Racing Wheel Guided R/C Car With Video Feed

May 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

Instructables user [Kaeru no Ojisan] enjoys constructing R/C kit cars and wanted to build one that could be driven using a PC racing wheel he had on hand. Not satisfied with simply guiding it with the racing wheel, he added a web cam to the car so that he can monitor its location from the comfort of his desk chair.

The car is loaded down with all sorts of electronics to get the job done, requiring four separate battery packs to keep them online. An Arduino controls the motor and the steering servos, receiving its commands wirelessly via a Bluetooth add-on. The camera connects to a USB to Ethernet converter, which enables the car’s video feed to be transmitted via the onboard wireless router.

The racing wheel interface seems to work just fine, though we don’t doubt that the whole setup can be easily simplified, reducing both weight and battery count. While [Kaeru no Ojisan] says that the car is in its concept stages and there are a few bugs to work out, we think it’s a good start.

Stick around to see a quick video of the car in testing.

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Real-time Digital Puppetry

April 29, 2011 by Mike Nathan 4 Comments

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If it sometimes seems that there is only a finite amount of things you can do with your kids, have you ever considered making movies? We don’t mean taking home videos – we’re talking about making actual movies where your kids can orchestrate the action and be the indirect stars of the show.

Maker [Friedrich Kirchner] has been working on an application called MovieSandbox, which is an open-source realtime animation tool. A couple of years in the making, the project is cross-platform compatible on both Windows and Apple computers (with Linux in the works), making it accessible to just about everyone.

His most recent example of the software’s power is a simple digital puppet show, which is sure to please young and old alike. Using sock puppets fitted with special flex sensors, he is able to control his on-screen cartoon characters by simply moving his puppets’ “mouths”. An Arduino is used to pass the sensor data to his software, while also allowing him to dynamically switch camera angles with a series of buttons.

Obviously something like this requires a bit of configuration in advance, but given a bit of time we imagine it would be pretty easy to set up a digital puppet stage that will keep your kids happily occupied for hours on end.

Continue reading to see a quick video of his sock puppet theater in action.

[via Make]

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ChronoTune: Listen To Radio By Year, Not By Frequency

April 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

The ChronoTune is a radio that plays sounds from different eras. This project was developed as an entry for the Redbull Creation Challenge by some members of i3Detroit, a hackerspace in the motor city. It allows a user to turn the dial to tune in a new moment in history, but they can also listen in on the present day. They’ll be greeted with the sounds of a tuning radio, followed by music or audio clips common to the period displayed on the dial.

As you know from the last contest entry, each project must use an Arduino to qualify. It reads a rotary encoder attached to one of the knobs on the front of the case. This doesn’t directly move the tuning needle. Instead, it’s attached to the guts of an inkjet printer to move it back and forth. This lets the radio tune itself if need be.

The audio is played from several sources. There is an MP3 module that allows for longer clips, but there are also some ISD voice recorder chip modules that play back shorter clips. If the dial is tuned to present day, an FM radio module tunes in a station over the air.

Having trouble reading that dial? Don’t worry, there’s a simulated Nixie tube display sticking out the top of the case to provide a digital readout of the currently selected time period. Check out the video after the break to see the team walk us through each part of the ChronoTune.

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BlinkM Smart Garage Door Opener

April 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

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Calling Canada home, Hackaday reader [TheRafMan] has seen his share of bitterly cold winters. He also knows all too well how hard it is to get his cars started in the morning if somebody happens to leave the garage open. After the door was left open overnight for the second time this last winter, he decided that it was time to add an indicator inside the house that would alert him when the garage had not been closed .

Inspired by our BlinkM Arduino coverage a short while back, his circuit incorporates a BlinkM as well as several other components he already had on hand. He disassembled the garage door switch situated in the house and fit the BlinkM into the switch box once he had finished programming it. A set of wires was run to the BlinkM, connecting it to both a power supply located in the garage as well as the magnetic switch he mounted on the door.

The end result is a simple and elegant indicator that leaves plenty of room for expansion. In the near future, he plans on adding an additional indicator strobe to let him know when the mail has arrived, not unlike this system we covered a few months ago.

Stick around to see a quick video demonstration of his garage door indicator in action.

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Be Lazy, And Get Somewhere At The Same Time

April 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Cruise the beach in comfortable Jamaican style with this motorized hammock. [Stephen Shaffer] and his friends built it for the Red Bull Creation contest which has as its number one requirement, the need to include an Arduino. We’re basically looking at a hammock frame made out of square pipe that has been put on wheels. Watch the video after the break to see the prototyping, construction, and final product. Looks like originally the electric wheelchair base that’s used for propulsion was centered below the hammock. One sharp turn and the rider/operator gets dumped out on the concrete.

The final version includes a couple of wheels that serve as outriggers, keeping the vehicle upright. A PlayStation 2 controller is used for steering and directional control. It’s polled by the Arduino, which then uses servo motors to control the original wheelchair joystick. At least that’s what we were able to figure out by watching the video.

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Data Scraping And Visualization With Python

April 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

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[Greg] built himself a small indicator dial with his laser cutter, and wanted to use it for visualizing server performance and load information. Before he started using it for server monitoring however, he thought he should test out his data parsing skills on a simpler data set.

Pachube has a wealth of information that can be freely used for whatever project you might have in mind, so [Greg] started looking around for something interesting to track. Eventually he located the data feed for a tanker ship and wired his dial to display the ship’s speed. He uses a Python script to interface with the Pachube API, which is fed to his Netduino board. A servo motor then changes the position of the dial based on the feed’s data. Since large tankers don’t change speed often, the experiment was a bit of a letdown. He searched for a bit and tuned into another feed that tracked wind speed in New Zealand, getting much better results.

His future plans include hooking it directly to his network and eventually using it to monitor his servers…at least once the novelty of tracking random data feeds wears off.

All of his code is available on GitHub, and he is happy to make a gauge for anyone who is interested, though he doesn’t currently list a price.

Server Room Light And Temperature Monitoring

April 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

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[Jaren] is occasionally forgetful, and frequently wonders if he’s left the lights on in his server room. Not knowing if the lights have been left on drives him nuts until he returns to work the next morning, so he decided he had to do something. He figured it would be easy enough to build a small sensor that would allow him to monitor the status of the overhead lights, but he didn’t want to have his micro controller’s abilities go to waste by performing one simple task. Instead, he laid out plans to add an array of other sensors which will allow him to monitor the room’s temperature, sound levels, as well as the current draw of the servers.

Right now the project is in the beginning stages, but he already has part of his sensor network established. He hooked up a TMP421-based temperature module along with a TEMT6000 ambient light sensor to his Arduino, which displays the data on a small LCD screen he purchased. More sensors are on order, so we should expect to see more progress in the coming weeks.

Hopefully when everything is completed we will see a full set of schematics and code so that anyone can buld their own server room monitoring network from his designs.