How Green Screen Worked Before Computers

February 7, 2015 by Rick Osgood 19 Comments

If you know anything about how films are made then you have probably heard about the “green screen” before. The technique is also known as chroma key compositing, and it’s generally used to merge two images or videos together based on color hues. Usually you see an actor filmed in front of a green background. Using video editing software, the editor can then replace that specific green color with another video clip. This makes it look like the actor is in a completely different environment.

It’s no surprise that with computers, this is a very simple task. Any basic video editing software will include a chroma key function, but have you ever wondered how this was accomplished before computers made it so simple? [Tom Scott] posted a video to explain exactly that.

In the early days of film, the studio could film the actor against an entirely black background. Then, they would copy the film over and over using higher and higher contrasts until they end up with a black background, and a white silhouette of the actor. This film could be used as a matte. Working with an optical printer, the studio could then perform a double exposure to combine film of a background with the film of the actor. You can imagine that this was a much more cumbersome process than making a few mouse clicks.

For the green screen effect, studios could actually use specialized optical filters. They could apply one filter that would ignore a specific wavelength of the color green. Then they could film the actor using that filter. The resulting matte could then be combined with the footage of the actor and the background film using the optical printer. It’s very similar to the older style with the black background.

Electronic analog video has some other interesting tricks to perform the same basic effect. [Tom] explains that the analog signal contained information about the various colors that needed to be displayed on the screen. Electronic circuits were built that could watch for a specific color (green) and replace the signal with one from the background video. Studios even went so far as to record both the actor and a model simultaneously, using two cameras that were mechanically linked together to make the same movements. The signals could then be run through this special circuit and the combined image recorded all simultaneously.

There are a few other examples in the video, and the effects that [Tom] uses to describe these old techniques go a long way to help understand the concepts. It’s crazy to think of how complicated this process can be, when nowadays we can do it in minutes with the computers we already have in our homes. Continue reading “How Green Screen Worked Before Computers” →

Logic Noise: Sweet, Sweet Oscillator Sounds

February 4, 2015 by Elliot Williams 51 Comments

Welcome to part one of a series taking you down the rabbit hole of DIY electronic synthesizers based on (largely) CMOS logic chips. Instead of synths being commodity gear made by large corporate enterprises, we’ll be building with the cheapest available parts, using and misusing digital logic. In short, don’t expect pre-packaged smooth tones, because we’ll be making creative noise machines.

If you’re the chiptunes type, you’ll probably find something you like here. If you’re the circuit bender or electro-noise-punk type, this is gonna be right up your alley. If you just like to see CMOS chips wriggle and squirm in unintended ways, feel free to look over my shoulder. If you’re the type who insists that a screwdriver can’t be used to pry open a paint can, then maybe you’d better move along. There’s a thin line between the glitch as bug and the glitch as interesting discovery, and we’ll be dancing all over it.

Continue reading “Logic Noise: Sweet, Sweet Oscillator Sounds” →

Annoy Your Enemies With The Hassler Circuit

January 29, 2015 by Rick Osgood 62 Comments

[Craig] recently built himself a version of the “hassler” circuit as a sort of homage to Bob Widlar. If you haven’t heard of Bob Widlar, he was a key person involved in making analog IC’s a reality. We’ve actually covered the topic in-depth in the past. The hassler circuit is a simple but ingenious office prank. The idea is that the circuit emits a very high frequency tone, but only when the noise level in the room reaches a certain threshold. If your coworkers become too noisy, they will suddenly notice a ringing in their ears. When they stop talking to identify the source, the noise goes away. The desired result is to get your coworkers to shut the hell up.

[Craig] couldn’t find any published schematics for the original circuit, but he managed to build his own version with discrete components and IC’s. Sound first enters the circuit via a small electret microphone. The signal is then amplified, half-wave rectified, and run through a low pass filter. The gain from the microphone is configurable via a trim pot. A capacitor converts the output into a flat DC voltage.

The signal then gets passed to a relaxation oscillator circuit. This circuit creates a signal whose output duty cycle is dependent on the input voltage. The higher the input voltage, the longer the duty cycle, and the lower the frequency. The resulting signal is sent to a small speaker for output. The speaker is also controlled by a Schmitt trigger. This prevents the speaker from being powered until the voltage reaches a certain threshold, thus saving energy. The whole circuit is soldered together dead bug style and mounted to a copper clad board.

When the room is quiet, the input voltage is low. The output frequency is high enough that it is out of the range of human hearing. As the room slowly gets louder, the voltage increases and the output frequency lowers. Eventually it reaches the outer limits of human hearing and people in the room take notice. The video below walks step by step through the circuit. Continue reading “Annoy Your Enemies With The Hassler Circuit” →

Universal Active Filters: Part 2

January 28, 2015 by Bil Herd 23 Comments

An easy way to conceptualize active filters is thinking about audio speakers. A speaker crossover has a low-pass, high-pass and band-pass effect breaking a signal into three components based upon frequency. In the previous part of this series I took that idea and applied it to a Universal Active Filter built with a single chip opamp based chip known as the UAF-42. By the way, it’s pretty much an older expensive chip, just one I picked out for demonstration.

Using a dual-ganged potentiometer, I was able to adjust the point at which frequencies are allowed to pass or be rejected. We could display this behavior by sweeping the circuit with my sweep frequency function generator which rapidly changes the frequency from low to high while we watch what can get through the filter.

In this installment I’ll test the theory that filtering out the harmonics which make up a square wave results in a predictable degradation of the waveform until at last it is a sine wave. This sine wave occurs at the fundamental frequency of the original square wave. Here’s the video but stick with me after the break to walk through each concept covered.

Continue reading “Universal Active Filters: Part 2” →

Universal Active Filters: Part 1

January 13, 2015 by Bil Herd 42 Comments

Today I am experimenting with a single chip Universal Active Filter, in this case I made a small PCB for the UAF-42 from Texas Instruments. I chose this part in particular as it facilitates setting the filter frequency by changing just a pair of resistors and the somewhat critical values that are contained on the chip have been laser trimmed for accuracy. This type of active filter includes Operational Amplifiers to supply gain and it supports various configurations including simultaneous operating modes such as Band Pass, Low Pass and High Pass make it “Universal”.

UAF421 Universal Active Filter

UAF421 Universal Active Filter using a dual ganged potentiometer.

Filter Basics

Looking at the block diagram you can see where I have inserted a dual-ganged potentiometer to change both resistors simultaneously which should allow a straight forward adjustment for our purposes here.

Looking into the components of a simple RC filter which can easily implement a simple Low Pass or High Pass filter, we see that the math is fairly straight forward and swapping the components with each other is all that is needed to change the type of filter. Continue reading “Universal Active Filters: Part 1” →

Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash

October 25, 2014 by Rick Osgood 26 Comments

[Pyrow] wanted to upgrade his garage door opener remote. It worked just fine, but changing those tiny batteries out can be an inconvenience. Plus, the remote control was taking up valuable storage space and would always rattle around while driving. [Pyrow] decided to make use of an Omron E2K-F10MC2 capacitive touch sensor to fix these issues.

[Pyrow’s] circuit still makes use of the original remote control. He just added some of his own components to get it to do what he wanted. The circuit is powered by the car’s battery, so it never needs a battery replacement. The circuit is protected with a fuse and the power is regulated to prevent electrical spikes from burning up the original remote control. The actual circuit is pretty simple and uses mostly discrete components. It’s all soldered onto proto board to keep it together. He only had to solder to three places on the original remote control in order to provide power and simulate a button press.

Next, [Pyrow] took his dash apart. He used double-sided tape to attach the touch sensor to the back of the dash. After securing the electronics in place with tape, he now has a working hidden garage door opener. Full schematics are available in the writeup linked above. Also, be sure to watch the demonstration video below.

Continue reading “Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash” →

Ask Hackaday: How Would You Build A Clock Clock?

September 21, 2014 by Mike Szczys 96 Comments

Hotel art often elicits less than a glance from most patrons. But we have to admit if we came across a piece like this we’d be compelled to record a video for later reference. That’s actually where the video came from, this was spotted in a hotel called Ham Yard.

The concept seemed familiar to us and a bit of Google-fu brings up our previous coverage of the concept back in 2010. The display is made up of circular analog clocks and we’d wager this is a version of “a million times” by Human Since 1982, the same artist who brought us the earlier concept.

Since we’re covering this once again we thought it would be fun to ask: how would you go about building your own? There are several challenges that come to mind. First, notice both hands of the analog clocks appear to be exactly the same (there is no short hour hand). Driving the coils of a cheap clock directly (a la Lord Vetinari clock hacking) seems an obvious approach. But look closely and you’ll see the hands sometimes move in opposite directions. There must be a simple way to implement the control, or are we chasing a pipe dream of a low cost version for our workshop clock?

[Thanks Munit]