Home Made Rollerbar Mouse

October 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

4003919989_f0f0c6cd65 (Custom)

[Judyofthewoods] has hacked together this rollerbar mouse. We’ve heard people talk about these in a positive way, going on about how comfortable they are. We haven’t really experimented with one much to verify. This one looks surprisingly nice considering it is made from scrap. The image above is showing it without the cover that hides the hot glue and optical sensor. There isn’t much of a writeup, but as you can see from the picture, there isn’t much necessity for one either. She seems to have done a great job stating that it is fairly smooth with only minor jittering.

Multi-touch LCD From LEDs

October 10, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 8 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiJsBaBAUL4%5D

[Thomas] promised nearly a year ago he would give the community code and schematics of how he made his LED Multi-touch panel, but we would have to wait for his next version first. Well its finally here, bigger and better then we could ever have imagined. His new version is organized as a 48 by 32 matrix of 1536 LEDs, but he’s gone further by placing it behind a stripped LCD to make a multi-touch display. It doesn’t seem nearly as fast or accurate as the original, but potentially could be more portable than ones we’ve seen before. And yes, this time around he included how his LED matrix is made.

Safelock: Biometric Typing Security

October 9, 2009 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vMb9JUhC1g]

We’ve seen some ways to bypass biometric security measures but here’s a new offering that we think will be hard to fool. The Safelock system is used in conjunction with a password to identify a specific user. This software records your typing style including the time between keystrokes, the time keys are held, and key pressure data. This information is then normalized and compared to the information stored about the user when the password was originally set. If you don’t fall within specifications that match the stored data, you won’t get in even with the right password.

The icing on the cake is that Safelock will look for malicious users. If you enter the wrong password, it will begin to record and analyze your typing style. If you make enough incorrect attempts you will be labeled as a security threat and locked out of the system altogether. We can only think of one reliable way to circumvent this and that’s using a man-in-the-middle method of recording the keyboard inputs of the legitimate user for playback later.

This is an innovative user identification system and we’re not the only ones that think so. [Jeff Allen] and [John Howard], students at SMU won first prize for the Student Innovation Contest at the 2009 User Interface Software and Technology Symposium.

Five Concept Mice Add Multi-touch Control

October 6, 2009 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLw1MXTDlAE]

Microsoft is showing off five concepts for added mouse functionality. All of them seek to replace traditional move-and-click with touch sensitivity through either capacitive sensing, video recognition, sensor articulation, or laser scanning. We’re excited about the prospects of some of these features but at the same time wonder what this does to the price of this much-abused peripheral. After the break we’ll touch on each of the devices, along with time references for the video embedded above. Continue reading “Five Concept Mice Add Multi-touch Control” →

Building An IR Receiver For The Popcorn Hour C-200

October 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

IR_module

[Linuxworks] has posted a writeup on how to build an IR module for the popcorn hour c-200. We weren’t familiar with the popcorn hour c-200, so we had to look it up. It seems to be a media center pc sort of thing. We’re not reviewing the unit itself, since we’ve never used one, so we’ll just get back to the mod. The device uses an RF remote, which some people didn’t like as much. Luckily it has an expansion port which can be utilized to get IR signals into the machine. [Linuxworks] has used a cheap IR sensor and a standard headphone plug. He notes that equipment passing power through these plugs should be turned off before plugging them in or removing them as they short momentarily during insertion.

Monome Case Mod: Vintage Radio

October 5, 2009 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

monome_vintage_radio

We’ve seen a lot of the Monome, a USB based controller often used as a sampler, here at Hack a Day. This is one of the more creative hacks. [brothernigel] took a Monome 40h kit and fit it inside the case of a vintage radio. The faceplate was a custom order to fit his purposes and incorporates the original radio frequency display. The USB port was well placed in the side of the wooden housing. For extra “soul”, pen and ink art adorns the insides. His work log gallery takes you through the process from start to finish.

We never noticed before, but the Monome makes a great vintage-looking-electronics project. All the lighted buttons are straight out of a ’60s military command center.

[Thanks Antonio]

Pickle Lighting For Fun And Profit

October 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

2oct09_mitpickle (Custom)

The fantastic people at MIT have taken it upon themselves to explain how an OLED works. Their visual aide in this explanation is an electrocuted pickle. This helps describe how OLEDs are actually constructed from organic material. Many of you probably already know how they work, but for those who don’t this video will clear up any questions you might have. Even if you do know how OLEDs work, you may learn something too. We hadn’t realized how amazingly thin the displays are.

[via Engadget]