Inexpensive Robot Platform Combines Mass-produced Parts

February 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Meet Bilibot, a modular robot that aims to lower the cost of entry for robotic tinkerers. It combines the Kinect, the iRobot Create, and an Ubuntu box running ROS using some laser cut mounting brackets. These are relatively inexpensive components but the most exciting thing is that there’s already a slew of example out there that use this hardware. For instance, we looked in on ROS body tracking in January that can be directly plucked and used with this hardware. You’ll recognize the base as the iRobot create which was used in video chat robot from last week. The brains of the operation come in a choice of three Linux boxes – two headless and one laptop – which have ROS pre-installed. Watch the open-source autonomy as it tools around the office in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Inexpensive Robot Platform Combines Mass-produced Parts” →

Shockingly Fun Quiz Game

February 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Gather your friends round the living room for a head-to-head quiz game. This one’s not quite as nice as you might think. Get an answer wrong and you’re going to get the Venkman treatment thanks to the stored electricity in a disposable camera flash circuit. [Israel] runs the game questions from a Windows machine, and uses a set of four USB joystick buzzers that let each contestant ring in. They all wear a cuff that houses electrodes for negative-reinforcement upon an incorrect answer. Since every contestant answers each question it won’t be long before you hear the uncomfortable yelp of failure from your guests. This seems a little bit more fair than shocking people for not calming their minds, but the video from that hack is still one of our all-time favorites.

Clap To Remove This Brassiere

February 14, 2011 by Mike Szczys 71 Comments

Like some strange manga come to life, you can remove this brassiere with a clap of your hands. Under the red bow is a not-so-small mechanical clasp that replaces the original on the strapless front-clasping undergarment. We hate to criticize, but [Randofo] really went off the deep end of hardware overkill on this project. The clasp itself is the electromagnetic coil removed from the case of a mechanical relay. An ATmega168 listens for a spike in sound pressure from a microphone, then drives the relay to release the feminine support system.

It is Valentine’s day. The question being is this romantic or sleazy? Watch the NSFW video after the break and let us know your opinion in the comments.

Continue reading “Clap To Remove This Brassiere” →

Overclocked ATmega32 Gaming

February 13, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

With more pixels and more objects to track you’re going to need to get that AVR running pretty fast to get the job done. But [Vladutz2000] figured why stop at 16 MHz when you can overclock an ATmega32 to 27 MHz for a faster gaming experience?

This build may not be as colorful as Super Pixel Bros, but choosing a KS0108 graphic LCD certainly brings a lot more definition to the images. You can see in the video after the break that the AVR does an excellent job of generating and animating multiple objects. It doesn’t take much to put this together yourself but if you want the board layout done for you, you’re out of luck. The hardware for the project is installed on a PCB that was hand-drawn with an etch resist marker. Continue reading “Overclocked ATmega32 Gaming” →

Flash Trigger With Programmable Delay

February 13, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Here’s a flash trigger with a programmable delay. These triggers are often used to capture quick events like a balloon popping. The technique takes place in a dark room with the shutter open. When the event is triggered the flash illuminates the scene and an image is captured. Because these require precise timing it has typically been a chore to synchronize the event, hence solutions like using a pressure plate.

This build, which centers around a PICAXE 08M, allows the photographer to use any trigger they desire, but adds a delay. The box above shows the apparatus set up for a 42 millisecond delay. So if you’re using the sound of the balloon pop as a trigger, you can hold the flash off until the event really gets going.

[Thanks Two Part Epoxy]

Modern Freaking: Pull Phone Numbers From YouTube Audio

February 13, 2011 by Mike Szczys 48 Comments

[Charlie X-Ray] is having some modern fun with the phone system by pulling dialed numbers from the audio track of YouTube videos (translated). The first step was to find a video where a telephone is being dialed and the sounds of the keypresses are audible. You can’t tell those tones apart, but a computer can. That’s because each number pressed generates a combination of two out of seven closely related frequencies. [Charlie] isolated the audio using Audacity, then wrote a python script to generate a spectrogram like the one above. By matching up the two dark nodes you can establish which two frequencies were played and decode the phone number being dialed. So how does this work again… find audio of a phone being dialed, decode the number.. profit?

Uncrippling Lower Model Speakers

February 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 89 Comments

It looks like this low-end Sennheiser HD speaker has the same internals as it’s better-brother but has been altered to reduce sound quality. It’s not uncommon for manufacturers to hobble a product in order to sell more units at a lower price that reflects less features. Linksys WRT54G routers immediately come to mind, or perhaps the more recent Rigol 100 MHz oscilloscope hack is a better example.

In this case, that black piece of foam on the left has been added to the 555 version of the hardware to decrease the sound quality you get from the much more expensive 595 model. Take it out and you’ve got an upgrade that would have cost you more than a hundred bucks. Don’t think this is the only difference? There is a bit of a difference in case design, but [Mike Beauchamp] also found that if you acquire a replacement driver for either model you’ll get the same part.