My First Robot: A Dad’s Journey In Robotics For His Daughter

May 7, 2014 by James Hobson 15 Comments

My first robot

[Joel Miller] wants to get his daughters into electronics early (his oldest is only 3), so he’s decided to foray into the wonderful world of robotics as a fun way to get them interested. As bonus to us and all other would-be robotics enthusiasts out there, he’s keeping track of the project on his blog!

He started by sketching out some ideas about what he wanted his robot to be capable of — it should be able to move around, be remote controlled, have sensors for experiments, and even have some personality — expression capable eyes maybe? Oh and it should be able to automatically charge itself, and have tank treads!

It’s been a few weeks since he started scheming up ideas… and he already has a prototype complete! Talk about a productive father! He decided to try 3D printing a continuous tank tread using ABS, but unfortunately it was a bit too stiff, so he’s opted to use a tried and true Lego system instead — although maybe he should try printing in two materials, like we just saw with the FlexyDualie extruder!

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Recycled Foam Box Is Now A Weather Station

May 5, 2014 by Will Sweatman 20 Comments

Raspberry pi in foam box

When [Ioannis] received some high resolution LCD’s in a tattered foam box, he posed to himself a most interesting question – Should he throw the foam box away, or use it as a container for a project? Fortunately for us, he decided on the latter and threw together a very capable weather station!

Having only an hour to spare, [Ioannis] grabbed a Raspberry Pi, WiFi USB stick and a camera module and went to work. He mounted the camera module to the foam lid using a highly advanced technique, and soldered a cable that would power the device directly to D17 – a Zener diode that sits on the bottom of the board.

For the weather data, he’s using another design of his – the Sensor Stick. This nifty device — which we featured over the weekend — is about the size of a stick of chewing gum, and sports an array of sensors including the popular BMP085, which can measure pressure and temperature .

He wraps up everything using open source software to get the data from the weather station. Pretty impressive for an old foam box and an hours time! This would be an interesting start to a home automation system. Connect it to motorized windows and/or a sprinkler system and he’s on his way to claiming The Hackaday Prize.

Raspi, GPS, USB hub and battery hooked together

NSA Technology Goes Open Hardware

May 2, 2014 by Will Sweatman 27 Comments

When [Edward Snowden] smeared the internet with classified NSA documents, it brought to light the many spying capabilities our government has at its disposal. One the most interesting of these documents is known as the ANT catalog. This 50 page catalog, now available to the public, reads like a mail order form where agents can simply select the technology they want and order it. One of these technologies is called the Sparrow II, and a group of hackers at Hyperion Bristol has attempted to create their own version.

The Sparrow II is an aerial surveillance platform designed to map and catalog WiFi access points. Think wardriving from a UAV. Now, if you were an NSA agent, you could just order yourself one of these nifty devices from the ANT catalog for a measly 6 grand. However, if you’re like most of us, you can use the guidance from Hyperion Bristol to make your own.

They start off with a Raspi, a run-of-the-mill USB WiFi adapter, a Ublox GY-NEO6MV2 GPS Module, and a 1200 mAh battery to power it all. Be sure to check out the link for full details.

Thanks to [Joe] for the tip!

Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

May 1, 2014 by Adam Fabio 31 Comments

Who wouldn’t want a mirror that compliments them first thing in the morning? [Michael]’s Magic Mirror does this and more. [Michael] got the idea for his mirror during an epic Macy’s shopping trip with his girlfriend. While looking for a boyfriend chair, [Michael] noticed a mirror with a lighted sign behind it. Intrigued by the effect, [Michael] realized he could build it – and build it better!

Back at home [Michael] set to work. The Magic Mirror uses a piece of one-way mirror, similar to infinity mirrors. Instead of LED’s and another mirror, [Michael] wanted to embed an entire monitor behind the glass. In order to keep the mirror thin, [Michael] needed a monitor with cables exiting toward the side or bottom rather than directly out the back. He found what he was looking for in an Iiyama monitor. Yanking the case off a brand new LCD can be a bit nerve-wracking, but [Michael] pulled it off in pursuit of a thin final product.

Magic Mirror’s frame is built with standard 2×4 lumber. [Michael] had the foresight to include some cooling holes for the heat generated by the monitor. The heavy 6.5Kg final product required a double mounting point.

With a good-looking case, it was time to get some equally good-looking data to display. [Michael] used a Raspberry Pi to drive his display. He switched the Pi’s display mode to portrait and installed Chromium in kiosk mode. The entire mirror is essentially a web page. [Michael] used some simple HTML, CSS and Javascript to pull time and weather data down from various feeds. The page is rendered in a clean Helvetica ~~Nueve~~ Neue font with matching icons. A handsome build indeed!

Sink Your Teeth Into PiPhone

April 26, 2014 by Kristina Panos 37 Comments

Raspberry Pi cell phone Have you ever dreamed of independence from smartphone bloatware? If you have a Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit TFT, you’re halfway to making your own version of [Dave]’s PiPhone.

This tasty proof-of-concept cellular sandwich is made by adding a Sim900 GSM/GPRS module, which communicates via UART, to the Pi/TFT hardware while using a piece of foam core board in the middle to prevent shorts. You won’t get free service or anything, but you can pop a pre-paid SIM card into it. He’s powering it with a LiPo battery and using a DC-to-DC converter to set up the 3.7V to 5V. You could do a lot worse than the $158 BOM, and we’re betting you have a Pi lying around already. We wish more phones had baby rocker switches.

There’s a slight problem with the PiPhone: it gets pretty warm and there isn’t a lot of room for air circulation. For best results, let it cool on a well-attended windowsill or operate it near a fan like [Dave] did. He doesn’t have the code up on GitHub as of this writing, but he will capitulate to high demand. Make the jump to see [Dave]’s tour of the PiPhone and watch him make a call with it.

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Black Mirror, Black Hole: Kill Your Television

April 23, 2014 by Kristina Panos 15 Comments

don't waste your time TV screen Would you believe that some people think the internet is a time waster? Well, not at this particular address of course, but we can think of some other sites that are absolute rabbit holes without so much as a rousing game of croquet at the bottom. If you need help achieving what Tim Ferriss dubbed a Low Information Diet, there are browser extensions that will block your access to sites that keep you from getting things done. [Ivan’s girlfriend] has taken this time management tack seriously and even created a simple web page that states “Don’t Waste Your Time!” that will show if she tries to get to Facebook.

There’s one small problem with all this, and it’s been around for a long time. [Ivan’s girlfriend] still watches TV. Out of love and respect for her goals, he decided to prank her by blocking her TV viewing. In a delightful twist, the TV will display her own web page to her after 30 seconds.

They have digital and analog TVs, so he had to set up both in order to cover his bases. The digital TV is a monitor fed from a set-top box with HDMI out. As the STB can only be controlled via IR remote, [Ivan] used an HDMI switch to change from the STB input to a Raspi that will display the reprimanding web page and play Pink Floyd’s “Time“.

The analog TV took slightly more doing. He put a Raspi on the AV input, but connected it from the inside so nothing looked suspicious. The Raspi checks the TV status every second and switches to the Pi once the TV is on. Same deal: judgmental web page, Pink Floyd. The beauty part is that both of [Ivan]’s setups also record her reaction; the digital TV uses a dash camera and the analog uses an Android phone. Check out [Ivan]’s tour of the analog TV Pi after the break.

If you or [Ivan’s girlfriend] need even more time management help, there’s always the roll-your-own-Pomodoro timer.

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HummingBoard, The Vastly More Powerful Raspi

April 22, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 76 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has been around for a while now, and while many boards that hope to take the Pi’s place at the top of the single board ARM Linux food chain, not one has yet succeeded. Finally, there may be a true contender to the throne. It’s called the HummingBoard, and packs a surprising amount of power and connectivity into the same size and shape as the venerable Raspberry Pi.

The HummingBoard uses a Freescale i.MX6 quad core processor running at 1GHz with a Vivante GC2000 GPU. There’s 2GB of RAM, microSD card slot, mSATA connector, Gigabit Ethernet, a BCM4329 WiFi and Bluetooth module, a real-time clock, and IR receiver. There’s also all the usual Raspberry Pi flair, with a 26 pin GPIO connector, CSI camera connector, DSI LCD connector, stereo out, as well as the usual HDMI and analog video.

The company behind the HummingBoard, SolidRun, hasn’t put a retail price on the board, nor have they set a launch date. You can, however, enter a contest to win a HummingBoard with the deadline this Friday. Winners will be announced in early May, so maybe the HummingBoard will be officially launched sometime around then.

It’s an amazing board with more than enough power to rival the extremely powerful BeagleBone Black, with the added bonus of being compatible with so many of those Raspberry Pi accessories we all love dearly.