Hacked Interactive R2D2 Controlled By Raspberry Pi

March 23, 2013 by Ryan Fitzpatrick 2 Comments

hacked-R2D2-controlled-by-raspberry-pi

Ah R2D2. Probably one of the most recognized little robots on the planet. There have to be a hundred different toys of R2 out there, but one of the more impressive is the 30th Anniversary Interactive edition. Complete with all kinds of bells and whistles, it’s about as realistic as they come. One Star Wars fan found himself in possession of a broken Interactive R2, and with his girlfriend’s birthday coming up, decided to do a little droid surgery to create the ultimate gift.

Giving Anakin a run for his money, all the controls for this R2 unit were custom built. A Raspberry Pi running Rasbian acts as the brain. Facial recognition was implemented using OpenCV. Voice commands in either English or Chinese were made possible by PocketSphinx. Some of the other features he included are: message recording and playback, ultrasonic distance detection, motion detection, wifi, and a rechargeable battery. Many of those features were included in the original toy, but since this unit was broken, had to be rebuilt from scratch.

In the end, it must have impressed his girlfriend – she’s now his wife. Good work Jedi. Check out some build photos and a video demonstration after the break.

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WSPR Transmitter Shows True Value Of Raspberry Pi For Hacking

March 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

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Don’t get us wrong, we love our Raspberry Pi. But if you’re merely running a Linux image without adding a hardware hack into the mix you’re missing out on part of the power for which the platform was developed. This project is a great example of how to embrace the Raspberry Pi’s ability to deliver both low-level hardware access, and solid embedded Linux performance. [Dan Ankers] and [Threeme3] have developed a program which turns the RPi in to a WSPR transmitter. The GitHub readme shares many of the details on how it was done. But you’ll also want to dig through the .c file to see how they’re making use of the GPIO header pins.

[William Meara] sent in the tip for this. He’s been featured on Hackaday previously for his work with WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Report). It’s an amateur radio protocol which lets you communicate over very long distances using relatively weak transmitters. The trick is to use computing power to find the signal hidden in all the noise. Be warned that you do need a HAM license to try this out, but otherwise all you need to connect to the board is a low-pass filter and an antennae.

[via SolderSmoke]

[Photo credit: WSPR hompage]

Raspberry Pi As A Spotify Server With MPD Control

March 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has been very popular as a streaming music player. Sure, the only audio out option on the board is an analog stereo jack, but you can use a USB audio device to improve upon that if you wish. [Wouter van Wijk] wanted to use his RPi as a Spotify server. It’s a bit tricky to get everything configured for this, so he decided to give back by publishing a ready to use Spotify server image for the Raspberry Pi.

The project is call the Pi MusicBox. Like some of the RPi Pandora setups we’ve seen he included the ability to use the hardware as an AirPlay device too. To connect to the Spotify service he uses the Mopidy package. It can also play tracks from local storage (including the home network). It’s even capable of mixing the two sources in the same queue. Possibly the best part is that it can be controlled with any Music Player Daemon (MPD) client like the smart phone screenshots seen above.

If you’re interested, check out his GitHub repo for the project.

Minimalist User Interface For Headless Raspberry Pi Applications

March 13, 2013 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

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[Jason Birch] just finished building a beautifully simple user interface for the Raspberry Pi. The goal was to keep it small and intuitive while still providing a range of functionality. His add-on hardware gives feedback using several LEDs and a four-line character LCD screen. It provides control using just four momentary press switches.

The base for the add-on hardware is a chunk of protoboard the same size as the Pi itself. This is just slightly wider than the LCD screen, leaving room along the top for the row of buttons with different colors of LEDs in between them. Look closely in that nest of point-to-point wiring and you’ll find the dual pin-socket which mates with the RPi GPIO header. One important note from [Jason] mentions that the LCD screen R/W pin must be tied to ground. This keeps it from going into read mode, which would push 5V over the I/O pins, potentially damaging the 3.3V tolerant header on the RPi.

Throw in a battery and that pretty much covers the hardware. To see how he’s using it you’ll want to view the video clip after the break.

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Wiimote Controlled RPi Robot

March 7, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 24 Comments

[Brian] has brought together a powerful collection of hardware to build a robot. The end goal is to have a robot that’s controlled by a Wiimote.

The Wiimote communicates over Bluetooth with a Raspberry Pi, which is running a Python script. This script uses the CWiid Python module to communicate with the controller, and [Brian] has detailed instructions on getting the Wiimote working with a RPi. The RPi controls an ATmega based development board over SPI, which drives an h-bridge to control the two DC motors that move the robot.

[Brian]’s code for this could be helpful for anyone looking to control their RPi with a Wiimote. Since Wiimotes and Bluetooth dongles are fairly cheap nowadays, this is a great way to drop in wireless control to any RPi project, or even to control your media center from the couch.

After the break, check out a video of the build in action

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Dynamic Bicycle Headlight Uses The Open Road As A Display

March 6, 2013 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

This thing is so cool it almost looks fake. But [Matt Richardson] isn’t a hoaxster. He actually built what might be called a heads-down display for your bicycle. He refers to it as a headlight because it borrows a similar function. It mounts on the handlebars and shoots light off the front of the bike. But it’s more than just a battery and a bulb, this uses a pico-projector to give that light some meaning. In the video after the break he shows it off on the streets of NYC.

So far he’s only displaying information that has to do with the speed of travel, but the proof is there just waiting for a brilliant new use. Feeding the projector is a Raspberry Pi board. For this prototype [Matt] mounted it, along with the portable cellphone charger which plays the role of the power source, on a hunk of hardboard strapped inside the bike frame.

If you’re thinking of doing this one yourself beware of the BOM price tag. That projector he’s using runs upwards of $400. We wonder if you could hack together a rudimentary replacement with an old cellphone screen and this diy film projector?

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Audiobook Player Used Only NFC Tags For Control

March 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Martynas Mickevičius] has a Grandmother who is visually impaired. She enjoys listening to audiobooks and has been doing so using a DVD player for quite some time. The problem is that there is no way for her to save her position in between listening session. He set out to help by building a dedicated audiobook reader that doesn’t have any buttons.

The project was inspired by a one-button reader we featured back in November. Like that project, [Martynas] chose to use the inexpensive, yet powerful Raspberry Pi. The main difference comes in the control method. He’s using an NFC tag reader, which is mounted in the top portion of the RPi case. The image above shows the rig during prototyping, but his final version is all bundled up in the pink enclosure and only needs the power and audio cables connected to it. See for yourself in the demo after the jump.

Each book has its own NFC tag. When she’s done reading she can simply cut the power and it will resume in the same place the next time it is plugged in. The tag setup is a vast improvement since it allows an entire library to be stored on the SD card and chosen using a different tag. With this hardware in place it should be trivial to code extensions to the system, like a script that uses text-to-speech to announce which book is being played before playback starts.

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