[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPHpMonoC8]
Yo dawg, we heard you liked accelerometers… Apparently people have been wanting this for a while. We’re not completely sure why, so we’ll wait and see what gets done with it. [Ubiq_01] has connected a WiiMote to his iPhone and is using it to control and OpenGL application. He has released a tutorial (which seems to be down currently) if you want to try to reproduce it yourself.
[via Makezine]
[Bill2009] has made some nice progress on a control panel for his motorcycle over at the arduino.cc forums. It can show speed, tachometer readings for the wheel and engine, as well as indicate the current gear. He reads the square wave coming off of his tachometer input and pulses from a reed switch mounted on the wheel to calculate all this. To top it all off he can monitor the data via a Bluetooth module attached to the board, which is much better than trying to balance a laptop on your knees while cruising down the highway. He is working on getting the size down so that he can mount the whole assembly inside of his motorcycle. He also plans to add new software features like wind resistance calculations and0 to 60mph timing.
Though we usually think of Wii projects when we see him, [Johnny Lee] is showing us some Bioloid fun. He’s decided to pick one up to play with, wanting to write his own control programs for it. Unfortunately what he found was that it doesn’t do wireless communication for control. Even after installing a bluetooth module, he found it was only used to trigger different predetermined motions. After some research, he found how to connect the bluetooth module to the main PC link which allows him direct control of the Bioloid via the PC. Unfortunately, the communication speed leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s a good start. We’ll keep our eye on this one.
[emuboy] sent in this neat hack where he converted a GPS dock to bluetooth (google translated). He has an ipaq rz1710 and a Kirrio GPS cradle. Apparently there were annoying problems when inserting the ipaq into the cradle. He decided that he would much rather just connect via Bluetooth. After tearing apart the cradle, he found the documentation for the GPS chip online. He ordered a bluesmirf bluetooth modem and got to work. The end result is something that could be concealed in his car and just connected to when he gets close enough.
We spotted this odd piece of geek couture on DVICE today. It’s a bracelet that displays incoming calls via Bluetooth and also vibrates. The intended use is kinda interesting, but we wonder what else could be done with it. Could you update it with any text you want by creating fake caller ID messages? You could have your laptop in your backpack and have the bracelet update when it finds an open access point or any other sort of notification. The display shows the word “Connecting” in pictures, but apparently only displays numbers for incoming calls. It also includes a button to reject calls.
Do you have a project that needs a wireless display? Are there other options like this? At $25, this might be worth a try.
Many G1/ADP1 owners have been using the app Tetherbot to get internet access on their laptop via USB to the phone’s data connection. The app relied on the Android Debug Bridge to forward ports. It worked, but people wanted a solution better than a SOCKS proxy. The community figured out a way to create a properly NAT’d connection using iptables and then [moussam] rolled them up into easy to use applications. There’s one for setting up a PAN device on Bluetooth and another for adhoc WiFi networking. It requires you to have root on your phone, but hopefully you’ve achieved that and are already running the latest community firmware.
[photo: tnkgrl]
Bug Labs, the company that makes modular electronics that allow you to build your own tech doohickeys quickly and easily, has announced five new modules: BUGprojector, a mini DLP projector developed in conjunction with Texas Instruments, which sounds very much like the tiny DLP projector we posted about last week; BUGsound, an audio processing module with four stereo input/output jacks, a microphone, a speaker, and builtin hardware codecs; BUGbee (802.15.4) and BUGwifi (802.11 and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR), which will let you connect wirelessly with your PAN and WLAN, respectively; and BUG3g GSM, for connecting to (you guessed it) 3G GSM networks. In conjunction with Bug Labs’ existing series of modules, especially the highly versatile BUGvonHippel universal module, you’ll be able to create some pretty kickass gadgets. No word yet on pricing, although Bug Labs expects to ship by the end of Q1 2009.
