Lego Head Tracking

April 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

lego_tracking

[Epoch] Sent in this simple head tracking project using Lego pieces. He’s made a custom mount to hold 3 Lego light sensors on a baseball cap. Then, after modifying his webcam for IR with some floppy disk scraps, he loads up the free-track software and can control his games. For convenience, he has programmed the Lego Nxt to only turn on the lights while he’s holding a contact sensor. You can see it in action after the break. This appears to be very similar to [Johnny Lee’s] head tracking. Judging by the video, it’s not as smooth though.

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CNC Music Factory Still Alive

April 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 33 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKCX1CeXIjA]

With some careful programming and probably tedious testing, [Tim] was able to get his CNC router to play [Jonathan Coulton’s] “Still Alive”. He didn’t just tell the motors to spin at the correct speeds directly though. He computed the 3d vectors necessary to produce the notes. The router thinks it is just doing its job. We would love to see those vectors rendered out in 3d space. Imagine having a physical sculpture of “Still Alive” as seen by a CNC machine. This reminds us of the Obsolete Technology Band.

[via Skullydazed’s twitter]

RF Modem + 250mW Amplifier

April 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 37 Comments

[Trax] sent in his writeup on this RF modem with built in 250mW amplifier. The original power of the RF transceiver was around 10mW, his final results after testing were nearly 250mW. He was able to to easily transmit data over 1000 meters using his test setup. He states that he was actually able to achieve this without an antenna on the receiving side. That’s pretty impressive performance. It’s also worth noting that he soldered all of the components in place using a home clothing iron and some soldering paste. That must have been fairly tedious.

Capslocker 2

April 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

caps

Almost exactly a year ago, we posted the random USB capslocker. [Garrett] has revisited the idea to build a smaller, neater version. He has posted the build process to give us an idea how he goes about building things. The overall build is quite nice, but part if its neatness can be attributed to the fact that he had access to an Epilog laser cutter. If you think you might be using one in the near future, this is a great writeup for you.

[via the Hack a Day flickr pool]

Mac LCD Logo Tutorial

April 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

[Eddie], who made the Mac Logo LCD Mod, had posted a step by step tutorial on how to do it yourself. He basically just fully disassembled his MacBook, popped out the logo, put one from an iBook or Powerbook, then mounted a small LCD back there and routed it into a USB port internally. He says the extra electronics cause a tiny bulge in the monitor casing. We wonder if this couldn’t lead to stress damage on the main LCD in the long run.

[thanks Koray]

KanEye Tracking System Preview

April 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[vimeo=3952932]

[Tempt One] is a graffiti artist who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. He can no longer physically produce art, since his disease has taken his ability to control his arms. His friends, won’t let that be the end of it though. They’re building a visual tracking system to let him work by moving his eye. It seems like it would be very difficult to get any kind of a smooth curve out of eye movement, but the short demonstration video, which you can see after the break, does a decent job, at least for something this early in development. The source code isn’t released yet, but they do plan to do so. If you wanted to make your own, you could find some info in a past post of ours. We’re guessing they intend to use it with something along the lines of the laser tagging system.

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How-to: Fix Your Stupid Internet

April 1, 2009 by Eliot 26 Comments

aprilfools-1

Dear Hack a Day,
Websites keep publishing poorly executed jokes today; how can I fix this?

We’ve been getting a lot of questions on the tip line like the one above, so we put together this one-step illustrated how-to. If you’re not the physical labor type, you can use [Steve Lambert]’s SelfControl.