Monitoring Batch Jobs The Cylon Way With Python And A Parallel Port

November 18, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

parallel-port-trigger

If you happen to do a lot of video encoding, you know that your computer can really drag while the process is carried out. Our own [Mike Szczys] transcodes videos at home fairly often, and because the process is automated, he doesn’t always know if a conversion is taking place in the background.

He has been tinkering with Larson Scanners recently and thought he could put everything he’s learned along the way to good use by using the scanner as a “busy” indicator for his PC. He hooked the scanner up to the computer’s parallel port, and took a few minutes to bang out some Python code that would alert him when his PC was busy.

He set his notifier script to launch along with FFMPEG, whenever his MythTV setup had something ready to convert. The Python script drives a pin on the parallel port high, triggering the Larson Scanner’s animation. Every minute, the script checks the status of FFMPEG and continues to hold the pin high until the application exits. Once the conversion is done, the scanner goes back to sleep, letting [Mike] know that the coast is clear.

Check out the video below the break to see his parallel port trigger in action.

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This Animatronic Horus Guard Mask Is So Good, Even Anubis Would Be Fooled

November 17, 2011 by Mike Nathan 32 Comments

horus-guard-mask

[Jerome Kelty] is a big fan of the movie Stargate, and when he saw it for the first time, he wanted one of the awesome helmets worn by the Horus Guards. This isn’t the kind of thing you would normally find at your local costume shop, so he knew that he would have to build one of his own. After rejecting multiple designs over the years, he finally came up with a solution that he thought would work well.

His Horus Guard helmet was constructed primarily out of cardstock, papier-mâché, spray foam, and spackle. Don’t let that list of materials give you the wrong idea about this helmet however – it looks absolutely amazing!

Not only does it look good, but it moves just like the guard’s helmets in the movie too. To control the helmet’s movements [Jerome] used an Arduino animatronics setup he designed, which we’ve seen before in his slick Predator build from last year. The Arduino controls a set of 5 servos, which are tasked with turning the helmet’s head and actuating the fans mounted on either side.

Stick around to see a short video of the mask in action, and if you’re thinking of building one yourself, be sure to check out his writeup for a very thorough BoM.

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DIY LED Photography Lights

November 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

led-light-box

[Markus] had been drooling over some LED panels to use as a soft light source for photography, but being a hobbyist, he didn’t want to spend a ton of money to buy them. He figured that he had enough electronics know-how to build his own panels, while saving a boatload of cash in the process.

He hoped to keep the total cost under £100, so along with new items like LED light strips, he would have to use some stuff he had sitting around, like the metal cooking containers that make up the body of the lights. While originally planned for use in a different project, it turns out that the cooking containers were ideal for his lighting setup, since they are both durable and great heatsink material.

The remainder of the build is pretty straightforward. [Markus] used a pre-made LED dimmer to control the panel’s brightness, along with some tinted plexiglas to diffuse the light while bringing the color temperature into a more usable range.

While he missed his £100 mark, the lights look great – we just might have to build a few of them ourselves.

ColorHug: A Reasonably-priced, Completely Open Color Calibration Tool

November 15, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

colorhug-opensource-color-calibrator

[Richard] wanted to create a color profile for his computer monitor, but he wasn’t thrilled with the existing color calibration offerings he found for sale. Color calibration tools can be somewhat costly, but even more troubling to [Richard] was the fact that they are all closed source. Closed hardware and closed software can be a drag, especially when manufacturers drop support for a product, so he set off to design his own open-source monitor calibration tool.

Once his ColorHug sensor is placed against a monitor, it begins sampling colors from the screen, creating an ICC color profile from the data it gathers. The sensor is a Linux-only tool at the moment, but he has created a live CD from which a color profile can be created, then subsequently used in Windows or OSX.

While ColorHug doesn’t sport all the features of its commercial competitors, its color sampling rate is second to none, and since the software is open, anyone is free to implement any sort of functionality they wish.

[Richard] is currently selling finished ColorHug modules to anyone interested in giving them a test drive, but you can always build your own from the plans found at ColorHug’s Github repository.

[via Adafruit blog]

NES Controller Is A Slick Way To Carry Around Your Portable OS

November 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

nes-controller-linux-drive

[Oliver] had an old NES controller laying around, and without any other use for it, he decided to repurpose it as a portable storage device.

He gutted most of the controller, removing the plastic standoffs, leaving the D-pad and remaining buttons intact. He crammed a 32 GB flash drive inside, along with the guts from an SD card reader. Using a Dremel he cut several openings into the controller, one for the flash drive and SD card reader’s USB ports, as well as for the SD card itself. When the physical modifications were finished, he installed a small Linux distro on the flash drive, which can be run by any PC that supports booting from USB.

While some might argue, we think it’s a neat way to reuse an old gaming peripheral that he might have otherwise thrown out. The portable OS is something that would certainly come in handy, though we can’t wait until the Raspberry Pi is finished – it would be awesome to have a complete computer packed in there too.

ColorNode: A Drop-in GE Color Effects LED Controller

November 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

colornode-ge-color-effects-controller

[Paul] was looking to spice up his holiday decorations this year, so he picked up some GE Color Effects lights and started hacking away.

We’ve already seen how hacker-friendly these LED bulbs are, which is why [Paul] decided to give them a try. His ultimate goal was to synchronize several sets of lights from one location, which would unfortunately require that he run wires from his control board to each of the strings.

He then decided to go a different route, and build his own control board that would work as a drop-in replacement for GE’s controller circuitry. He wanted to retain the wireless control aspect of the lights, so he picked up some RFM12B wireless modules which happen to be well-supported by the folks at JeeLabs.

He modified their JeeNode board design to fit it in the Color Effects electronics enclosure, paring it back to the minimum components necessary to control his lights.

The hardware side of the ColorNode is complete, but the software is a work in progress. [Paul] says that once he gets things wrapped up, he will make the code available on his site.

Lego NXT Creations Are Even Cooler With WiFi On Board

November 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 2 Comments

nxt-wifi

The folks at Dexter Industries have just wrapped up a week of Lego NXT projects, most of which centered on the use of their NXT WiFi sensor. Developed over the last few months, the group has been hard at work refining their design and getting some of the kinks worked out, so now you too can control your NXT creations sans wires.

The demonstrations have covered various topics throughout the week, starting out with a short tutorial on how to use a computer to communicate with the NXT device using the TCP protocol. After taking a look at WiFi power-saving capabilities, they touched on pinging other networked machines as well as querying DNS records from an NXT device. An NXT-based webserver was the next project on the list, as was remote robot control over the Internet. Finally, they wrapped the week up by configuring their Lego robot to send a tweet.

If getting your NXT creations on the move with full-fledged network access is something that sounds interesting, be sure to check out their site for downloads, a WiFi manual, and more.