Tablet Interacts With Magnets, How Does That Work?

October 30, 2012 by 24 Comments

Making computers interact with physical objects is a favorite of the HCI gurus out there, but these builds usually take the form of image recognition of barcodes or colors. Of course there are new near field communication builds coming down the pipe, but [Andrea Bianchi] has figured out an easier way to provide a physical bridge between computer and user. He’s using magnets to interact with a tablet, and his idea opens up a lot of ideas for future tangible interfaces.

Many tablets currently on the market have a very high-resolution, low latency magnetometer meant for geomagnetic field detection. Yes, it’s basically a compass but Android allows for the detection of magnets, and conveniently provides the orientation and magnitude of magnets around a tablet.

[Andrea] came up with a few different interfaces using magnets. The first is just a magnets of varying strengths embedded into some polymer clay. When these colorful magnetic cubes are placed on the tablet, [Andrea]’s app is able to differentiate between small, medium, and large magnets.

There are a few more things [Andrea]’s app can do; by placing two magnets on an ‘arrow’ token, the app can detect the direction in which the arrow is pointing. It’s a very cool project that borders on genius with its simplicity.

You can check out [Andrea]’s demo video after the break.

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Portal Gun Hack Approaches 1.5 Million Views. More Fun Hacks To Come!

October 22, 2012 by 26 Comments

 

The quick and simple portal gun hack was published a little ver a week ago and has cleared almost 1.5 million views. This is just a taste of things to come as we plunge into creating more fun original content for hackaday. If you haven’t yet, you should go subscribe to our youtube channel.

We have many more exciting projects planned for the near future. Projects involving high voltage, lasers, and thermite! We could always use more ideas though. What projects would you like to see done? Think big, we want to remind people just how awesome hacking can be!

We now have access to some high speed cameras, a wonderful and professional gentleman named [Jay] who is an astounding video editor, and quite possibly the brightest readership in the universe. Let us know your ideas for awesome projects!

Nixie Clock Without A PCB

October 11, 2012 by 23 Comments

Looking for an artistic way to build circuits? Don’t want to design a PCB? The Lethal Nixie Tube Clock is a free form circuit that gives you the time one digit at a time. It uses a IN-1 Nixie tube to display the digits. This is driven by ten MPSA42 high voltage transistors. A IRF520 N-FET, inductor, and a diode are used as a switching power supply that generates the high voltage needed to drive the Nixie tube. It’s probably not lethal, but there are exposed high voltages in the cube. You’d definitely regret touching it.

An ATMega8 is used to control the clock. It drives the various digits of the Nixie tube, and generates a PWM output to switch the high voltage supply. Unfortunately, the schematic has been lost. If you’re interested in the switching supply, it’s likely similar to the one explained here.

Check out a video of the clock after the break.

Via Dangerous Prototypes

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STM32 Driving A PCIe Video Card

October 8, 2012 by 33 Comments

[Gpuhackr] chose his username to explain exactly how he spends his time. For instance, here he’s using an STM32 Discovery board to drive an AMD Radeon HD 2400 graphics card. The ARM microcontroller isn’t actually using the PCIe interface on the card. Instead, [Gpuhackr] has patched into the debugging interface built into the card itself. This isn’t quite as straight forward as it sounds, but if you do the wiring carefully it’s a pretty intersting way to connect an ARM to an LCD monitor.

This project would be almost impossible if it weren’t for the open source code which AMD has released. This lets him implement the card’s 3D rendering features. The demo directly programs the UVD Xtensa CPU which is on the video card. It draws a cube with color gradients on each side. The cube spins while the debug information is overlaid on the screen. In this case the ARM chip/board is really being used as a programmer to upload some custom firmware. But we think a real code-ninja could implement a communications protocol to open up a simple way to drive the card in real-time.

[Thanks uMinded]

OS X Port Of Gqrx Is The Easiest Way To Get Into Software Defined Radio

October 8, 2012 by 18 Comments

Many have tried to put together an easy package for running software defined radio packages on the Mac. Not many have succeeded the way [Elias]’ port of the gqrx SDR package has. It’s simply the easiest way to get a software defined radio up and running on the mac.

gqrx is a front end for the very popular GNU Radio software defined radio toolkit. Originally designed for the FUNcube SDR dongle, gqrx can also be made to work with one of the many, many USB TV tuners that have come out of China this past year for use as a software radio.

[Elias]’ port of gqrx isn’t the first app to put software defined radio on the Mac, but it certainly is the easiest. Simply by downloading [Elias] disk image, plugging in a TV tuner dongle, and starting the app, I was able to have a software radio receiver on my MacBook Air in less than a minute.

Everything required by GNU Radio and gqrx is already included, making this the easiest way to get SDR on a Mac. Very awesome work from [Elias], and we thank him.

Seeed Studio Shows Off Their Wares

October 4, 2012 by 4 Comments

Everyone’s favorite Open Hardware store – Seeed Studio – was at Maker Faire this last weekend. They showed off a bunch of cool toys, oscilloscopes, Arduino shields and other hardware goodness, but one of the more interesting products was from their B Squares line.

As [Colin] from Seeed showed us, each B Square is a small plastic enclosure about the size of a drink coaster. The corners of these squares are clad in metal, and each one has magnets inside. The idea behind the B Squares system is to provide power to other B Square boards via magnetic connections.

So far, Seeed has released an Arduino square, battery, solar, and LED squares, as well as iPod docks and prototyping boards. These boards can also be orthogonally, meaning it’s entirely possible to turn six B Squares into a B Cube.

These magnetic connections only provide power connections; there is currently no way to transfer data between different B Squares. We suspect, though, that anyone wanting to replicate the Apple MagSafe power adapter and invent a magnetic I2C bus would find these boards perfectly suited to the task.

Video after the break.

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Ginormous Ultimaker Can Print Slightly Smaller Ultimakers

September 30, 2012 by 14 Comments

[bwattendorf] showed off his Gigimaker, a huge version of a Ultimaker at the Maker Faire this weekend.

It’s got a print area 2.5 feet square and 3.5 feet high. Currently, the team is using the machine to print off parts for smaller desktop-sized 3D printers, but theoretically this printer could be used to print life-sized companion cubes or full sized [Nefertiti] busts.

If you’d like to build your own giant Ultimaker, grab a few sheets of plywood and grab the git repo for the Gigimaker.