Sort Your Candy With A Raspberry Pi And Google Cloud Vision

October 31, 2016 by 15 Comments

If you have been off trick-or-treating and returned home with an embarassment of candy, what on earth can you do to mange the problem and sort it by brand?

Yes, it’s an issue that so many of us have had to face at this time of year. So much a challenge, that the folks at [Dexter Industries] have made a robotic candy-sorter to automate the task.

OK, there’s something of the tongue-in-cheek about the application. But the technology they’ve used is interesting, and worth a second look. Hardware wise it’s a Lego Mindstorms conveyor and hopper controlled by a Raspberry Pi through the BrickPi interface. All very well, but it’s in the software that the interest lies. They use the Raspberry Pi’s camera to take a picture to send off to Google Cloud Vision, which they then query to return a guess at the brand of the candy in question. The value returned is then compared to a list of brands to keep or donate to another family member, and the hopper tips the bar into the respective pile.  They provide full build details and code, as well as the video we’ve put below the break. So simple a child can explain it, sort of.

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Building Transistors With Transistors

October 31, 2016 by 15 Comments

Since the 1940s when the first transistor was created, transistors have evolved from ornery blocks of germanium wrangled into basic amplifiers into thousands and thousands of different devices made of all kinds of material that make any number of electrical applications possible, cheap, and reliable. MOSFETs can come in at least four types: P- or N-channel, and enhancement or depletion mode. They also bear different power ratings. And some varieties are more loved than others; for instance, depletion-mode, N-channel power MOSFETs are comparatively scarce. [DeepSOIC] was trying to find one before he decided to make his own by hacking a more readily available enhancement-mode transistor.

For those not intimately familiar with semiconductor physics, the difference between these two modes is essentially the difference between a relay that is normally closed and one that’s normally open. Enhancement-mode transistors are “normally off” and are easy to obtain and (for most of us) useful for almost all applications. On the other hand, if you need a “normally on” transistor, you will need to source a depletion mode transistor. [DeepSOIC] was able to create a depletion mode transistor by “torturing” the transistor to effectively retrain the semiconductor junctions in the device.

If you’re interested in semiconductors and how transistors work on an atomic level, [DeepSOIC]’s project will keep you on the edge of your seat. On the other hand, if you’re new to the field and looking to get a more basic understanding, look no further than these DIY diodes.

The Potowitzer: A Rapid Fire Potato Cannon

October 31, 2016 by 38 Comments

If you’ve ever fired a potato cannon, you’ll know that they are a raucous good time, but are somewhat clumsy to reload after each shot. Seeing an opportunity to improve on the design and minimize the delay between launches, [Danger First] have concocted a fast reloading potato cannon — or should I say — Potowitzer.

The key here is that they’ve gone through the extra effort of designing and building honest-to-goodness artillery rounds for their Potowitzer’s manual breech-loading mechanism. Foregoing the inconsistency of potatoes, they’ve 3D printed a bevy of bullets and sealed them with propane gas into PVC pipe cartridges. Metal contacts around the base to carry current from a BBQ lighter to the inside of the cartridge to ignite the propellant. Seeing it fire at about 18 rounds per minute is something special.

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By The Glow Of The CRT

October 31, 2016 by 47 Comments

If you are a certain age, you probably remember writing software (or playing Adventure) bathed in an amber or green light from an old CRT terminal. If you are even older, you might have found it way better than punching cards, but that’s another story. [Tobi] wanted to relive those days (well, sounds like he is too young to have lived them to start with) so he hooked up a VT220 terminal to his Linux box.

This isn’t that surprising. Linux’s forefather, Unix, expected these kind of terminals (or a hard copy TeleType) and all the trappings for working with a glass terminal are still in there. You do have to deal with a few configuration items that [Tobi] works through.

In fact, it appears that he wrote his blog post using vi on that very VT220 using a text-based Web browser to research the links. He has a lot of resources for connecting a terminal of any sort (or even a terminal emulator) to a Linux computer.

There’s been a lot of interest in old terminals lately. You see a lot of old VT100s lying around. I personally have an ADDS Regent 100 that occasionally connects to several of my computers. You can see it in the video below.

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What’s New, ESP-32? Testing The Arduino Library

October 31, 2016 by 30 Comments

In case you missed it, the big news is that a minimal Arduino core is up and working on the ESP32. There’s still lots left to do, but the core functionality — GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C, and WiFi — are all up and ready to be tested out. Installing the library is as easy as checking out the code from GitHub into your Arduino install, so that’s exactly what I did.

I then spent a couple days playing around with it. It’s a work in progress, but it’s getting to the point of being useful, and the codebase itself contains some hidden gems. Come on along and take a sneak peek.

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Put That Amateur Radio License To Use On 915 MHz

October 31, 2016 by 106 Comments

Amateur radio enthusiasts in the US will be interested in Faraday, an open-source digital radio that runs on 915 MHz, which amateur radio enthusiasts may know better as the 33 cm band.

You can transmit on 915 MHz without a license (in the US), taking advantage of the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) exemption. This means that there’s commodity hardware available for sending and receiving, which is a plus. But you can’t do so with any real power unless you have an amateur radio license. And that’s what makes Faraday interesting — it makes it very easy to transmit and receive digital data, with decent power and range, if you’re licensed. The band is currently under-utilized, so go nuts!

The hardware design and documentation is online, and so is the firmware. The founders of the project would like you to build out a big network of these devices, possibly meshing them together. Our only regret is that the 33 cm band is only really open for use in the US, both with a license and without. Of course, there’s very little the Faraday team can do about that.

We’re no strangers to digital-mode amateur radio around here. But if you’re an amateur who hasn’t played around with digital modes yet, this might be a good way to get your feet wet.

Thanks to [Daniel] for the tip!

Making VR A Little More Usable With A Pinch Gesture Ring

October 31, 2016 by 5 Comments

[Florian] wants to browse the web like an internet cowboy from a cyberpunk novel. Unfortunately, VR controllers are great for games but really incapacitate a hand for typing. A new input method was needed, one that would free his fingers for typing, but still give his hands detailed input into the virtual world.

Since VR goggles have… hopefully… already reached peak ridiculousness, his first idea was to glue a Leap Motion controller to the front of it. It couldn’t look any sillier after all.  The Leap controller was designed to track hands, and when combined with the IMU built into the VR contraption, did a pretty good job of putting his hands into the world. Unfortunately, the primary gesture used for a “click” was only registering 80% of the time.

The gesture in question is a pinching motion, pushing the thumb and middle finger together. He couldn’t involve a big button without incapacitating his hands for typing. It took a few iterations, but he arrived at a compact ring design with a momentary switch on it. This is connected to an Arduino on his wrist, but was out of the way enough to allow him to type.

It’s yet another development marching us to usable VR. We personally can’t wait until we can use some technology straight out of  Stephenson or Gibson novel.