Hacklet 42 – Mouse Projects

April 10, 2015 by Adam Fabio 30 Comments

Ever since [Douglas Engelbart] and his team came up with the computer mouse, hackers, makers, and engineers have been creating ways to change and improve the design. Even the original mouse was something of a hack, built form a block of wood, a button, and two encoder wheels. The wire exited toward the user’s wrist, making the device look like it had a tail. Even after all these years, folks are still working to make the perfect pointing device. This week’s Hacklet highlights some of the best mouse projects on Hackaday.io!

We start with [s_sudhar] and ORB – A 3D gaming mouse. Orb uses accelerometers and gyros to track its location in 3D space. The popular MPU-6050 chip provides all the sensors to create an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The controller is an Arduino Micro, which provides the USB interface to a PC with the help of Arduino’s MouseKeyboard library. Two micro switches handle button duties. The original Orb was built up in a cardboard box. [S_sudhar] created a more advanced version housed in a 3D printed sphere with two buttons. The translucent joint between the two halves of the sphere is just begging for some RGB LEDs. We can already see them flashing red when you’re getting shot in Team Fortress 2!

Anyone who has used X-Windows with a three button mouse knows how maddening the modern clickable center scroll wheel can be. You can’t click the wheel without it rolling, and causing all sorts of mayhem. There are plenty of software solutions and window manager mods to work around this, but [mclien] wanted a real three button mouse with a side scroll wheel. He didn’t want just any mouse though – it had to be a Silicon Graphics International (SGI) 3 button unit. His project 3-buttonmouse with seperate wheel used a dremel, drill press, and glue to transplant the electronics of a 3 button scrolling mouse into the classic SGI plastics. The final wheel placement did work – but it didn’t quite fit [mclien’s] hand. It did fit one of his friends hands perfectly though. So well in fact that the friend borrowed [mclien’s] creation. Neither the mouse nor the friend have been seen since!

[Jay-t] decided that mice are for more than pointing, so he built Jimmy the mouse bot. Jimmy is a robot built from an old Commodore Amiga two button mouse. His brain is a Parallax Propeller processor. Two outrigger mounted gear motors help Jimmy drive around. Jimmy has plenty of sensors, including infrared object detectors, switches, and a GPS module from Adafruit. Jimmy may be the world’s first homing mousebot. [Jay-t] does all his interactive testing with Tachyon Forth on the Prop. The great thing about having an 8 core processor is that there is plenty of room for expansion. Even with all these sensors, Jimmy is still only using 3 cores!

Finally we at [Clovis Fritzen] and the Wireless Batteryless Mouse. This is our favorite type of project – the kind that has just been uploaded. [Clovis] plans to use a movement based system to charge up a supercapacitor – eliminating the need for batteries or wires. He’s also hoping to use an accelerometer to detect the mouse’s position rather than a power-hungry optical system. The details are still sparse, because he’s just started the project! These are exactly the type of projects that get us thinking. How will [Clovis] translate movement to energy? Will it be weights, like a self-winding watch? Maybe pizeo elements in the buttons. Will people mind having to jiggle their mouse to get it working once that capacitor is discharged? One thing we’re sure of, [Clovis] has a proven track record of implementing projects like his weather station. Get in there and help with your own ideas, or simply follow along with us and see how this one turns out.

Not satisfied? Want more mousy goodness? Check out our freshly minted mouse and pointer projects list!

That’s about all the time we have for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Caption CERN Contest Week 10

April 9, 2015 by Adam Fabio 8 Comments

We had some great entries in the Caption CERN Contest this week. A huge thanks goes out to everyone who entered. The jury is still out as to whether the gentleman on the left is a CERN staffer, or a Morlock caught on camera. Our eagle-eyed readers picked out some things we didn’t even notice at first blush – like the strange foreshortening of the “pipe smoking dude’s” right leg. (Yes, he is officially known as pipe smoking dude here at Hackaday HQ). We spotted him again in this image, and he’s in almost exactly the same pose!

The Funnies:

“Billy looked on as the James, the workplace bully, was about to walk in to Billy’s electrified puddle of water..” – [Leonard]
“This is Bob. Bob made a BAD ENGINEERING MISTAKE. Bob is going to spend some time in THE CORNER. Corners are not easy to find in a ring, so this is Bob’s BAD CORNER.?” – [ca5m1th]
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. His name was Boson Baggins and he had a great fondness for pipe weed and protons.” – [shlonkin]

The winner for this week is [Greg Kennedy] with “You call that a moonwalk? Stand back, Edmund, and let me show you how it’s done.” If [Greg’s] name sounds familiar, that’s because he used some creative web scraping to compile the unofficial stats for the 2014 Hackaday prize. They were pretty interesting, so we featured them right here on the blog. [Greg] will be hacking in style wearing his new Robot T-Shirt From The Hackaday Store!

On to week 10!

There’s something for everyone in this image from CERN’s achieves. Gas bottles, chemicals, huge concrete blocks, high voltage wires, and a rather surprised looking scientist. What sort of experiment would require this sort of shielding? What is the photographer standing on? Most importantly, is that a keg of beer hiding under the table to the right?

Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the project log, not on the project itself.

As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!

An Apple ][ Emulator On An Arduino Uno

April 8, 2015 by Adam Fabio 19 Comments

April Fools’ Day may have passed, but we really had to check the calendar on this hack. [Damian Peckett] has implemented an Apple ][, its 6502 processor, and a cassette port, all on an Arduino Uno. If that wasn’t enough, he also uses a PS/2 keyboard for input and outputs analog VGA. [Damian] is doing all this with very few additional components. A couple of resistors, a capacitor and some very clever hacking were all [Damian] needed to convince an Arduino Uno that it was an Apple.

Making all this work boiled down to a case of resource management. The original Apple ][ had 4KB of RAM and 8KB of ROM. The ATmega328 has only 2KB of RAM, but 32KB of Flash. The only way to make this hack work would be to keep as much of the emulation and other routines in Flash, using as little RAM as possible.

The core of this hack starts with the MOS 6502, the processor used in the Apple. [Damian] wrote a simple assembler which translates the 6502 opcodes and address modes to instructions which can be executed by the Arduino’s ATmega328. To keep everything in ROM and make the emulator portable, [Damian] used two large switch statements. One for address modes, and a 352 line switch statement for the opcodes themselves.

A CPU alone is not an Apple though. [Damian] still needed input, output, and the ROM which made the Apple so special. Input was through a PS/2 keyboard. The PS/2 synchronous serial clock is easy to interface with an Arduino. Output was through a custom VGA implementation, which is a hack all its own. [Damian] used the lowly ATmega16u2 to generate the video timing. The 16u2 is normally used as the Arduino Uno’s USB interface. The only external hardware needed is a single 120 ohm resistor.

The original Apples had cassette and speaker interfaces. So does this emulated Apple. [Woz’s] original cassette and speaker interface accurate loops to generate and measure frequencies. One of the trade-offs [Damian] accepted in his 6502 was cycle accuracy, so he couldn’t use the original routines. Not a problem though, as he was able to write simple functions to replace these routines and drop them in place of the Apple’s own ROM calls.

The Apple ][ ROM itself is handled as one giant character array. This includes the system monitor, Mini-Assembler, Sweet-16, and [Woz’s] own Integer Basic. [Damian] caps off this incredible project by booting his new computer, loading a Mandelbrot set program from cassette -or in this case an audio file stored on his cell phone, and running it. The well-known fractal is displayed in all its glory on a modern LCD monitor, driven by a microcontroller, emulating a computer from nearly 40 years ago.

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Hacklet 41 – Prosthetics Projects

April 3, 2015 by Adam Fabio 8 Comments

Throughout human history, mankind has worked to enable those with disabilities. This applies especially to those who have missing limbs, either from injury or since birth. Every time technology improves, prosthetics improve along with the way. Unfortunately this now means prosthetics have become expensive systems. Hackers, makers, and engineers are working to make prosthetics more affordable, and more available to everyone. This week’s Hacklet focuses on some of the best prosthetics projects on Hackaday.io!

We start with [Open Bionics] and Affordable Bionic Hands For Amputees. The [Open Bionics] team are using 3D printers to bring the cost of a prosthetic arm and hand down from up to $100,000 USD to just $1000 USD. They’ve also reduced the time to create a custom device from weeks to just 5 days. The team’s current hand has five degrees of freedom, uses electromyography (EMG) for control, and weighs just 268 grams. [Open Bionics] discovered that many amputees are willing to trade off functions for a lighter weight device. Having a sensor and motor studded hand won’t help much if the wearer is worn out after just a couple of hours!

Next up is [yash.gajra56] and RE-ARM. RE-ARM is a prosthetic arm project which aims to help both those who have lost limbs, and those with full or partial paralysis of a limb. Movement is provided by radio control style servos. Control is via voice commands and Bluetooth from a cell phone. [Yash] has incorporated feedback into RE-ARM by using flex sensors. Processing is handled by an Arduino. We like the low-cost, low tech approach RE-ARM uses. We’d love to see everyone have access to a 3D printer, but unfortunately the world isn’t there quite yet. RE-ARM uses readily available components to build a functional prosthetic. Nice work [yash]!

[OpenBionics] brings us Affordable Prosthetic Hands. No, you didn’t read that name wrong. There are two “Open Bionics” on Hackaday.io! This [OpenBionics] team has no space, and is based in Athens, Greece. The other [Open Bionics] team does have a space between the words, and is based in Bristol in the United Kingdom. We’re hoping the two groups can come together and collaborate now that they’re both using Hackaday.io. This [OpenBionics] team is working on prosthetic hands, in the sub $200 USD price range. The team has come up with a novel thumb design which provides nearly full functionality with only one rotating joint. [OpenBionics] also allows their users to selectively lock digits, which allows for up to 144 different grasping postures.

Finally we have [Daniel Mead] with Third World Medical Equipment (Arm). [Daniel] created this project as an independent study back in high school. The idea is create a simple arm with a gripper out of cheap or freely available items. The gripper is fashioned from a bicycle brake. The fitting system is especially novel. [Daniel] used an old soda bottle to create a custom mold for the amputee’s residual limb. Plastic bottles are generally made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a thermoplastic. [Daniel] placed a wet sock over his arm, and a plastic bottle over the sock. Holding the plastic bottle above a fire created enough heat to shrink the bottle to his arm. the sock provided room for padding, and insulated him from getting burned during the molding process.

Not satisfied? Want more prosthetics? Check out the Prosthetics list over on Hackaday.io! If any of these projects inspire you, don’t forget that prosthetics are a great starting point for an entry in The Hackaday Prize!

That’s about all the time we have for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Caption CERN Contest Is A GO For Week 9

April 2, 2015 by Adam Fabio 10 Comments

Thanks for another week of great entries in the Caption CERN Contest over at Hackaday.io! We still aren’t sure if our CERN staffer is looking at that machine pensively, amorously, or with a bit of confusion, but you all found some great words to go with the image!

The Funnies:

“Dr. Breman’s early attempts to create the perfect robot woman had some early success, but was later scrapped do to a tragic input/output error.” – Terry Davis
“You were supposed to be intelligent, my dear. What do you mean by segfault?” –elias.alberto
“CERN’s pioneering computer dating service didn’t quite work out as expected.” – Nick Johnson

The winner for this week is Stripeytype with the quote seen in the top image of this article. Stripeytype will be sporting a CRT head T-Shirt From The Hackaday Store at their next hackerspace meeting.

We’re not done searching out they mysteries of CERN’s history. Week 9 of the Caption CERN Contest has just begun!

Some of CERN’s experiments take place in the miles of tunnels below their labs in and around Meyrin, on the border of France and Switzerland. It looks like this image was taken in one of those tunnels. It’s definitely an interesting shot. CERN’s documentation for the image has been lost to history, so it’s up to you to explain what’s going on here! Add your humorous caption as a comment to the project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the log, not on the project itself. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!

Caption CERN Contest Enters Week 8

March 26, 2015 by Adam Fabio 25 Comments

The Caption CERN Contest has been going great guns thanks to the community of users over on Hackaday.io. The contest just finished up its seventh week of finding funny captions for images which CERN has in their archives. CERN has decades of great photo documentation of their projects. Unfortunately they don’t know which project each image goes with, or who exactly is in the image. We’re helping them out where we can, by letting CERN know any information we can find on their photos. We’re also having some fun along the way, by giving out a T-Shirt for the best caption each week.

Here are some of the best quotes from week 7

The Funnies:

“Are Socks and Sandals acceptable safety equipment for the Demolition Pit? Yes, because these are Kelvar socks and Zylon sandals being testing. Quite uncomfortable, but these feet will survive a close proximity blast.” – [controlmypad]

“Check it out! One tube for each Ninja Turtle” – [OzQube]

“Before the LHC, hunting for the Higgs was much less glamorous.” – [Tachyon]

The winner of course is [Tim] with the featured image at the top of this article.

If [Tachyon] sounds familiar, that’s because he came up with the best caption back in week 6. Runners up for week 6 were:

“Damn Mario Brothers ….. ‘gotta save the princess’ How about watching where you’re going for once. – [Scott Galvin]

“Here at CERN, you don’t get shafted. You get tubed.” – [Rollyn01]

“Thank god the separator caught him. Another 50 meters, and he’d be nothing but quarks.” – [Curtis Carlsen]

Click past the break to check out this week’s image!

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Mustachioed Nintendo Virtual Boy Gone Augmented Reality

March 25, 2015 by Adam Fabio 14 Comments

Some people just want to watch the world burn. Others want to spread peace, joy and mustaches. [Joe Grand] falls into the latter group this time around. His latest creation is Mustache Mayhem, a hack, video game, and art project all rolled into one. This is a bit of a change from deconstructing circuit boards or designing electronic badges, but not completely new for [Joe], who wrote SCSIcide and Ultra SCSIcide for the Atari 2600 back in the early 2000’s.

Mustache Mayhem is built into a Nintendo Virtual Boy housing. The Virtual Boy itself was broken, and unfortunately was beyond repair. [Joe] removed most of the stock electronics and added a BeagleBone Black, Logitech C920 webcam, an LCD screen and some custom electronics. He kept the original audio amplifier, speakers, and controller connector. Angstrom Linux boots into [Joe’s] software, which uses OpenCV to detect faces and overlay mustaches. Gameplay is simple: Point the console at one or more faces. If you see a mustache, press the A button on the controller! The more faces and mustaches on-screen at once, the more points, or “mojo” the player gets. The code is up on Github, and can be built with Xcode targeted to the Mac, or directly on the BeagleBone Black.

[Joe’s] goal for the project was to make a ridiculous game that looks like it could have come out in the 90’s. He also used Mustache Mayhem as a fun way to learn some new skills which will come in handy for more serious projects in the future.

We caught up with [Joe] for a quick interview about his new creation.

How did you come up with the idea for Mustache Mayhem?

I was selling a bunch of my video game collection at PRGE (Portland Retro Gaming Expo) a few years ago and had a broken Virtual Boy that no one bought. A friend of mine was at the table and said I had to do something with it. I thought “People wear cosplay and walk around at conventions, so what if I could do something with the Virtual Boy that you could walk around with?” That was the seed.

A few months later, Texas Instruments sent me the original production release of the BeagleBone Black (rev. A5A). Eighteen months after that I actually started the project. The catalyst was to do something for an upcoming Portland, OR art show (Byte Me 4.0), which is an annual event that shows off interactive technology-based artwork. I wrote up a little description and got accepted. I had less than 2 months to actually get things working and it ended up taking about a month of full-time work. It was much more work than I expected for such a silly project. I originally was going to do something along the lines of walking around in a Doom-like perspective and shooting people when their faces were detected.

That would be pretty darn cool. How did you get from Doom to Mustaches?

I saw a TI BeagleBoard demo called “boothstache” which drew mustaches on faces and tweeted the pictures. I thought that doing something non-violent with mustaches would be more suitable (and funny) to actually show my kids. I also secretly wanted to use this project as a way to experiment with Linux, write some code, and learn about face detection and image processing with OpenCV, which I plan to use for some actual computer security research in the future. Mustache Mayhem turned out to be a super cool project and I’m really happy with it. I sort of feel guilty spending so much time on it, since it’s basically just a one-off prototype, but I just got so obsessed with making it exactly as I wanted.

You mentioned on your website that Mustache was “designed to challenge the paradigms of personal privacy and entertainment.” What exactly did you mean there?

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