Smart Hat Puts Your Head In The Game

July 22, 2014 by Will Sweatman 8 Comments

man wearing a diy head mounted display

[Arvind] has dropped his hat in the game of head mounted displays. With Google Glass pushing $1,500, it’s only natural for hackers to make a cheaper alternative. [Avind’s] $80 version might not be pretty, but it gets the job done.

Using a Raspberry Pi loaded with speech recognition software, a webcam, 2.5 inch LCD display and a handful of other parts, [Arvind’s] hat mounted display allows him to view email, Google Maps, videos or just about anything he wants.

An aspheric loupe magnifier lens lets him see the display even though it sits around 5cm from his eye. No outside light is allowed in. Only the guts of the webcam were used to give him the video and microphone. We’ve seen other head mounted displays before, and this one adds to the growing collection. Be sure to check out [Arvinds] site for a tutorial on how to build your own, and catch a video of it in action after the break.

Continue reading “Smart Hat Puts Your Head In The Game” →

Is Your Wearable Tech Too Subtle?

July 19, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

wrist

With any con, you’re going to have people walking around with things they’ve built. It’s the perfect venue for wearable tech, and the cream of the crop for HOPE X is [Zack]’s SmarTwatCh. Billed as a 3D printed big ass smart watch, it’s anything but subtle and has enough gadgets and gizmos to make even the biggest tech aficionado blush

The front of the SmarTwatCh is an authentic 2×20 glass encapsulated VFD running at 160 Volts, chosen for its danger and character. Inside the 3D printed enclosure is a Teensy 3.0, pots, knobs, and switches, a laser, LEDs, and an alcohol sensor because, “the future is quantified drinking”.

‘Apps’ for this smart watch include a TV-B-Gone, laser pointer, breathalyzer, flashlight, and just about anything else [Zack] can think of that would involve a Bluetooth adapter and a text display. Video of [Zack] demoing the watch at HOPE below.

Continue reading “Is Your Wearable Tech Too Subtle?” →

DIY OLED Smart Watch

July 7, 2014 by Nick Conn 48 Comments

OLED DIY Smart Watch

What is better than making your own smart watch? Making one with an OLED display. This is exactly what [Jared] set out to do with his DIY OLED smart watch, which combines an impressive build with some pretty cool hardware.

When building a DIY smart watch, getting the hardware right is arguably the hardest part. After a few iterations, [Jared’s] OLED smart watch is all packaged up and looks great! The firmware for his watch can communicate with the PC via USB HID (requiring no drivers), contains a “watch face” for telling time, includes an integrated calendar, and support for an accelerometer. His post also includes all of the firmware and goes into some build details. With the recent popularity of smart watches and wearable electronics, we really love seeing functional DIY versions. This is just the beginning. In the future, [Jared] plans on adding Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a magnetometer, a smart sleep based alarm clock, and more! So be sure to look at his two older posts and keep an eye on this project as it unfolds. It is a very promising smart watch!

With Android L including support for smart watches (in the near future), it would be amazing to see DIY watches (such as this one) modified to run the new mobile OS. How great would it be to have an open hardware platform running such a powerful (open source-ish) OS? the possibilities are endless!

Knitted Circuit Board Lends Flexibility To E-Textiles

June 19, 2014 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

What could be better than sewing a circuit into wearable fabric? How about rolling your own circuit-ready knits? Chicago-based artist and assistant professor [Jesse] has done just that by perfecting a method for knitting solderable circuit boards.

This can be done by hand or with a knitting machine. The basic idea is that 2-3 strands of 34-36AWG bus wire are knitted into mercerized cotton yarn in rows, mimicking a piece of stripboard. Once the knitting is blocked and the component layout chosen, the floating bus wire strands between the rows are cut as you would cut unneeded stripboard traces. When it’s all done, [Jesse] used iron-on backing to protect her skin from scratches and lead transfer.

Her tutorial covers a simple LED circuit with a battery and a sliding switch, though she describes in detail how this can be expanded for more complex circuitry and offers good suggestions for working with different components. She also advocates feeding the bus wire from a spool rack to maintain tension and recommends stretching a piece of nylon stocking over the spool to keep it from unfurling all over the place.

This is the most aesthetically appealing e-textile work we’ve seen since this electro-embroidery piece or this blinky LED necklace, and it’s fascinating to watch the e-textile world unfold. Watch [Jesse]’s short videos after the break where she demonstrates a simple blinky knit as well as a lovely pulsing heart collar.

Continue reading “Knitted Circuit Board Lends Flexibility To E-Textiles” →

Seeker Hats Find Each Other With Directional LEDs

June 18, 2014 by James Hobson 9 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

[John Petersen] created a very cool piece of wearable technology for him and his son. Eager to explore the Maker Fair, but not eager to lose his son in the crowds, he’s come up with the Seeker Hat — a kind of auto-locating GPS hat which always points towards the other.

It’s a clever setup that makes use of a GPS module, a microprocessor, a xBee wireless chip, a compass, and LEDs to light the way. The GPS determines the hat’s approximate location, the xBee transmits it to the other hat, the digital compasses determine the directions of both hats, and the microprocessor figures out the azimuth, resulting in a difference in trajectory of the two — a strip of LEDs, like landing lights, direct you in the right direction.

Continue reading “Seeker Hats Find Each Other With Directional LEDs” →

Track Your Dog With This DIY GPS Harness

June 7, 2014 by Rick Osgood 22 Comments

GPS-dog-harness

Have you ever wondered how far your dog actually runs when you take it to the park? You could be a standard consumer and purchase a GPS tracking collar for $100 or more, or you could follow [Becky Stern’s] lead and build your own simple but effective GPS tracking harness.

[Becky] used two FLORA modules for this project; The FLORA main board, and the FLORA GPS module. The FLORA main board is essentially a small, sewable Arduino board. The GPS module obviously provides the tracking capabilities, but also has built-in data logging functionality. This means that [Becky] didn’t need to add complexity with any special logging circuit. The GPS coordinates are logged in a raw format, but they can easily be pasted into Google Maps for viewing as demonstrated by [Becky] in the video after the break. The system uses the built-in LED on the FLORA main board to notify the user when the GPS has received a lock and that the program is running.

The whole system runs off of three AAA batteries which, according to [Becky], can provide several hours of tracking. She also installed a small coin cell battery for the GPS module. This provides reserve power for the GPS module so it can remember its previous location. This is not necessary, but it provides a benefit in that the GPS module can remember it’s most recent location and therefore discover its location much faster. Continue reading “Track Your Dog With This DIY GPS Harness” →

[Furze] Sets Fire To Everything With Pyro Gloves

May 30, 2014 by Marsh 25 Comments

Pyro Build

Crazyman [Colin Furze] is back, and this time he’s setting everything on fire with his Pyro gloves. Though Hackaday readers are already a discerning bunch, this is a build we get submissions for all the time and feature fairly often. It would take an exceedingly impressive build to outshine the other fire hazards. But, as with his pneumatic Wolverine claws and his electromagnetic boots, [Furze] knows how to build the insane and then put on a good show.

The Pyro build is part of [Furze’s] 3-part celebratory X-Men extravaganza, a nod to the realm of superheroes coinciding with the release of the new X-Men film. [Furze] began with a custom reservoir cylinder that fitted with two solenoid valves: one for a pilot light and another for the big blasts. He’s also affixed a Piezo element and a AA battery, which sits in a cozy little container. The bulkier bits of the assembly sit in a backpack, hooking up, as expected, to the wrist-mounted devices. This flame cannon, however, is unique among the ones we’ve encountered here.

Continue reading “[Furze] Sets Fire To Everything With Pyro Gloves” →