Who would have thought that some corn starch could be made into toner transfer paper? We’re not sure of the advantages (perhaps its cheaper?), but if you have a lot of time or just love to get sticky [Matthew Sager] shows the proper method for making the paper, printing, and then etching a PCB.
If you’re just getting started making PCBs, we recommend you check out these DIY circuit etching videos to get a better grasp on the printing and etching steps.
Wanting to get back to playing with actual pieces, [Thomas Pototschnig] built a chess table that interfaces with the Internet. The table uses an custom setup to project the board on the frosted surface of the table. Chess moves from your internet opponent are displayed as arrows on the board so you can move the pieces. Your moves are detected by a webcam below the surface as this table actually functions as a multitouch display. From the description, it sounds like the projector was made from a 128×64 graphic LCD display. A 64×64 pixel area is used, with an LED below and a lens above. This works remarkably well. See for yourself after the break.
Want some other options for your chess setup? You can play against a robot arm, or if you’ve got 144 square feet of extra space you can build a really big board for the occasional game.
Continue reading “Chess Table: Physical Interface For Internet Games”
What we need in today’s handhelds is LESS resolution. Take a look at the video after the break to see the exciting action that [Bruno Pasquini] 4×4 LED matrix handheld game delivers. The device is made up of 16 bi-color LEDs, four buttons, and a PIC 16F628. There’s no schematic yet but it looks like there’s no need for shift registers, just some transistors to handle the current load for the rows of each color. We’ve seen a 64-pixel handheld that plays Super Mario Brothers, but this portable brings a top scrolling racing game with just 25% of that display size.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEUeJb6Pwt4&feature=player_embedded]
Last week, we posted a story about how to configure speech recognition at a beginner level. Several of the commenters expressed an interest in doing speech recognition for embedded devices. [Nickolay Shmyrev] volunteered to write some directions for those people. In this article, [Nickolay] will be taking you through the basics of setting up your embedded device with CMUsphinx an open source toolkit for speech recognition. He gives programming examples in both C and python. Though we are hosting this, we haven’t set it up and tried it, so please direct any questions you have at [Nickolay] in the comments.
Continue reading “Adding Speech Recognition To Your Embedded Platform.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRcWB3jwMo]
CubeStormer solves Rubik’s cubes and it does it quickly! Made entirely out of LEGO, a Mindstorm web camera is used to scan in the cube with four mechanical hands for manipulation. The device is capable of solving a random cube in less than 11 seconds. That’s quite a bit faster than the last Minstorm solver we saw, and the CuBear solver we are so fond of.
[Thanks Ferdinand]
Scooty is a balancing robot based around a PIC32. The project is the first iteration in a long road toward a ridable version. The video after the break shows some incredible promise. Scooty is pitted against a large rubber ball. The two roll into each other but Scooty maintains balance thanks to that powerful processor, an inertial sensor, and a range finder.
Scooty versus a ball isn’t really fair to the ball. We’d like to see Scooty versus the ball balancing robot.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkhjeEDaagQ]
[Andres Guzman] is chauffuering himself around the University of Illinois campus thanks to his wirelessly controlled mountainboard. He added a brushless motor to drive the rear axel with the help of a chain. Power is provided by a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery which we’ve seen used in other electric vehicles due to its lightweight properties. A wireless PlayStation 2 controller operates the motor but steering remains a lean-to-turn system.
