Misc Hacks

4181 Articles

Turn Signal Jacket How-to

June 22, 2008 by 2 Comments


[Leah Buechley], whose work we’ve been covering since way back when, has built this lovely turn signal jacket. The project photos were posted in March, but she’s just added a well illustrated project guide. The jacket is based around a LilyPad Arduino, a lightweight Arduino board with radial pads designed to be used in wearable projects. You make your connections by sewing conductive thread through the pads. The how-to covers attaching the LilyPad parts properly and then insulating the wires with fabric paint after you’ve verified they work.

The guide has an interesting discussion about placing the power supply. The 4-ply silver coated thread used has a resistance of approximately 14ohms/foot. So, if you place the power supply one foot from the LilyPad, the two wires combine for 28ohms, causing a 1.4V drop. The power supply is only 5V, which means the LilyPad will be 3.6V. A voltage of 3.3V will cause the Arduino to reset. If your resistance is too high, you’ll have to add more thread.

The power supply on this jacket is under the collar. Each cuff has a single button plus an LED. The button will make the jacket flash the direction for 15 seconds (also indicated on the sleeve LED). If you press both buttons at the same time, it switches to night mode by flashing both directions at the same time to make you more visible.

Rear View Jacket

June 21, 2008 by 10 Comments


Is your popped collar so epic it emulates horse blinders? Are punk teens always skitching your coattails? Are you constantly moonwalking into power poles, trash cans, and the elderly? [Paul Coudamy]’s Hard-Wear Jacket solves all of these problems. It has a micro-camera embedded in the back of the neck and streams live video to a sleeve mounted monitor. The goal is to expand the perception of the wearer and how they interact with the environment. We know this is just a small step and doubt many people will be scrambling to never turn their neck again. It’s something interesting to contemplate though: how will people behave when brain taps allow their peripheral vision to have the same clarity as normal vision?

[via Gizmodo]

Free Web Development Tools

June 21, 2008 by 1 Comment


OStatic has a collected some great free tools for web developers. We talked about Quanta in an earlier post, but this article reaches beyond just HTML editors. LaunchSplash can be used to generate splash pages while you build. IBM, responsible for the Eclipse IDE, has built Project Zero to encourage web app development; even the IDE is web based. OpenX is an open ad server. Piwik is a free web analytics package. There are also quite a few open source CMS’s and sites collecting open source designs.

3x3x3 LED Cube

June 20, 2008 by 9 Comments


[portreathbeach] built this simple 3x3x3 LED matrix. It uses a PIC16F690 in a ZIF socket for the brains. Each layer has nine LEDs with the cathodes tied together. The anodes from each LED are connected to the LED below. The LEDs are multiplexed so that even though all layers appear to be on, they’re being addressed individually. He’s included software, so you can build your own animations. Video of the matrix in motion is after the break.

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Dance Floor Power Generation

June 20, 2008 by 17 Comments


With concerns about the environment at an all-time high, do we roll up our sleeves and fix the situation or set our fears aside and dance the night away? [Andrew Charalambous], a nightclub owner in from Britain, doesn’t think we should have to choose, so he installed a dance floor that harnesses power from dancers into one of his clubs.

The dance floor uses piezoelectrics to collect the power: as clubgoers dance, electricity-producing crystals under the floor are compressed, producing a small current. The current is collect by embedded batteries, which in turn provide the power to lights, audio systems, and other parts of the club that consume electricity.

It’s certainly an interesting idea, but we’d like to know just how much power these floors are able to generate. Is this a gimmick or a genuinely practical solution? [Charalambous]’s club has adopted the somewhat hokey policy of forcing patrons to sign a pledge to be climate-conscious and do what they can to help the Earth, but that’s a small price to pay to earn green karma and have fun at the same time.

[via io9]

Robot Clarinet

June 20, 2008 by 6 Comments


Australian research group NICTA in association with the University of New South Wales won the 2008 Artemis Orchestra Competition with their robot clarinet player. The competition challenges participants to design embedded systems that can play unmodified instruments. NICTA took first prize with their roboclarinet, due mainly to the complexity of the robot’s “mouth.” It uses two servo motors to act as a surrogate tongue and lips, vibrating the reed of the clarinet in a way consistent with human playing. The keys of the clarinet are pushed by a series of brass plungers. All of the robot’s functions are controlled by a computer running Linux. If great sound or novel technology are not enough for you, then the project is at least worth a look for the robot’s attractive, slightly steampunk-esque look. Watch it in action after the break.

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RGB Etched Box

June 20, 2008 by 5 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG4PWZyR4Sk&hl=en]
[Dine909] brings us this simple glowing box made out of five etched PCBs. The PCBs control RGB LEDs inside the box, which is also filled with clear glass beads. The four walls are connected to a base controller board that has a Cypress PSoC chip for color mixing. There’s no writeup, and even though it looks a lot like the Lament Configuration, it should be a lot easier to build; any transportation to other dimensions it provides will be strictly figurative.

[via ladyada]