Build Your Own Lightweight Flash Tripod

March 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Peter Karlsson] is a commercial photographer who wanted some ultralight, portable supports for multiple flashes. What he came up with meets those goals; measuring 16 inches long when folded and weighing just 14 ounces. They set up just like a tent because they’re made from tent poles. Like the portable habitats, the tripods have bungee cords running through each section which holds them rigid but allows them to fold for transport. This is a great sister project to the flash synchronizer from yesterday. See the demo and the building instructions after the break.

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Smart Flash Synchronization

March 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Max] designed this circuit to add smart flash synchronization to his photography arsenal. He did this because ‘dumb’ TTL based flashes won’t play nicely with more sophisticated systems like the Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting. By building a microcontroller into the mechanism, he’s added functionality for several different scenarios, ensuring that he’ll never again have problems with early flash triggering. Now that the kinks have been ironed out in the prototype, the code and hardware can be migrated over to whatever microcontroller suits you.

Developing Physical Controllers For The Uninitiated

January 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

[Dave] hosted a one day seminar at the Illinois Institute of Technology which focused on rapid electronics prototyping for those with little prior experience blinking those LEDs. As the defacto standard for novice prototypers it’s no surprise that he gave an Arduino to each team to use as the controller-computer interface. He started the day by getting the Firmata package up and running. Firmata is a set of libraries that make communications between software and a microcontrollers simple. In this case, each team developed a Flash game that used data from the Arduino as a control.

Several rudimentary games resulted from the day. We’ve embedded video of two of them after the break for your enjoyment. Lion Vs. Pig uses potentiometers, a distance sensor, and an arcade button to play a game of cat-and-mouse (well, Lion-and-Pig really). The other is Kick the Cat, a game that uses a flex sensor and force sensor combination as input. This is something of a virtual mini-basketball game that uses a springy material to launch a virtual feline at a target.

These teams already had a background in code, but the hardware was a new endeavor for them. Arduino helps to break down this cross-over barrier and we think this will result in more people to contribute to open source projects, and falling hardware prices due to a larger volume of demand.

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360 Degree Video For Next-to-nothing

January 4, 2010 by Mike Szczys 50 Comments

[Luis], a regular Hackaday reader, sent in some info about his 360 degree video experiments. He wanted a cheap device to use with a video camera, producing video that can be displayed using a free Flash software library.

The hardware consists of a mirrored light bulb, a square of glass, and some threaded rod. The camera lens attaches to the glass with the rod right in the middle. The lens will capture a donut image reflected in the mirror of the bulb. [Luis] then processes the result and uses Ryubin’s Flash Panorama to handle playback. He’s posted two clips as examples, the first of an “Existentialist Suburb Walker” and the second is some test footage while setting up for a shot. You can click-and-rotate the video while it’s playing to look around the area.

This could produce some great driving videos, without the need for multiple cameras. [Luis] does point out some problems with oscillation as the mirror on the end of a rod will amplify the effect of movement on the image.

Lightning Rod: Keeps You Safe From Dirty Flashers

January 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

A new open source package called Lightning Rod will help to close security exploits in Adobe’s dirty Flash code. A presentation made at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress showed that the package does its job by reviewing incoming code before the browser executes it. Heise Online is reporting that this method can block over 20 different known attacks and can even be used to filter out malicious JPG attacks. As more vulnerabilities are discovered they can be added to Lightning Rod to close the breach. This amounts to a virus scanner for Flash code. It’s great to have this type of protection but why can’t Adobe handle its security problems?

[Photo Credit]

[Thanks das_coach]

Terminate RFID Tags

December 22, 2009 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

This gun hunts only RFID tags.[mnt], who brought us laser gesture control, built this RFID Zapper but included so much more. Any good weapon has to sound mean, a feat he’s accomplished by incorporating an MP3 player into the rifle. The coil that zaps the RFID tag is powered by a photo-flash unit, but for visual feedback he’s got a second unit that flashes light to signal the demise of your German passport (see the video after the break).

It’s hard to believe we haven’t covered RFID Zappers yet. The concept came out of the Chaos Communication Congress a few years back. This method works by sending a very strong electromagnetic field through the RFID tag that causes it to burn out. There’s a wiki post on RFID Zappers but Firefox threw a certificate warning when we loaded it up; read at your own risk.

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Axe Your Camera (again!)

November 19, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 9 Comments

[Maurice] let us know that his latest photography tool for hackers, the Camera Axe 3.0, is now available. The original allowed you to trigger a high-speed flash and camera from a multitude of sensors, including light and sound. The new one does all that, but also: allows multiple cameras or multiple flashes, clean up of software to make it more user adaptable, and the best (arguably the most important) part – cheaper components! All that and more under the Creative Commons that we do love so much. Keep up the amazingly detailed and just pure awesome work [Maurice].