Cat Hacking

June 26, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 32 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CSoroo-bkg]

After a gruesome accident involving a harvester, [Oscar] lost his legs. [Noel Fitzpatrick] a mad scientist veterinary surgeon came to the rescue. [Oscar] now has leg implants prosthetic feet. It is pretty amazing that a cat would even function in this manner. Have you ever seen one try to walk with tape on its feet? We have to wonder why that cat doesn’t have some more awesome looking legs though. We think that cat needs to team up with [Aimee Mullens], the olympic athlete with no legs, to get a better looking pair.

Head Mounted Camera Tracks With Your Eyes

May 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

The EyeSeeCam is a rig that attaches to your noggin and points a camera wherever your gaze falls. There’s actually four cameras involved here, one to track each eye via a reflecting piece of acrylic, one as your third eye, and finally the tracking camera above that. There are some legitimate medical uses for this type of technology, but we enjoyed seeing some of the videos that [Johannes Vockeroth] put together showing everyday activities. We’ve embedded several clips after the break including an example of reading a book while wearing the apparatus. The third eye camera provides the wide shot with close-ups of the wearer’s visual focus.

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EMG Controlled Prosthesis

May 4, 2010 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This prosthetic arm is the result of a student project. [Amnon Demri] and his classmates built it with below-the-elbow amputees in mind. It uses electromyography to actuate the fingers and wrist. Four stick-on sensors are placed around the elbow to sense electrical activity there. These signals are interpreted by a PIC 16f877a microcontroller which then controls the servo motors to operate the prosthetic limb. This sounds like a very economical solution and as you can see in the videos after the break, it works fairly well.

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DIY Pulse Oximeter

May 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

This pulse oximeter turned out very nicely. It is based around a Freescale microcontroller and detects pulse as well as oxygen saturation in your blood. The sensor is made of two wood pieces and allows two wavelengths of light to be shined through your finger. A sensor picks up the light on the other side of your stubby digit and the readings are compared to calculate saturation. Check out the finished project after the break.

We saw an Arduino-based oximeter a few months ago. These kind biometric hacks are rare around here. If you’ve got a well documented project don’t forget to tell us about it.

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Pulse Oximeter

January 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdN5IRVJOXI]

[Mike] is building his own Pulse Oximeter which uses light to measure the oxygen saturation in blood. One collateral benefit of this measurement is that pulse rate can be calculated from the same data. The parts used for the detector include a red LED, infrared LED, and a TSL230R light intensity measuring chip. As explained in the video above, each LED is shined through the tip of your finger and onto the light sensor. The IR LED is used as a baseline and compared to the red LED, which has some of its intensity absorbed by the red blood in your finger. This is a pretty approachable biometric concept so you may want to start here before moving on to more involved biometric interfaces.

[Thanks Russ]

Door Opening Help

November 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

For those who are seeking prosthetic limbs, or just require a little bit of robotic gripper help, the choices are very few and very costly. A newcomer to the area is hoping to change the costly part with their door opening arm. Costing only $2,000 to build, it is quite cheap compared to the other offerings. This arm can grip, twist, and swing its arm at the same time using a single motor thanks to a slip clutch.

[via Popular Science]

25 Scariest Experiments

November 4, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 113 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq06D0xRWmc]

Warning: This video contains actual footage of a severed dog head, kept alive. Watch at your own peril.

[Annalee] over at io9.com has gathered together the 25 scariest science experiments. There are some truly frightening pieces, like the cyborg beetles which we’ve seen before, all the way to silly stuff like the guy who re grew his thumb using pig powder. Next time you’re thinking of admonishing someone for creating a flamethrower, or a super fast scooter, consider for a moment that they’re not burning peoples nasal passages to stop masturbation or creating zombie severed dog heads like the one in the video above.