Day: November 27, 2016

Controlling A Game Room With Amazon Echo

November 27, 2016 by 2 Comments

If there are two things we love here at Hackaday, it’s games and automating mundane tasks by adding a lot of electronics and voice control. A game room is, therefore, the perfect sandbox for projects that get us excited in all of the right ways. Liberty Games, a UK-based games room company, already had a really impressive game room (as you might expect). They’ve just posted an awesome build log showcasing how they went about automating mundane game room tasks by adding a lot of electronics and voice control.

There were four tasks that Liberty Games wanted to be able to complete with voice control: releasing billiards balls on their pool table, adding credits to an arcade machine, releasing pinballs on a pinball machine, and control of a CD jukebox. For all of these tasks, they used an Amazon Echo, which already has built-in support for adding new “skills” (Amazon’s term for user-created Alexa commands). These skills allow the Echo to communicate with other devices using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

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3D Printed R/C Lifeboat

November 27, 2016 by 3 Comments

Radio control boats usually bring up thoughts of racing catamarans, or scale sailing yachts. This build takes things in a slightly different direction. A radio controlled lifeboat with a built-in First Person View (FPV) transmitter. [Peter Sripol] used to be one of the awesome folks over at Flite Test. Now he’s gone solo, and has been cranking out some great builds on his YouTube channel. His latest build is a lifeboat loosely based on the totally enclosed lifeboats used on oil tankers and other seafaring vessels.

[Peter] designed the boat in 3D modeling software and printed it on his Lulzbot Taz 6. The files are available on Thingiverse if you want to print your own. The lower hull was printed in two pieces then epoxied together. Peter’s musical build montage goes by fast, proving that he’s just as good editing video as he is scratch-building R/C craft. Along the way he shows us everything from wiring up speed controls to cutting and soldering up a rudder. The final touch on this boat is a micro FPV camera and radio transmitter. As long as the boat is in range, it can be piloted through video goggles.

[Peter’s] boat is destined to be tested on an upcoming trip to Hawaii, so keep an eye on his channel to see how it fares in the monster waves!