Playing Pong Or Breakout On The Nexus Q

July 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 2 Comments

Since Google announced the Nexus Q media streaming device at the Google developers conference a few weeks ago, a lot of devs have been toying around with the idea of running Android apps on this small media sphere. [Det] over at BrickSimple threw his hat into the ring with a Pong and/or Breakout app that showcases the huge rotary volume knob on the Q.

The Nexus Q was hacked into running proper Android apps not long after it made its way into the hands of Google IO conference attendees. Of course with no way to get user input into Google’s little sphere, that hack was of questionable utility. Recently, [kornyone] over on the XDA developers forum got USB HID input on the Q, allowing for full mouse and keyboard support.

Not much has been said about the Q’s most prominent physical feature, the half hemisphere rotary encoder that serves as the volume knob. To build his Pong/Breakout clone, [Det]’s app simply responds to volume up/volume down events by moving the paddle to the left or right.

A neat build, and hopefully we’ll see a few more Nexus Q hacks in short order.

Android Controlled Monitor Stand Uses Marbles As Ball Bearings

July 6, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

[mobile_earth_explorer] sent in an Instructable he put together documenting an Android-controlled rotating monitor stand he built.

The stand itself is three disks turned on a lathe out of a 18mm thick board. After turning these disks, [mobile_earth_explorer] hopped over to his bench grinder and made a semicircular tool to carve out the track for the ball bearings.

Once the disks could rotate freely on each other, the only thing left was to carve out a space for the servo, Arduino, a pair of pots, and the wiring. The pots control the maximum speed of the monitor stand as well as provide a manual rotation control for when your phone is across the room.

[mobile_earth_explorer] wrote the Android app so up to five of these swiveling monitors can be controlled by just one Arduino; yes, that might be overkill for home or office use, but we’re sure it would be highly useful for some sort of presentation.

You can check out a few videos going over the conception and construction of [mobile_earth_explorer]’s monitor stands after the break.

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Using An Android As A Webserver

June 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

In the latest episode of XDA TV [Adam Outler] turned his Android phone into a webserver. At first this might sound comical, but the ever-increasing power of our handhelds makes it a pretty legitimate option. It’s hard to come up with concrete uses off the top of our head, but we’re sure there’s value in being able to pull the phone out of your pocket and serve some content.

The app BotBrew Basil makes the installation process nearly automatic. It gives you point-and-click access to install the lighttpd webserver package and set the daemon to run automatically at boot time. That’s it! Of course you need to supply your own HTML to be served. [Adam] used an HTML5 website template for this.

Next you also need a way to resolve the address of the phone. In this case it’s assigned a static IP from the router, and a dynamic DNS service provides a link that maps to the router’s location. But since these phones are running Linux (at least on the lowest level) it should be pretty easy to add a cron job which will send IP address updates to the service if you want to take the ‘webserver’ out in the world with you. You can watch the entire video after the break.

Ironically this is a big hardware upgrade for [Adam’s] webserver. The previous version was running from an Evalbot.

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Shake Phone To Start Scooter

June 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

This scooter starts right up with a shake of your Android device. This shake must be done from front-to-back, because a side-to-side shake is reserved for unlocking the saddle ([Brad] stores his helmet within).

Connectivity is facilitated over Bluetooth, with a rocker switch near the left handle bar to disable the receiver so that you don’t run down the battery. You can see the locking panel hanging open on the front portion of the scooter. Inside he installed the driver board which patches into the ignition system and drives a solenoid for the seat latch. It sounds like the latching mechanism used a bowden cable whose handle was inside that locking panel. By adding a solenoid and generously lubricating the cable he managed to get it functioning from the driver board.

Check out the video after the break for a proper demonstration. The phone is running a Python script via SL4A, which takes care of the user interface.

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Emulating Mac System 7 On An Android Device

June 18, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

Over on the 68kmla forums, a website dedicated to old Macs built before 1994, [zydeco] released his Android port of Mini vMac, a Macintosh Plus emulator that puts the power of a Motorola MC68000 processor and System 7 on any computer.

Unlike the original Macintosh, or the subsequent revision that bumped the RAM up to 512 kilobytes, the Mac Plus was actually useful. With the addition of a SCSI port and support for 4 Megabytes of RAM, it’s not only possible to browse the Internet, but also act as a server. There’s a reason [Sprite_tm] chose to rebuild one of these classic, all-in-one machines to act as a home server; they really do epitomize the elegant computers from a more civilized age.

68kmla user [FlyingToaster] even went so far as to put a Mac Plus in his nook touch. With this, he’s got a full-blown installation of System 7 running on an e-ink screen, complete with Lemmings, Gauntlet, and Tetris.

It should be possible to plug this emulated box into the Internet. Unfortunately, experience tells us it won’t be a very pleasant browsing experience outside Hackaday’s retro edition.

Android CNC Controller

June 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Matt] is the proud owner of a JGRO-based CNC router and he’s been working on a way to control it without a computer. What he came up with is a way to drive the CNC machine using this Android tablet.

A big part of the hack is the CNC controller that he’s using. The TinyG is a board that can take commands via USB and convert them to instructions for up to six axes. In the video after the break [Matt] shows off a direct USB connection as the control method. This is the most interesting part to us, but the system can also be run through the network with the assistance of a computer feeding commands to the TinyG. This second method means the Android controller would be wireless.

A trio of repositories host the code [Matt] is using. From the demo it looks like the Android app has no shortage of features.

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Simplest Of SL4A Microbridge Examples

June 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys No comments

We’re familiar with the daunting task of sifting through mountains of code in hopes you can learn how something works. So when a simple example like this SL4A LED toggle comes along we’re thankful for the trimmed fat. If you’re looking to use an Android device to control your Arduino hardware this will be huge shove in the right direction.

The microbridge is used to get the Arduino talking with the Android phone. It involves a USB host shield that lets you connect the two devices via a USB cable. With the USB debugging enabled on the phone, you can use Scripting Layer for Android as a user interface. In this case, a set of Python scripts builds the button and readout seen on the screen above. They also handle sending and receiving commands based on user input. This means you don’t really need to know anything about Android development. We think it would be a great way to get your project through the development stages, and you could learn to write a traditional App later on.

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