[whatsisface] sent in his scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate. The PowerMate… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to see why more than one person has attempted this. [whatsisface] was inspired by a bit-tech post that did nearly the same thing, only they used the head out of a VCR for the knob. All the other components, like the optical encoder, are salvaged from a mouse, which we talked about in our scavenging How-To. He used a RC car tire for the actual knob. While we’re sure it works great in dirt, we’d probably go with the weight and inertia of the VCR head instead. Have a look at the video below to see the knob being used with the Volumouse software.
Peripherals Hacks1540 Articles
Make A Stretchy Fabric USB Cable
If you’ve been puzzled over a discreet, durable way to sew wiring into your clothing, then puzzle no more: [Plusea] has put together a writeup detailing how to make a USB cable partly out of stretchy cotton fabric. Although the design as detailed doesn’t give much practical use for the invention, we can think of several very effective ways of exploiting this toy. Imagine, for example, placing a USB battery pack into one pocket of a jacket, a portable digital audio recorder in the other, and a lavalier microphone in the lining, thus enabling dozens of hours of covert audio surveillance.
Burning In The Siftables
[Curiouslee] put up some pictures of his Siftables burn in. He got them in the mail with all their accessories and decided to make a special box to carry it all. He started with an ArtBin parts box and cut out dividers where necessary to make everything fit nice and tidy.
The Siftables are quite interesting. They are an information interface that is supposed to be more physical and natural. The analogy they use is a container of nuts and bolts can be sifted through quite easily using your hands. They envision us being able to sift through data similarly. They also mention that it could be used as a gestural interface as well.
RGB Monome Clone
[Julien Bayle] has posted this great breakdown of building an RGB monome clone. He is a musical performer using Ableton Live. He wanted to do away with the need for a computer screen and found that the monome would have been perfect had it been RGB. So he decided to build his own.
The parts list for the entire project is as follows:
- 1x Arduino board
- 4x Sparkfun breakout PCB
- 4x Sparkfun buttons pads (like our door lock)
- 4x Sparkfun buttons bezel
- 64x RGB LEDs common cathode
- 64x Diodes Small Signal (1N4148)
- 1x MAX7221 (LED Driver)
- 1x 74HC164 (8-Bit Serial-In, Parallel-Out Shift Register)
- 1x 74HC165 (8-Bit Parallel-In, Serial-Out Shift Register)
He also has files for the schematics and source code as well as information on how to assemble and test it.
The RGB aspect is still under development. He is using the LEDMatrix-Serial Interface-RGB from Sparkfun Electronics to run it. It is expensive, but is exactly what he was looking for.
There aren’t very many pictures of the project, and none of the working RGB unit. He makes up for it in sheer information. Many parts have links to manufacturers or support forums. Hopefully he’ll post some pictures and video of the final product soon.
Tablo, Fabric Gesture Controller
[Adrian Freed] posted this interesting fabric gesture controller called Tablo. It uses a stretchy conductive fabric, laid over a framework to create a curve known as the Witch of Agnesi. Holding the center of the fabric up is an inverted bowl covered with sections of conductive material. The whole thing is wired to a microcontroller that measures the resistance fluctuations when you press on the fabric. It is capable of measuring displacement and pressure as well as being multitouch.
They mention that the simple interface allows it to be used as a foot input as well as a hand input. We’d love to see a video of it in action.
UnMouse Cheap Multitouch Prototype
A Microsoft research team has delivered a prototype called the UnMouse that could really be a big hit. This unit is a mouse pad sized sensor that is multitouch and pressure sensitive. It is flexible and thin enough to roll up. The article mentions that the construction of the device is “dirt cheap”. This is very exciting; is this the next mouse?
The idea of having low cost multitouch input is very enticing. While there are many ways to do multitouch right now, most are limited by their large size due to projector/camera setups or high cost such as the iPhone. A portable (fits in your laptop bag) pressure sensitive multitouch input device is something that a lot of people have been craving for a while.
Just imagine the uses. Audio engineers could create new interfaces on the fly. You could draw a key map on piece of paper and just lay it on top. Graphic designers could use different sized and shaped brushes. Gamers could make their own ergonomically comfortable gaming layouts. How about covering one in Velcro and attaching buttons to it?
Shell Case Your Flash Drive
[Aki] sent in his collection of projects. We like his bullet shell cased USB flash drive and his take on our friend, the simple parallel port based logic analyzer. The flash drive uses a B style USB connector, mounted inside a big freakin’ bullet shell. The logic analyzer is the classic version, but uses a rather nice unix compatible piece of software that supports up to 1mhz sampling rates.
