Controlling Spykee Via Web Cam Using Your Fingers

April 14, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

spykee

[epokh] sent in this cool project where he wrote some custom code to control the Spykee robot using gestures. He filters out everything but green through his web cam, then wraps his fingers in green tape. He then runs a series of filters to clean it up a little bit. The resulting “blobs” are tracked and converted to motor commands. You can see the setup in action in the video after the break. This guy might look familiar, as we posted a super quick head tracking rig he did with legos recently. Some of you mentioned, in the comments, that the legos were a waste, you’ll find that he thought so too, and ended up fabbing a simple rig to take the place of the legos.

Continue reading “Controlling Spykee Via Web Cam Using Your Fingers” →

Dell Adamo Teardown

April 10, 2009 by Eliot 4 Comments

dell_adamo

TechRepublic and iFixit partnered to teardown Dell’s flagship notebook, the Adamo. The Adamo is positioned to compete directly with Apple’s MacBook Air. The Dell crams a lot of technology into a very thin frame and they use a clever locking system for the backplate to hide any screws. The built in battery has a longer life than the Air and an SSD comes stock. The team points out that the Windows logo is etched on the backside instead of the standard ugly stickers; apparently this took quite a bit of teeth-pulling to get approved. Check out the full photo gallery which includes the fetish packaging and comparison shots to the Air and Dell Mini 9.

Distance Detecting Pc

March 26, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 55 Comments

distance

Reader [Joshua] sent in his latest project. using a sonar rangefinder, an Arduino, and some clever programming, he’s made is computer react to his distance from it. As you can see in the video after the jump, he has programmed it to change text size and background color depending on his distance from the screen. While he admits that his implementation doesn’t seem immediately useful, there’s lots of potential there. We can actually think of several uses. What would you use it for?

Status Icon For Your Office

March 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[flickr video= 3187384682]

[Furan] wanted a way to let people know his status at the office. Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered, or wanted to let them know he was on break. His solution is to set up an OLED display outside his office to display his status. He’s using a 4d systems OLED display. He has a windows application that updates the status, with plans of making it synchronize with his messenger status. Its a fairly cool idea, but just watching the video, we have no idea what some of the icons are supposed to mean. We would possibly choose something a little more obvious and generic, like text stating our status. What would you use?

USB Sniffing In Linux

March 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

sniffer

[Robert] sent in this tutorial on how to set up USB sniffing in linux. Useful for seeing exactly what is being communicated to and from your USB devices, this ability is built into linux. [Bert], the author, shows us the steps involved and how to filter it to get the data we desire. You can specify exactly which device to capture data from. His example, shown above, is a session with an Arduino.

Ultra Mouse Modification

March 16, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 75 Comments

mouse

When traveling with a laptop, we often find that the list of peripherals that we have to attach can get pretty long. Especially if it is an older laptop without wireless built in. [Dawning] has taken steps to consolidate some of his peripherals(registration required)by cramming a USB hub and a wireless card into his mouse.

He started by dismantling a USB hub. After placing the board in the mouse to see how it fit, he realized that he was going to have to reduce the size. To do this, he removed the USB slots themselves. This forces him to wire things directly to the board, but saves a ton of space. Next, he took the guts from a USB wireless adapter and wired them up. The decorative LED in the mouse was then moved to the wireless card. This way he could see light flicker with his network traffic. At this point, that’s all he’s added, though there’s still plenty of space for other items. He notes that he’ll probably add some storage or a CF reader. The only problem he has encountered is that his mouse tends to get warm during use. What peripherals would you put in there?

Update: [Dawning] let us know that he didn’t actually remove the LED from its original location. He connected a wire from the wireless adapter that causes the LED to short when traffic is going through. Also, there’s a video which you can now see after the break.

Continue reading “Ultra Mouse Modification” →

Adding ESATA To An Acer Aspire 1

March 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

esata

In another installment of her ongoing efforts to mod the Acer Aspire 1, [tnkgrl] has added eSATA capabilities. During the hard drive upgrade she did, she used the spare PATA connection, leaving an SATA connection free. This time she has gone in and extended it to be accessible outside the case. To do that, she scavenged an eSATA connector from a desktop and simply wired it into the connections on the motherboard. She then mounted it flush as seen in the picture above. In the past she’s covered adding RAM, internal Bluetooth and the hard drive upgrade.