Elegant Wearable Computer

July 30, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 50 Comments

[Jason Statham] [Martin Magnusson] wrote in to tell us about his adventure in building a wearable computer. The device in its current state is a Beagleboard running Angstrom Linux tethered to an iPhone for internet. A bluetooth keyboard allows for input, while output is displayed on monocle-ized Myvu. And last but not least, the entire setup is powered by 4 AA batteries for 3 hours of life.

Its not as small as some of the wearable computers we’ve seen before, but if you wanted to whip out your own it sure takes a lot less soldering.

Stylin’ HMD

July 8, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 22 Comments

Watch out, these sunglasses are actually a head mounted display. [Staffan] says he’s wanted dataglasses since ’95, but whats currently out there makes the user look ridiculous, and we have to agree. While his forum posts are a little lacking in detail, he’s promised us more info soon. And for now lets us know at least the resolution, well sort of: Its either 480×1280 or 480x427x3, you can be the judge. Update: [Staffan] has clarified “The resolution is 480*1280 true pixels. It is accomplished by spanning the screen across two Kopin CyberDisplay VGA modules.”

Regardless, [Staffan] is looking for help perfecting the glasses, with what in particular we’re not sure, but the project looks promising and we hope he keeps up the good work.

Multi-layer Display Uses Water Instead Of Screen

July 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

This multi-layer display uses droplets of water as a projection medium. This way, several different projected areas can be seen for a not-quite-3D layering effect. The trick is in syncing up all aspects of the apparatus. There are three manifolds, each with 50 stainless steel needles for water drop production. A solenoid valve actuates the drops, a camera images them mid-air, and a computer syncs the images of the dots with a projector. In the video after the break you can see the SIGGRAPH 2010 presentation that includes a description of the process as well as action shots including a 3-layer version of Tetris.

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Nixie-display Brings More Wiring Madness

June 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

[Tim Anderson] whipped up this nixie tube display using epoxy-coated wires. He’s certainly giving the wire-wrapped LED display a run for its money. He ground the epoxy off the end of each wire using a Dremel before soldering them. We thought you could solder right through the epoxy but maybe not. Was this easier than wire wrapping would have been? We’d bet that because of the voltages wire wrapping wasn’t an option here. That board on the left is the 180V power supply for the tubes with an AVR chip running the Arduino bootloader to the right. After the break there’s a brief demo of data being pulled down over a serial connection. [Tim] also has some plans to add an atomic clock module to this setup sometime down the road.

BAMF2010: DIY Electroluminescent Displays

May 27, 2010 by Phil Burgess 14 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPclj5lbz48]

In this video from Maker Faire, [Jon Beck] of CLUE — the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics — demonstrates the unexpected ease of creating custom electroluminescent (EL) displays using materials from DuPont and common t-shirt screen printing tools. Eagle-eyed reader [ithon] recognized the Hack a Day logo among the custom shapes, which escaped our notice at the time. Sorry, Jon! Very cool project, even if the setup is a bit steep. You’ll find links to materials at the project site.

If the interviewer seems especially sharp, that’s because it’s none other than [Jeri “Circuit Girl” Ellsworth], who makes transistors from scratch and designed the C64 DTV. We’re not worthy!

Illuminated Moveable Type

April 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/10437744]

[Rob Stewart] put in a lot of time and built this lighted display at great expense. It displays four letter words using a word association algorithm to pick the next term to show. What interests us is the motorized display. It is made up of fluorescent tubes but they’re not fixed in place. Each can be rotated, as well as moved along a linear path to form any letter in the alphabet. Check out [Rob’s] build logs for the details on how he pulled it all together.

[Thanks Hugo via Engadget and Switched]

RGB Display Development

January 17, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[SeBsZ] tipped us off that he’s working on a display using RGB LEDs. He’s etched some nice surface mount controller boards to carry the ATmega8 microcontroller and NXP PCA9635 drivers. This setup uses the I2C bus to address each expansion board of 5 LED modules. Theoretically this hardware would allow for 638 RGB modules but because of power and refresh rate issues he’s set his sights on reaching somewhere between 100-125, a total of about 25 expansion boards.

There’s not a ton to show off yet. But we expect big things from the project. Partly because one of his goals is to generate a display that can be rolled up and easily moved, and partly because his large-scale light bulb displays are so impressive. Take a look at the video of his 60-bulb unit after the break.

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