A Better Way To Measure Your Impact On The World

September 16, 2016 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

Close your eyes and think of an electric wheelchair. What do you see? Is it sleek, futuristic, and elegant… worthy of the moniker: iChair? No, no it is not. It’s a boxy tank-like thing with grey knobbed wheels that is powered with lead-acid batteries. Why is that?

Obviously there are alternatives. Just yesterday I came across UPnRIDE (that name is sore on the eyes but speak it aloud and you’ll get it). It’s an electric wheelchair that converts into a standing position. And it looks comparatively sleek and modern. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen the idea before. One of my favorite articles over the years is still our coverage of Tek RMD, a similar standing robotic wheelchair design. So why is it I don’t see these in the wild? Why is it I only remember seeing the concept twice in four years?

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Neopixel Pocket Watch

September 15, 2016 by Jenny List 10 Comments

A timepiece is rather a rite of passage in the world of hardware hacking, and we never cease to be enthralled by the creativity of our community in coming up with new ones.

Today’s example comes from [Joshua Snyder], who has made a pocket watch. Not just any pocket watch, he’s taken the shell of a clockwork watch and inserted a ring of Neopixels, which he drives from an ESP8266 module. Power comes from a small LiPo battery, and he’s cleverly engineered a small push-button switch so that it can be actuated by the knob from the original watch. Different colour LEDs traverse the ring to simulate the hands of a traditional timepiece, and the whole nestles behind the perforated cover of the watch shell for something of a steampunk feel.

He admits the battery life is not very good at the moment, probably because for now the WiFi is always enabled so he can reach its web interface for debugging. Sadly he appears to have not yet posted the software, but he does tell us it uses NTP to update its time, and that it supports over-the-air updating for new versions. He suggests a future version might dispense with the ESP and use an ATtiny or similar with a real-time clock giving better battery life.

We’ve covered a lot of LED timepieces over the years, including quite a few watches. Only a small selection are this PIC LED ring in a pocket watch case, another LED ring this time powered by an ATMega645, and this very stylish OLED wristwatch.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Environmental Regulation

September 14, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

A while back, [Kyle] wanted to grow gourmet mushrooms. The usual way of doing this is finding a limestone cave and stinking up half the county with the smell of manure. Doing this at home annoys far fewer neighbors, leading him to create a device that will regulate temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration. It’s called Mycodo, and it’s one of the finalists for the Automation portion of the Hackaday Prize.

Mycodo is designed to read sensors and activate relays, and when it comes to environmental sensors, there’s no shortage of sensors available. Right now, Mycodo has support for the usual DHT11 and DHT22 temperature and humidity sensors, HTU21D, AM2315, SHT* DS18B, and infrared sensors like the TMP006 and TMP007. These are connected to a Raspberry Pi equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen and a few relays to turn power outlets on and off. It’s not a complete system, though: think of it as a firmware for a 3D printer – the firmware doesn’t give you a 3D printer, it just makes building your own much easier.

Already Mycodo has been used for a few environmental control issues in addition to growing mushrooms. It was used to control the humidity in a bat cave – for real bats, not some cosplay thing – and a temperature- and humidity-regulated apiary. With the right environmental control system, there’s nothing you can’t do, and we’re glad to have Mycodo in the running for the Hackaday Prize.

Hackaday Prize Entry: The Internet Of Garbage

September 13, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 32 Comments

The Internet of Things is garbage. While the most visible implementations of the Internet of Things are smart lights that stop working because the company responsible for them folded, or smart thermostats that stop working because providing lifetime support wasn’t profitable, IoT could actually be useful, albeit in devices less glamorous than a smart toaster. Smart meters are a great idea, and so is smart trash. That’s what [mikrotron] and company are entering into the Hackaday Prize – smart trash cans – and it’s not as dumb as spending $40 on a light bulb.

The idea behind the Internet of Trash is to collect data on how full a trashcan is, and publish that data to the Internet. This information will be used by a city’s trash collectors and recycling agencies to know when it’s time to collect the garbage.

The hardware for the Internet of Garbage needs to know how full a can is, and for that the team has turned to an ultrasonic sensor pointed down into the garbage. The amount of trash in a can is pinged once a day, and the information is sent over the Internet via a GSM network. Additionally, the GPS coordinates and a unique ID are delivered to the server, with everything ultimately powered by a solar panel.

The future of the Internet of Things isn’t putting Twitter in a coffee maker, it’s all about infrastructure, whether that’s power, solar freakin’ roadways, or the trash. We’re glad to see a useful application of a billion smart things, and the Internet of Trash makes for a great Hackaday Prize entry.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Alarm Detection For The Hearing Impaired

September 12, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

A few years ago, [K.C. Lee] woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke. He was drying a futon next to the heater and it caught on fire. A smoke detector would have helped in that situation, but wouldn’t have for anyone who was hearing impaired. Since we’re in the Assistive Technologies portion of the Hackaday Prize, [KC] decided to build on his previous work and build an alarm alarm – a device that would tell anyone when an alarm is going off

Smoke detectors and other alarms are surprisingly standardized – loud, somewhere around 3kHz. (Not coincidentally around the resonant frequency of a 3/4″ piezo disc.) Some modern alarms use a 520 Hz alarm, but in either case, you’re looking at something very loud with a very narrow peak when viewing the audio spectrum.

[KC]’s Alarm Detector relies on this one property to detect alarms and light up, vibrate, or really do anything else that can be controlled electronically. Right now the device is a tiny STM32F0-based device with an old Nokia LCD working as a spectrum analyzer, with the entire device lighting up whenever an alarm is detected. It’s simple, it works, and it’s a great entry for the Assistive Technology portion of the Hackaday Prize.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Aesthetic As Hell

September 11, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 32 Comments

Microsoft Bob was revolutionary. Normally you’d hear a phrase like that coming from an idiot blogger, but in this case a good argument could be made. Bob threw away the ‘files’ and ‘folders’ paradigm for the very beginnings of virtual reality. The word processor was just sitting down at a desk and writing a letter. Your Rolodex was a Rolodex. All abstractions are removed, and you’re closer than ever to living in your computer. If Microsoft Bob was released today, with multiple users interacting with each other in a virtual environment, it would be too far ahead of it’s time. It would be William Gibson’s most visible heir, instead of Melinda Gates’ only failure. Imagine a cyberpunk world that isn’t a dystopia, and your mind will turn to Microsoft Bob.

Not everyone will laugh at the above paragraph. Indeed, some people are trying to make the idea of a gigantic, virtual, 3D space populated by real people a reality. For the last few years, [alusion] has been working on Metaverse Lab as an experiment in 3D scanning, virtual web browsers, and turning interconnected 3D spaces into habitats for technonauts. The name comes from Snow Crash, and over the past twenty years, a number of projects have popped up to replicate this convergence of the digital and physical. By integrating this idea with the latest VR headsets, Metaverse Lab is the the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the dream of awesome 80s sci-fi.

I’ve actually had the experience of using and interacting with Metaverse Lab on a few occasions. The only way to describe it is as what someone would expect the Internet would be if their only exposure to technology was viewing the 1992 film Lawnmower Man. It works, though, as a completely virtual environment where potential is apparent, and the human mind is not limited by its physical embodiment.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Autonomous Kayaks

September 10, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

[Barry] has an expedition planned. He’s going to be exploring coastlines, inlets, and other shallow waters where even small ROVs are too big. [Barry] wants an autonomous vehicle on this expedition, though, and that means he must build his own. This led to The Julius Project, repurposed kayaks, and all the techniques that go into making proper maritime electronics.

The first question [Barry] gets is, ‘why kayaks?’ A quick cruise around Craigslist is enough to answer that – they’re cheap, and they’re available in almost infinite variety from big touring kayaks to small play boats, all built for different conditions and expeditions. With a few motors and modular parts to this build, [Barry] has an autonomous aquatic vessel built for every condition imaginable.

Right now, [Barry]’s focus is getting the propulsion working. This comes in the form of a few brushless motors bolted to the underside of the kayak. A tethered test was very successful, demonstrating this tiny boat can turn on a dime. Integration with an autopilot is coming, but until then [Barry] has a neat little boat puttering around a river. You can check out a video of that below.

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