Open Data Cam Combines Camera, GPU, And Neural Network In An Artisanal DIY Cereal Box

October 29, 2018 by Brian Boucheron 13 Comments

The engineers and product designers at [moovel lab] have created the Open Data Cam – an AI camera platform that can identify and count objects as they move through its field of view – along with an open source guide for making your own.

Step one: get out your ruler and utility knife. In this world of ubiquitous 3D-printers they’ve taken a decidedly low-tech approach to the project’s enclosure: a cut, folded, and zip-tied plastic box, with a cardboard frame inside to hold the electronic bits. It’s “splash proof” and certainly cheap to make, but we’re a little worried about cooling and physical protection for the electronics inside, as they’re not exactly cheap and rugged components.

So what’s inside? An Nvidia Jetson TX2 board, a LiPo battery with some charging circuitry, and a standard webcam. The special sauce, however, is the software, which is available on GitHub. [Moovel lab]’s engineers have put together a nice-looking wifi-accessible mobile UI for marking the areas where you’d like the software to identify and tally objects. The actual object detection and identification tasks are performed by the speedy YOLO neural network, a task the Nvidia board’s GPU is of course well suited for.

As the Open Data Cam’s unblinking glass eye gazes upon our urban environments, it will log its observations in an ancient and mysterious language: CSV. It’s up to you, human, to interpret this information and use it for good.

A summary video and build time lapse are embedded after the break.

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Seth Molson Is Designing The Future, One Show At A Time

October 29, 2018 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

From the banks of levers and steam gauges of 1927’s Metropolis to the multicolored jewels that the crew would knowingly tap on in the original Star Trek, the entertainment industry has always struggled with producing imagery of advanced technology. Whether constrained by budget or imagination, portrayals usually go in one of two directions: they either rely too heavily on contemporary technology, or else they go so far in the opposite direction that it borders on comical.

But it doesn’t always have to be that way. In fact, when technology is shown properly in film it often serves as inspiration for engineers. The portrayal of facial recognition and gesture control in Minority Report was so well done that it’s still referenced today, nearly 20 years after the film’s release. For all its faults, Star Trek is responsible for a number of “life imitating art” creations; such as early mobile phones bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the flip communicators issued to Starfleet personnel.

So when I saw the exceptional use of 3D printing in the Netflix reboot of Lost in Space, I felt it was something that needed to be pointed out. From the way the crew made use of printed parts to the printer’s control interface, everything felt very real. It took existing technology and pushed it forward in a way that was impressive while still being believable. It was the kind of portrayal of technology that modern tech-savvy audiences deserve.

It left such an impression that we decided to reach out to Seth Molson, the artist behind the user interfaces from Lost in Space, and try to gain a little insight from somebody who is fighting the good fight for technology in media. To learn how he creates his interfaces, the pitfalls he navigates, and how the expectations of the viewer have changed now that we all have a touch screen supercomputer in our pocket.

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Creating A 3G Raspberry Pi Smartphone

October 29, 2018 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

It’s hard to believe, but the Raspberry Pi has now been around long enough that some of the earliest Pi projects could nearly be considered bonafide vintage hacks at this point. A perfect example are some of the DIY Raspberry Pi smartphone projects that sprung up a few years back. Few of them were terribly practical to begin with, but even if you ignore the performance issues and bulkiness, the bigger problem is they relied on software and cellular hardware that simply isn’t going to cut it today.

Which was exactly the problem [Dylan Radcliffe] ran into when he wanted to create his own Pi smartphone. There was prior art to use as a guide, but the ones he found were limited to 2G cellular networks which no longer exist in his corner of the globe. He’s now taken on the quest to develop his own 3G-capable Pi smartphone, and his early results are looking very promising.

Inside the phone, which he calls the rCrumbl, [Dylan] has crammed a considerable amount of hardware. A Raspberry Pi 3B+ with attached Adafruit touchscreen LCD is the star of the show, but there’s also a Pi camera module, battery charging circuit, and Adafruit FONA 3G modem (which also provides GPS). Powering the device is a 2500 mAh 3.7V battery, which reportedly delivers a respectable 8 to 12 hour runtime.

The case is 3D printed, and [Dylan] says it took a long time to nail down a design that would fit all of his hardware, keep things from shifting around, and still be reasonably slim. Obviously DIY phones like this are never going to be as slim as even the chunkiest of modern smartphones, but the rCrumbl looks fairly reasonable for a portable device. We especially like the row of physical buttons he’s included along the bottom of the screen, which should help with the device’s usability.

Speaking of usability, that’s where [Dylan] still has his work cut out for him. The existing software he’s found won’t work on 3G, so he’s going to have to come up with his own software stack to provide a proper phone interface. As it stands he’s made a call on the rCrumbl using command line tools, but while that might score you some extra geek points at the next hacker meetup, it’s not exactly going to fly for daily use. He mentions he would love to talk to any developers out there that would like to team up on the software side of the project.

We’ve covered one of the 2G Pi smartphones in the past, and of course the ZeroPhone is a very interesting project if you don’t mind the “dumb phone” interface. But if you’re looking for something that’s fairly close to commercial devices in terms of usability, you might just want to roll your own Android phone.

Parcelcopter Drone Project Delivers In Rough Terrain

October 29, 2018 by Drew Littrell 33 Comments

It’s a known fact that the last mile is also the longest mile in the parcel delivery service. The further removed from a hub city a delivery location is, the more required stops in between. Every part of the process slows to a glacial pace when the drop-off spot is inaccessible by land or air. Now apply this in the case of a medical emergency, and timing is everything.

Enter the joint project between [DHL and Wingcopter] dubbed Parcelcopter 4.0. The half plane, half helicopter drone design was recently tested over a six month period by making medical supply drops to Ukerewe island located in the middle of Lake Victoria. The remote island is home to roughly 400,000 people and many areas around the isle remain out of reach to traditional delivery vehicles. The island’s closest southern port is separated from mainland Tanzania by a four hour trip by barge and over six hours by road which makes drone delivery a potentially life saving option.

The Wingcopter drone itself is capable of vertical take off and landing (see 1:53 in the video below) while holding up to 9 lbs inside the thermally insulated cargo hold on the underside of the craft. It is controlled via 3G and/or 4G LTE, and according to the manufacturer website is capable of flying up to 60 miles on a single charge. Tests showed the drone made the nearly 40 mile trip across Lake Victoria in an average of 40 minutes.

It is interesting to see a real world commercial application seemingly ready to meet the needs of a vastly under served community. There are certainly many tests left to go before drone delivery goes into wider use, but thanks to this project the Parcelcopter 4.0 is 1400 air miles closer to that future.

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