Self-feeding Pen Printer

June 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

At first look we thought this was a plotter, but it’s really more of a dot matrix (or line matrix) printer. [Bruno] whipped this up using parts from a DVD optical drive. It is capable of moving the pen along the Z and X axes, and feeding the paper along the Y axis.

The video after the break shows the machine printing Megaman, an image perfectly suited to the low-resolution pixels this can put out. But even without the high-pixel counts you might get from a thermal printer, we just love the look of this one. And who doesn’t have an optical drive sitting around just waiting to be hacked? It looks like the one part you’re going to have to source is the stepper motor and geared feed wheel that moves the paper.

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Turning The Wii Classic Controller Into A Gaming Rig

June 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

A bit of clever design lets you mount a screen and gaming hardware right on this controller. [Valentin Ivanov] had already been using the Wii Classic Controller Pro as an input for his Gadgeteer-based projects. He wanted a way to marry the project board, display, and controller into one single unit.

We’re huge fans the design because it doesn’t require any alteration of the controller. Instead, five carefully designed pieces were cut from some thin plywood. They lock together into an assembly that embraces the top of the controller while providing plenty of mounting options for the prototyping hardware thanks to a large grid of holes. A couple of pieces of bronze rod lock the mounting bracket in place by keying into the screw holes in the bottom of the controller.

In the image above you can see Mini Pacman running on the rig. It’s now nearly portable, only relying on a barrel jack for power but we’re sure a battery pack could stand in if necessary.

Building A Clutch For Vim

June 21, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 43 Comments

Whether you’re using emacs, vi, or vim, your fingers will be performing acrobatics on your keyboard because of the mouseless interface. [alevchuk] thought his feet could be used as a way to reduce the amount of keystrokes, so he built the vim clutch. It’s a USB-enabled foot pedal that will insert characters before the cursor in vim.

Vim requires the user to type the letter ‘i’ to insert text before the cursor. [alevchuk] thought this function could be easily replicated by a foot pedal, so he found an extremely cheap USB foot pedal to serve as his vim clutch. Ideally, the pedal should send ‘i’ when it is pressed and Esc when it’s released. [alevchuk] took two pedals, programmed one to send ‘i’ and the other to send Esc, and put them in the same enclosure.

The result is a working clutch for inserting before the cursor in vim. [alevchuk] is looking into a three-pedal model to add inserting at the beginning and end of the line to his vim clutch, so we’ll keep an eye out for when he posts that build.

Recording Off A Reel-to-reel With A Credit Card Reader

June 16, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

If you’ve got a few reel-to-reel recordings of 1940s radio, how do you transfer those to a digital medium? [Evan Long] and his dad used a credit card reader built for the iPhone to transfer a vintage [Art Kassel] recording from magnetic tape to the digital domain of .MP3s.

A few months ago, we saw what goes into these Square credit card readers. They’re just a magnetic tape head with a resistor an 1/8″ jack that plugs directly into the headphone jack of any iDevice. Because there’s no hardware limitation of what the Square credit card reader can do, [The Long boys] decided to back up some old reel-to-reel tapes with an iPod Touch.

[Evan] and his father needed to perform a few modifications to the credit card reader; the tape head pressed against the plastic case too tightly to allow feeding 70-year-old tape through the device. After bending a bit of metal the credit card reader was ready to record the dulcet tones of the Big Band era.

It’s a neat build, and anything that reuses proprietary hardware (however limited) is alright in our book. Nice job, guys.

Volumetric Display Looks Like A DaVinci Sketch

June 14, 2012 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

This volumetric display really shows a lot of potential. And it has just the right balance of simplicity and ingenuity. The rig is being developed by [Michel David] and involves a screen shaped like a helix, and a laser which shines through an optical filter disk.

The moving parts of the device are mounted on the same shaft, which is spun by a belt system connected to a Dremel tool. Since the screen and the information disc are mounted on the same shaft, one part of the synchronization process is already taken care of. You can see the separate stand for the projector, which is a laser in this case but is designed to work with other light sources as well. Since the projection surface is moving towards and away from the projector, a laser is preferrable because of focus issues. Unfortunately [Michel] has been having some issues with switching the diode at high enough frequencies. Still, we think the results in the clip after the break are marvelous.

As far as hardware is concerned, this is a lot simpler than trying to spin a large LED matrix.

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Controlling A Mouse With Your Voice

June 7, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

It’s entirely possible to use a computer without the aid of a mouse or trackpad. Shift and arrow keys will get you very far, but that is entirely too taxing. [Stephen] came up with a really neat way to control a mouse with your voice, a project that is sure to find its way onto the desktops of those with mobility issues very quickly

The voice controlled mouse works in conjunction with the voice recognition built into OS X, a little AppleScript, and a touch of Python. When the user says, ‘show grid’ a 10 by 10 grid numbered 1 to 100 is displayed on the screen. By saying ‘thirty five,’ the cursor moves to the 35th cell in the grid. From there, the mouse can be controlled by speaking cardinal directions such as South and Northwest.

[Stephen] put up a very clever demo of his Voice Mouse project available after the break. Even though he did have a little difficulty with his mac recognizing a few of his spoken commands its light years ahead of trying to navigate the web with just shift and arrow keys.

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Update: Androcade 2.0

June 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

[Chris] has been going about his business, letting his interest guide him as it will. But always in the back of his mind is his Androcade project, and he’s spent the last year making improvements. It’s an arcade controller for playing games on an Android tablet. It connects to the device via Bluetooth, and includes a built-in stand.

His original version was featured here last year. It was made from wood (with a nice Android green finish) and included three buttons and a joystick. This time around he moved to some black laser-cut acrylic for the case, and has doubled up on the buttons. It also now enumerates as an HID Bluetooth device, whereas before it was pushing serial data over the BT connection.

He’s had enough interest from his friends to also create an iPad version all in white. It connects and works just the same as the Android flavor. Check out a bit of Donkey Kong gameplay after the break.

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