internet

59 Articles

Checking Network Status With A Traffic Light

July 29, 2012 by 14 Comments

If you’ve ever dealt with a buggy Internet connection, you know how frustrating it can be. This project takes the guesswork out of mashing F5 over and over, or simply walking over to your router and ‘turning it on and off again.’

Necessity is the mother of invention, and when the folks at the Bitlair hackerspace in Amersfoort, Netherlands got tired of opening up a terminal to see if their network connection was down at this weekend’s Haxogreen camp they did what any self-respecting hackerspace would do: make a traffic light monitor the Internet.

The traffic light is controlled by a Raspberry Pi the Bitlair folks had lying around attached to a spare traffic light they somehow obtained with a relay. Green means the Raspi can reach 8.8.8.8, red means there is no connection, and flashing lights means there is packet loss.

Not bad for a project put together in a few hours. Now if we only knew how they obtained a traffic light, ‘just lying around.’

Video after the break.

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Smile, Your Face Is On The Internet

July 7, 2011 by 98 Comments

[Kyle McDonald] is up to a bit of no-good with a little piece of software he wrote. He’s been installing it on public computers all over New York City. It uses the webcam found in pretty much every new computer out there to detect when a face is in frame, then takes a picture and uploads it to the Internet.

We’ve embedded a video after the break that describes the process. From [Kyle’s] comments about the video it seems that he asked a security guard at the Apple store if it was okay to take pictures and he encouraged it. We guess it could be worse, if this were a key logger you’d be sorry for checking your email (or, god forbid, banking) on a public machine. Instead of being malicious, [Kyle] took a string of the images, adjusted them so that the faces were all aligned and the same size, and then rolled them into the latter half of his video.

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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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Machine Pushes Cellphone Buttons From Anywhere In The World

February 24, 2011 by 32 Comments

[Mok Young Bacq] works on the weekends for mobile game monitoring service. He has three cellphones that he uses for work, and although you would think this means he could work from anywhere in the world, the roaming charges are a killer. His solution was to build an incredibly intricate machine that can use three different cellphones (PDF) on his behalf.

Above you can see it perched underneath the apex of the ladder, but you’re definitely going to want to watch the video after the break. This interface method uses a camera to look at each phone. It’s hung pointing downward and moves like a pendulum to look at one of the three screens at a time. Each phone has one servo motor for each button, which uses a flexible cable as an actuator. Now he can take trips abroad, just checking in over the Internet for his two 17-hour weekend shifts (10am to 3am the next morning) working the phones.

This reminds us of the cellphone endurance tests. What happens when a button stops working?

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Global CALCnet: Your TI-83 Just Acquired Internet

February 22, 2011 by 16 Comments

Global CALCnet lets you connect your TI graphic calculator to the Internet and use your favorite services like instant messaging and Internet relay chat. It also provides the option of worldwide multiplayer functionality for games ported to the device such as Scorched Earth and Tetris. We looked in on [Christopher Mitchell’s] CALCnet in December when it was being used to create local area networks with the adding machines. He’s taken that up a notch with a helping hand from Arduino. An Arduino board is used to connect the serial communications from the calculator to an Internet connected PC via the Arduino’s USB capabilities.

Think this will waste a lot of time in schools? Unlikely since an Internet connected computer is integral for this system to work. If you have a computer in front of you why waste time on the calculator network? Still, how hard would it be to build a WiFi module that can directly connect them to an access point? That may be a moot point as the Slashdot article that pointed us to global CALCnet also links to a calculator port of DOOM. It runs quite well, as you can see in the video after the break. This is a must-have for anyone owning a TI Nspire that can run it.

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Internet Controlled Remote

September 10, 2010 by 41 Comments

How often does this happen to you? You’re leaving on a long trip, and half way there you remember the TV was left on. Never? Alright then, how about wanting to control an Xbox 360 from within the other room and you don’t have the remote. Still a rare occurrence?

Perhaps you have a better situation where an internet controlled IR remote, that can be programmed to work with any TV or IR accepting device, would be useful. [Nicholas McClanahan] starts off with USB Propeller from Parallax, adds an Ethernet module making a mini server, and ends with an IR LED and receiver. The code is nearly as simple being a combination of SPIN, Html, and JavaScript. All coming together under a nice website GUI that prompts for what IR signals to send. To make the project even more straightforward, [Nicholas] has included an Instructable as well. In the end though, while the hack is great, we’re still trying to find a decent enough use. Video after the rift.

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Cybraphon, Rocks Hard To The Mood Of The Internet

August 13, 2010 by 13 Comments

Start off with a beat, wood sticks on cigar boxes will do. Add some chimes as accent, a Farfisa organ or record player for a voice, several other instruments for harmony and dissonance, and you’re still just on the tip of the iceberg for understanding Cybraphon.

Not only is this antique wardrobe completely autonomous, playing music with over 60 robotic instruments, its song are based on the current mood of the internet. You definitely don’t want to miss the video (or pictures) on this one, catch it after the rift.

[Thanks to PsychoNerd91]

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