[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPHpMonoC8]
Yo dawg, we heard you liked accelerometers… Apparently people have been wanting this for a while. We’re not completely sure why, so we’ll wait and see what gets done with it. [Ubiq_01] has connected a WiiMote to his iPhone and is using it to control and OpenGL application. He has released a tutorial (which seems to be down currently) if you want to try to reproduce it yourself.
[via Makezine]
Introducing ERP: Experimental Robotic Platform. This is an open source, modular robotics platform that, as you can see above, didn’t fair too poorly in the Robogames 2009. [John] has been working on this platform for roughly 2 years and states that it will never be “finished”. It is a development platform, and is always changing and being updated. You can follow along on the project page to see the major design changes as they happen, such as the wheel suspension system cut from a single piece of plastic. All of the pieces, schematics, and software are available for download. Be sure to scroll down and see ERP’s reaction to some of crabfu’s inventions.
A fake ATM machine, set to capture ATM information was found at Defcon 17 in vegas this year. Its design has a tinted plastic window at the top which attendees noticed had a computer in it. It was quickly removed by the police. Is this an amazing coincidence? We doubt it. Someone probably knew exactly who was going to be there and either wanted to scam some hackers or just wanted to have some fun.
This little walking robot caught our eye. We’ve seen tons of 4 legged bots, but the design on this probably took more effort than the electronics. The design is radially symmetrical, it can walk in any direction, turn in place, and even walk upside down. The electronics weren’t forgotten though. This little bugger manages to pull a half our of use out of each battery charging. It communicates wirelessly with a custom dual Wiimote Nunchuck setup via XBEE modules. You can find much more technical details in the captions of the pictures. We’re not positive what processing power is hidden in the bot itself, but we know there’s an Arduino in one of the nunchucks. This might be the brains of the operation leaving the hardware on the bot simply to control the servos. We really like the arc-reactor-esque power display.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhcNnO-LMGk]
[Jared Bouck] is on a roll this week. We just covered his Diamond thermal paste and now he’s got more for us. To celebrate the re design of his website, he has released the plans for the paintball turret. As you may recall, we absolutely loved this design when he originally showed it to us. Though he has had kits available for a while, he has finally put the plans up for download. You can cut your own parts and build it yourself. He mentions that version 2 is coming shortly, we wait with bated breath.
[Aaron] has been working at iweb hosting for about 5 years. When he started, the number of servers was small enough that managing them was fairly painless and could be done by just manually verifying that everything was operational. As the number of servers grew, this task became more and more difficult. They employed various methods of tracking problems, but found them all lacking in one way or another. They got an idea to build a Defcon status page based on all of the information collected about their server status. The page was built and all rejoiced. As with most projects, they just couldn’t leave it alone. Next, they built an android app to be able to see the defcon status from their phones. As cool as that was, they felt they needed to have yet another way to keep track. They What you see above is the prototype for the office defcon status display. It is extremely simple, using an Arduino (yes, we know, massive overkill) to receive status updates to change the display number. [Aaron] says that right now it is a mess, and you have to shield it from the light with your hands to see it, but it works. What should the next step be? A giant Alpha Numeric LED indicator? A nixie tube?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLpfq4tHZxE]
This is an interesting little toy. A tiny board that can display text on an oscilloscope. The components, or rather just component, is a PIC16F628A. Aside from a power supply, that’s it. It can display 10 characters at a time and, as you can see above, scroll them as well. We don’t really know of a practical use for this, but it would make a nice practical joke tool. If you want some more complicated oscilloscope effects, check out Tennis for Two.
[via HackedGadgets]
