bluetooth

602 Articles

Literally Turn Your Headset Into A Handset

March 7, 2011 by 17 Comments

[Rachel’s] Bluetooth glove is proving that you don’t have to be missing fingers to talk to the hand. You can see in the video after the break that, like us, she wears fingerless gloves while typing to keep the cold from causing pain in her hands (it’s so cold in here it’s like we’re [Bob Cratchit]). So why not make those gloves multitaskers?

She cracked open a small Bluetooth headset to see if it would play nicely with her fuzzy purple gloves. A bit of wire and some shrink tubing allowed for the speaker and microphone to be moved a bit further from the circuit board. Once those components had been extended she pinned everything in place to make sure it fit the bill. The components were then sewn in place and a microswitch for answering calls was repositioned in the hollow of the wearer’s palm. Now you’re free to work the day away, with all of your incoming calls already at your fingertips.

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Jittering Hexapod Dances To The Strokes Of Your Bluetooth Keyboard

March 3, 2011 by 4 Comments

Here’s a small but functional hexapod that is controlled via Bluetooth. [Sigfpe] started with the hexapod kit sold by Polulu and added a BlueSMiRF modem to get the little guy’s communications up and running. But since the bot is merely three servos, a microcontroller board, sensors, and miscellaneous parts it’s an easy build for most electronic hobbyists.

Check out the video after the break to see the delightful dance it can perform at your bidding. When we first looked at the project we thought that the keyboard was directly paired with the bot for control, but a look at the code makes us think the computer is controlling it after processing keystrokes. Either way the BlueSMiRF should have no problem pairing with other Bluetooth devices so it’s just a matter of coding to get it taking commands from your device of choice. We’d love to see Android control but for the really hard-core code monkeys we think this should be voice controlled with a Bluetooth headset.

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Bluetooth Nixie Driver Lets You Go Almost-wireless

March 1, 2011 by 8 Comments

[Bob Coggeshall] has a nice Nixie tube driver board coming down the pipes. It’s not quite ready yet but you can see by the image above, it offers something that isn’t always easy to find; control for B7971 tubes which can display the full spectrum of alpha-numeric characters. This board is not limited to just one type of tube and it can be chained together with other boards to create longer displays. But perhaps the best development is the addition of a Bluetooth module. [Bob] has incorporated a Roving Networks RN-41 Bluetooth module which takes care of all aspects of the wireless protocol. This way the display is not tethered to a computer, or limited to data stored on a chip. We can’t really say that it’s wireless though, as we’d assume a set of these big tubes would rip through batteries pretty quickly. Keep an eye on this project, it will be open source once the bugs are worked out and [Bob] will also sell fully assembled and tested boards for those who choose not to roll their own.

We wonder if it would be easy to pair this with your phone and use it to display incoming call information?

Walking Motion Analysis Using Wii Remotes

March 1, 2011 by 10 Comments

WiiGait is not a political scandal, it’s a project that records motion data while walking. [Bilal Chishti] and [Zassa Kavuma] are strapping a Wii remote onto each leg and recording the sensor data while making video of the walker at the same time. The two are using an Ubuntu box to pull the sensor data from the Bluetooth-enabled devices and utilizing its built-in webcam for the video. They graph the data for each axis and we’re sure that syncing up data anomalies with the video is just a matter of matching timestamps.

So what good is this? The creators are keeping us in the dark about an end-goal for collected data; this may just be for the experience of using the hardware. But we could see it having uses in making distance runners more efficient, or teaching that bipedal robot how to balance.

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Bluetooth-enabled Talking Chicken

February 28, 2011 by 4 Comments

bluetooth_chicken

[Jeri Ellsworth] sent us a video walkthrough of a hack she did a few years ago using a toy chicken with a motor operated mouth. She wired up a Bluetooth headset’s audio output to a LM386 audio amplifier, which drives the speaker she added to the chicken. The output of the audio amplifier was also connected to a 555 timer in bistable mode to activate the motorized mouth. The motor simply opens the mouth when activated, allowing the built-in spring to snap it shut when the 555 is reset.

Obviously Jeri didn’t send us an old project just for kicks, she wanted to remind all of our readers that the 555 Design Contest comes to a close tomorrow night, March 1st at 11:59 EST. If you haven’t submitted an entry yet, get something started while there is still time!

Keep reading to see Jeri give a quick video overview of her talking Bluetooth chicken.

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Remote Phone Control Using Bluetooth And A Video Stream

February 27, 2011 by 19 Comments

remote_bluetooth_phone_control

Hack-a-Day reader [Bobbie] sent us a hack that is an adaptation of the automatic cell phone button pushing machine we featured earlier this week. Inspired by that project, he challenged himself to construct a more efficient way to tackle the problem.

He started out in much the same fashion, pointing a camera at the phone in order to view the display remotely. The main thing he focused on to make his project unique was they way in which the buttons on the phone were activated. He was impressed by the mechanical button pressing rig, but thought it to be overly complicated. Instead, he decided to send button presses over Bluetooth to his phone which happened to be AT+CKPD compatible (PDF).

Not only that, his interface is quite impressive too. Originally planning to use the keyboard to send input to the phone, he changed course and programmed his video stream GUI to register mouse clicks instead. Now, when he clicks one of the phone’s buttons in the video display, the appropriate button press is sent to the phone – Awesome!

Keep reading to see a video of his remote phone interface, you’ll be glad you did.

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ITalkman Refrigerated Franken-phone

February 22, 2011 by 12 Comments

italkman_frankenphone

[Jani] over at MetkuMods was commissioned to build a prize for an on-air contest held by MTV3 in Finland. Well known for some of his previous work, he was a natural choice for this project. The only stipulation for the build was that it contain three specific items: a Mobira mobile phone, an Apple iPhone, and a refrigerator. For those of you who don’t know, a Mobira Talkman is an old-school “mobile” phone built by Nokia in the 80’s that weighed in at 11 pounds, and was far from convenient to use. In this case however, the size of the phone is an advantage since he was able to gut it and use the frame to make up the body of the refrigerated compartment. He sacrificed a soft-side portable heater/cooler bag, removing the built-in peltier cooler and associated components, later grafting them onto his Talkman case.

The next task was to add the iPhone to the Talkman. Rather than have the old handset sit there uselessly, [Jani] decided to mount a small Bluetooth hands-free module inside the handset, allowing it to answer calls, adjust the volume, and change music tracks on the iPhone. The iPhone was put in a hard plastic case, then mounted to the Talkman handset where the keypad and display used to reside.

All in all, the iTalkman is a pretty cool looking device, though we wouldn’t want to be tasked with lugging that thing around all day!