Put An Honest Face On Alexa With This HAL 9000 Build

November 15, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 17 Comments

Amazon put out a version of Alexa’s software that could run on Raspberry Pi. Adafruit sold a big scary red button. For, [Keith Elliott] the project ahead was an obvious conclusion.

The Raspberry Pi version of Alexa’s software was lagging behind the release version. You had to press a button to input a command, which really steals a lot of the joy out of a creepy voice controlled robot listening to you putz around the house. Now, it can wake on command.

Since this sold him on finally adding Amazon’s ever watching witch eye to his home, he decided he would give it appropriately sinister clothes. These were 3D printed from files based on Adafruit’s guide. He ended up with a fairly convincing facade.

The inside is kind of melancholy. A lone Raspberry Pi 3 is held company by a microphone and audio amplifier. These are pretty much all that’s needed to make you home automated shopping experience dreams come true. Video after the break.

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Put A Pi In Your JAMMA

November 12, 2016 by Jenny List 13 Comments

Most of us who play an occasional arcade game will have never taken a look inside a cabinet however much its contents might interest us. We’ll know in principle what kind of hardware we’d expect to see if we were given the chance, but the details are probably beyond us.

In fact, there is a standard for the wiring in arcade cabinets. Arcade operators demanded running costs as low as possible, and the industry responded with the JAMMA wiring standard. The Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association was the name the Japanese trade body was known under in the 1980s, and they originated a specification for both wiring and connector that would allow hardware to be easily installed for any game that supported it.

[Jochen Zurborg] has created an interesting board supporting the JAMMA connector, one that interfaces it with a Raspberry Pi and offers full support of the Pi as a video source. He’s launching his Pi2Jamma as a commercial product so sadly there are no schematics or Gerbers for you to look at, but if you’d prefer to roll your own it probably wouldn’t be beyond most Hackaday readers to do so. What it does though is open up the huge world of emulation on the Pi to owners of classic cabinets, and if you don’t mind forking out for one then we can see it might make for a very versatile addition to your cabinet.

We’ve featured [Jochen]’s work before here at Hackaday with a joystick that faithfully replicates arcade items. As to the Pi, this is the first JAMMA board we’ve seen with video, but we’ve featured another board using a Pi to bring console controllers to JAMMA boards in the past.

Pi Zero Transforms To Game Boy

November 12, 2016 by Al Williams 11 Comments

[GreatScott] bought a Game Boy case. Normally, you’d assume you wanted this to repair a damaged Game Boy, but in this case [GreatScott] used a Pi Zero and some 3D printing to build a game system into the tiny box. You can see some videos, below.

Two interesting parts of the project are the source of the LCD display (a rearview camera screen) and the selection of batteries. Lithium ion batteries are all the rage. But if you watch the news, you know there are some safety issues with using the batteries, especially if you use them improperly. [GreatScott] decided to go with nickel metal hydride cells which still need a protection circuit, but are typically less of a danger than the newer technology cells.

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Raspberry Pi Spies On… Err… Monitors Baby

November 12, 2016 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

“Quick! We’re having a baby and we need a baby monitor!” Rather than run to the local big box and plunk down cash for an off-the-shelf solution, any self-respecting hacker would rise to the challenge and hit the shop to build something like this live streaming eye-in-the-sky baby camera. Right?

At least that’s how [Antibore] handled the situation, and the results are pretty good. He designed his build around an old Raspberry Pi 2 that was hanging around. That required a WiFi adapter, and since he wanted video and audio he needed a camera and mic. The first USB mic had a nice compact design but didn’t perform well, so a gutted gooseneck mic soldered right to the USB connector joined the design spec. A camera module, cell-phone quick charge battery bank, and a 3D printed case round out the BOM. A knitted cozy to keep it looking warm and fuzzy was provided by the mother-to-be — although we think it looks a little like [Mike Wazowski].

This self-contained unit will work anywhere it has access to a WiFi network. Mounted on the baby carrier, it’ll provide a live stream to any browser and provide the new parents with a little peace of mind.

There are a lot of baby monitors on the market, some of them terrible and in need of a rebuild. Kudos to [Antibore] for deciding to roll his own custom solution and for getting it done before the blessed event. Now how about painting that nursery?

A Trove Of Arcade Projects

November 11, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 4 Comments

[Ryan Bates] loves arcade games, any arcade games. Which is why you can find claw machines, coin pushers, video games, and more on his website.

We’ve covered his work before with his Venduino project. We also really enjoyed his 3D printed arcade joystick based off the design of a commercial variant. His coin pushing machine could help some us finally live our dream of getting a big win out of the most insidious gambling machine at arcades meant for children.

Speaking of frustrating gambling machines for children, he also built his own claw machine. Nothing like enabling test mode and winning a fluffy teddy bear or an Arduino!

It’s quite a large site and there’s good content hidden in nooks and crannys, so explore. He also sells kits, but it’s well balanced against a lot of open source files if you’d like to do it yourself. If you’re wondering how he gets it all done, his energy drink review might provide a clue.

Better Tornado Warnings With Polygons And Pi

November 11, 2016 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Everyone pays close attention to the weather, but for those who live where tornadoes are prevalent, watching the sky can be a matter of life and death. When the difference between making it to a shelter or getting caught in the open can be a matter of seconds, it might make sense to build an internet enabled Raspberry Pi weather alert system.

We know what you’re thinking – why not just buy an off-the-shelf weather alert radio with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) reporting, or just rely on a smartphone app? As [Jim Scarborough] explains, living in the heart of Tornado Alley and having had a brush with tragedy as a kid teaches you not to be complacent with severe weather. He found a problem with the SAME system: lack of locational granularity below the county level, leading to a tendency to over-warn during tornado season. [Jim]’s build seeks to improve SAME by integrating National Weather Service polygon warnings, which define an area likely to see a severe weather event as a collection of geographic vertices rather than a political unit. He’s using a Raspberry Pi NOAA weather radio receiver with SAME decoding, and while details are sparse and the project is ongoing, the idea seems to be to use the Pi to scrape the NWS site for polygon data once a county-level warning is issued.

It’s an interesting idea, and one we’ll be keeping an eye on as [Jim] continues his build. In the meantime, you can brush up on weather radio and SAME encoding with this Arduino SAME decoder.

[via r/weather]

Primes In A Box

November 7, 2016 by Richard Baguley 6 Comments

Lots of useful things come in boxes. Shoes, soldering irons and… prime numbers? This simple project from [WhiskyTangoHotel] puts a list of prime numbers in a handy box. Press a button, get a prime.

Sure, it isn’t brain surgery: all that it is happening is that a Raspberry Pi is reading a number from a text file, then showing it on an LCD screen. But it’s well-documented project that shows how to tie together a number of things on the Pi, like writing to an I2C display and using a button to trigger a clean shutdown.

It might be a good starting project for the younger hacker or if you have a Pi pining for something to do. If you’re looking for more easy Raspberry Pi projects, check out our Enlightened Pi Contest.