HaD Links – Quakepocalypse Edition: August 23, 2011

August 23, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 22 Comments

Well, if you hadn’t noticed the news there has been a little bit of a shakeup on the east coast. I just arrived home after being evacuated due to a 30 second rumble the likes of which has not been felt on the east coast in something like 114 years. In lieu of the not so devastating but earth shaking event we thought we’d put together a few earthquake related links for you.

Earthquake-proof Wine Rack

First off instructables user [jofish] has a quick remedy if earthquakes are constantly destroying all the wine on your wine rack. He researched some existing commercial products and simply copied them by stapling cheap O rings to the front of the rack. We assume the back of the wine rack is secured to the wall as well.

Vertical Seismometer

Next up is a vertical seismometer from [Mike] over at mikesense.com. This was in response to a slightly more threatening 7.2 earthquake he experienced in Baja California last year. A vertical seismometer measures the movement of a weight either electronically or mechanically, and then damps the motion of the oscillation by a magnet or some other means. This particular design is known as the AS-1 developed by [Jeff Batten]. Matt’s page has links to everything you’d need to know including build videos.

Predict Seismic Activity with Hard Drives

If you are looking for some non-conventional ways of tracking seismic activity we have a pair of articles that detail earthquake tracking using your disk drive’s accelerometer. [Michael Stadler] realized the potential for all these sensors and released a program that creates a peer-to-peer network compiling data from the sensors. We are not too comfortable with the prospect of somebody tracking every time we drop or kick (or drop-kick) our laptops but 2500 users in Asia downloaded the software in ’06. The second article details an effort lead by IBM to monitor the fixed hard drives in server racks which generally remain far more stationary.

Simple DIY Earthquake Simulator

Finally for those of you who want to cause (miniature) earthquakes, we dug up this MTU project using plywood, an electric drill, rubber bands and some bearings to fabricate a DIY shake table (PDF warning). We are sure there are tons of improvements that can be made but this is a pretty fun project if you have a bunch of CNC parts lying around (we wish we did).

Basic Animatronics Continued: Servo Actuated Mouth

August 21, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 4 Comments

[Chris] is at it again and this time he has put together a tutorial rounding off his animatronic face by actuating the mouth. His tutorial covers two different styles of robot mouth: an LCD mouth which dims to imply actuation and a servo articulated flap.

[Chris] covers all the aspects of each mouth type, from the basics of human mouth actuation to servo motor control. In this case the LCD mouth is not quite as impressive so it gets installed on a face mock up while the servo mouth goes on the face previously featured in his other tutorials. The entire setup is still controlled using a single PIC 18F452. The circuit diagrams and code for both types of mouth are all available on the site including videos of the actuated mouth and a gif of the LCD mouth in action.

Check out a video of the articulated mouth below throwing down some classic season 6 Jean-Luc. If you are interested in the other parts of the face we have covered [Chris]’s other tutorials on the eyebrows and the eyeballs. These are a great jumping point for your own animatronic face project and do a great job of setting up all the know how you’d need to build your own emotional puppet.

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Overhaul An Old Mechanical Keyboard

August 12, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 16 Comments

Deskthority forum user [lowpoly] recently posted a writeup on his complete overhaul of an Apple M0110 mechanical keyboard. Any one familiar with the satisfying clack of a good mechanical key under their fingers can appreciate the effort put into this project.

[lowpoly] removed the keyboard’s PCB, rewired the key matrix adding diodes, built in a teensy USB board, broke apart the mechanical switches and fit replacement springs and finally applied a generous portion of retr0bright to all of the aging plastic. Since the teensy has no mounting holes [lowpoly] had to create a mounting assembly out of some spare plastic. A usb mini cable is even fitted into the original RJ-11 connector. To compensate for the lack of PCB the key assembly was fitting with some rubber washers. To top off the whole thing some nice new rubber feet were taped to the underside of the M0110.

[lowpoly] reports that with the foam, new springs, and lack of PCB the keyboard is much quieter and easy to use. The end result is a slick retro looking modern keyboard. If you’ll excuse us we have to go rooting through some old storage bins to find our own ancient keyboards.

We have seen our share of vintage keyboard hacks which can be useful, impressive and sometimes just odd. This build keeps it down to a nice simple, functional, useful retrofit. Nice work!

Basic Animatronics Tutorial: PIC Based Servo Eyebrows

August 5, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 7 Comments

[Chris] writes in to let us know about his latest animatronics tutorial, this time on robotic eyebrows! The tutorial takes us through the process of using a fairly simple PIC circuit to display various facial expressions. Since a wide array of facial expressions have unique and well understood eyebrow positions this simple hack can make even the most bland looking mask come to life . Animatronics is a subject near and dear to our hearts, but the simple actuation of servos can go much further than cardboard faces. This easy to follow tutorial can help you on your way to controlling all sorts of servo stuff like vent flaps or um… fish, if you’d like. The software is not very deeply explained but it is commented and available for download from [Chris]’s site.

From here [Chris] plans to expand the project with more tutorials that can help further animate the face. We are particularly interested in the one and two eye systems he mentions, as well as more complicated eyebrow mechanics. Also check out [Chris]’s other servo based robotics tutorials like the Sharpie Spotifier and the Wooden Menace.

There is also a video of the eyebrows in action after the break.

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Arduino Powered 2.4 GHz Spectrum Analyzer

July 25, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 8 Comments

[Fred] dropped a note in our tip line to let us know about arduino forum user [bilbo]’s latest project: A 3-in-one spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, volt-meter combo. The build consists of an Arduino, radio board and Nokia 5110 LCD breakout board. The (thin) video after the jump shows the rig in action. Though soldered to a full sized perf-board we can see later, smaller, battery powered versions prove useful in rooting out wayward bluetooth signals, or just finding that lost microwave oven. Although [bilbo] uses the same radio board as similar builds his creation boasts several different display modes, as well as doubling as a volt meter and miniature-oscilloscope. There is no shortage of previous spectrum analyzer builds, but this one is the first one we have seen running on an Arduino.

Thanks for the tip [Fred]! If you feel like wedging some frequency scanning capabilities into your next project don’t forget to check out [bilbo]’s forum posts for source code!

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Quadbike: Smaller Is Faster

June 21, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 14 Comments

After three huge mutant vehicle builds, [Tom Wilson] thought: “why not build another?” This time he decided to weld together a (comparatively) smaller more agile two-seater he calls the Boxer. We covered [Tom]’s previous quadbike, Big Dog, which features a similar tube frame, full suspension, and the familiar culvert pipe wheels. This time around [Tom] actually built an extensive jig out of plywood to ease in the build process. The Boxer is much lighter than its predecessor, weighing in at 125lbs Vs the Big Dog’s 490lbs, and about four feet shorter. The shorter lighter vehicle makes for a much more agile ride. If you are interested in building your own quadbike [Tom]’s site is a really good resource with tons of detail.

We really look forward to seeing this latest creation at burning man, check out a video of the (comparatively speedy) Boxer in action after the jump!

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Create And Conflagrate Giant Modeled Sculptures With Kinect And CNC

June 8, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 7 Comments

Summer has hit, and with it a bunch of crazy people going to crazy festivals and (often) burning crazy sculptures to crazy music! In that vein [Matthew Goodman] recently got involved in the burning flipside community down in Texas for his first big effigy build. The project called for a gigantic archway flanked by two human shaped figures, since he had been working in Kinect [Matt] decided to try his hand at physically modeling the figures from Kinect mesh data.

After co-registering the depth and image cameras, setting up a capture routine to record, getting .ply based meshes from the depth camera, and making a keypoint detector [Matt] was ready to start getting real world data from the Kinect. Armed with a ghetto steadycam built from his local Austin Hackerspace‘s spare parts bin, [Matt] proceeded to collect three 1.5 gigabyte scans of the charming [KT], who served as a model for the sculpture.

Once the meshes were imported to sketchup they could be merged and smoothed into a coherent form. The figure was split into CNC-able parts (known as the “lady bits” by [Matt] and his crew) and sent to local makers [Dave Umlas] and [Marrilee Ratcliff]’s ShopBot CNC mill. The 400 some odd bits of wood were then carted to flipside, methodically set up, and promptly set aflame the end of the event.

We have seen a couple of really interesting burning man projects, but this is possibly the shortest lived end result. Stay tuned this summer for more insane Black Rock City bound creations as well. Also don’t forget to check out [Matt]’s site for more details.