A GPU For An Arduino

October 15, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

GPU

As the creator of the Gameduino, a shield that adds a VGA port and graphics capability to any Arduino, [James] knows a little something about generating high quality video with a microcontroller. His latest project, the Gameduino 2, blows his previous projects out of the water. He’s created an Arduino shield with a built-in touchscreen that has the same graphics performance as the Quake box you had in the late 1990s.

The power behind this shield comes from a single-chip graphics solution called the FTDI EVE. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the FTDI EVE, but this is the first instance of a project or product using this very cool embedded graphics engine. The Gameduino 2 uses an FT800 graphics chip over an SPI connection to give a 480×272 TFT touch panel the same graphical capabilities as a Voodoo 2 graphics card. From the video, [James] is able to put thousands of sprites on a screen, as well as simple 3D animation, and extremely impressive 2D animations using only an Arduino.

While the Gameduino 2 is designed to be a game console you program yourself, we’re thinking this would be even more useful as a display for standalone projects.

CastAR Goes Live On Kickstarter

October 15, 2013 by Adam Fabio 53 Comments

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[Jeri, Rick and the Technical Illusions crew] have taken the castAR to Kickstarter. We’ve covered castAR a couple of times in the past, but the Kickstarter includes a few new features just ripe for the hacking. First, castAR is no longer confined to a retro-reflective surface. In fact, it’s no longer confined to augmented reality. An optional clip on adapter converts castAR into a “free” augmented reality or a full virtual reality system.

[Jeri] has also posted a video on her YouTube channel detailing the entire saga of castAR’s development (embedded after the jump). The video has a real “heart to heart” feel to it, and is definitely worth watching. The story starts with the early days (and late nights) [Rick] and [Jeri] spent at Valve. She goes through the split with Valve and how the two set up a lab in [Rick’s] living room. [Jeri] also outlines some of the technical aspects of the system. She explains how the optics have been reduced from several pounds of projectors to the mere ounces we see today.

Another surprise addition is the lower level tier rewards of the campaign. The castAR tracking system is offered. The campaign page says the tracking system can be mounted to anything from robots to other VR headsets. The possibilities for hacking are almost endless. We’re curious about setting up our own swarm of quadcopters similar to the UPENN Grasp Lab. The RFID tracking grid is also offered as a separate option. In the gaming system this will be used for tracking tabletop game pieces. Based upon the Kickstarter page, it sounds as if the grid will not only use RFID, but a camera based tracking system. We’re definitely curious what possibilities this will hold.

As of this writing, the castAR Kickstarter campaign is already well past the halfway mark on its way to a $400,000 USD goal.

Continue reading “CastAR Goes Live On Kickstarter” →

An Open Source GPU

October 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 34 Comments

Unless you’re bit-banging a CRT interface or using a bunch of resistors to connect a VGA monitor to your project, odds are you’re using proprietary hardware as a graphics engine. The GPU on the Raspberry Pi is locked up under an NDA, and the dream of an open source graphics processor has yet to be realized. [Frank Bruno] at Silicon Spectrum thinks he has the solution to that: a completely open source GPU implemented on an FPGA.

Right now, [Frank] has a very lightweight 2D and 3D engine well-suited for everything from servers to embedded devices. If their Kickstarter meets its goal, they’ll release their project to the world, giving every developer and hardware hacker out there a complete, fully functional, open source GPU.

Given the difficulties [Bunnie] had finding a GPU that doesn’t require an NDA to develop for, we’re thinking this is an awesome project that gets away from the closed-source binary blobs found on the Raspberry Pi and other ARM dev boards.

Why Kickstarter Projects Are Always Delayed

October 4, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 45 Comments

Most Hackaday readers may remember the Spark Core, an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform. Its Kickstarter campaign funding goal was 10k, but it ended up getting more than half a million. The founder and CEO of Spark [Zach Supalla] recently published an article explaining why Kickstarter projects are always delayed as the Spark core project currently is 7 weeks behind schedule.

[Zach] starts off by mentioning that most founders are optimistic, making them want to embark in this kind of adventure in the first place. In most presentation videos the prototypes shown are usually rougher than they appear, allowing the presenters to skip over the unfinished bits. Moreover, the transition from prototype to “manufacturable product ” also adds unexpected delays. For example, if a product has a plastic casing it is very easy to 3D print the prototype but much harder to setup a plastic injection system. Last, sourcing the components may get tricky as in the case of Spark core the quantities were quite important. Oddly enough, it was very hard for them to get the sparkcore CC3000 Wifi module.

PocketQubes: Even Smaller Than A CubeSat

October 2, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

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Over one hundred CubeSats have been launched by hundreds of organizations and universities from around the globe. These have proven very useful in technology demonstration, Earth imaging, and other applications. There is, however, one large downside to the CubeSat platform. Even though it is designed to hitch a ride on launches of larger satellites, they’re still very expensive to develop and launch – somewhere between $60,000 and $125,000.

PocketQubes are a new design of satellite that bring the cost of personal satellites down to what Universities and amateur radio enthusiasts can actually afford. Instead of spending $125k on a 10cm cube CubeSat, the PocketQube, a 5cm cube, can be launched to a 700 km orbit for about $20,000.

Already, four PocketQubes are scheduled for launch in November to a 700km solar synchronous orbit, including $50SAT, a small radio transceiver put together by some ham guys, and The WREN a very impressive PocketQube with 3-axis reaction wheels and plasma thrusters.

Right now, the PocketQube kickstarter is only for aluminum structures that will become the skeleton of a small, 5cm cube satellite. There’s also the PocketQube Shop that provides a little more background on the project.

X-Winder: Carbon Fiber Wrapping

October 1, 2013 by James Hobson 41 Comments

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One of our readers just sent us a tip about this interesting kickstarter project. [Turner Hunt] is bringing carbon fiber manufacture into the hands of makers — at considerable cost savings!

So how does it work? The machine wraps the filament around the workpiece, not unlike a CNC lathe in reverse. Actually it’s kind of a new breed of 3D printer! As the machine feeds the filament, it dips it through a bath of epoxy resin before being wrapped around the workpiece. A finishing step wraps heat shrink tape around the finished project using a heat gun, which then provides a glossy surface finish very similar to commercial carbon fiber products.

By purchasing carbon fiber filament and epoxy resin and using this machine, you can create structural carbon fiber tubes for about 80% less than they would cost commercially. The system comes with its own software that controls the machine via g-code, and you can also specify different wrapping patterns for different applications. While tube-shapes work best, you can also wrap other shapes including flat bars, wing skins, turbine blades and more — anything that is wrappable and under 6″ in total diameter. Is anyone else thinking about custom wrapped quadcopter frames?

[Thanks Alannah!]

Smoothieboard, The Be-all, End-all CNC Controller

September 30, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 74 Comments

A while back we took a look at electronics boards for 3D printers, going over the cost and benefits of the most common electronics boards for printers, laser cutters, and mills. One of the most impressive boards was the Smoothieboard, but finding a supplier back then was a little difficult. Now, the Smoothieboard is up on Kickstarter, giving everyone the opportunity to get their hands on this very cool CNC control board.

While most RepRap and 3D printer controller boards use an ATMega or other 8-bit microcontroller, the Smoothie uses a 32-bit ARM chip in the form of an NXP LPC Cortex-M3 chip. Not only does this allow the Smoothie to do some very cool things with your machine – native arcs and circles, for example, but this better hardware also allows for Ethernet, drag-and-drop firmware, and exposing the USB port as both a serial port or mass storage device.

The Smoothie comes in three flavors, with either 3, 4, or 5 stepper motor drivers. These Allegro A4982 drivers are good enough for any 3D printer, laser cutter, or small mill, but the broken out pins allow for stepper drivers supplying more than 2A of current.

Everything on the Smoothieboard is modular, meaning this board is equally capable of powering a RepRap, mill, laser cutter, or plotter. There’s even a planned control panel called the Smoothiepanel, making this a great choice for your next CNC build.