Phillips AmbX Dissected

April 21, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjSv2VNKnvY]

Electrosthetics has taken it upon themselves to open up and explore the insides of a Phillips AmbX system. The unit is supposed to help immerse you in your video games by adding ambient lighting, vibration, and wind. They got the starter kit, which is missing some bits. Interestingly they found that the hardware was not hampered in any way. You could plug in fans and such and, in theory, build the larger kit. There are lots of pics of the various pieces for you to look at. They note that the hardware all seems decent, but it’s the software that really causes issue. On their Vista64 dual core machine, the software was eating up an entire core to do ambient lighting.

Felix’s Machines

April 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdA-ivDj8o]

Ok, we know you’re going to get mad, there’s virtually no information on the technical side. But the music was so pleasant, and that’s rare. There’s an interview with Felix, the creator, where he discusses his goals and ideas behind the project. We prefer just to sit and watch though. If you want to make something similar, there were some technical details on a mechanical drum recently.

[Thanks Hash]

Radish – Eco Friendly Google Calendar

April 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

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

[Aaron] a google employee came up with an idea that would be good for the environment, as well as fun. The Radish is a solar powered display, updated from a google calendar, with extremely low power consumption. They are building this to be an indicator of the conference room schedule. When we first read this, we wondered just how much greener it could possibly be than printing a few sheets of paper. Then we read that they were going through six reams per day. wow. The Radish gets its power through a solar panel, and preserves it through some creative power saving modes and the fact that it has an LCD that only requires power to update. Would this be a good place for some E paper? Data is transferred using IEEE 802.15.4, which is slow, but also more efficient in terms of power than normal WiFi. The system is so efficient, it can run for 3-4 days in low light conditions after a charge . Another cool fact is that [Aaron] got to design and build this on company time. Google allows people to spend 20% of their time on innovative new projects of their choice.

correction: the LCD goes into an extremely low power “sleep mode” when not being updated, and retains the last image loaded.

Stepper Motor Controller From Old Scanner

April 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

sms

[Murray484] submitted his instructable on how to create a stepper motor controller from an old scanner. He removed the motor and controller from an old scanner then harvested the parts. He’s pretty much starting over, taking the ULN2003 chip from the scanner motor controller and putting it on a fresh board. He then wired it all up, installed the software and got it working. Finally, he built a container out of cardboard for it all. Though he could have made it nicer looking and used higher quality building materials, he was trying to make this a “green” project for the epilog laser cutter contest. He’s done a good job recycling, this could be pretty useful.

Portal-ish Automated Turret

April 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

turret

[RazorConcepts] has built this cool automated turret. It is a home made frame with an airsoft gun, a Roboduino development board, a rangefinder, camera, and some servos. They programmed it to keep up constant random banter from the game as well as respond appropriately do different inputs. For example, it complains when you pick it up or knock it over as well as announcing if it has acquired a target. The range finder is mounted on its own servo which constantly sweeps back and forth, so the turret itself mainly sits still. You can see that the tracking is not so great in the video. [RazorConcepts] notes in the instructable that this is because the main focus was just to make it for “show”. We’ve seen our fair share of turrets before. We think he did a good job, but if it is just for show, maybe spend some more time on a nice body and smoother motion.

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Toddler Computer Remote

April 6, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbLjz-c4LE]

[Killerdark] has built a simple remote for his toddler to control videos on a PC. He gutted a USB number pad, built a new enclosure with the necessary buttons clearly labeled, and mapped the buttons in software. He could have possibly done better with larger color coded buttons, but really, it seems to work well as is. This reminds us of the giant iPod remote from back in 2006. Good job [Killerdark]

Arduino VGA Glitching

April 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

glitch

For some people, mistakes or glitches has become an art form. We’ve seen it in circuit bending for a while, but the newest version is in video glitching. [Sebastian] has gone so far as to intentionally set up an Arduino to send a glitched signal to a monitor. His description sounds pretty easy. We’re just assuming this is in motion in some way, a video of it in action would be nice.