Gesture Control The Easy Way

February 22, 2020 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

Gesture control is a technology that has floated around for quite a while, but never quite reached mainstream acceptance. Wii Bowling was fun for a while, but we’re not regularly using gestures to open doors or order pizza just yet. Doing it yourself can be quite easy, however, as [RC Lover san] found with a barebones, hacky build.

Typically, when we think of gesture control, we envisage object tracking cameras or MEMS accelerometers. Instead, this build uses simple tilt switches, as you might find in a pinball machine from days of yore. Four of these are placed on a wrist-mounted device, allowing the user to tilt their arm to move an RC car in different directions. The tilt switches are easy to hack into the controller for a toy RC car, as they simply replace the existing buttons on the PCB.

It’s a project that goes to show that not everything has to be done with advanced sensors and complex algorithms. Sometimes, it can all be done with a handful of cheap switches and some ingenuity. Plus, using arm movements to scoot BB-8 around on the floor looks like great fun. We’ve seen other attempts to build simple gesture controls with pots, too. Video after the break.

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Classic Toy Helicopter Flies Again As DIY Version

February 11, 2020 by Dan Maloney 31 Comments

For many of us who grew up in the 1970s, “VertiBird”, the fly-it-yourself indoor helicopter, was a toy that was begged for often enough that it eventually appeared under the Christmas tree. And more than a few of the fascinating but delicate toys were defunct by Christmas afternoon, victims of the fatal combination of exuberant play and price-point engineering. But now a DIY version of the classic toy flies again, this time with a more robust design.

To be fair to the designers at Mattel, the toy company that marketed VertiBird, the toy was pretty amazing. The plastic helicopter was powered by a motor located in the central base, which rotated a drive rod that ran through a stiff tether. Small springs in the base and at the copter acted as universal joints to transmit power to the rotor. These springs were the weak point in the design, especially the one in the base, often snapping in two.

[Luke J. Barker]’s redesign puts a tiny gear motor in the aircraft rather than in the base, something that wouldn’t have been feasible in the original. To address the problem of getting electrical power from the base to the aircraft, [Luke] eschewed an expensive slip ring and instead used a standard 3.5-mm audio jack and plug. The plug serves as an axle for the main gear in the base that powers the copter’s rotation; sadly, this version doesn’t tilt the aircraft mechanically to control backward and forward flight like the original. A pair of pots with 3D-printed levers control throttle and flight direction through an Arduino; see it in action in the video below.

These pages abound with rotorcraft builds, both helicopters and multirotor. We appreciate all manner of flying machines, but this one really takes us back.

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Lego Space Station Designed By Fan

February 2, 2020 by Al Williams 9 Comments

It is no secret that most people like to play with Lego, but some people really like it to an extreme degree. Lego’s Idea platform lets people submit designs for review and also lets users vote on these designs. If accepted, the company works with the designer to put a kit in production and they share in the profits. [Christophe Ruge] submitted his design for the International Space Station and three years later, you can buy it on the Lego website.

The kit has 864 parts and the finished model is 12″ x 19″ x 7″ — probably will take longer than a coffee break to finish it. The model even includes the two rotating Solar Alpha Rotary Joints that allow the solar panels to align with the sun. You can see [Scott] building his on a recorded live stream below if you have 3 hours to kill.

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A Commmand Center For Children With Sensory Needs

January 25, 2020 by Sharon Lin 4 Comments

Toys for children are meant to be fun and interactive, but they’re even better if they’re educational as well. For [carrola1], a parent of a 4-year-old suffering from from medical disabilities, sensory needs, and autism, a more personalized approach seemed best. The electrical engineer built a wall-mounted command center with plenty of switches, buttons, and knobs to trigger to keep any child happy.

Apart from basic inputs, the device also has a color sensor – the command center can ask the child for an object of a particular color and congratulate them with a song when they’ve successfully acquired one.

The software for the audio and light controls was written in C for a STM32L0 series MCU, with CMSIS as the hardware abstraction layer and STM32CubeIDE as the IDE. The design uses SPI and I2C for serial communication and I2S for communicating between the digital audio devices. Physical inputs include toggle switches, rotary switches, and key switches to provide variety, with all physical hardware connected to the MCU on a custom PCB.

The audio output, sourced from a library of wav files, seems like the most challenging part of the build: the amps needed to be changed from left channel mono configuration to stereo, the output had to be LC filtered, and the code for had to be optimized for size to allow the audio files to play.

You can check out a video of the command center in action on the Reddit post.

Robo Pony Greets Hackerspace Visitors

January 24, 2020 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Robotic animal companions were once all the rage, though their limited personalities and annoying sound effects often relegated them to the bin fairly quickly. This makes them all the more ripe for hacking. [David Bynoe] had a Baby Butterscotch that was in need of a new home, and he decided to put the pony to work at his local hackerspace.

The Baby Butterscotch pony is a charming beast in stock form, yet highly menacing once its skin is removed. Mounted to a plaque, the pony has three PIR sensors that detect movement. These sensors are used to allow the pony to act as a door greeter, waking up when people enter the hackerspace and following them around the room. The additional hardware interfaces with the pony’s stock electronics by using floating capacitors and relays to activate the original capacitive touch sensors. The final piece is finished with a coat of gold paint and some RGB eyes to complete the look.

It’s a fun project that gives Vancouver Hack Space a little personality, and we’re sure it’s enjoyed by the members. We’ve seen other companion toy hacks before, with the Furby always being a ripe target for projects. Video after the break.

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Electric Unicorn Is Our Kind Of Rideable

January 20, 2020 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

When [Charlyn] took a unicorn rocking horse in to work, it was an instant hit. Naturally, the people wanted more, and suggested it needed electric propulsion. Naturally, she rose to the challenge, and Rocky the Unicorn got a motorized upgrade.

The build consists of a frame built out of PVC pipes, hooked up with Formufit fittings. These are a great way to build useful structures out of PVC pipe, and made the build a cinch. The frame has a footrests for the rider, and the rocking horse already has a comfortable seat. For propulsion, a hoverboard is installed in the base, with the frame sporting a pair of casters to avoid tip over. Twin PVC handles are used to interface with the footplate of the hoverboard, allowing the user to drive and steer, as well as turn on the spot. A bouquet of fake flowers round out the aesthetic and hide some of the zipties.

It goes to show that PVC pipe can be an excellent material for quick, fun projects – all you need is the right fittings to make it all happen! It’s also fun to see a hoverboard used in such a way that doesn’t end with severe injuries. Unicorns always bring a nice flair to a project, too. Video after the break.

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Teardown: BilBot Bluetooth Robot

January 20, 2020 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

Historically, the subject of our January teardown has been a piece of high-tech holiday lighting from the clearance rack; after all, they can usually be picked up for pocket change once the trucks full of Valentine’s Day merchandise start pulling up around the back of your local Big Box retailer. But this year, we’ve got something a little different.

Today we’re looking at the BilBot Bluetooth robot, which over the holidays was being sold at Five Below for (you guessed it) just $5 USD. These were clearly something the company hoped to sell a lot of, with stacks of the little two-wheeled bots in your choice of white and yellow livery right by the front door. With wireless control from your iOS or Android device, and intriguing features like voice command, I’d be willing to bet they managed to move quite a few of these at such a low price.

For folks like us, it can be hard to wrap our minds around a product like this. It must have a Bluetooth radio, some kind of motor controller, and of course the motors and gears themselves. Yet they can sell it for the price of a budget hamburger and still turn a profit. If you wanted to pick up barebones robotics platform, with just a couple gear motors and some wheels, it would cost more than that. The economies of scale are a hell of a thing.

Which made me wonder, could hackers take advantage of this ultra-cheap robot for our own purposes? It’s pretty much a given that the software for this robot will be terrible, and that whatever control electronics live inside it will be marginal at best. But what if we write those off and just look at the BilBot as a two-wheeled platform to carry our own electronics? It’s certainly worth $5 to find out.

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