Misc Hacks

4086 Articles

InFORM The Morphing Table Gets Even More Interactive

November 13, 2013 by 21 Comments

inform2

Remember last week’s post on the inFORM, MIT’s morphing table? Well they just released a new video showing off what it can do, and it’s pretty impressive.

The new setup features two separate interfaces, and they’ve added a display  so you can see the person who is manipulating the surface. This springs to life a whole new realm of possibilities for the tactile digital experience. The inFORM also has a projector shining on the surface, which allows the objects shown from the other side to be both visually and physically seen — they use an example of opening a book and displaying its pages on the surface. To track the hand movements they use a plain old Microsoft Kinect, which works extremely well. They also show off the table as a standalone unit, an interactive table — Now all they need to do is make the pixels smaller… 

Stick around after the break to see some more awesome examples of the possibilities of this new tactile-digital interface. There are also some great clips near the end of the video showing off the complex linkage system that makes it all work.

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RC Tractor Build

November 8, 2013 by 18 Comments

[Rémi] is an engineer in France who runs his own little plasma cutting shop where he designs and manufactures custom projects for people. His latest project is this very slick remote controlled tractor.

It makes use of two 350W motors running at 24V, powered off of two 12V lead acid gel cells. The entire frame was designed in 3D CAD and then cut to shape using a plasma cutter. It was designed to tow small farm equipment around, or to turn mowing the lawn into a fun game that can be performed from the comforts of your lounge chair, while sipping a cold drink.

The reason we’re sharing this is because [Rémi] made an excellent video of fabrication and build of this project — So stick around after the break and enjoy! But be warned, watching the video may induce certain desires for owning a personal plasma cutter. Oh the possibilities!

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Remote Control FPV Cockpit

November 7, 2013 by 24 Comments

cockpit

FPV flying, for how awesome it actually is, still consists of fiddling around with a remote control transmitter and either wearing video goggles or squinting into a screen. Awesome, yes, but not as cool as [Brett Hays]’s enclosed cockpit ground station. It’s a trailerable flight sim that allows you to have the same experience of flying an aircraft over your local terrain without actually leaving the ground.

The centerpiece for this build is a 42 inch flat screen TV that was picked up for $160. This was placed at the front of a large plywood and 2×2 box along with a computer joystick, throttle, and rudder controls.

The pots inside the controls needed to be switched out to match the resistance of the ones inside an old Futaba transmitter. From there, completing the the cockpit was just a matter of fabricating a few panels for a video switcher, gear retract lever, flaps. and RC radio settings.

It’s a truly amazing build and when placed on a trailer towed by [Brett]’s jeep, has the potential to be the closest thing to flying a manned aircraft you can get without a pilot’s license.

Videos of the cockpit in action below.

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InFORM: MIT’s Morphing Table

November 7, 2013 by 25 Comments

Have you ever wished your dinner table could pass the salt? Advancements at MIT may soon make this a reality — although it might spill the salt everywhere. Enter the inFORM: Dynamic Physical Affordances and Constraints through Shape and Object Actuation.

While the MIT paper doesn’t go into much detail of the hardware itself, there are a few juicy tidbits that explain how it works. There are 900 individually actuated white polystyrene pins that make up the surface, in an array of 30 x 30 pixels. An overhead projector provides visual guidance of the system. Each pin can actuate 100mm, exerting a force of up to 1.08 Newtons each. To achieve the actuation, push-pull rods are utilized to maximize the dense pin arrangement as seen, making the display independent of the size of the actuators. The actuation is achieved by motorized slide potentiometers grouped in sets of 6 using custom PCBs that are driven by ATMega2560s — this allows for an excellent method of PID feedback right off the actuators themselves. There is an excellent image of the entire system on page 8 of the paper that shows both the scale and complexity of the build. Sadly it does not look like something that could be easily built at home, but hey, we’d love for someone to prove us wrong!

Stick around after the break to see this fascinating piece of technology in action. The video has been posted by a random Russian YouTube account, and we couldn’t find the original source for it — so if you can, let us know in the comments!

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Homemade Nixie Tubes

November 7, 2013 by 23 Comments

Do you love Nixie Tubes? Upset that they aren’t really manufactured anymore, and the cost of old ones is rising? Why not make your own? That’s exactly what [Dalibor] of the Czech Republic is up to, including blowing the glass tubes himself!

He’s chosen the Z568 nixie tubes to copy, as they are his favorite style of nixie. To create the display he has etched the digits and housing out of 0.3mm stainless steel sheet — which potentially means if he gets the hang of making the tubes, he could actually produce them to sell! To perform the glass blowing, he scored a Heathway glassblowing lathe off eBay — but unfortunately he hasn’t documented much of anything on making the glass tubes, which is too bad because we think that would be equally fascinating as the nixie displays themselves. On his first attempt with a properly sealed tube, the nixie worked and he even recorded striking voltage values very similar to industry tubes — not bad for something made in a backyard shed!

He has since then continued refining this art and is entering a glass-art contest called “When Prague Meets Shanghai” with a beautiful entry dubbed the ShanghaiTime Nixie Clock.

If this post seems vaguely familiar, it’s because this isn’t the first time we’ve posted an article about homemade nixie tubes, but we think [Dalibor’s] is by far the most elegant! Stick around after the break to see one of his first test videos — You might even think he’s cheating, the tubes look so professional!

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Classic 80’s Stereo Receiver Enjoys A Second Life As RadioduinoWRT

November 6, 2013 by 19 Comments

radio2[Raffael] had an old Broken Yamaha natural sound receiver lying around. Rather than throw it out, he built himself a slick web radio. He calls it RadioduinoWRT. [Raffael] started by removing all the internals – though he kept the front panel controls.  He then added an Arduino Mega to handle the front panel controls, including a 16×2 character LCD module. The Arduino also takes commands via IR remote. An enc28j60 Ethernet module allows the Arduino to communicate with a the brains of the operation, a TL-WR703N mini router.

A micro USB hub expands the single USB port on the WR703, allowing both a USB sound card and a 4 gig USB stick to be mounted. We’d like to add that the TL-WR703 is a must in this application – the amazon link [Rafael] provides brings up the TL-WR702 as a top link. Only the TL-WR703 has a USB host connection.

The real magic is in [Raffael’s] software setup. The WR703 is running OpenWRT.  He added modules for the USB sound card, as well as expanding the file system onto the USB stick. Once that was complete [Raffael] added Music Player Daemon (MPD) and MPC, a console app to drive MPD. Lighttpd, a light web server provides an interface for the Arduino as well as a web front end to the entire radio.All this allows [Raffael] to control his radio in several ways. He can log in via any web browser on his network. He can use the front panel controls. He can use an IR remote. Since he is running MPD, any client (there are literally hundreds out there) will also drive the radio.

While a low-end USB sound card in a home stereo application does make our inner audiophile cringe a bit, the quality does seem to be pretty good. [Rafael’s] design would make it simple to swap out a higher quality USB sound card if the need arises.

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Furbies Sing Queen At Fresher’s Faire

November 5, 2013 by 10 Comments

kent-furby

The University of Kent has their own hacker space, called  [Maker Society]. Every year the school holds an orientation for new students called the Fresher’s Faire. The [Maker Society] display at this year’s Fresher’s Faire included a group of partially clothed Furbies singing the classic Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. This isn’t our first run in with Bohemian Rhapsody and hacked hardware.

The [Maker Society] started by doing some internet research and reverse engineering a first generation Furby.  The Furby itself is a marvel of cost reduction. All the doll’s functions run from a single motor and a cam system. A limit switch tells the on-board microcontroller when the cam is at the zero position. An optical encoder keeps track of the cam as it moves. The [Society] replaced Furby’s internal microcontroller with an Atmel ATMega328. This allowed them to use the Arduino programming environment.

Many classic Animatronic systems use an audio recording for motion. Typically a stereo recorder would perform double duty. The first track would contain the audio for the animation. A second track would contain audio tones corresponding to movement of each of the degrees of freedom of the doll being animated. Because the two tracks were on the same strip of magnetic tape, the audio and movement would always be in sync. Multitrack tape record and playback systems added even more flexibility to this type of system.

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