High Voltage Hacks: All About Electroluminescence

August 25, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 11 Comments

Although many might not know it, electroluminescent materials use high voltage, and thus qualify for our featured topic. Many may assume that these sheets work in the same way as LED lights, using low-voltage DC power. This, however, is not the case, as they need around 100 volts of AC current to allow them to light up.

For a battery-powered solution, this means converting the battery’s DC power to AC. Adafruit has a good tutorial about working with EL wire and powering it up using a portable inverter. One should obviously be careful to properly insulate any clothing using this material as being shocked is generally not fun.

The video after the break is pretty long, but is well produced and will give you a good background of EL use. If you don’t have 30 minutes to dedicate to this, be sure to at least skip to 2:43 to see one of the coolest EL shirts we’ve seen. Continue reading “High Voltage Hacks: All About Electroluminescence” →

Bluetooth Wristwatch Based On An Arduino

August 23, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

We hate to admit it, but we missed out on the TI Chronos watch deal last week. While we’re still a little bit burned over the fact that these watches sold out so fast, [Ahmet] sent in his Open Source Bluetooth Watch and we’re thinking this could eventually be a decent replacement.

The watch is built around an Arduino Pro Mini, a scavenged Nokia LCD, and a BlueSMiRF Gold. The Bluetooth connects to a Nokia N900 with a little Bluetooth client app [Ahmet] wrote. He also wrote a small GUI for the watch’s LCD display. Afterwards, he was able to display missed calls, new email, and is now working on support for changing songs on his N900’s media player.

Admittedly, a little work needs to be done on the enclosure. Still, the potential for this watch is much greater than the iPod as a watch project we saw last year. Right now, we’re thinking about what could be added to [Ahmet]’s watch. An accelerometer would probably be on the top of our list, but if you have any ideas feel free to leave them in the comments.

Check out the walk through of the watch’s functions after the break.

Continue reading “Bluetooth Wristwatch Based On An Arduino” →

The Hand-Mounted Haptic Feedback Sonar Obstacle Avoidance Asstance Device.. Or The Tacit

August 19, 2011 by Nick Schulze 14 Comments

Here is a hack that takes the stick out of the blind mans hand. [Steve] has been working on the Tacit, a wrist mounted sonar device with haptic feedback, it’s like strapping a bat to your wrist to help you see. The Tacit uses two sonar ping sensors to measure the distance to the nearest obstacle, the relative distance to an object is then fed back to the user using two servos which apply pressure to the back of the wrist. The Tacit is sporting an Arduino pro mini to control the ping sensors and drive the servos, and runs off a 9 volt battery.

This is not an entirely new concept, haptic headbands have been around on the net for a while, but the Tacit allows the user to detect obstacles on the ground waiting to trip you up. All in all a neat hack that may have a future in helping the blind. Check out the video after the break to see it in action.

Continue reading “The Hand-Mounted Haptic Feedback Sonar Obstacle Avoidance Asstance Device.. Or The Tacit” →

Lighted Shoe Ruffles — He’ll Never Step On Your Toes Again

August 9, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Whether for fashion, emergency lighting, or just to make a statement, these lighted shoe clips make for a unique footwear accessory. [Becky Stern], who we’ve seen before hacking automatic knitting machines, tackles this quick lighted project.

The electronics are simple, two LEDs connected in parallel to a button battery by some conductive thread. The circuit is the same as an LED throwie, but she’s using a sewable battery holder. The ruffle is made by cutting out and folding several circles of fabric. We’re not too used to working with this building material and were glad to hear her tip on fusing the cut edges with a lighter. She’s also got a good tip about bending one LED lead in a square shape and the other in a round shape to keep track of the polarity. After sewing everything together and completing the circuit with the conductive thread [Becky] adds a paper clamp making this easy to use with any shoe. In fact, the guy’s don’t have to miss out on the fun as this could easily double as a boutineer.

Don’t miss [Becky’s] complete walk through video embedded after the break.

Continue reading “Lighted Shoe Ruffles — He’ll Never Step On Your Toes Again” →

Wearable Video Coat

July 12, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

[David Forbes] is no stranger to the weird and esoteric, so he created a color LED TV built into a lab coat. He plans on bringing it to Burning Man next month.

The RGB LEDs are mounted narrow flex boards, providing a 160×120 pixel NTSC display. Video processing is taken care of by an Xilinx FPGA that takes the YCrCb video feed from a video iPod and converts it into four separate RGB streams for the front, back, and the two sides. The requisite controls for brightness and color are on the shoulders.

Of course, the build wouldn’t be over-the-top without the ability to plug a Nintendo into a lab coat, so there’s an NTSC input on an RCA jack. Everything is powered by two 11.1 V, 5Ah radio-control LiPo battery packs that should power this for a while.

Check out a video of the LED lab coat below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtSm8Oom2n4&w=470]

VU Meter Scarf Lights Up The Night

July 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

vu_meter_scarf

[Eli Skipp] wrote in to share a project she has been working on bit by bit, for over a year – an LED VU meter scarf. The project was originally going to be built using a custom PCB, but no matter how long she spent troubleshooting the piece, it just wouldn’t work right. She eventually broke down and purchased a VU meter kit, which worked out quite a bit better than the homebrew version.

The VU meter circuitry is tucked away inside the scarf as she shows in the video below. The LEDs are connected using conductive thread sourced from Lamé Lifesaver, which she says is far more durable than other threads she has tried. After originally testing the VU meter, she was unimpressed by the output of the LEDs, so she swapped them out for brighter ones, which look much better. It looks like it works quite well – we definitely dig the idea of a scarf with a built-in VU meter, even if it was partially built from a kit.

Continue reading to see [Eli] give a quick demonstration and a rundown of the scarf’s construction.

Continue reading “VU Meter Scarf Lights Up The Night” →

Did you get the tickets? To what? The gun show.

Detecting Muscles With Electromyography

June 29, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

The folks at Advancer Technologies just release a muscle sensor board with a great walk through posted on Instructables describing how this board measures the flexing of muscles using electromyography.

Using the same electrode placement points as the remote controlled hand we covered earlier, the muscle is measured by sensing the voltage between the muscle and its tendon. The result is a fairly fine-grained sensing of the output – more than enough to provide some analog control for a project.

The board itself is relatively simple – an INA106 differential amp is used to sense if a muscle is flexing or not. This signal is then amplified and rectified, after which it can be connected to the analog input of your favorite microcontroller. The video demo shows the board connected to a Processing app running from an Arduino, but it wouldn’t be hard to adapt this towards remote Nerf sentry turret controlled by your biceps.

Check out the video after the break to see the muscle sensor board in action.

Continue reading “Detecting Muscles With Electromyography” →