[Scott] is building motion-activated lights for under the bed for his Hackaday Prize entry. Admittedly, there are fancier projects for the ‘Assistive Technology’ portion of the prize, but this project helps anyone who would otherwise stumble around in the dark. And as [Scott] jokes, that includes a number of underserved demographics including accident prone people, children afraid of the dark, drunks, and, “drunk accident prone children who are afraid of the dark”.

Although the idea of mounting LEDs under a bed is simple, the devil is in the details. [Scott] is using a PIR sensor to turn these hidden lights on and off when getting into or out of bed. An RTC ensures the LED strip will only be on during the desired hours. In [Scott]’s case, this means from 9PM to 7AM. When movement is detected at the foot of the bed, the lights remain on for about two minutes.

This is a fairly simple project compared to some of the entries we’ve seen in the Hackaday Prize, but it does have a purpose. It’s a great way to scare a child into believing there are monsters under a bed, and it every so slightly reduces the chances of a drunk stubbing their toe. [Scott] produced a video for this project, you can check that out below.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Bed Lighting” →

The current trend of 3D printed prosthetic hands have one rather large drawback: you can’t use them if you already have two hands. This might seem like a glib objection, but one of last week’s Hackaday Prize posts pointed this out rather well – sometimes a meat machine needs mechanical assistance.

BEOWULF, [Chad Paik]’s entry for the Hackaday Prize, is the answer to this problem. It’s a mechanical exoskeleton for grip enhancement, stroke rehabilitation, and anyone else that doesn’t have the strength they need to get through the day.

This project solves the problem of weak arm strength through – you guessed it – 3D-printed parts, a linear actuator on the forearm, and a few force sensors on the fingertips. Control is obtained through a Thalmic Labs Myo, but the team behind the BEOWULF is currently working on a custom muscle activity sensor that is more compact and isn’t beholden to VC investors. You can check out a video of this exoskeleton below.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: A Cluster Of Exoskeletons” →

I did not coin the phrase in this article’s headline. It came, I believe, from an asinine press release I read years ago. It was a stupid phrase then, and it’s a stupid phrase now, but the idea behind it does have some merit. A collaborative Dropbox running on hardware you own isn’t a bad idea, and a physical device that does the same is a pretty good idea. That’s the idea behind the USB Borg Drive. It’s two (or more) mirrored USB thumb drives linked together by condescending condensation saying you too can have the cloud in both your pockets.

Like all good technology, the USB Borg Drive began as a joke. [heige] and his colleague were passing USB sticks back and forth to get software running on a machine without Internet. The idea of two USB sticks connected together via WiFi blossomed and the idea of the USB Borg Drive was born.

An idea is one thing, and an implementation another thing entirely. This is where [helge] is stumbling. The basic idea now is to use a Raspberry Pi Zero containing a WiFi adapter, USB set up in peripheral mode, some sort of way to power the devices, and maybe a way to set IDs between pairs of devices.

There’s still a lot of work for [heige] to do, but this is actually, honestly, not a terrible idea. Everything has a USB port on it these days, and USB mass storage is available on every platform imaginable. It’s the cloud, at ground level. A fog, if you will, but not something that sounds that stupid.

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Joe’s little brother Richard has never been able to speak. When Richard turned 19, he received a device not unlike the voice box of Stephen Hawking. Suddenly, Richard was able to communicate using thousands of words, and everyone could understand him. In the UK, there are thousands of people who could benefit from this technology, but can’t afford one. This is the inspiration for the Open Voice Factory, a device that allows anyone to create pages of touch screen interfaces and parses them into functioning speech aids.

The basic idea behind the Open Voice Factory is — wait for it — PowerPoint. Hold on, this actually makes sense. The Open Voice Factory is designed so caregivers can create and modify the touchscreen ‘pages’ with different words and actions. PowerPoint is universal, and everybody’s grandmother knows how to use it. In this regard, the software that is the leading cause of death for astronauts isn’t a terrible choice.

That PowerPoint stack is sent off to an online Factory that parses the commands and assembles a web page built for touch screen interaction. It’s brilliantly simple, relies on a cloud service so it’s highly marketable, and requires only a minimal hardware investment for each user. Consider the fact that computers – especially Macs – have had exceptional text to speech capabilities for twenty years now, and you wonder why something like this hasn’t come along sooner. It’s an awesome idea, and a great entry for the Hackaday Prize.

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