Author: Eliot

1332 Articles

Commodity Telepresence Rover

July 1, 2005 by 5 Comments

telepresence

Scott Metoyer built this awesome telepresence rover using really cheap parts. He started with a Pentium II laptop that wasn’t being used. Then he picked up a relay board to connect to the parallel port. A servo board was connected to the serial port and a webcam was attached to the USB port. The drive wheels are powered by two windshield wiper motors. The rover runs a server application that talks to a wireless client computer for control. He says the control lag is minimal and you get 15fps from the webcam with pan and tilt. This is a great start and really shows how cheaply you can build a telepresence robot. Scott still has a lot of sensor connections he can use so I’m sure will see more interesting applications in the future.

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VOIP Chat Cord

June 30, 2005 by 13 Comments

chatcord

We’ve mentioned Christoffer’s Skype phone before; Jeroen decided to make a device that could work with any standard phone. Seeing the Chat-Cord he decided that one could be built really easily. The main component is a transformer to demux the the mic and line signals. I’m guessing you could grab the appropriate one off of an old modem. To translate the DTFM tones for dialing he downloaded the Chat-Cord software. The only problem left is how to ring the phone using Skype and Jeroen has enough tips to put you on track. I know at least one reader requested this after seeing the Chat-Cord so I hope you guys enjoy.

[thanks usergentoo]

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Nextel Serial Charging For Always-on GPS

June 29, 2005 by 5 Comments

nextelnextelnextel

Tim uses his Nextel phone as a GPS receiver for his laptop. This drains the battery on the phone much quicker than usual. He decided to jump power into the system so the phone would actually charge when it is plugged in. The power is tapped from the 5 volts coming from the USB to RS-232 adapter. A full schematic and list of phones that this should work on are available at the site.

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Weather Radar Display

June 27, 2005 by 11 Comments

weather radar

No, I never wondered what meteorologists did when they were bored. I’m happy to discover that they’re building slick little devices like this. It is a mini-ITX based system that uses StormPredator for the generating the display. Everything is housed inside an old marine weather display. It is a really thorough write up covering the entire build process even covering bugs found along the way.

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USB Rotary Channel Changer

June 26, 2005 by 2 Comments

rotary switch

Kentaro Fukuchi originally built this simple controller for an art installation. He needed an easy way for visitors to switch effects on an EffecTV system. To avoid writing device drivers he canabilized a cheap game pad. There were 16 available buttons but only 12 were needed. Once the rotary switch was wired to all of the buttons he could use simple scripting to grab the button press events. You could use this to control a variety of things and Kentaro gives a couple possible ideas on his site.

[thanks Jaime Wong]

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Home Built Water Injection

June 25, 2005 by 34 Comments

water injection

Okay, so you’ve built your manual boost controller and want to know what to add next? Water injection is the answer. Okay maybe if the original question was “what’s the last thing you want to spray into your engine?” On turbo cars water injection helps cool the injection charge as it enters the engine. Compressing air generates a lot of heat and the hotter the air/fuel mixture is when it enters the engine the more likely it is to detonate. You can use a water/alcohol mixture to cool your intercooler or you can spray it into the intake air. This guide shows you how to assemble a home built water injection system that has been proven to reduce intake temperatures by 90F. It also includes notes on how to do this without hydrolocking your engine. Handy!

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