Hackaday Prize Entry: Wheelchair User Pressure Relief Indicator System

September 30, 2017 by 3 Comments

It is difficult to put yourself as an able-bodied person into the experiences of a person with a physical disability. Able-bodied people are quick with phrases such as “Confined to a wheelchair” with little idea of what that really means, and might be surprised to meet wheelchair users who would point out that far from being a prison their chair might, in fact, be their tool of liberation.

It is also difficult for an able-bodied person to understand some of the physical effects of using a wheelchair. In particular, some wheelchair users with paralysis can suffer from dangerous pressure sores without being aware of them due to their loss of feeling. Such people, therefore, have a regime of exercises designed to relieve the pressure that causes the sores, and these exercises must be completed as often as every half hour. They can be inconvenient and difficult to perform, so in an effort to help people in that position there is a Hackaday Prize entry that provides feedback on how effectively the exercise regime has been performed.

The project puts an array of force-sensitive resistors on the bed of the chair underneath its cushion and monitors them with an Arduino before giving a feedback to the user via a set of LEDs. So far they have created a first prototype, and are awaiting parts and recruiting users for testing a second.

It would be nice to think that this project would have a positive impact on the lives of the people it aims to help. It’s not the first time the Hackaday Prize has ventured into this field, as the 2015 winner demonstrates.

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LED Princess Dress Also Lights Up Girl’s Face

September 30, 2017 by 14 Comments

We’re pretty sure that [Luke] took Uncle of the Year last Halloween when he made an RGB LED princess dress for his niece. He recently found the time to document the build with a comprehensive how-to that’s just in time for Halloween ’17.

[Luke] made the system modular so that his niece could use it with any dress. The RGB LED strips are actually fastened down the inside of a petticoat — a fluffy, puffy kind of slip that’s worn underneath the dress. The LEDs face in toward the body, which helps diffuse the light. [Luke] first attached the strips with their own adhesive and then spent a lot of time sewing them down so they stayed put. At some point, he found that hot glue worked just as well.

The coolest part of this project (aside from the blinkenlights of course) is the power source. [Luke] used what he already had lying around: an 18V Ryobi battery pack. He wired a step-converter to it using a printed cap from Shapeways that’s designed to connect metal clips to the battery contacts. This cap really makes these packs useful for a lot of projects that need long-lasting portability.

These batteries are rated for 240W, which is overkill considering the load. But there’s a reason: it keeps heat to a minimum, since the electronics are hidden inside a cute little backpack. Speaking of cute, you can see his niece model the dress after the break.

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Enresoning An IPhone 8 Ring

September 30, 2017 by 54 Comments

The iPhone 8 was just released last week, and that means some people were standing in line in front of an Apple store for hours waiting to get their hands on the latest and greatest glowing rectangle. [Patrick Adair] had a better idea: he would stand in front of an Apple store for four hours, then do something productive with his new smartphone. With the help of a waterjet, some resin, a lathe, and some very fine grades of sandpaper, he created the Apple Ring.

Setting aside the whole process of actually acquiring an iPhone 8 on launch day, the process of turning an iPhone into a ring is more or less what you would expect. First, the iPhone was cut into ring-shaped pieces on a waterjet cutter. Special care was taken to avoid the battery, and in the end [Patrick] was able to get a nice chunk ‘o phone that included the camera lens.

This ring piece was then embedded in clear resin. For this, [Patrick] used Alumilite epoxy, a pressure pot, and a toaster oven to cure the resin. Once the phone parts were firmly encased for the rest of eternity, the ring blank moved over to the lathe. The center of the ring was bored out, and the process of sanding, polishing and gluing in all the tiny parts that fell out during the process commenced. The end result actually looks pretty great, and even though it’s probably a little too bulky, it is a remarkable demonstration of the craft of turning.

You can check out [Patrick]’s video below, along with a video from the Waterjet Channel showing the deconstruction of a glowing rectangle.

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Test your speed

Modern Strongman Games Test Your Speed Instead

September 30, 2017 by No comments

Step right up! What would a Makerfaire be without some carnival games? And being a Makerfaire, they could of course be modernized versions. In [avishorp]’s case, he made a series of games that test your speed and look very much like the old strongman game, aka high striker or strength tester.

In the strongman game, you smash a lever with all your might using a hammer. A puck on the other end of the lever then shoots up a tower, hopefully high enough to hit a bell, winning you a prize. In [avishorp]’s games the puck, tower and bell are all replaced with an LED strip. In the swipe game, the faster you swipe your hand sideways over two optical proximity sensors, the higher the LEDs light up. In the drum game, the speed with which you drum on a rubber disk with embedded accelerometer, the higher the LEDs light up. The chase and response games both involve buttons that you have to rapidly hit, to similar effect.

For the brains, each game is controlled by an Adafruit Trinket board. [Avishorp] chose to use the PlatformIO IDE instead of the Arduino IDE to write them, preferring its modern editor, but he didn’t like that it doesn’t print and that it doesn’t tell you the final file size. The latter issue caused him to overwrite the bootloader, something that he understandably considered a major inconvenience.

Check out his page for more details, Fritzing diagrams, links to code, and all game videos. Meanwhile we’ve included clips of the drum and swipe games below.

And if it’s more carnival games you’re looking for, how about this adult-sized Sit ‘n Spin made using a rear differential and axle assembly out of an old car or truck. Or maybe you prefer something less likely to make you woozy, in which case you can try fishing with the Bass Master 3000.

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MIDI To CV/Gate The Easy Way

September 30, 2017 by 7 Comments

Let’s say you’ve got a modular synthesizer. You’re probably a pretty cool person. But all your cool laptop DJ friends keep showing off their MIDI-controlled hardware, and you’re getting jealous. Well, [little-scale] has the build for you.

The Teensy 3.6 is the current top-of-the-line Teensy from PJRC, and it’s [little-scale]’s weapon of choice here. With USB-MIDI and two 12-bit DACs on board, it’s made creating an interface between the worlds of analog and digital music into a remarkably simple job. Control voltages for pitch and velocity are pushed out over the analog pins, while pin 29 is used for gate signals.

It’s a testament to the amount of development that has gone into the Teensy platform that such projects can be built with virtually no off-board components. The build is a further step forward in simplicity from [little-scale]’s previous work, using a Teensy 2 with an offboard DAC to generate the output voltages.

Here at Hackaday, we’ve always been big fans of adding computer control to analog hardware. This CNC mod to a guitar pickup winding machine is a great example.

Teletype Machine Resurrected

September 29, 2017 by 10 Comments

A teleprinter is, at its heart, an automatic typewriter.  It’s electrically controlled and has some smarts to be able to decode an incoming message and has something that will move the keys.   These printers have been in use since the late 1800’s and [AethericLtd] have refurbished an old 1930’s design and given it a bit of steampunk flair.

As is common with older mechanical devices that have been sitting for extended periods of time, the first thing this machine needed was a bath. The machine was separated into its three main parts and soaked in a degreasing solvent. The keyboard was the dirtiest, so it got an overnight soak. Since little of the mechanism was electrical, most of it could be submerged which helped with the cleaning.

The next step in the restoration was lubrication. In order to do a proper job, the manuals (which were available online) were consulted and synthetic motor oil used for lubrication. Once all the hundreds of parts were oiled, [AethericLtd] started working on the wiring. The original wiring in this machine was called Deltabeston – a type of wire by General Electric which uses asbestos insulation. To play it safe, that wire was left alone. The selector magnet required only 4 volts to pull up, but 4 volts wasn’t enough to run the machine. The power supply used was a 120 VDC, 200 mA supply through a 2 KΩ, 10 W resistor.

Once everything was back together and working, [AethericLtd] could take machine out and show it off. The website describes not only the restoration process but also the setup, how to connect to the machine and how to communicate with the machine. Great work! If you are interested in these machines, there have been a few Teleprinter projects on the site before: this one has been modified to connect to a modern modem, and this one prints out tweets.

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Reuleaux Coaster

September 29, 2017 by 15 Comments

What’s better than a cool build? A cool build with valuable advice! Add a few flashy pictures and you have [Martin Raynsford]’s Reuleaux triangle coasters blog post. [Martin Raynsford] wanted to share his advice about the importance of using jigs and we’re sold. He was able to make 100 coasters in a single day and if he’s like us, after number ten, the work gets a little hurried and that is when mistakes are made.

Jig is a broad term when it comes to tooling but essentially, it holds your part in place while you work on it. In this case, a jig was made to hold the coaster pieces while they were glued together. [Martin Raynsford] didn’t need any registration marks on the wood so even the back is clean. If you look closely, the coaster is two parts, the frame and the triangle. Each part is three layers and they cannot separated once the glue dries. If any part doesn’t line up properly, the whole coaster is scrap wood.

This robot arm engraved 400 coasters in a day but maybe you would prefer if you simply had your beer delivered to your new coasters.

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