Newest Hardware Bounty, The Open Lidar Project

November 17, 2010 by 29 Comments

Inspired by the successful Kinect bounty put out by Adafruit, [gallamine] of the RobotBox community has posted his own $200 $400 bounty for the first person who can hack the scanning LIDAR from Neato Robotic’s XV-11 vacuumbot. This sensor would be particularly useful to any robotic makers out there, because even the full retail price of the vacuum is less than the cost of most standalone LIDAR units, which often run upwards of $1000. The bounty seems to be growing every day, starting out at $200, and doubling thanks to a couple of other interested parties.

Luckily, from what we hear, the sensor was never made to be hack-proof (and perhaps even secretly hack friendly?), seeing as one of the prime developers of the sensor is a member of a certain Home Brew Robotics Club. We love it when companies are nice to hackers, and we hope to see more examples of this in the future. Not sure what the XV-11 is? Be sure to check out the video after the break for info about the vacuum and its scanning LIDAR.

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Making Model Rocket Motor Igniters

November 16, 2010 by 28 Comments

[Stephan Jones] has an easy method for making your own model rocket engine igniter. The solid state motors used in this hobby consume one igniter with each electrically triggered launch. Whether you’re making your own motors or not, this construction technique should prohibit you from every buying an igniter again. The process involves bending some nichrome wire around a paper clip, adding some structural support to the leads using masking tape, and insulating the business end with a quick dip in paint.

Now would be a good time to send us your launchpad hacks. All we’ve seen so far is a launchpad for water rockets.

[via Make]

Paper Touchpad

November 16, 2010 by 36 Comments

If you don’t mind getting your fingers a little dirty you can replace your mouse with a piece of paper. [Dr. West] made this touchpad himself, which measures signals at the corners of the paper using four voltage dividers. The paper has been completely covered with graphite from a pencil (which we see in hacks from time to time), making it conductive. The user wears an anti-static strap that grounds their hand, allowing an Arduino to calculate contact points on two axes when a finger completes the circuit. See this controlling a cursor in the video after the break.

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How To Weigh A Bee Hive

November 16, 2010 by 14 Comments

Did you know weighing bee hives was even necessary? Of course it is. Monitoring hive weight can tell a beekeeper a lot about the size of the swarm, their harvesting habits, and the yield they are producing.

We had to cover this hack because it’s a fine piece of engineering. [Trearick] designed a bee hive scale that lifts one side of the hive to calculate weight. Using easy to find metal brackets, a hinge, a pulley, and some plywood he built a prying device. The three teeth slip in between the hive and its base and can be separated by squeezing together the plywood handles on the opposite side. This lifts one end of the hive, measuring the force needed to do so using a luggage scale. The readout should be roughly 1/2 the total hive weight. This measurement takes seconds to complete, uses a bulb level on the scale to help ensure consistency, and creates little or no disturbance to our flying friends.

It’s nice to see a Hymenoptera hack that helps in giving bees a healthy place to live, instead of killing wasps.

DTG: Improved Printing On T-shirts

November 16, 2010 by 21 Comments

[Jeff German] improved upon his DIY direct to garment printer an ended up with a machine he thinks is equivalent to anything you can buy commercially. We last looked in on this project in June but much has been done since then. Most notably, there are build instructions available (requires login). [Jeff’s] printer is based around an Epson R1900 plus the base that holds and feed a garment. Take a look after the break to see it printing full color designs in high resolution. From the YouTube description it sounds like he wants to go into production with this. Kudos to him for also sharing the build techniques.

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Jeri Makes Flexible EL Displays

November 16, 2010 by 19 Comments

A failed chemistry experiment led [Jeri Ellsworth] to discover a flexible substrate for electroluminescent displays. We’re familiar with EL displays on the back of a glass panel like you would find in an audio receiver, but after making a mesh from aluminum foil [Jeri] looked at using the porous metal to host phosphors. She starts by cleaning foil and using a vinyl sticker to resist etching portions of the aluminum. It then goes into a bath of boric acid, electrified with the foil as the anode. As the foil etches she tests the progress by shining a laser through the foil. After this the phosphors are applied to the back surface of the foil, covered in a dielectric, and topped off with a conductive ink that will carry the AC necessary to excite the phosphors. This is layering materials in reverse compared to her EL PCB experiments. See [Jeri] explain this herself in the clip after the break.

You can see above that this produces a pretty well-defined display area. It reminds us of that color changing paint display. We think it would be worth a try to build a few 7-segment displays using this method.

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Gear Indicator For Suzuki Motorcycle

November 15, 2010 by 26 Comments

This little board serves as a current gear indicator for a motorcycle. It was designed with the Suzuki V-Storm motorcycles in mind as they have a sensor built into the gearbox. Other gear indicators rely on sensors on the shifters themselves, but reading the voltage level from a gearbox sensor gives much more reliable information.

The voltage measurement is handled by an ATmega88 microcontroller which in turn drives the 8×8 LED display. Also built into the system is a temperature sensor and photoresistor. The firmware takes advantage of both of these inputs, displaying temperature when in sixth gear or at the push of a button, and dimming the display based on ambient light. There are also settings for screen rotation, and user preferences.

We didn’t find schematics or software but this should be pretty easy to replicate. If you need a primer for AVR programming we’ve got you covered.

[Thanks Michal]