Author: Pedro Umbelino

77 Articles

Hidden Bookshelf Door Shows Incredible Motion

January 21, 2017 by 42 Comments

Who didn’t dream of a hidden door or secret passage in the house when they were kids? Some of us still do! [SPECTREcat] had already built a secret door in a fully functioning bookcase with a unique opening mechanism. The intriguing mechanism allows the doors to start by sliding slightly away form one another before hinging into the hidden space. Their operation was, however, was manual. The next step was to automate the secret door opening mechanism with electronics.

The project brain is an off-the-shelf Arduino Uno paired with a MultiMoto Arduino shield to drive 4 Progressive Automations PA-14 linear actuators. These linear actuators have 50lb force, allowing the doors to fully open or close within 10 seconds and maintain a speed that wouldn’t throw the books off the bookcases.

Not wanting to drill a hole through the bookshelf for a switch or other opening mechanisms, [SPECTREcat] added a reed switch that is activated on the other side by a DVD cover with a magnet inside. In addition to that, there is a PIR sensor on the inside room to automatically close the doors if no motion is detected for 2 hours. Dont worry, there’s also a manual switch inside just in case.

Using one of the items on the shelf to trigger the secret passage is a classic move. He could also have used a secret knock code, like the Secret Attic Library Door we covered in the past. Check out the video below to see the hinge and slide movement in action.

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Brain Controlled Tracked Robot

January 20, 2017 by 1 Comment

[Imetomi] found himself salvaging a camera from a broken drone when he decided to use it in a new project, a tracked robot with a live video feed from the mounted camera.

… I had a cheap Chinese drone that was broken, but its camera seemed to be operating and when I took apart my drone I found a small WiFi chip with a video transmitter. I (decided) that I will use this little circuit for a project and I started to buy and salvage the parts.

Being a tracked robot, it can negotiate most types of terrain and climb hills up to 40 degrees. It is powered by two 18650 lithium-ion batteries with a capacity of 2600 mAh and the remote control is based on the HC-12 serial communication module. You can control it with a joystick and watch the camera’s live-stream in a virtual reality glass. That’s pretty neat but it’s not all.

[Imetomi] also used a hacked Nacomimi Brainwave Toy to make a brain controlled version of his robot. The brainwaves are detected using sensors placed on the scalp. To actually control it the operator has to focus on the right hand to move right, focus on the left hand to move left, blink to move forward and blink again to stop. There is also an ultrasonic sensor to help navigation so the robot doesn’t bump into things. It’s not very precise but you can always build the joystick version or, even better, make a version with both controls.

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3D Printer With Tilted Bed

January 19, 2017 by 37 Comments

[Oliver Tolar] and [Denis Herrmann], two students from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), designed and produced a 3D printer prototype that has a movable printing bed that can tilt. By tilting, objects with critical overhangs can be printed without the additional support material. The printer has six axes, three axes control the print head as usual and three other axes control the printing bed, allowing a wider range of movements.

The students claim that besides saving on the support material this printer can actually save time while printing objects that need a lot of support since, we assume, it’s faster to tilt the bed than to print the support itself. In normal 3D printers the plate is always horizontal and the print object is built up in horizontal layers. In this printer, for large overhangs, the printing bed is held in such a way that the print object is pivoted until perpendicular to the print head. Of course, for round shapes it will probably be different but we only saw it in action in one demonstration video. There is also the plus side that, when a print finishes, it’s finished. No x-acto knife to remove support, no sand paper, no time wasted.

Having the software controlling the bed properly was more difficult than the assembly of the printer, they said. It is still under development as it cannot, for example, simultaneously move the print head and printing bed to produce a continuous print.

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Drones, Swarms At War

January 11, 2017 by 45 Comments

Using drones in areas of conflict is not something new. As commercial drones get easily affordable, we see it all the time in the news, some soldier using a Parrot drone to scout ahead, above trenches or around buildings. That’s a new reality that soldiers have to get used to. It changes the battlefield, especially traditional ground warfare. There is also research in drone swarms, performing tasks in team for some time now. Some of them are really impressive.

And then there’s the U.S. Military Perdix drones. William Roper of the Department of Defense illustrate what exactly their capabilities are:

Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature. Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.

Did we mention they can be released in mid-flight by a F/A 18 Super Hornet? That’s no piece of cake for any drone but Perdix is able to withstand speeds of Mach 0.6 and temperatures of -10 °C during release. In the latest tests conducted, three jets released a massive swarm of 103 Perdix drones, which after deployment communicated with each other and went on a simulated surveillance mission.

The Department of Defense announced the successful Micro-Drone demonstration and presented a video:

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Socks By Bob

January 11, 2017 by 25 Comments

No, this article is not about SOCKS4 or SOCKS5 or Proxies. It’s about real socks, the ones that go onto your feet. Meet [Bob Rutherford], 88 years old, who lives in Saskatoon, Canada. He and his gang ([Glynn Sully], 92 years old , [George Slater] 85 year old, and young [Barney Sullivan] 65 years old) have made 10,000 socks for shelters in the community and across the country. That’s almost 8 miles of socks. Last year alone “operation Socks by Bob” as he likes to call it, produced 2,000 socks.

So how did these 4 fellows manage to pull this off? Turns out that [Bob] has a bit of a maker spirit in him and he actually built a fast, cheap, knitting machine for the purpose of making socks. Using a sewer tubing as a base, the machines can knit at 90 stitches a second.

He made it a while back but it didn’t have much of a use in mind for it. Sadly, seven years ago his wife passed away, leaving him facing a void in his life. Following his son advice “If you want to help yourself, help somebody else”, he decided to start this project.

“There’s a lot of us, as we grow older, we sit at home and look at the wall with nothing to do! Socks by Bob has given me that something to do.” [Bob]

Nowadays the gang has 2 machines working steadily and, once a week, they cut the long tubes of wool into socks. Half the yarn is donated, the other plus shipping costs are raised by [Bob’s] son. The knitting machines look pretty awesome in action. See for yourself in the video below.

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Super Mario Run(s) — Away With Your Money

January 11, 2017 by 37 Comments

If you are an Android user and a big fan of Super Mario beware: there is no Android version! There has been no official news on the Android version yet, let alone a version of the game. There is, however, a version circulating outside of Google Play market that will steal your bank account.

Right now attackers are taking advantage of the game’s popularity and Android users despair to spread malware posing as an Android version of Super Mario Run as they did in the past for Pokemon GO. The trojan is called Android Marcher and has been around since 2013, mostly targeting mobile users financial information. After installation, the application attempts to trick users with fake finance apps and a credit card page in an effort to capture banking details. The malware also locks out Google Play until the user supplies their credit card information.

In this new variant of Marcher, it can monitor the device and steal login data of regular apps, not just banking and payment apps, and send the stolen data back to command and control (C&C) servers. Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Gmail, the Google Play store are all vulnerable. Criminals can exploit these stolen accounts to carry out additional fraud.

Zscaler researchers advice is:

To avoid becoming a victim of such malware, it is a good practice to download apps only from trusted app stores such as Google Play. This practice can be enforced by unchecking the “Unknown Sources” option under the “Security” settings of your device.

We may add to turn on “App Verification”. Verify Apps regularly checks activity on your device and prevents or warns you about potential harm. Verify Apps is on by default, as is Unknown Sources turned off. Verify Apps also checks apps when you install them from sources other than Google Play. Of course, there is a privacy trade-off. Some information has to be sent about the apps you install back to Google.

The main advice is: use common sense. It’s common practice for companies to release official apps versions through Google Play and highly unlikely to do it via any other way.

Recording Functioning Muscles To Rehab Spinal Cord Injury Patients

January 10, 2017 by 3 Comments

[Diego Marino] and his colleagues at the Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy) designed a prototype that allows for patients with motor deficits, such as spinal cord injury (SCI), to do rehabilitation via Functional Electrical Stimulation. They devised a system that records and interprets muscle signals from the physiotherapist and then stimulates specific muscles, in the patient, via an electro-stimulator.

The acquisition system is based on a BITalino board that records the Surface Electromyography (sEMG) signal from the muscles of the physiotherapist, while they perform a specific exercise designed for the patient’s rehabilitation plan. The BITalino uses Bluetooth to send the data to a PC where the data is properly crunched in Matlab in order to recognize and to isolate the muscular activity patterns.

After that, the signals are ‘replayed’ on the patient using a relay-board connected to a Globus Genesy 600 electro-stimulator. This relay board hack is mostly because the Globus Genesy is not programmable so this was a fast way for them to implement the stimulator. In their video we can see the muscle activation being replayed immediately after the ‘physiotherapist’ performs the movement. It’s clearly a prototype but it does show promising results.

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