One of the ideas that’s been floating around my How-To bin for a couple of years is an under carpet zone switch dance pad. [sprite_tm] beat me to it in late 2006, and did it even better. He was using a QT160 chip – a nifty six channel capacitive touch sensor to make touch switches. Instead, he used an Atmel to duplicate the technology. He was able to place foil panels below his carpet. Step on one and it acts like you just closed a switch. The QT160 is now available, but the atmel he used is actually cheaper.
Peripherals Hacks1573 Articles
Adding USB To A Cheap Linux Router
[sprite_tm] usually sends this stuff in, but I discovered that he took some time to hack on a Sweex router. The CPU happens to have an on-board usb host controller, so he added a few components. Now the router can support memory sticks, or possibly become a USB print server. (I can’t say for sure since I haven’t checked out the software myself)
Update: the project was linked in a comment a while back, but we never gave it the attention it deserved. Enjoy.
Webcam Laser Rangefinder
This has been around for a while, but I thought it deserved some attention. [Todd] used a laser pointer, a webcam, some trig and (sigh) some windows development tools to create his own laser range finder. Given the position of the beam strike and that the camera is located at a right angle to the laser, calculating the distance is pretty simple. This could be handy if you’re building a bot for defcon…
One Pin Diy Dot Matrix Printer
I’m pretty sure that in 1986 all I wanted was a new pair of hi-tops. While I was hoping for new shoes, [Matthias] built this printer for his commodore 64 using a ball point pin and a solenoid to form a hybrid plotter/one pin dot matrix. If you’ve got a few minutes, [Matthias] has quite a few interesting hacks on his site.
Mechanical Xeyes
This project, courtesy of [fbz] brings back memories. Xeyes is one of those classic apps – handy for testing out connections and great for screwing with new people who had wide open servers. [Zn000h] built this set of mechanical Xeyes – instead of following a mouse, it samples video and follows the highest contrasting moving object around. (See the description for more on the video filter) The data is passed on via USB to a set of ATTINY controlled servo operated eyes. Just in case the server can’t handle the load, you can find pictures of the setup here.
Ultimate Dance Pad V2
[Jared] sent along his latest on inventgeek. The most interesting piece of the project has to be the stainless steel/teflon pressure switch. Otherwise, it’s probably every DDR fan’s wet dream. Oh, and congratulations on geek 2.0 [Jared]!
DIY ‘midi’ Footpedal
[forrest] passed along this diy foot-pedal ‘midi’ controller. It’s a good re-use of hardware, but not a true midi controller. The pcb was gutted from an old keyboard, and the pedals were scored from a mad 60 mile tour of the local radio shacks clearance bin. Since the pedals are simple momentary on switches, it was a matter of wiring them to the controller and using a laptop to generate signals via usb midi interface. Replace the keyboard pcb with a drum controller and you’d have an interesting stand alone solution.
Just so I could enjoy some extra crow, I managed to leave one other entry out of my published list of Design Challenge entries. [Jason] sent in this MEGA32 programmer/dev board. He kept it single sided, but you’ll need a parallel port to use it.
