This Man Will Take Your Picture While Macing You

January 29, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 40 Comments

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Odds are you don’t have a photographic memory, so if you ever have to mace someone, you probably won’t remember exactly what your attacker looks like. Compound that with talking to the police and looking at a few dozen mug shots, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be able to identify the person you maced. This was the problem [John], [Cordelia], and [Adrian] chose to solve for [Bruce Land]’s microcontroller course at Cornell this semester.

The device they created, PepGuard, adds a microcontroller and a serial JPEG camera to a canister of pepper spray. When the button on top is pressed, the microcontroller flashes a LED, takes a picture with a camera, and sends that picture to a phone over a Bluetooth connection.

PepGuard is always connected to the user’s phone via Bluetooth, and this allows for some interesting possibilities. With their Android app, the team can set up the phone to call emergency services when the device is activated.

You can check out the demo of the device after the break, or read the team’s report here.

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Hackaday Links: January 24th, 2013

January 24, 2013 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

Raspberry Pi’s answer to the iMac

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If you always wanted a sweet looking all-in-one computer like an iMac, but without OSX this one’s for you. [Michael Davis] glued everything you need for a Raspberry Pi computer to the back of an LCD monitor.

Dancing Japanese robot shows high creepiness factor

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You’ve just got to see this one to believe it. Someone choreographed some seriously lifelike dance moves for this robot. [Thanks – via Dr. GIY’s blog]

Helper script to install MSPGCC

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The repositories available to Ubuntu are nice, but if you want to get the newest version of the GCC toolchain for MSP430 microcontrollers you’re going to need to do the compilation yourself. [Jose] is trying to make the process a bit easier with this helper script which download and installs MSPGCC Uniarch.

Easy reset for WRT-54G routers

The whole point of the router reset button being hard to press is so you don’t hit it by accident. But the difficulty of getting to it drove [Noah] crazy so he added his own easy to reach replacement.

Camera stabilization tips

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This is a public service to amateur videographers. You don’t need expensive equipment to make a video without nausea inducing shakes. Try out these simple camera stabilization tips. You can use a tripod as a counterweight, or a piece of 2×4 to give the point-and-shoot a dual grip.

Operation StratoSphere

January 18, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 7 Comments

Panoramic photos are nice, however a full 360 degree x 180 degree, or spherical panorama would be even better. [Caleb Anderson] decided to take this concept much further, attempting to extract panoramic photos from video taken at 100,000 feet using a high-altitude balloon and six GoPro cameras.

The overview of this project can be found here, and gives some background. The first task was to start prototyping some payload containers, which for a device that you have little control over once out of your hands is quite critical. As well as some background, there’s a cool interactive panorama of the first test results on this page, so be sure to check it out.

The “real” hacking in this experiment wasn’t a matter of putting a balloon into the stratosphere or recovering it, however. Chaining these images together into pictures was a huge challenge, and involved a diverse set of skills and software knowledge that most of our readers would be proud to possess. There are several videos in the explanation, but we’ve embedded one with the cameras falling out of the sky. Be sure to at least watch until (or skip to) just after 1:05 where all the cameras impressively survive impact! Continue reading “Operation StratoSphere” →

Polaroid Catcher Make Print Screen Do What It Says

January 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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As part of their coursework at ITP New York a group of students developed the Polaroid Catcher. It’s a way to make your digital experiences more permanent. When you have something on-screen that you’d like to keep as a memory you can print the screen on this old Polaroid camera. Of course you’re not going to get the chemical-filled container you may remember from ages past. But we thing you’d agree the nostalgic camera makes a nice enclosure for a modern image printer.

The workings of the system are shown off quite well in the clip after the break. But we’re always interested in the particulars of how they pulled it off. The system uses a Google Chrome extension to capture what is being displayed in the browser. Before the image is sent to the printer the user has the opportunity to frame up the subject of the photo. Once decided, the image is pushed to a Bluetooth photo printer using some scripts written by the team.

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Unwrapping Images Of Cylindrical Objects

January 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

unwrapping-images-of-cylindrical-objects

Here’s an automated setup that lets you create flat images of cylindrical objects. The example shown above takes a creamer and lets you see what the painted pattern looks like when viewed continuously.

The image capture rig is similar to turntable photography setups that allow you to construct animated GIF files or 3D models of objects. The subject is places on a stepper motor which allows precise control when rotating the object between frames. The EiBotBoard (which we’ve seen in at least one other project) is designed for the EggBot printer. But it is used here to interface the motor and capture equipment with the Raspberry Pi.

We’re a little uncertain if the RPi actually handles the image manipulation. The project uses ImageMagick, which will certainly run on the RPi. There is a mention of the Raspberry Pi camera joing the rig as a future improvement so we do expect to see a fully-automatic revision at some point.

[via Adafruit via EMSL]

Flash Controller Works With Point And Shoot Cameras

November 25, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

Needless to say, there’s a world of difference between the expensive DSLR cameras professional photographers use and the point-and-shoot models carried by commoners. One such difference is the ability to use slave flashes – a second flash set off to the side of the subject for better illumination. Most of these slave flash units are triggered when they see a bright light, or when the on-camera flash goes off. Point and shoot models usually have a ‘pre-flash’ that cause a slave flash to trigger prematurely. [Kerry] built a really neat slave flash that is able to work with these point-and-shoot cameras, and is pretty easy to build as well.

There are two options when it comes to building a flash that can work with a point-and-shoot: First, measure the time between the pre-flash and real flash, and then simply delay the slave flash. This option has a few problems. Even when [Kerry] tested this technique on the same camera, the delay between the flashes were never consistant.

The second option is to simply ignore the pre flash and synchronize with the main flash. This is a little harder, but if done right this technique is nearly foolproof.

[Kerry] ended up building a small circuit out of a 556 timer chip and an LM339n comparator that turns itself ‘on’ just a little bit after it sees the pre flash. From there, the device looks for the main flash and triggers itself whenever it sees another bright source of light.

The finished product works beautifully, and is simple enough for just about anyone to build on a piece of perf board.

Raspberry Pi Camera Board Coming Early Next Year

November 24, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 52 Comments

We’ve seen hundreds of builds tinker around with the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. They’re great for bridging the gap between physical sensors and a virtual world, but there are a few more unused and ignored pins on the Raspberry Pi. The folks at the Raspberry Pi foundation are finally giving these unused pins a life of their own with the new camera module for our favorite single board computer.

The specs for the camera are fairly impressive – it can record H.264 video at 1080p and 30 frames per second. Best of all, it costs only $25.

There are a few more hurdles to pass before the Raspi foundation can send this board out to manufacturers. They still need to make sure the ribbon cable doesn’t emit any interference, but if all goes right the camera module should be available early next year.

You can see the camera in action in the video after the break. If you listen closely you can hear [Rob Bishop] of the Raspi foundation say they’re also working on a display add on for the other unused pins on the Pi, something we can’t wait to see.

Continue reading “Raspberry Pi Camera Board Coming Early Next Year” →