Arduino Helps You Ski Copper

February 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Dwight’s] been working on a long-term project to add a status board for the ski runs at Copper Mountain ski resort. The board will feature an 8×8 LED module for each run that displays a green O for open trails, a green G for groomed trails, and a red X for closed trails. He’s also got a status board with LEDs embedded in a trail map.

The system relies on SPI for each LED module. An Arduino Mega uses a Xbee module to pull down XML data wirelessly and display it on this board. Since the trail report is already available online it’s just a matter of parsing the data in a useful way.

He’s not quite done with the whole thing yet, but keep an eye out for it if you are planning to ski Copper Mountain.

[via Tom’s Guide]

PicAxe LEGO Tank

February 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[TomTheGeek] built a LEGO tank with a PicAxe controller. Locomotion is supplied by a Lego Power Function motor controller. He cut an LPF extension wire in half so that he could patch into the PWM signals without altering the motors themselves. You can make out the control circuitry and a small breadboard in the tank’s turret. [Tom] added a laser pointer to the tip of the barrel but we’d like to see an IR LED. The tank is controlled by a infrared remote control and adding TV-b-gone functionality to the toy would create something of a Rube Goldberg feature for turning off the tube. But alas, there’s no programming space left for that as the PicAxe 08M is limited to 256 bytes.

There’s a video after the break of this little demon tracking its way around the room. This is a nice addition to the other LEGO tank we saw a while back.

Continue reading “PicAxe LEGO Tank” →

USB Host Mode For Droid

February 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 41 Comments

There’s a simple hack to use your Motorola Droid phone as a USB host. It is a hardware-only hack that doesn’t require you to crack open your phone, root it, or even to change firmware (although device drivers in the stock Android image may be quite limited). The dongle above is used as a key to enable the mode while the phone is booting. This was repurposed from a car charging cable by removing the wires and resistor and shorting the resistor pads. Once the phone is in host mode the dongle is swapped for a simple USB-mini to USB-A socket adapter, built from two cables you probably have lying around. Now you can plug in any device you want.

[Thanks Freezer90]

Dexterous Hexapod Rocks An Atom Processor

February 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ovrT8pWww]

[Matt Bunting’s] hexapod caught Intel’s eye (and their wallet). This coordinated little bot runs Ubuntu on an Atom Z530 processor, popular in netbooks like the Dell Mini 10, and uses a webcam to coordinate and monitor its motion. Intel picked up two of them from [Matt] to exhibit at trade shows. As you can see, the 18 servos provide some gorgeous motion to the beast. It’s no DJ Roomba but it approaches the zen-like perfection that is the A-Pod.

[Thanks Miked]

Wireless Painting

February 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Tom Shannon] uses science as part of his art. One of his methods when painting is to use this radio controlled paint pendulum. He gave an interview at his studio, which we’ve embedded after the break, and goes into detail about this device. It has six different reservoirs that hold the paint colors. Each gravity-fed canister connects to a central nozzle with flexible tubing. The hand held control box has a slider for each color that moves a servo pinching each supply tube. This ingenuity keeps him creating even though Parkinson’s Disease has started to manifest itself with tremors in his hands.

It’s hard to make out the paintings seen above, but the ones on display in the video are pretty amazing. He mentions that anything can be loaded into the hoppers, including tomato sauce. Is anyone else thinking about large scale pizza constuction? This also reminds us of the mechanical bartenders we’ve seen in the past. Continue reading “Wireless Painting” →

TPM Crytography Cracked

February 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

Trusted Platform Module based cryptography protects your secrets as well as your government’s secrets. Well, it used to. [Christopher Tarnovsky] figured out how to defeat the hardware by spying on its communications. This requires physical access so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, but this does reach beyond TPM to many of the security chips made by Infineon. This includes peripheral security chips for Xbox 360 and some chips used in cell phones and satellite TV.

[Christopher] revealed his hack during his presentation at Black Hat 2010. The method is wicked-hard, involving removal of the chip’s case and top layer, then tapping into a data bus to get at unencrypted data. The chip still has some tricks up its sleeve and includes firmware traps that keep a look out for this type of attack, shutting down if it’s detected. Infineon commented that they knew this was possible but regard it as a low threat due to the high skill level necessary for success.

[Thanks Greg]

Old-time Music Player Is Brand New

February 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

This looks like a home entertainment center of yore but something’s not quite right. Where is the turntable used to play the music? It turns out that this Danforth Standard Digitrola is digital and doesn’t rely upon wax for an input. [Jonathan Danforth] built it as a show piece and it exhibits fine craftsmanship. A sound driver uses the brass horn and the acoustical chamber to put out what sounds like a fine quality end product. Hear it playing some Daft Punk in the video after the break. The music comes from an MP3 board inside that has a 50W amplifier and reads the music from an SD card. The only control available to the listener is the brass knob which controls the volume.

Continue reading “Old-time Music Player Is Brand New” →