DIY Laser Tag Project Does It In Style

October 26, 2024 by 21 Comments

This DIY lasertag project designed by [Nii], which he brought to Tokyo Maker Faire back in September, is a treasure trove. It’s all in Japanese and you’ll need to visit X (formerly Twitter) to see it, but the images do a fine job of getting the essentials across and your favorite translator tool will do a fair job of the rest.

There’s a whole lot to admire in this project. The swing-out transparent OLED display is super slick, the electronics are housed on a single PCB, the back half of the grip is in fact a portable USB power bank that slots directly in to provide power, and there’s a really smart use of a short RGB LED strip for effects.

The optical elements show some inspired design, as well. An infrared LED points forward, and with the help of a lens, focuses the beam tightly enough to make aiming meaningful. For detecting hits, the top of the pistol conceals a custom-made reflector that directs any IR downward into a receiver, making it omnidirectional in terms of hit sensing but only needing a single sensor.

Want to know more? Check out [Nii]’s earlier prototypes on his website. It’s clear this has been in the works for a while, so if you like seeing how a project develops, you’re in for a treat.

As for the choice of transparent OLED displays? They are certainly cool, and we remember how wild it looks to have several stacked together.

RF Detector Chip Helps Find Hidden Cameras And Bugs

October 26, 2024 by 6 Comments

It’s a staple of spy thriller movies, that the protagonist has some kind of electronic scanner with which he theatrically searches his hotel room to reveal the bad guys’ attempt to bug him. The bug of course always had a flashing LED to make it really obvious to viewers, and the scanner was made by the props department to look all cool and futuristic.

It’s not so far-fetched though, while bugs and hidden cameras in for example an Airbnb may not have flashing LEDs, they still emit RF and can be detected with a signal strength meter. That’s the premise behind [RamboRogers]’ RF hunter, the spy movie electronic scanner made real.

At the rear of the device is an ESP32, but the front end is an AD8317 RF detector chip. This is an interesting and useful component, in that it contains a logarithmic amplifier such that it produces a voltage proportional to the RF input in decibels. You’ll find it at the heart of an RF power meter, but it’s also perfect for a precision field strength meter like this one. That movie spy would have a much higher chance of finding the bug with one of these.

For the real spies of course, the instruments are much more sophisticated.

Chinese Humanoid Robot Establishes New Running Speed Courtesy Of Running Shoes

October 26, 2024 by 37 Comments

As natural as walking is to us tail-less bipedal mammals, the fact of the matter is that it took many evolutionary adaptations to make this act of controlled falling forward work (somewhat) reliably. It’s therefore little wonder that replicating bipedal walking (and running) in robotics is taking a while. Recently a Chinese humanoid robot managed to bump up the maximum running speed to 3.6 m/s (12.96 km/h), during a match between two of Robot Era’s STAR1 humanoid robots in the Gobi desert.

For comparison, the footspeed of humans during a marathon is around 20 km/h and significantly higher with a sprint. These humanoid robots did a 34 minute run, with an interesting difference being that one was equipped with running shoes, which helped it reach these faster speeds. Clearly the same reasons which has led humans to start adopting footwear since humankind’s hunter-gatherer days – including increased grip and traction – also apply to humanoid robots.

That said, it looks like the era when humans can no longer outrun humanoid robots is still a long time off.

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Atari’s Pac-Man Flop: How A Classic Went Off-Course

October 25, 2024 by 35 Comments

For fans of retro games, Pac-Man is nothing short of iconic—a game so loved it’s been ported to nearly every console imaginable. But the Atari 2600 version, released in 1982, left players scratching their heads – as laid out in a video by [Almost Something]. Atari had licensed Pac-Man to ride the wave of its arcade success, but the home version, programmed solely by [Todd Fry], missed the mark, turning an arcade icon into a surprising lesson in over-ambitious marketing.

Despite the hype, [Fry] faced an almost impossible task: translating Pac-Man’s detailed graphics and complex gameplay to the Atari’s limited 4 K cartridge with only 128 bytes of RAM. Atari’s strict limitations on black backgrounds and its choice to cut costs by sticking with a 4 K cartridge left the game barely recognizable. The famous pellet-chomping maze became simpler, colors were changed, and the iconic ghosts—reduced to single colors—flickered constantly. And then, Atari went all in, producing twelve million copies, betting on the success of universal appeal. In a twist, Pac-Man did sell in record numbers (over seven million copies) but still fell short of Atari’s expectations, leaving millions of unsold cartridges eventually dumped in a New Mexico landfill.

This debacle even kind of marked Atari’s 1983 decline. Still, Pac-Man survived the hiccup, evolving and outlasting its flawed adaptation on the 2600. If you’re interested in learning more about the ins and outs of game ports, check out the fantastic talk [Bob Hickman] gave during Supercon 2023.

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Retrotechtacular: Making Enough Merlins To Win A War

October 25, 2024 by 16 Comments

From the earliest days of warfare, it’s never been enough to be able to build a deadlier weapon than your enemy can. Making a sharper spear, an arrow that flies farther and straighter, or a more accurate rifle are all important, but if you can’t make a lot of those spears, arrows, or guns, their quality doesn’t matter. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality of its own.

That was the problem faced by Britain in the run-up to World War II. In the 1930s, Rolls-Royce had developed one of the finest pieces of engineering ever conceived: the Merlin engine. Planners knew they had something special in the supercharged V-12 engine, which would go on to power fighters such as the Supermarine Spitfire, and bombers like the Avro Lancaster and Hawker Hurricane. But, the engine would be needed in such numbers that an entire system would need to be built to produce enough of them to make a difference.

“Contribution to Victory,” a film that appears to date from the early 1950s, documents the expansive efforts of the Rolls-Royce corporation to ramp up Merlin engine production for World War II. Compiled from footage shot during the mid to late 1930s, the film details not just the exquisite mechanical engineering of the Merlin but how a web of enterprises was brought together under one vast, vertically integrated umbrella. Designing the engine and the infrastructure to produce it in massive numbers took place in parallel, which must have represented a huge gamble for Rolls-Royce and the Air Ministry. To manage that risk, Rolls-Royce designers made wooden scale models on the Merlin, to test fitment and look for potential interference problems before any castings were made or metal was cut. They also set up an experimental shop dedicated to looking at the processes of making each part, and how human factors could be streamlined to make it easier to manufacture the engines.

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DIY 3D Hand Controller Using A Webcam And Scripting

October 25, 2024 by 3 Comments

Are you ready to elevate your interactive possibilities without breaking the bank? If so, explore [Caio Bassetti]’s tutorial on creating a full 3D hand controller using only a webcam, MediaPipe Hands, and Three.js. This hack lets you transform a 2D screen into a fully interactive 3D scene—all with your hand movements. If you’re passionate about low-cost, accessible tech, try this yourself – not much else is needed but a webcam and a browser!

The magic of the project lies in using MediaPipe Hands to track key points on your hand, such as the middle finger and wrist, to calculate depth and positioning. Using clever Three.js tricks, the elements can be controlled on a 3D axis. This setup creates a responsive virtual controller, interpreting hand gestures for intuitive movement in the 3D space. The hack also implements a closed-fist gesture to grab and drag objects and detects collisions to add interactivity. It’s a simple, practical build and it performs reliably in most browsers.

For more on this innovation or other exciting DIY hand-tracking projects, browse our archive on gesture control projects, or check out the full article on Codrops. With tools such as MediaPipe and Three.js, turning ideas into reality gets more accessible than ever.

Can You Homebrew A Running Shoe?

October 25, 2024 by 8 Comments

Unless you spend all your time lounging on the sofa, you probably own at least one pair of shoes. But have you ever thought to make your own to improve some aspect of your life? YouTube channel Answer in Progress set out to do precisely that, but it didn’t quite work out.

When you (well, other people) get into running, it’s tempting to believe a lot of the shoe company hype and just drop hundreds of dollars on the latest ‘super shoe’ and hope that will help you break your target time. But do you actually need to buy into all this, or can you make something yourself? The project aimed to get the 5k time down significantly, at any cost, but primarily by cheating with technology. The team set out to look at the design process, given that there is indeed a fair amount of science to shoe design. Firstly, after a quick run, the main issues with some existing shoes were identified, specifically that there are a lot of pain points; feet hurt from all the impacts, and knees take a real pounding, too. That meant they needed to increase the sole cushioning. They felt that too much energy was wasted with the shoes not promoting forward motion as much as possible; feet tended to bounce upwards so that a rocker sole shape would help. Finally, laces and other upper sole features cause distraction and some comfort issues, so those can be deleted.

A thicker mid-sole allows for a rolled shape

The plan was to make a ‘sock’ shoe style, with an upper in one piece and stretchy enough to slip on without laces. The process started by wrapping the foot in cling film and then a few layers of duct tape to fix the shape. This was split down the top to extract the foot, open out the pattern, and transfer it to some nylon fabric. The outer profile was transferred and cut out with simple hand tools in a fashion that would allow the shape to be reconstructed as it was glued to a sole. It sounds simple, but it’s pretty fiddly work.
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