Demonstration of the PMDG 737 being controlled by a blind user using Talking Flight Monitor

Flying Blind: Taking Flight Simulation To A New Level In Accessibility

November 2, 2021 by 14 Comments

Software developers [Andy Borka] and [Jason Fayre] have a love for aviation. They are also both totally blind. They’ve developed software called Talking Flight Monitor, and it has made flight simulation possible for anyone with impaired vision or blindness, as you can experience in the blurry video below the break. What draws them to aviation and flight simulators?

This fascination with flight is not limited to the sighted, and who wouldn’t want to experience what it’s like to be in cockpit of a modern airliner? I still recall the awe that I felt when at 9 years old, I glanced the flight deck of a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 as I boarded the aircraft. The array of lights, buttons, switches, and gauges dazzled me for years to come. I wanted to know how all of it worked. I wanted to be a pilot. A few years later I discovered Flight Simulator 4 on a 286, and I was hooked for life.

For the vision impaired this presents a problem. Flight simulators are by nature extremely visual, and they lack the text based interface that would allow a screen reader to help a visually impaired person make use of the simulator. Enter Talking Flight Monitor.

[Andy] and [Jason] have worked with PMDG Simulations to create text friendly interfaces for the 737 and 777 produced by PMDG. These ultra-realistic aircraft are available for the Prepar3D flight Simulator, and they result in a combination that blurs the line between Flight Simulator and Flight Training. By modifying these aircraft with accessible control panels, Talking Flight Monitor allows a completely blind flight simulator user to take off, navigate, and even land without ever seeing the screen.

Talking Flight Monitor makes flight possible using over 70 keyboard shortcuts. Both autopilot control and full manual control of the aircraft simulation are possible. Compatibility with standard simulation software is maintained in such a way that tutorials for programming flight computers not controlled by Talking Flight Monitor will still work. It even includes its own voice, so it does not require a screen reader to use.

Our hats are off to [Andy] and [Jason] for their hard work, diligence, and true application of the Hacker spirit. Thanks to [Mike Stone] for this most excellent tip.

[Note: The images in this post are produced by a community of blind flight simulator users who are not concerned with visual quality. They have been intentionally left blurry.]

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How To Get Into Cars: Endurance Racing Builds

November 2, 2021 by 21 Comments

Many an automotive enthusiast finds themselves at a track day eventually. Typically, this involves competing against the clock to better one’s laptimes in short sessions throughout the day. Such events are fun, but it often creates a perishing thirst for a greater level of competition.

Regularity and endurance events are often the next step up for a lot of people. These events involve long runs at race pace that stress a car to (or beyond!) the breaking point. Careful preparation is required if one is to see out the race to the chequered flag. Let’s break down what you’ll need to consider.

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Hardware Project Becomes Successful Product For Solo Developer

November 2, 2021 by 26 Comments

[Michael Lynch] has been a solo developer for over three years now, and has been carefully cataloguing his attempts at generating revenue for himself ever since making the jump to being self-employed. Success is not just hard work; it is partly knowing when the pull the plug on an idea, and [Micheal] has been very open about his adventures in this area. He shares the good news about a DIY project of his that ended up becoming a successful product, complete with dollar amounts and frank observations.

About a year ago, we covered a project he shared called TinyPilot, which is an effective KVM-over-IP device, accessible over the web, that could be built with about $100 worth of parts. [Micheal] found it to be a fun and useful project, and decided to see if he could sell kits. However, he admits he didn’t have high expectations, and his thoughts are probably pretty familiar to most hardware types:

I questioned whether there was a market for this. Why would anyone buy this device from me? It was just a collection of widely available hardware components.

Well, it turns out that he was onto something, and the demand for his device became immediately clear. He’s since given TinyPilot more features, an attractive case, and even provides a support plan for commercial customers. This is an excellent reminder that sometimes, what is being sold isn’t the collection of parts itself. Sometimes, what’s being sold is a solution to a problem people have, and those people are time-poor and willing to pay for something that just works.

It’s great to see [Michael] find some success as a solo developer, but his yearly wrap-up covers much more than just the success of TinyPilot as a product, so be sure to check it out if you’re at all interested in the journey of working for yourself.

30 Days Of Terror: The Logistics Of Launching The James Webb Space Telescope

November 2, 2021 by 21 Comments

Back during the 2019 Superconference in Pasadena, I had the chance to go to Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach campus to get a look at the James Webb Space Telescope. There is the high-bay class 10,000+ cleanroom in building M8, my wife and I along with fellow space nerd Tom Nardi got a chance to look upon what is likely the most expensive single object ever made. The $10 billion dollar space observatory was undergoing what we thought were its final tests before being packaged up and sent on its way to its forever home at the L2 Lagrange point.

Sadly, thanks to technical difficulties and the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be another two years before JWST was actually ready to ship — not a new story for the project, Mike Szczys toured the same facility back in 2015. But the good news is that it finally has shipped, taking the very, very slow first steps on its journey to space.

Both the terrestrial leg of the trip and the trip through 1.5 million kilometers of space are fraught with peril, of a different kind, of course, but still with plenty of chances for mission-impacting events. Here’s a look at what the priceless and long-awaited observatory will face along the way, and how its minders will endure the “30 days of terror” that lie ahead.

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Hedgehog Gesture Sensor Built With Cheap Time-of-Flight Modules

November 2, 2021 by 6 Comments

Time-of-flight sensors used to be expensive obscurities, capable of measuring the travel time of photons themselves and often used for tracking purposes. However, the technology is cheaper now, such that [jean.perardel] has used TOF sensors to build a useful and affordable gesture-tracking system.

The system relies on four VL53L1X time of flight sensors, which have a 16×16 scanning array and communicate over the I2C bus. Controlling the show is an Arduino MKR1010, though the project should be achievable with a range of other microcontrollers, too.

The device is built into a cute hedgehog-like form factor, with an LCD screen acting as the face. It displays facial expressions which show how the system is interpreting and responding to gestures. It gives the project lots of personality, which makes using the system more fun. Gestures from the system can be used to send keystrokes over USB, control relays or servos, or even fire IR signals to control TVs and other hardware.

It actually seems like a useful gesture control interface, one that could become a useful part of a workstation setup. We’ve seen gesture controls put to other uses too, like controlling robot arms. Video after the break.

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Janksy Robot Paints Murals One Dot At A Time

November 2, 2021 by 22 Comments

[Stuff Made Here] has a new shop, with a huge blank wall. A blank white wall just wouldn’t do, so rather than paint the wall himself, he designed a robot to do it for him. (Video, embedded below.)

The result is Janksy. A huge machine made of metal, wood, and 3D printed parts. Janksy is an ingenious design in that it has two sets of X and Y axis.  A large, slow-moving system of rails and cables positions the robot roughly in the right area of the wall. From there a much smaller, but faster and more precise motion system makes the final moves.

The “business end” of Janksy is of course a paint sprayer; in this case a Harbor Freight model. The medium of choice is acrylic paint, as Janksy will be painting for several days, and didn’t want to gas himself with the volatile solvents of more traditional paints.

Janksy mainly sprays dots of paint. Up close you’ll only see the dots, but step back a bit and a full image takes shape. It’s a technique called Pointillism, which puts Janksy in the company of artists like Georges Seurat and
Vincent van Gogh.

While human artists mix colors to produce the hue they want, robots can’t easily do that. [Stuff Made Here] spends quite a bit of time explaining basic color theory, and how dots of cyan, magenta, and yellow will combine in the eye to produce colors – much the way a monitor uses pixels of red, green, and blue light.

After all this work, you might be wondering what [Stuff Made Here] would want on his wall. Well, let’s just say that he loves his wife, even though his pranks on here often elicit an exasperated glare. Watch the video after the break for the full story.

You don’t have to build a huge drawing robot though – we’ve seen some great plotters on a much smaller scale, including one that will play tic-tac-toe.

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Modded GBA SP Does Its Best Switch Impression

November 1, 2021 by 4 Comments

The whole idea behind the Nintendo Switch is that the system isn’t just a handheld, but can be converted into a more traditional home game console when placed into its dock. The wireless controllers even pop off the sides so you can kick back on the couch and enjoy your big-screen gaming from a distance. Judging by how many units Nintendo has sold of their latest system, it’s clearly a winning combination.

Which is probably why [Tito] of Macho Nacho and his friend [Kyle Brinkerhoff] decided to recreate some of the Switch’s core features using one of Nintendo’s older handhelds, the Game Boy Advance SP. There was already a video-out mod kit on the market for the GBA SP that would let them play games on the TV, but the team still had to figure out how to make a dock for the 18 year old handheld, plus get it working with the official Switch Joy-Cons.

Wiring the custom PCB into the GBA SP

Lucky, this crew is no stranger to developing impressive GBA SP add-ons. Last month they took the wraps off of an expanded 3D printed rear panel for the system that housed a number of upgrades, such as an expanded battery pack and support for Bluetooth audio.

This mod uses a similarly expanded “trunk” for the GBA, but this time it’s to hold the rails the Joy-Cons mount to, as well as the electronics required to get the modern controllers talking to the Game Boy. Namely, a Raspberry Pi Zero and a custom PCB designed by [Kyle] that uses a dozen transistors to pull the system’s control inputs low when the Pi’s GPIO pins go high.

[Tito] doesn’t seem to mention it in the video below, but we’re assuming the dock component of this project is just a 3D printed box with a connector sticking up for the GBA SP’s link cable port, since that’s where the TV-out modification outputs its video. Incidentally that means you don’t really need the dock itself, but it certainly looks cool.

At the end of the video [Tito] goes over a few of the rough edges of the current build, including the rather lengthy pairing process to get the Joy-Cons talking to the Raspberry Pi. But ultimately, he says that not only does the system feel good in his hands, but playing those classic games on the big screen has been a nice change of pace.

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