Theremin Controlled Mario

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnZeI8uLJnw]

In the video above, [conquerearth] is using a theremin to control Super Mario Bros. Moving his hand toward and away from the vertical antenna increases the theremin’s pitch. The computer monitors this in real time and moves Mario left and right. The loop antenna controls the theremin’s volume and acts as the jump button. The controls seem to work well, much better than the sound of one man flailing at a theremin.

[via Gizmodo]

Real Guitar + Guitar Hero

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b_mE4JhF1o]

[Alan] isn’t very good at guitar. He says so himself. He’s not that great at guitar hero either. Was that medium difficulty? Let’s put aside his skill to talk about his controller. He has fused the guitar hero controller with a real guitar. The original guitar has retained its functionality, though the controller bits may get in the way if he jams really hard. With a flip of the switch, it turns into a guitar hero controller. You simply press the strings down at the frets where the buttons should be, while strumming the controller part.

130 Megapixel Scanner Camera

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9ZoaPIHQc]

Made from a 1200 dpi epson scanner and a manual focus canon lens, this camera captures 130 Megapixel images. With a resolution of 13,068 x 10,173, these pictures are very detialed. You can see some examples in his flickr set. It doesn’t look like they’re the full size originals though.  If you want to build your own, here’s a good start. Keep in mind that it’s from 2004 though.

Playing With The PC-PIC II

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09tA7sUbF4]

[Asier] pointed us to this video of his PC-PIC II acting as a peripheral to his EEepc. You can see him playing pong, using it as a musical input, and even a video game controller. This project seems pretty nice, though we would like some more information. We tried digging around in the “projects” area and couldn’t find anything.

LCD Multitouch

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLztKzljMc0&feature=player_embedded]

[Jacob] wrote us to show off his latest project. He built his multitouch interface out of an LCD monitor. We’ve seen plenty of multitouch projects here, but usually they are projection style. This project uses the panel out of an LCD, with the diffusers and backlighting removed. The panel itself is fairly transparent, so a webcam with IR filter can see the light pens right through it. It does seem a bit dim in the video, we’re wondering if it is better in real life.

Keykeriki: Wireless Keyboard Sniffer

[vimeo = 4990390]

Remote-Exploit.org is releasing Keykeriki, a wireless keyboard sniffer. The project is both open source hardware and software. you can download the files on their site. Right now you can’t get a pre made board, but they plan on releasing one soon. The system can be upgraded with “backpacks” or add on modules. One of these is going to be an LCD that displays the keystrokes of the keyboard you are sniffing. Another is supposed to serve as an interface to your iPhone.  Right now it has the ability to decode Microsoft wireless keyboards, but the Logitech pieces should be added soon.

Gesture Controlled Tetris

glove

Look at this awesome glove. This awesome glove is used to control tetris. Yes, you read that right, it controls tetris. This was a final project at Cornell in the summer of 2008. They built this glove to do gesture controlled tetris. With all the announcements of the PS3 motion device and Microsoft’s project Natal, it’s nice to look back to our very recent past and see some alternative user input. These people are using accellerometer data only, sent to the computer wirelessly.