Monocular Head Mounted Display

February 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

glasses

[Xenonjon] wanted to make a Heads Up Display that he could use while maintaining the ability to see. The most logical choice was a monocular set up. He had an old Eye-Trek laying around and decided to sacrifice it to make his Heads Up Display. Combining a screen from his TV glasses and a wireless security camera setup, he was able to achieve an untethered monocular HUD. This has a multitude of uses, from displaying vital information, to home made night vision, or just watching TV while you work.

There’s plenty of good pictures and information there. The final result is a pair of safety glasses with the display and a pack that you have to put on your belt that holds batteries and the wireless receiver. It seems as though it isn’t horribly cumbersome, but we’d have to try it for a while to say if it would be ergonomically sound.

High Voltage Cable Inspection

January 14, 2009 by Strom Carlson 27 Comments

high-voltage-woker

Have you ever wondered how they inspect high voltage cables without taking them out of service? Check out this video which offers a glimpse into the life of a professional high voltage cable inspector. There are parts of the job you’d expect—namely perching on the cable like a bird, trying to not fall off—but the part of the job you wouldn’t expect is the suit. This suit is made of 75% Nomex, to prevent it from catching fire, and 25% stainless steel thread, turning the suit into a wearable Faraday cage. Of course, because he’s got a Faraday cage mere millimeters from his skin, the cable inspector spends his workday surrounded by half a million volts. To avoid electric shock, he equalizes the voltage potential between himself and the line before touching the cable.

Depending on your specific phobias, this video might make your job seem really dull… or really really safe.

[via Gizmodo]

Lazy Knitting

December 15, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

yarn

As much as we love crazy prototype style hacks, we really enjoy seeing things that get used after their creation. [Marcus] sent us the information about his automatic yarn winder. Noticing that his friends who knit had to go through the monotonous process of winding a ball of yarn each time they started the process, he sprung into action. After finding only a few commercial solutions, which were out of his price range, he decided to build his own. He found a hand cranked version and gutted it to add a motor. Now, they simply need to get it started and walk away. Great job [Marcus].

Wearable XBee Morse Code Keyer

December 14, 2008 by Eliot 15 Comments

xbeeglove

NYC Resistor hosted a wearable wireless workshop today. It was taught by [Rob Faludi] and [Kate Hartman]. They brought along their recently released LilyPad XBee breakout boards. The goal of the class was to use the digital radios to build wireless communication gloves. Above, you can see the conductive thread sewn into the fingertips to key the device. The signal is transmitted to the other glove, which flashes an indicator LED so you can communicate using Morse code.

Baby Twitters Via Kicks

December 12, 2008 by Eliot 30 Comments

[Corey Menscher] built the Kickbee while attending ITP this Fall. It monitors his pregnant wife’s belly and updates Twitter, a microblogging service, every time the baby kicks. The device makes everyone aware of the baby’s movement, not just the expectant mother. It can also log the baby’s activity to monitor development. The sensors are piezos held in place with an elastic band. They’re connected to an Arduino Mini which connects to a host computer using a BlueSMIRF bluetooth module. The host Mac does the logging and twittering.

This is one of the many projects on display at the ITP Winter Show.

[Thanks, @readiness via Boing Boing]

Musical Shirt From Toy Keyboard

December 5, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

musical_shirt

[mikamika] has put together a great tutorial on how to build this musical shirt. The whole process is covered, from taking apart the toy keyboard to laying out the circuit and creating the fabric switches. He used the same method as [plusea] for the fabric buttons and conductive thread for most of the connections. It seems as though he has actually taken [plusea]’s wearable shirt project and added some polish. His looks good enough, he might even be able to make it through an airport.

Arduino Buyers Guide And The Seeeduino

November 26, 2008 by Eliot 17 Comments

seeeduino

Make has assembled a buyers guide for the many different types of Arduino devices. The Arduino is an open hardware platform designed to make prototyping easily accessible. The design allows for other people to modify, expand, and improve on the base, and many people have started producing their own versions. The guide features a lot of the hardware we’ve covered in the past like the LilyPad, Arduino Pro, Sanguino, Duemilanove, Ethernet Shield, and Freeduino.

Out of the pack, the Seeeduino (pictured above) definitely caught our eye. It’s a low profile SMD design much like the Arduino Pro. They’ve taken advantage of the space saved by the SMD ATmega168 by adding more useful headers. In addition to the ICSP, you get the pins in UART order and an I2C header. Vcc is switch selectable for 3.3 or 5volts. The reset switch has been moved to the edge plus two additional ADC pins. Our favorite feature is the new spacing on the digital pins. Arduino digital pin headers have an inexplicable 160mil gap between the banks. The Seeeduino has the standard row for shield compatibility, but has an additional row spaced at standard 100mil spacing for use with protoboard. At $23.99, it’s competitively priced too.