and in the base there are four 3 W RGB LEDS. At 25 levels, this is an impressive amount of light.

[Est]’s smaller version of the VU meter has been featured here before, if you’re looking to enhance your music-listening or party-going experiences with something a little less intimidating. We’ve also seen VU meters built directly into the speakers and also into prom dresses.

There’s A Pi In Mike’s Fridge

June 13, 2016 by 29 Comments

How often have you stood in the supermarket wondering about the inventory level in the fridge at home? [Mike] asked himself this question one time too often and so he decided to install a webcam in his fridge along with a Raspberry Pi and a light sensor to take a picture every time the fridge is opened — uploading it to a webserver for easy remote access.

Continue reading “There’s A Pi In Mike’s Fridge” →

Ball Run Gets Custom Sound Effects

June 13, 2016 by 11 Comments

Building a marble run has long been on my project list, but now I’m going to have to revise that plan. In addition to building an interesting track for the orbs to traverse, [Jack Atherton] added custom sound effects triggered by the marble.

I ran into [Jack] at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics booth at Maker Faire. That’s a mouthful, so they usually go with the acronym CCRMA. In addition to his project there were numerous others on display and all have a brief write-up for your enjoyment.

[Jack] calls his project Leap the Dips which is the same name as the roller coaster the track was modeled after. This is the first I’ve heard of laying out a rolling ball sculpture track by following an amusement park ride, but it makes a lot of sense since the engineering for keeping the ball rolling has already been done. After bending the heavy gauge wire [Jack] secured it in place with lead-free solder and a blowtorch.

As mentioned, the project didn’t stop there. He added four piezo elements which are monitored by an Arduino board. Each is at a particularly extreme dip in the track which makes it easy to detect the marble rolling past. The USB connection to the computer allows the Arduino to trigger a MaxMSP patch to play back the sound effects.

For the demonstration, Faire goers wear headphones while letting the balls roll, but in the video below [Jack] let me plug in directly to the headphone port on his Macbook. It’s a bit weird, since there no background sound of the Faire during this part, but it was the only way I could get a reasonable recording of the audio. I love the effect, and think it would be really fun packaging this as a standalone using the Teensy Audio library and audio adapter hardware.

Continue reading “Ball Run Gets Custom Sound Effects” →

Review: Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer

June 13, 2016 by 150 Comments

2016 is the year of the consumer 3D printer. Yes, the hype over 3D printing has died down since 2012. There were too many 3D printers at Maker Faire three years ago. Nevertheless, sales of 3D printers have never been stronger, the industry is growing, and the low-end machines are getting very, very good.

Printers are also getting cheap. At CES last January, Monoprice, the same company you buy Ethernet and HDMI cables from, introduced a line of 3D printers that would be released this year. While the $300 resin-based printer has been canned, Monoprice has released their MP Select Mini 3D printer for $200. This printer appeared on Monoprice late last month.

My curiosity was worth more than $200, so Hackaday readers get a review of the MP Select Mini 3D printer. The bottom line? There are some problems with this printer, but nothing that wouldn’t be found in printers that cost three times as much. This is a game-changing machine, and proof 2016 is the year of the entry-level consumer 3D printer.

Continue reading “Review: Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer” →

Synchronize Data With Audio From A $2 MP3 Player

June 13, 2016 by 32 Comments

Many of the hacks featured here are complex feats of ingenuity that you might expect to have emerged from a space-age laboratory rather than a hacker’s bench. Impressive stuff, but on the other side of the coin the essence of a good hack is often just a simple and elegant way of solving a technical problem using clever lateral thinking.

Take this project from [drtune], he needed to synchronize some lighting to an audio stream from an MP3 player and wanted to store his lighting control on the same SD card as his MP3 file. Sadly his serial-controlled MP3 player module would only play audio data from the card and he couldn’t read a data file from it, so there seemed to be no easy way forward.

His solution was simple: realizing that the module has a stereo DAC but a mono amplifier he encoded the data as an audio FSK stream similar to that used by modems back in the day, and applied it to one channel of his stereo MP3 file. He could then play the music from his first channel and digitize the FSK data on the other before applying it to a software modem to retrieve its information.

There was a small snag though, the MP3 player summed both channels before supplying audio to its amplifier. Not a huge problem to overcome, a bit of detective work in the device datasheet allowed him to identify the resistor network doing the mixing and he removed the component for the data channel.

He’s posted full details of the system in the video below the break, complete with waveforms and gratuitous playback of audio FSK data.

Continue reading “Synchronize Data With Audio From A $2 MP3 Player” →