Reader [Brien Schultz] didn’t like his laptop suspending every time he closed the lid to move around the house or to a different work area, so he turned that feature off. Of course that just led to him forgetting to put the thing to sleep when he really needed to, like when he was walking around all day with it in his backpack. To solve his self inflicted problem (common cause of many hacks) he wrote a .NET program to monitor the laptop’s accelerometer. The accelerometer is usually used to park the hard drive heads in case the laptop is falling (it’s also used for hilarity). If BedTime detects that the laptop is in motion, but is not being used it starts a countdown and eventually puts the laptop to sleep. Brien isn’t using the “sleep after X minutes” option because it would put the machine to sleep while it was open and he was just distracted for a few moments. Demo video after the break.
[Blind Tree Frog] sent in the Milkscanner. It’s an oh-so-simple method of mapping a 3d object. [fiezi] used a small tub, a lego mounted webcam, a small supply of milk and a bit of software to create the map and import it to moviesandbox.. The object is placed in the tub, then then it’s scanned by the camera as the milk level is slowly raised (in this case, via spoon power) and voila: 3d map.
Video is after the jump, or at the top of the read link.
Continue reading “Milkscanner – 3D Mapping That’s Good For You”
Just when I thought I’d seen most of the CNC mods out there, [Steve Ciciora] (who happens to be one of the driving forces behind the killacycle) sent in his diy solder paste dispenser *and* his diy pick and place machine. Both are extensions of his CNC taig mill. Hopefully [steve] will put up some more details of his mill mods.
It wasn’t [Ben Heck] this time. [Owen] sent in his modded iPod. Once the warranty was voided by some breakage, he decided to make sure it was *really* void. The fold is limited by the length of the wires – but I can’t tell from the description or pictures if he actually hinged it.
Update: I’m re-posting this thanks to some funky cms bug…
[Juergen] sent in his catcam project built. He used an inexpensive 1.3mp keychain camera with an ATTINY2313. The controller keeps the camera shut down until it’s time to take a picture. Then it powers it up, takes the shot, and returns to low-power mode. The cat adventures are actually kind of interesting. It wouldn’t work from under the car, but anyone feel like gps tracking their cat?
I’m on a 1-wire/home automation kick lately. It looks like he’s giving up on the router platform, but [barebottoms] did some interesting work with a couple of wireless routers (a belkin that he fried, and then onto a wrt54g) to create automated controls for his reef. Think of it as home automation for the fishes. It’s an interesting idea – a hacked wireless router could make a fairly robust and power efficient controller for simple HA applications. His site isn’t really that informative, I found the forum posts more interesting.
