Hackaday Prize Entry: Arduino Splash Resistant Toilet Foamer

May 4, 2017 by Jenny List 42 Comments

There are some universal human experiences we don’t talk about much, at least not in public. One of them you’ll have in your own house, and such is our reluctance to talk about it, we’ve surrounded it in a fog of euphemisms and slang words. Your toilet, lavatory, john, dunny, khazi, bog, or whatever you call it, is part of your everyday life.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [VijeMiller] tackles his smallest room head-on. You see, for him, the chief horror of the experience lies with the dreaded splashback. Yes, a bit of projectile power dumping leaves the old rump a little on the damp side. So he’s tackled the problem with some maker ingenuity and installed an Arduino-controlled foam generator that injects a mixture of soap and glycerin to fill the bowl with a splash-damping load of foam. Rearward inundation avoided.

The parts list reveals that the foam is generated by a fish tank aerator, triggered by a relay which is driven by an Arduino Uno through a power transistor. A solenoid valve controls the flow, and a lot of vinyl tubing hooks it all together. There is an HC/06 Bluetooth module with an app to control the device from a phone, though while he’s posted some Arduino code there is no link to the app. There are several pictures, including a cheeky placement of a Jolly Wrencher, and a shot of what we can only surmise is a text, as foam overflows all over the bathroom. And he’s put up the video we’ve placed below the break, for a humorous demonstration of the device in action.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: Arduino Splash Resistant Toilet Foamer” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: Analyzing And Controlling Hand Tremors

May 3, 2017 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

For the millions of people suffering from Parkinson’s and other causes of hand tremor, there is new hope in the form of [mohammedzeeshan77]’s entry into the Hackaday Prize: a glove that analyzes and controls the tremors.

The glove uses an accelerometer and a pair of flex sensors to determine the position of the hand as it oscillates. A Particle Photon crunches the raw data to come up with the frequency and amplitude of the tremors and uploads it to the cloud for retrieval and analysis by medical staff.

Hand tremors can vary in frequency and severity depending on the cause. Some are barely perceptible movements, and others are life-disrupting shakes. By analyzing the frequency and amplitude of these tremors, doctors can better understand a patient’s condition.

The best part of this glove is that it also provides immediate relief to the wearer by stabilizing the hand. A rapidly spinning super precision gyroscope counteracts the tremor oscillations as it tries to maintain its position. The last time we saw innovation like this, it came with a set of attachments.

Friday Hack Chat: Chip Gracey From Parallax

May 3, 2017 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Learn the ins and outs of multi-core microcontrollers as Chip Gracey leads this week’s Hack Chat on Friday 5/5 at noon PDT. Chip founded Parallax and has now been working for more than a decade on the Propeller 2 design, a microcontroller which has 8 and 16 core options.

When it comes to embedded development, most people think of a single process running. Doing more than one task at a time is an illusion provided by interrupts that stop one part of your program to spend a few cycles on another part before returning. The Propeller 2 has true parallel processing; each core can run its own part of the program. From the embedded engineer’s perspective that makes multiple real-time operations possible. Where things get really interesting is how those cores work together.

Here’s your chance to hear about multi-core embedded first hand, from both the silicon design side and the firmware developer side. Join us for a Parallax Hack Chat this Friday at noon PDT.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Seizure Detection By EEG

May 2, 2017 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

For those that suffer them, seizures are a dangerous thing. Outside the neurological effects, there is always the possibility of injury from the surrounding environment as well – consider the dangers of having a seizure near a busy road, or even simply a glass table. Some detection methods exist for seizure sufferers, but they are primarily based on detecting the jerking motion of the patient. [akhil2001us] thinks it’s possible to do better – by measuring brainwaves to detect the onset of seizures.

The build is centered around the Neurosky Mindwave headset. This is an off-the-shelf product designed specifically for capturing EEG data. It outputs raw brainwave data which is key for doing proper analysis. The project then uses an Arduino Mega to tie everything together, along with some Sparkfun Bluetooth modules to talk to a cell phone to send an SMS for help in the event of a seizure.

The real difficulty in a project like this comes from developing an algorithm that can reliably detect seizures, as well as a unit robust enough to work in the real world. It’s no use if your headset is detecting a seizure in progress, but the help message is never sent because a wire fell out of your breadboard. It’s considerations like this, combined with the threat of litigation, behind why medical devices are so rigorously engineered and certified. For a proof of concept, however, such concerns are not as important.

We’ve seen Mindwave builds before – brainwave research is an exciting field!

Hackaday Prize Entry: Hacker Calculus

May 1, 2017 by Jenny List 42 Comments

Mathematics, as it is taught in schools, sometimes falls short in its mission to educate the pupils. This is the view of [Joan Horvath] and [Rich Cameron], particularly with respect to the teaching of calculus, which they feel has become a purely algebraic discipline that leaves many students in the cold when it comes to understanding the concepts behind it.

Their Hacker Calculus project aims to address this, by returning to [Isaac Newton]’s 1687 seminal work on the matter, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. They were struck by how much the Principia was a work of geometry rather than algebra, and they are seeking to return to [Newton]’s principles in a bid to make the subject more accessible to students left behind when it comes to derivatives and integrals. They intend to refine the geometric approach to create a series of practical items to explain the concepts, both through 3D printed items and through electronics.

We can see that this is an approach that has considerable merit, given that most Hackaday readers will have at some time or other sat through a maths lesson and come away wondering what on earth the teacher was talking about and having been baffled by further attempts to explain it through impenetrable maths-speak. If you were the kid who “got” calculus when the relationship between speed and acceleration – another thing we have [Newton] to thank for describing – was explained in your physics lessons, then you will probably understand.

The pair have some Hackaday Prize history, you may remember them from such previous entries as their 3D prints for the visually impaired project from last year.

IuT ! IoT

May 1, 2017 by Mike Szczys 48 Comments

Let’s build the Internet of USEFUL Things, not just the Internet of Things. IuT ! IoT

That’s what we’ll be doing over the next five weeks. The second challenge of the 2017 Hackaday Prize begins today. We’re looking for the best ideas we can find for useful connected devices. Twenty entries will recieve $1,000 and move on to the final round to vie for the top prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

There is no doubt that the future is connected. It has been our future since the advent of the telegraph, and we’re unarguably becoming more connected at a faster rate. The phone in your hand, pocket, or bag connects you to the bulk of human knowledge. But it doesn’t yet connect you to very many “things”. It won’t be that way for long.

Already we’ve seen cameras (security, baby monitor, and everything in between) appear as some of the earliest connected devices, and they’ve brought with them all of the unintended consequences of poorly secured computer gear connected to the wider Internet. At least remote cameras have a purpose; there have been more than enough product launches for things that don’t. Our go-to counter-example is the Internet-connected toaster which is the topic of our wonderful art from Joe Kim this morning. Who needs to toast remotely? Nobody.

Let’s Invent the IoT

Here is our chance to do it right. How can Internet of Things make life better? What things become more meaningful when added to a network and what does that look like? How do we continue to connect our world while safeguarding privacy and being mindful of security. Finding answers to these questions will lead you to Build Something that Matters.

Hackaday Prize Entry: High Speed Sampling For The Raspberry Pi

April 30, 2017 by Jenny List 8 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has become a firm favorite in our community for its array of GPIOs and other interfaces, as well as its affordable computing power. Unfortunately though despite those many pins, there is a glaring omission in its interfacing capabilities. It lacks an analogue-to-digital converter, so analog inputs have to rely on an expansion card either on those GPIOs or through the USB port.

Most people remain content with simple ADCs such as Microchip’s MCP3008, or perhaps a USB sound card for low frequency moving targets. But not [Kelu124], he’s set his sights on something much faster. The original Pi is reputed to be capable of handling a 10Msamples/s ADC, so he thinks its faster successors should be able to work much faster. To that end, he’s created an ADC pHAT which he thinks should be good for twice that figure.

The choice of silicon is a CA3306E, a 6-bit device that’s rated at 15Msamples/S. It’s something of a dated device as is shown by its DIP package, and a quick look through major suppliers shows it to be no longer available. Happily though, when you look at his GitHub repo it emerges that he’s also producing a board based on the ADC08200, so his software is targetable at other chips.

Whether or not you need your Pi to serve as video digitizer or high-speed instrument, it’s useful and interesting to take a look at a board like this one in action. We often don’t use the raw power of our single board computers, and this project proves that should we ever need to, we can.

If ADCs interest you, take a look at [Bil Herd]’s series on delta-sigma ADCs.

Thanks [Fustini] for the tip.