Day: August 21, 2024

Ask Hackaday: How Can We Leverage Tech For Education?

August 21, 2024 by 30 Comments

If you’re like us, you’ve studied the mathematician [Euler], but all you really remember is that you pronounce his name like “oiler” and not much else. [Welch Labs], on the other hand, not only remembers what he learned about logarithms and imaginary numbers but also has a beautiful video with helpful 3D graphics to explain the concepts.

This post, however, isn’t about that video. If you are interested in math, definitely watch it. It’s great. But it also got us thinking. What would it be like to be a high school math student today? In our day, we were lucky to have some simple 2D graph to explain concepts. Then it hit us: it probably is exactly the same.

Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: How Can We Leverage Tech For Education?” →

Raptor DID. Photo by Matt Mechtley.

How Jurassic Park’s Dinosaur Input Device Bridged The Stop-Motion And CGI Worlds

August 21, 2024 by 8 Comments

In a double-blast from the past, [Ian Failes]’ 2018 interview with [Phil Tippett] and others who worked on Jurassic Park is a great look at how the dinosaurs in this 1993 blockbuster movie came to be. Originally conceived as stop-motion animatronics with some motion blurring applied using a method called go-motion, a large team of puppeteers was actively working to make turning the book into a movie when [Steven Spielberg] decided to go in a different direction after seeing a computer-generated Tyrannosaurus rex test made by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM).

Naturally, this left [Phil Tippett] and his crew rather flabbergasted, leading to a range of puppeteering-related extinction jokes. Of course, it was the early 90s, with computer-generated imagery (CGI) animators being still very scarce. This led to an interesting hybrid solution where [Tippett]’s team were put in charge of the dinosaur motion using a custom gadget called the Dinosaur Input Device (DID). This effectively was like a stop-motion puppet, but tricked out with motion capture sensors.

This way the puppeteers could provide motion data for the CG dinosaur using their stop-motion skills, albeit with the computer handling a lot of interpolation. Meanwhile ILM could handle the integration and sprucing up of the final result using their existing pool of artists. As a bridge between the old and new, DIDs provided the means for both puppeteers and CGI artists to cooperate, creating the first major CGI production that holds up to today.

Even if DIDs went the way of the non-avian dinosaurs, their legacy will forever leave their dino-sized footprints on the movie industry.

Thanks to [Aaron] for the tip.

Top image: Raptor DID. Photo by Matt Mechtley.

Pulling Apart A Premium WebCam

August 21, 2024 by 29 Comments

Over at EDN, [Brian Dipert] has been tearing down web cameras. A few months ago, he broke into a bargain basement camera. This time, he’s looking into a premium unit. Although we have to admit from some of what he reports, we are a little surprised at some of the corners cut. For example, it’s a 4K camera that doesn’t quite provide a 4K image. Despite a Sony CMOS sensor, [Brian] found the low-light performance to be poor. However, it does carry a much larger price tag than the previous camera examined.

The interesting part is about half way down the page when he tries to open the unit up. It seems like it is getting harder and harder to get into things and this camera was no exception. The device finally gives up. Inside is a relatively unremarkable board with a host of unknown ICs. One interesting item is a gyro chip that determines if the camera is upside down.

[Brian] managed to get the camera back together with no harm. It is interesting to compare it to the $15 camera he took apart earlier.

If you want maximum cred, do your video calls with a Game Boy camera. Or, at least, add your own lens to a webcam.