KanEye Tracking System Preview

April 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[vimeo=3952932]

[Tempt One] is a graffiti artist who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. He can no longer physically produce art, since his disease has taken his ability to control his arms. His friends, won’t let that be the end of it though. They’re building a visual tracking system to let him work by moving his eye. It seems like it would be very difficult to get any kind of a smooth curve out of eye movement, but the short demonstration video, which you can see after the break, does a decent job, at least for something this early in development. The source code isn’t released yet, but they do plan to do so. If you wanted to make your own, you could find some info in a past post of ours. We’re guessing they intend to use it with something along the lines of the laser tagging system.

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Daft Punk Costumes

March 21, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrWllxRLgQ]

[derektroywest] has posted a detailed step by step breakdown of making a Daft Punk costume. They’ve done a great job, the overall look is very convincing. They include links to where to get each part as well as information on how they pulled it off. The helmets were inspired by the timelapse Daft Punk helmet build. As you can see in the video, they don’t have the entire visor made into a display, but the effect is quite nice, especially because it is multi color.

USB Finger

March 10, 2009 by Eliot 35 Comments

usbfinger

[Jerry] lost his finger in an accident and has since added a prosthetic USB flash drive in its place. It’s making the best of a bad situation; there’s nothing wrong with a little voluntary cyborgization. At least it’s not as invasive as some of the implants we’ve seen before.

UPDATE: Here’s the entry on [Jerry]’s personal blog.

[via Gizmodo]

Wearable Projector Adds Info To Everyday Activities

March 10, 2009 by Eliot 14 Comments

sixthsense

[Pattie Maes] from MIT’s Media Lab showed a really interesting augmented reality demo at TED this year. It’s a wearable projector that lets you interact with any surface. A camera tracks the gestures your fingertips make and performs related actions. She shows several uses: projecting a dial pad on your hand, displaying additional info on a product you’re holding, and taking a picture when you form a frame with your hands. The current equipment cost is $350, but that would be reduced in a dedicated device.

[via Waxy]

Hackit: Hackable Bluetooth Bracelet?

February 17, 2009 by Eliot 63 Comments

bluetooth-1

We spotted this odd piece of geek couture on DVICE today. It’s a bracelet that displays incoming calls via Bluetooth and also vibrates. The intended use is kinda interesting, but we wonder what else could be done with it. Could you update it with any text you want by creating fake caller ID messages? You could have your laptop in your backpack and have the bracelet update when it finds an open access point or any other sort of notification. The display shows the word “Connecting” in pictures, but apparently only displays numbers for incoming calls. It also includes a button to reject calls.

Do you have a project that needs a wireless display? Are there other options like this? At $25, this might be worth a try.

Brain Controlled Fluid Simulation

February 10, 2009 by Eliot 18 Comments

[vimeo 3157584]

Here’s another video demo of [Eric]’s Besmoke interactive fluid simulation that we covered earlier. It was put together for the BIL Conference last weekend. This time around he’s strapped the iPhone to his head (complying with California’s handsfree laws). To make things interesting, he’s also added OCZ’s Neural Impulse Actuator to provide brainwave input.

Haptic Compass

February 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 44 Comments

north

[eric], inspired by this Wired article, built his own haptic compass. Named “the clown belt”, it is a belt with 12 little vibrating motors mounted evenly all around. A digital compass vibrates whichever motor is closest to north at all times. This basically gives the owner an extra sense. He doesn’t go much into his own experiences, but the Wired article mentions “dreaming in north” and feeling strange once they finally removed it. Precise direction senses may not be super power worthy, but they would be cool.

[thanks cnelson]