Weather Monitoring

May 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

weather

This weather monitor can track pressure, temperature, and humidity and last several months on a pack of AA batteries. It has a PIC18f452 to control all the bits, as well as some fancy power management to get the most out of the batteries as possible. The screen displays the highest and lowest temperatures of the last 42 hours as well as having options to display all other sensor input, updated every minute or so. You can get the full schematic and parts list on the project site.

[via YourITronics]

LED Buttons

May 4, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

led_buttons

For their final project in ECE 4760 at Cornell, [Christina] and [Joe] made a small single octave keyboard using LEDs as the input. They used a total of 63 LEDs to make the keys. Each key consists of 9 LEDs, with the center one acting as a sensor. When you lay your finger on it, the light reflects off of your finger and is picked up by the center LED. An ATMega 664 runs custom code to play a sound. You can find out more details about the construction as well as download the source code on the site. You can also download an example movie of it in action ( 7MB .mp4)

WaitLess Bus Tracking System

May 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 32 Comments

waitless

Bus systems on campus can often be frustrating. You’re standing at the stop waiting and you don’t know if it would just be faster to walk. If you have a WaitLess tracking system at your stop, you can see exactly where the bus is and make that decision much easier. The unit is self contained, solar, and equipped with wireless internet. With an Arduino at it’s core, it displays the current location of the bus by lighting an LED on a map. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

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IPhone Controlled TV Lift

May 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

pcb

[William] sent in this project where he’s using his iPhone to control his TV lift. He’s made a custom PCB with a pic18f122 microprocessor to communicate with the lift. He says it connects to the lift controls via a serial port. You can see a video of it in action after the break. We really think the shadow turning into an arrow is cool. That was a lucky accident.

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Cell Phone Glove

May 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

glove_phone

Sometimes you find yourself thinking “this cell phone is far to compact and unobtrusive.” [Trotmaster] had this thought and did something about it. Ok, well actually he’s trying to have some fun and build a glove phone, inspector gadget style. There really doesn’t seem to be a good reason to do this other than it would be cool, so we’ll proceed on those grounds. He has disassembled the phone and extended all the buttons. When wearing the glove, you can dial by pressing the finger tip buttons with your thumb. The screen is located on the back of the hand and can be lifted and rotated for easy viewing. Can anyone think of an application where this would be a beneficial layout, assuming you refined it a bit?

[via instructables]

Human Powered Electric Instruments

April 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

music

[Noah] tipped us off to his work with Physically Engaged Electronic Instruments. He is building instruments, that while being electronic, require physical action to drive them. In the video after the break, you can see an example, in the form of a polka. The part that they’re holding (print head?) is attached to a generator which powers the instrument. The effect makes the instrument much more like a traditional stringed instrument that must be strummed. We can easily also imagine an interface similar to a concertina or accordion being functional. There are schematics available on his site in the research reports section, but you’ll have to dig through a pdf or two to find them. We would love to see a breakdown of the instruments and their components in a more accessible form.

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Ipod GPS

April 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

ipod_gps

[Benjamin] was working for a GPS company called Nemerix about two years ago and decided to hack together this iPod accessory GPS unit. He is using an Atmel ATmega324 and a Nemerix GPS unit, though he says the GPS unit shouldn’t matter. He is taking advantage of the AiR mode on the iPod which allows a 4 color image to be sent to the screen. There was little information on how to utilize this, but BMW and Alpine had made some car audio that featured this. [Benjamin] picked up an Alpine with this function and sniffed the data stream to get what he needed. He says there is good documentation out there now though.

He says that the source code is available if you ask.