SwiitBoard: High Impact Wii Balance Board

December 9, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

swiitboard

[Frits] sent us the SwiitBoard, an improvised version of the Wii balance board. He wanted to be able to do something a little higher impact than he could on the Wii balance board, and required more space to do it in too. Using two different kinds of foam and a piece of plywood, he put together the SwiitBoard. We’re not completely clear on how he is handling direction control. He states that it is derived from gforce.x. Can anyone clarify? Stay tuned after the break for a video of his demo software.

Continue reading “SwiitBoard: High Impact Wii Balance Board” →

22″ Binocular Telescope

December 9, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

binocular

This is the worlds largest known visual binocular. Why binocular and not just a regular telescope? Well, it all has to do with clarity. Apparently when you can use both eyes, you can see much more detail and pick up light better. The author states in one story that he was able to see a spiral galaxy clearly with a binocular telescope, but couldn’t see it at all with a monocular telescope of the same power.

There is information on several models on the site. Look in the right hand column as well for useful links to parts distributors.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Controlling A Rover With Your Eyes

December 8, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcbPUQ8kvY]

Controlling a robot simply by looking at your desired location is pretty freaking awesome. A web camera pointed at your face, analyzes your movements and pupil direction to send the bot signals. Look at a location and the bot goes, change your expression to send other commands to the bot. This easily surpasses the laser guided assistance droid for ease of use.

[via BotJunkie]

Nintendo Keyless Entry

December 8, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm7daf36Mk]

The Nintendo keyless entry system will vigilantly guard your door from intruders. Enter the right code and you get access, enter the wrong code and it will deny you and take your picture. [action_owl] did a fantastic job on this lock, using mainly recycled parts like an old CDRom and an Arduino. It works both with or without the computer. If you choose not to use the computer, you don’t get pictures of the people who entered the code wrong.

We like this project, but we feel it needs to be pointed out that this lock is pretty useless. Everyone already knows the code to get in is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A.

Cellphone Operated Robot

December 8, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

cell_bot

If you can get through the cell phone text speak, you’ll probably enjoy this cool tutorial on how to build a cell phone controlled robot. This bot decodes the key tones, similar to the automated phone systems we’ve all experienced. It uses a chip called a MT8870 DTMF decoder to translate the signal for the Atmega 16 controller. The circuit diagram is pretty hard to read, maybe we missed a downloadable one somewhere. The source code is available.

It would be nice to get some feedback from the robot, so you aren’t driving it completely blind. This is similar to the Lego cell phone rover that we showed you before. Next, he should make it recognize voice commands.

Tesla Coil Guitar Amp

December 7, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnmZZNWzZPc]

You’ve probably seen musical Tesla coils already. People have wired them up to computers and keyboards to make them serve as dangerous and awesome speakers. This video popped up of someone playing his guitar through one. It is rough, and not very good at polyphony, but still cool. We would like to see several coils, split by different filters to be able to hear more of the guitar chords. If only someone had rigged these up for Queen when Flash Gordan was made.

PS2 Controller Thermometer

December 7, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

ps2-temp

Finding themselves in need of a thermometer that could communicate with the computer, The Cheap Vegetable Gardener resorted to a bit of hacking. They created this PS2 controller thermometer by attaching some thermistors to the analog stick inputs. Each PS2 controller could collect data from up to four thermistors. There is an auto shutoff feature built into the controller that shuts off the analog signal after a period of non use. To overcome this, they simply taped the L2 button down.

[thanks Shawn]