Motorized Skateboard Controlled By Hand Gestures

August 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

hand-gesture-skateboard

This rough-looking contraption is a hand gesture controlled skateboard which [Aditya] built using parts on hand. So far the sensor for hand gestures is connected by a control wire, but he hopes to transition to an RF unit at some point in the future.

Having access to a couple of high torque brushless motors is what turned him onto the project. He hit up a couple of Mechanical Engineer friends of his to help assemble the chassis and then started on the electronics side of things. A breakout board for an ATmega16 is mounted on the corner of the deck. It monitors an accelerometer which acts as steering as well as throttle. The accelerometer had been abused in a previous project so he had to add an extra switch to bolster his available inputs. We were glad to hear that he also included a kill switch, since putting the control of those motors in the hands of a damaged accelerometer is a bit sketchy.

We remember seeing a similar trike design a few years back. That one powered a single rear wheel while this one powers two wheels and uses a caster for the third.

Prosthetic Spines Become Musical Instruments

July 16, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

spine

[Joseph] and [Ian] have been working on a project that turns physical objects into bendable, snake-like controllers

This build is the culmination of an earlier project that digitally modeled a flexible object with accelerometers, gyroscopes, and IMUs. When we first saw this build, we wondered what it could actually be used for, but it seems [Joseph] and [Ian] came up with a pretty cool use for it: turning prosthetic spines and ribs into musical instruments.

These flexible devices are loaded up with sensors along their joints and are connected to a microcontroller with a Zigbee radio transceiver. The positioning data from these devices is transmitted to a computer where it’s turned into audio, effectively turning a dancer into a musical instrument.

For an art piece, it’s pretty cool, but as a new means of interacting with a computer, we’re thinking this might be a game changer. Imagine a gauntlet loaded up with IMUs being turned into a waldo, or precisely controlling virtual objects naturally with your hand.

DIY Airbag, Explosions Included

July 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

AnAirbagSavedMyLife

Your car’s airbag is one of the major engineering accomplishments of the auto industry. In an accident, a whole host of processes must take place in sequence to keep your face from slamming into the steering wheel, and everything must happen in just a fraction of a second. [Steve] over at Make thought it would be a cool idea to discover what actually goes in to saving a life with an airbag and decided to build his own.

The electronics of the build consisted of an accelerometer and an Arduino. A lot of research, development, and experimentation has gone into the algorithms that trigger airbags, but [Steve] decided to keep things simple: when a sudden acceleration is detected, set off a small charge of black powder.

The airbag itself is ripstop nylon reinforced with canvas, contained in a small wooded box fitted with hinged doors. All these components are put on wheeled aluminum test rig, manned with a honeydew melon crash test dummy, and pulled into a short wall at a few miles per hour.

Despite [Steve] not putting hundreds of thousands of man hours into the development of his airbag – unlike the ones you’ll find in your steering column – his device actually worked pretty well. While not a complete success, he did manage to come up with something that both looks and acts like the familiar device that has saved countless lives.

Rocketduino, For High-G, High Altitude Logging

July 7, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

rocketduino

Although the thrill of launching rockets is usually found in their safe decent back to Earth, eventually you’re going to want some data from your flight. Everything from barometric pressure, GPS logging, and acceleration data is a useful thing to have, especially if you’re trying to perfect your craft. [zortness] over on reddit created a data logging board created especially for amateur rocketry, a fabulous piece of work that stands up to the rigors of going very fast and very high.

The design of the board is a shield for the Arduino Mega and Due, and comes with enough sensors for over-analyzing any rocket flight. The GPS logs location and altitude at 66Hz, two accelerometers measure up to 55 G. Barometric, temperature, and compass sensors tell the ground station all the data they would need to know over a ZigBee 900MHz radio link.

Because this is an Arduino, setting up flight events such as deploying the main and drogue chutes are as easy as uploading a bit of code. [zortness] built this for a 4″ diameter rocket, but he says it might fit in a 3″ rocket. We just can’t wait to see some videos of it in action.

Rate Gyroscope Circuitry Explained

March 26, 2013 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

rate-gyroscope-driver

Hackaday alum [Adam Munich] shot a tutorial video on using a rate gyroscope.

Here he’s showing off the really fancy piece of ancient (technologically speaking) hardware. It would have set you back about fifteen grand in the 1960’s (inflation adjusted) but can be had these days for around $30. What a deal! These are not small, or power efficient when compared to the components that go into smart phones or gaming controllers, but they’re a heck of a lot more accurate than the ubiquitous modern parts. That’s because a rate gyroscope — which is the gold cylinder on the left — actually incorporates a spinning motor and a way to monitor how it is affected by changes in gravity. The driver/interface circuitry for this gets hairy relatively fast, but [Adam] does a solid job of breaking down the concept into smaller parts that are easy to manage.

Wondering what is different about this compared to a MEMS accelerometer? We know they’re really not the same thing at all, but wanted a chance to mention [The Engineer Guy’s] video on how those parts are made.

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Quadcopter Brain

February 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

quadcopter-brain

This project is the warm center of [Alan Kharsansky’s] thesis in Electronic Engineering. It’s an all-in-one control board for a quadcopter. This is the second iteration of the board, the first version he actually etched himself. As you can see after the break the firmware is not quite ready for prime-time. But that doesn’t stop us from appreciating the design choices he’s made.

You can see the effort he made to keep the board symmetrical which will help when it comes time to balance the aircraft. At the center of the PCB is the jewel of the sensor array, a combination accelerometer and gyroscope. This location will help easy the trouble of designing PID algorithms to drive the four propellers. Also included in the sensor array is a magnetometer for navigation, and a barometric pressure sensor which can be used as an altimeter. There are four multipurpose connectors used to drive the motors and provide feedback to the boards. He also included two more sets of pads on the board (without their own connectors) in case he wants to add more motors in the future. The quadcopter can be controlled from a base station via the XBee module.

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Pinoccio Web Rover

February 9, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 7 Comments

Before assuming that the title should be “web crawler,” just shush your shussins’ and check out the video after the break. The Pinoccio, as previously noted, is a board in development as a sort of web-enabled by default Arduino. This makes it perfect for a project like this one where a little rover is controlled from 10,000 Kilometers away, or around 6000 Miles for those of us that dwell in the US.

This setup uses a cell-phone accelerometer in Brazil to allow control of this robot in Nevada. Although close, the control isn’t quite real time, so that has to be accounted for. Something like this could be easily used for a telepresence ‘bot.

If you want to build your own, the assembly time is estimated at 1 hour. Instructions, as well as source code can be found on their page after the video. Although the Pinoccio board won’t be available until at least this summer, maybe this will give someone inspiration to try something similar in the mean time! Continue reading “Pinoccio Web Rover” →