The nitty gritty details are a little bit hidden, but [Sylvain]’s work is awesome enough that I just don’t care. He’s been doing research on robot learning with some tasty results. After all, who doesn’t want a robot to make breakfast for em? He’s taken the time to publish some source code, so robot made breakfast isn’t that far out of reach. mmmm.
Maker Faire 2008: SWARM
SWARM is a large scale kinetic art project. The electrically powered spheres move by shifting the batteries around the center axle. By tilting the central ring, th orb can steer as well. The SWARM members are currently radio controlled, but the plan is for them to eventually receive commands from a mother node. More information about the orbs’ design is available on the project wiki. A video of the wobbly buggers in motion is embedded after the break.
Maker Faire 2008: Stribe Music Controller
We saw a lot of interesting gear at Maker Faire last weekend and thought we’d highlight some of those projects this week. [Josh Boughey]’s Stribe was originally inspired by the monome 40h. It features of 16 columns of 64 LEDs for a total of 1024 individually addressable lights. Even with all those LEDs, PWM control means it can run off of USB power. 8 spectrasymbol softpots are used between the columns for user input. It’s really quite an amazing feat for being [josh]’s first board design. All of the circuit designs and firmware are available. Check out Flickr for more photos from this weekend.
Cornell ECE Final Projects: Spring 08
I was starting to wonder when [Bruce] would send in this years final projects from the Electrical and Computer Engineering students at Cornell University. The first project looks like a great one for the green geek – a controllable power usage monitoring power outlet. The music geeks should dig midi trumpet interface, but the car geeks might have problems keeping away from the soldering iron after they see the CAN bus SD card data acquisition system. There are plenty more, so go check em out.
Hacking Harmony For Linux
A while back, [Phil] got ticked off and started working on linux support for the Logitech Harmony remotes for quite a while. Having owned one of these sweet remotes, I can honestly say that yes, they rock, and yes, the driver software can be pretty freakin’ annoying. If you’ve got a Harmony remote and would like an alternative to the usual fare, check out [Phil]’s project.
Add Bluetooth Audio To Your GPS/etc
[sudija] wrote up a nice instructable on adding bluetooth audio output to a tomtom gps unit. It’s not too technically advanced, but you’ll have to add an audio jack if your gps lacks one. This looks like a great way to turn a cheaper unit into something suitable for a motorcycle rig.
Hackit: Ironman/movie Inspirations?
I got a chance to see the new Ironman movie last night, and it’s exactly the kind of film that kick-starts my brain into considering new projects. I’m opening up today’s hackit in a few directions:
1) Get any project ideas from Ironman?
2) Got any projects that were inspired by movie/tv/comic tech?
3) What’s your favorite source of inspiration?
