Water The Tree – There’s An App For That?

December 8, 2009 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Well no, but [Chris] needed something to remind him when to water the tree. Most folks would use their nifty iPhone to set up a calendar reminder, but why do that when you can purpose a 32 bit microcontroller to do it for you?

To detect a falling water level [Chris] attached a two-pin header to the end of a clothes pin clipped to the side of the tree stand. When the water level is covering the pins it completes a circuit, verified by a measurable current. When the water level drops the mbed microcontroller detects the loss of conductivity and through some creative code sends out an email and SMS reminder.

If you’re in love with your iPhone but not your living things, this will keep that tree kicking until after the new year.

Phone Controlled Solar Charged Tank

December 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmLU4GS7zAI]

This looks like a fun little project. [Chris] has built a tank that he is controlling using his iPhone. Constructed mainly of off the shelf parts, like an Arduino and an Xbee wireless unit, the tank is controlled via processing. You can see that it is fairly responsive as he changes the speed of the motors. You don’t need an iPhone for this, really to do exactly what he’s doing any multi-touch input would work. You can download the code for it from his site.

We’re a bit curious about the solar charging. How much power does this use? Doesn’t that panel look a bit small? How long does it take to charge?

[via HacknMod]

Double Dose Of IPhone Camera Hacks

December 1, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 34 Comments

Why take an iPhone, a slim device that already takes decent photographs and add several macro magnifying lenses? For [Mathijs], simply because he could, But now he can take some awesome macro pictures.

[Bhautik] (maker of the tilt-shift Plungercam) took the concept further. With some more trademark plumbing supplies and a lot of duct tape, secured an interchangeable SLR lense assembly to the back of his iPhone.

Check out some photos from both setups after the break. Continue reading “Double Dose Of IPhone Camera Hacks” →

Using An IPhone As A Newton Keyboard

November 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN44Eq4Thgo]

[Jesus Alvarez] sent us this funny little project. If you happen to have an iPhone and an old Apple Newton, you can use the iPhone as a keyboard for the Newton. You can download the schematic from his site to build the wire to connect the two. After that, you have to run an app on your iPhone that you can find once you’ve jailbroken your phone. At that point you are ready to go. Aside from the ability to say you could, we’re not sure why you would do this. It made us chuckle though. Maybe we’re not firing on all synapses though due to turkey overload.

Make Any Gloves Work With A Touch Screen

November 25, 2009 by Phil Burgess 16 Comments

The chill of autumn is upon us, and with it comes the awkward sport of trying to work touch-sensitive phones and gadgets with gloved fingers. One can try toughing it out with fingerless gloves, or we’ve seen some costly solutions in the forms of specialized gloves and capacitive-compatible styluses, but sometimes simple is best: all it takes is a few stitches of conductive thread in the fingertips.

Conductive thread is available from various sources; SparkFun Electronics comes naturally to mind, but most vendors carrying the LilyPad Arduino will stock a suitable thread as well. Don’t fret if you’ve never sewn before — just a few simple loops are required, and it doesn’t need to be especially tidy. In principle this should work for trackpads and capacitive mice as well, if you use those in the field. For multitouch devices, add a separate conductive bit to each fingertip.

[via Lifehacker]

Robot Interface Lets Fingers Do The Walking

November 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=945Z2xtdEBE]

We’re filing this one under “best interface implementation”. This robot is controlled by finger gestures on the surface of an iPod Touch. It can walk forward, turn, sidestep, jump, and kick a ball based on the input it receives from your sweaty digits. Unlike vehicles controlled by an iPhone (or by Power Wheels), this has some potential. Especially considering the inevitable proliferation of multi-touch devices in our everyday lives.

Remotely Control Your Crappy Car (dangerously)

November 10, 2009 by Mike Szczys 41 Comments

Here’s one that brings back that giddy feeling we got when the original episodes of thebroken were posted all those years ago. The lunatics over at Waterloo Labs have altered a beat-up Oldsmobile for remote control via laptop, iPhone, and…. wait for it… Power Wheels.

Brake and gas pedals are actuated using a wrench connected to a motor bolted to the floorboards of the car. The steering wheel has been replaced with a gear and connected to a motor using a motorcycle chain. Much like the van we saw last month, an iPhone app has been written to wirelessly control the car of doom. This leads to some car surfing and ghost riding the whip in the video after the break.

To our delight, they’ve also implement the most unorthodox automotive interface yet, Power Wheels. A chain has been added to measure the orientation of the toy steering wheel, and an optical encoder is used to measure the speed of the tiny electric vehicle. It looks like it doesn’t do the best job of translating to a full size vehicle, but it maxes out their style points.

Continue reading “Remotely Control Your Crappy Car (dangerously)” →