Hyperlapse Makes Your HeadCam Videos Awesome

August 12, 2014 by Adam Fabio 34 Comments

hyperlapse First person video – between Google Glass, GoPro, and other sports cameras, it seems like everyone has a camera on their head these days. If you’re a surfer or skydiver, that might make for some awesome footage. For the rest of us though, it means hours of boring video. The obvious way to fix this is time-lapse. Typically time-lapse throws frames away. Taking 1 of every 10 frames results in a 10x speed increase. Unfortunately, speeding up a head mounted camera often leads to a video so bouncy it can’t be watched without an air sickness bag handy. [Johannes Kopf], [Michael Cohen], and [Richard Szeliski] at Microsoft Research have come up with a novel solution to this problem with Hyperlapse.

Hyperlapse photography is not a new term. Typically, hyperlapse films require careful planning, camera rigs, and labor-intensive post-production to achieve a usable video. [Johannes] and team have thrown computer vision and graphics algorithms at the problem. The results are nothing short of amazing.

The full details are available in the team’s report (35MB PDF warning). To obtain usable data, the fisheye lenses often used on these cameras must be calibrated. The team accomplished that with the OCamCalib toolbox. Imported video is broken down frame by frame. Using structure from motion algorithms, hyperlapse creates a 3D models of the various scenes in the video. With the scenes in this virtual world, the camera can be moved and aimed at will. The team’s algorithms then pick a smooth path that follows the original cameras trajectory. Once the camera’s position is known, it’s simply a matter of rendering the final video.

The results aren’t perfect. The mountain climbing scenes show some artifacts caused by the camera frame rate and exposure changing due to the varied lighting conditions. People appear and disappear in the bicycling portion of the video.

~~One thing the team doesn’t mention is how long the process takes~~. We’re sure this kind of rendering must require some serious time and processing power. Still, the output video is stunning.

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Commodore 1530 Datasette Gets A Digital Counter

August 9, 2014 by Adam Fabio 25 Comments

Ah, the humble Commodore 1530 Datasette drive. It never enjoyed much popularity in the USA, but it was the standard for quite some time in Europe. [DerSchatten13] still uses and loves his 1530. When a co-worker showed him some 7-segment bubble LEDs, he knew what he had to do. Thus the 1530 digital counter (translated) was born.

[DerSchatten13] started out by building his design on a breadboard. He used every I/O pin on an ATtiny2313 to implement his circuit. Tape motion is detected by a home-made rotary encoder connected to the original mechanical counter’s belt drive. To keep the pin count down, [DerSchatten13] multiplexed the LEDs on the display.

Now came the hard part, tearing into the 1530 and removing the mechanical counter. [DerSchatten13] glued in some standoffs to hold the new PCB. After rebuilding the circuit on a piece of perfboard, he installed the new parts. The final result looks great on the inside. From the outside, one would be hard pressed to tell the digital counter wasn’t original equipment.

Operation of the digital counter is identical to the analog unit – with one exception. The clear button now serves double duty. Pressing and holding it saves the current count. Save mode is indicated by turning on the decimal point. If the user rewinds the tape, the counter will stop the motor when the saved count is reached. Cueing up that saved program just got a heck of a lot easier!

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Hacklet #10 Cryptography And Reverse Engineering

August 8, 2014 by Adam Fabio 25 Comments

In honor of DEFCON, this week we’re looking at some cryptography and reverse engineering projects over at Hackaday.io Every hacker loves a hardware puzzle, and [Tom] has created a tool to make those puzzles. His Hardware Reverse Engineering Learning Platform consists of a shield with two ATmega328 chips and an I2C EEPROM. The two Atmel chips share a data bus and I2C lines. Right in the middle of all this is an ST Morpho connector, which allows an ST Nucleo board to act as a sniffer. The platform allows anyone to create a reverse engineering challenge! To successfully reverse engineer a board, it sure helps to have good tools. [coflynn] is giving that to us in spaces with The ChipWhisperer. ChipWhisperer is an open source security research platform. The heart of the system is a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. The FPGA allows very high speed operations for things like VCC and clock glitching. ChipWhisperer is an entire ecosystem of boards – from LNA blocks to field probes. The entire system is controlled from an easy to use GUI. The end result is a powerful tool for hardware attacks. On the Encryption side of the house, we start by keeping the Feds at bay. The [Sector67] hackerspace has collectively created NSA AWAY. NSA AWAY is a simple method of sending secure messages over an insecure medium – such as email. A one-time use pad is stored on two SD cards, which are used by two Android devices. The message sender uses an Android device to encrypt the message. On the receive side, the message can be decoded simply by pointing an android device’s camera at the encrypted data. So easy, even a grandparent could do it! Next up is [Josh’s] Bury it under the noise floor. “Bury it” is an education for cryptography in general, and steganographic software in particular. [Josh] explains how to use AES-256 encryption, password hashing, and other common techniques. He then introduces steganography by showing how to hide an encrypted message inside an image. Anyone who participated in Hackaday’s ARG build up to The Hackaday Prize will recognize this technique. [yago] gives us encrypted voice communications with his ZRTP Hardphone. The hardphone implements the ZRTP, a protocol for encrypted voice over IP communications. The protocol is implemented by a Raspberry Pi using a couple of USB sound cards. User interface is a 16×2 Line character LCD, a membrane keypad, and of course a phone handset. Don’t forget that you need to build two units,or whoever you’re trying to call will be rather confused!

Finally we have the Mooltipass. Developed right here on Hackaday by [Mathieu Stephan] and the community at large, Mooltipass is a secure password storage system. All your passwords can be stored fully AES-256 encrypted, with a Smart Card key. Under the hood, Mooltipass uses an Arduino compatible ATmega32U4 microcontroller. UI is through a OLED screen and touch controls. That’s it for this week! Be sure to check out next week’s Hacklet, when we bring you more of the best from Hackaday.io!

Parallax Propeller 1 Goes Open Source

August 7, 2014 by Adam Fabio 60 Comments

OpenPropellerProject OpenSourceProp1Banner

Parallax has embraced open source hardware by releasing the source code to its Propeller 1 processor (P8X32A). Designed by [Chip Gracey] and released in 2006, the 32-bit octal core Propeller has built up a loyal fan base. Many of those fans have created development tools for the Propeller, from libraries to language ports. [Ken, Chip], and the entire Parallax team have decided to pay it forward by releasing the entire source to the Propeller.

The source code is in Verilog and released under GNU General Public License v3.0. Parallax has done much more than drop 8-year-old files out in the wild. All the configuration files necessary to implement the design on an Altera Cyclone IV using either of two different target boards have also been included. The DE0-Nano is the low-cost option. The Altera DE2-115 dev board is more expensive, but it also can run the upcoming Propeller 2 design.

The release also includes sources for the mask ROM used for booting, running cogs, and the SPIN interpreter. [Chip] originally released this code in 2008. The files contain references to PNut, the Propeller’s original code name.

We’re excited to see Parallax taking this step, and can’t wait to see what sort of modifications the community comes up with. Not an Altera fan? No problem – just grab the source code, your favorite FPGA tools, and go for it! Starved for memory? Just add some more. 8 cogs not enough? Bump it up to 16. The only limits are the your imagination and the resources of your target device.

Interested in hacking on a real Propeller? If you’re in Las Vegas, you’re in luck. A Propeller is included on each of the nearly 14,000 badges going to DEFCON 22 attendees. While you’re there, keep an eye out for Mike and The Hackaday Hat!

Focus Your Ears With The Visual Microphone

August 6, 2014 by Adam Fabio 53 Comments

VideoMicrophone

A Group of MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe researchers have managed to reproduce sound using video alone. The sounds we make bounce off every object in the room, causing microscopic vibrations. The Visual Microphone utilizes a high-speed video camera and some clever signal processing to extract an audio signal from these vibrations. Using video of everyday objects such as snack bags, plants, Styrofoam cups, and water, the team was able to reproduce tones, music and speech. Capturing audio from light isn’t exactly new. Laser microphones have been around for years. The difference here is the fact that the visual microphone is a completely passive device. No laser or special illumination is required.

The secret is in the signal processing, which the team explains in their SIGGRAPH paper (pdf link). They used a complex steerable pyramid along with wavelet filters to obtain local pixel motion values. These local values are averaged into a global motion value. From this global motion value the team is able to measure movement down to 1/1000 of a pixel. Plenty of resolution to decode audio data.

Most of the research is performed with high-speed video cameras, which are well outside the budget of the average hacker. Don’t despair though, the team did prove out that the same magic can be performed with consumer cameras, albeit with lower quality results. The team took advantage of the rolling shutter found in most of today’s CMOS imager based consumer cameras. Rolling shutter CMOS sensors capture images one row at a time. Each row can be processed in a similar fashion to the frames of the high-speed camera. There are some inter-frame gaps when the camera isn’t recording anything though. Even with the reduced resolution, it’s easy to pick out “Mary had a little lamb” in the video below.

We’re blown away by this research, and we’re sure certain organizations will be looking into it for their own use. Don’t pull out your tin foil hats yet though. Foil containers proved to be one of the best sound reflectors.

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Hacklet #9 Bugs And Fire

August 1, 2014 by Adam Fabio 6 Comments

This week on the Hacklet, we’re spending some time looking at bugs and fire! First up we have [Noel] who is saving the bees with Bee-O-Neo-Tweet-O. Bees are incredibly important, both to Earth’s ecosystem and the food chain we humans need to survive. Unfortunately bees are also sensitive to some of the chemicals humans dump into the atmosphere. Sometimes it results in colored honey, but more often than not it’s detrimental to the bees.

Neonicotinoids are a class of insecticide that has been causing problems to hives near where they are used. [Noel] is banking on sensors created with bismuth electrodes to detect the chemical near the entrance to hives. The data can be collected by beekeepers all over the world and sent to a central server. He’s using an Arduino Yun as a WiFi connected base station. Each individual hive has an Adafriut Trinket and a 433MHz radio link to send data to the base. [Noel] is even hoping to detect individual bees by the sound of their wings beating.

[Ken] is keeping his own bees, and wants to monitor more than just chemicals. His honeybee hive monitoring system keeps track of the temperature and weight (and thus the honey produced) by his hives. Rather than buy an expensive load cell setup, [Ken] modified a standard digital bathroom scale to suit his needs. The insects connect to the IOB (Internet of Bees) with a bit of help from the Apitronics platform and a BeagleBone Black. Ken even added a solar-powered weather station with the Apitronics system.

[Mike] is taking a slightly different approach. He doesn’t want to save the bugs, he wants to kill the ones that bug him! [Mike] doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’s created Lazy Killer 9000 for easy bug killing. Lazy Killer uses the business end of an electrified fly swatter to do its work. This project wouldn’t be complete without an Arduino, so [Mike] is adding one, as well as a WiFi shield. The entire system will have a friendly interface to turn the juice on. One of the best features of Lazy Killer is the internet connected kill count. [Mike] knows that there aren’t any bugs in the vacuum of space, so he’s entered Lazy Killer in The Hackaday Prize.

From bugs, we move on to Fire! [mr.jb.swe] needed a reliable portable power source. He found it in LiFePO4 batteries, but still needed a way to charge them. Toward that end he’s created The Multicharger, a watt meter and charger which can be powered from solar, wind, or thermometric power. A Powerpot X provides the fire and the power to charge the batteries. [mr.jb.swe’s] charger converts that into the standard constant current->constant voltage charging system needed by lithium chemistry batteries. The Multicharger isn’t a complete battery management system yet, but it’s well on its way.

Unity candles have become a staple at wedding ceremonies.[Quinn] has taken things to the next level and beyond with this take on the classic unity candle. This candle throws fireballs 30 feet into the sky! We covered the candle back in June, but [Quinn] has been busy since then. With over 20 updates, [Quinn] has created one of the most well documented projects on Hackaday.io. Of course, being that this project is dealing with propane and monstrous fires, [Quinn] mentions you shouldn’t try unless you really know what you’re doing. Don’t set any brides on fire! That’s it for this week’s Hacklet! Tune in next week, same hack time, same hack channel, for more of the best of Hackaday.io!

Aerodynamics? Super Honey Badger Don’t Give A @#*^@!

July 30, 2014 by Adam Fabio 50 Comments

honeybadger-rcplane

[Arron Bates] is a pro R/C Pilot from Australia. He’s spent the last few years chasing the dream of a fixed wing plane which could perform unlimited spins. After some promising starts with independently controlled wing spoilers, [Arron] went all in and created The Super Honey Badger. Super Honey Badger is a giant scale R/C plane with the tail of a helicopter and a soul of pure awesome.

Starting with a standard 87″ wingspan Extra 300 designed for 3D flight, [Arron] began hacking. The entire rear fuselage was removed and replaced with carbon fiber tubes. The standard Extra 300 tail assembly fit perfectly on the tubes. Between the abbreviated fuselage and the tail, [Arron] installed a tail rotor from an 800 size helicopter. A 1.25 kW brushless motor drives the tail rotor while a high-speed servo controls the pitch.

[Arron] debuted the plane at HuckFest 2013, and pulled off some amazing aerobatics. The tail rotor made 540 stall turn an easy trick to do – even with an airplane. Flat spins were a snap to enter, even from fast forward flight! Most of [Arron’s] maneuvers defy any attempt at naming them – just watch the videos after the break.

Sadly, Super Honey Badger was destroyed in May of 2014 due to a structural failure in the carbon tubes. [Arron] walked away without injury and isn’t giving up., He’s already dropping major hints about a new plane (facebook link).

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