Space Camera Streams Data During Flight

September 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Take the risk of not recovering your hardware out of a near-space camera launch by streaming the data during flight. [Tim Zaman] is part of a team that developed the rig seen above. It sent 119 image back during the recent balloon launch. This included transmissions from as high as 36 kilometers.

The main hardware included a BeagleBoard with connected Webcam housed in a Styrofoam cooler for thermal protection. Pair that with a GPS module for location tracking, and a GPRS module for data transmission and you’re in business.

But that’s not all that went up. The team built a backup hardware module in case the primary failed. This one also had a GPS and GPRS radio, but was driven by an Arduino.

The radio connection made it easy to recover the hardware. GPS data led the team directly to the landing site. The package came to rest on the roof of a building, but we guess that’s more convenient than getting snagged at the top of a huge tree.

Don’t miss the hardware detail video that we’ve embedded after the break.

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Motorized Blinds Put Control At Your Fingertips

September 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

remote_controlled_motorized_blinds

While [Bremster] likes the view from his office window, he often needs to get up and adjust the blinds several times throughout the day in order to keep the glare from killing his eyes. Like any other enterprising hacker, he decided that constantly adjusting them was too repetitive, and that he could automate the process with electronics.

He thought that RC car servos would be a great choice to control the blinds, since they are cheap and the geared drive system offers a lot of torque at low speeds. After modifying the servos to enable continuous rotation, he set off to the hardware store in search of a way to mount them to the blinds’ looped cords.

After mounting some nylon spacers with rubber grommets on the servo arms, he installed them into a set of brackets he built and gave the blinds a spin. Now, he can easily control his blinds from the comfort of his desk with the simple flick of a switch – that’s the kind of ~~laziness~~ ingenuity we can respect!

Continue reading to see a quick video of his motorized blinds in action.

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Swap-O-Matic: An Automat With Recycling In Mind

September 16, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

The Swap-O-Matic is vending machine built for recycling, not consuming. Instead of feeding money into the machine, you can get an item out of the machine by swapping it for something you don’t need anymore. It’s a great concept with a great retro design, probably influenced by the age of the automat.

[Lina Fenequito] and [Rick Cassidy] built the Swap-O-Matic around the time [Lina] was getting her MFA. The build was in Wired in 2005, but the project has been updated since then and has a new home at LaunchPad in Brooklyn, NY. The first version used a separate computer next to the machine that gave out combinations to locks on the doors. It looks like the new version has been improved with an integrated touchscreen and computer-activated locks leaving [Lina] and [Rick] with a very clean build.

It’s a great idea if you have a relatively homogeneous population with similar interests, so we expect to see some of these popping up at a few hackerspaces. Check out the Swap-O-Matic promo video after the break.

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Burning Man 2011: Peter Hudson’s Charon Strobe Sculpture

September 16, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 20 Comments

Here at Hackaday the only thing we like better than giant whirling artistic desert based contraptions are interactive giant whirling artistic desert based contraptions. [Peter Hudston]’s Charon is no exception. Known for his strobe sculptures [Peter] has returned from a two year hiatus with possibly one of the craziest and nightmarish sculptures found on the deep playa. The work features a gigantic spinning wheel that has posed human skeletons mounted on it’s inner edge. Onlookers can pull a series of 6 rope pairs which cause the wheel to rotate rapidly. When the rope pullers are coordinated enough to get the wheel spinning at the right speed, a strobe is activated revealing the skeleton’s animation.

I wandered over to this thing one night after hearing the local buzz about the piece. The towering wheel was spinning away as the rope pullers of the moment tried desperately to get the strobe to activate, every couple of minutes or so somebody would try and coordinate the pulling only to confuse things. From my perspective it seemed to be very difficult to get the right speed, and the pullers had to yank the rope practically to the ground. During the short time I was watching the piece (jaw to the floor) the strobe activated once or twice and honestly it was completely worth the effort. To see what this monster looks like in action check out the video after the jump.

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An Open-Source Rotational Casting Machine

September 15, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 28 Comments

[Aurelio] wrote in to tell us about the smartCaster, an “Open source automatic roto-casting machine.” For those of you not familiar with roto-casting, or rotational molding, it’s a process whereby something to be formed is placed into a mold and then melted while spinning. This item is often plastic, but it can be another material such as plaster of Paris or even chocolate.

Naturally, having something made using this process is generally very expensive and generally requires a high volume of parts to be made. The smartCaster Kickstarter project aims to change this. Although in the prototype stage currently, [Aurelio] claims to need only $1571 to finish his project and make it ready for the prospective at-home rotational molder.

Although it’s a much different tool than we see here most of the time, for the right project (custom Easter Bunnies anyone?) it could be quite useful. Check out a video of the prototype in action after the break. Continue reading “An Open-Source Rotational Casting Machine” →

Amp Hour Interviews [Joe Grand]

September 14, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The Amp Hour, a podcast of electronics enthusiasts and professionals alike, just did an epic interview with [Joe Grand]. Along with hosts [Chris Gammell] and [Dave Jones], the discussion runs the gamut of points of interest in the hardware hacking world. The first vignette explores the rise, run, and fall of Prototype This, an engineering-centric TV show that [Joe] did along with a group of various engineers for the Discover Channel. He politely discusses some of the goods and bads of the TV business and how that affected the team’s ability to go into great detail about the projects they were building.

From there the guys discuss the development of Hackerspaces through the years. [Joe] has some concerns about the injection of corporate sponsorships in these DIY spaces and what that may mean in the long run. He then talks about the impending release of his 3-year-long laser range-finder project (we’ve seen a project using a prototype of this sensor). The show is rounded out with discussions about hardware fab houses that [Joe] uses and has used over the years for projects like the Defcon Badges (we loved his Defcon 18 badges).

It’s a great episode so download a copy and set aside about an hour to listen to the whole show.

A No-touchscreen Picture Frame?

September 10, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 8 Comments

Many people have touch-screen devices, however, this hack claims to be the first picture frame to feature a “no-touch” interface. Although someone somewhere certainly has a digital picture frame hooked up to a “Clapper”, we’re going to give [Wasabi] the benefit of the doubt.

After buying a Microtouch kit from Adafruit several months ago with the intention of building something meaningful, [Wasabi] ran into a common problem among hackers, a lack of time. Instead of totally giving up on the device, the decision was made to make it into a simple picture frame. Although the Microtouch features a touchscreen, it also features an accelerometer. With a little hacking, as described in his write-up, the “touchless” picture frame was born. Cleverly, the screen was hidden behind glass, but through this interface, interaction was still possible.

The device itself seems like a great hacker tool, especially at a price point of just under $70. Here’s a hack where “Zork” was ported to this device, but be sure to send us any other projects you come up with using it! Check out the video after the break of this device in action!

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