Clock Hides Time Until You’re In Close Proximity

April 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Alan] is branching out beyond the Arduino with this clock. He’s still using the same code but built this board around an ATmega328 and the components he needed, saving his Arduino board for further development. The concept uses a character display housed in an old iPod Touch case. The build relies on an infrared sensor to actuate the LCD backlight. The closer your hand is the brighter the light.

The Maxim DS3232 RTC chip keeps time in this application. We’ve seen this little marvel used before, popular because it uses temperature compensation to maintain accuracy. If you’re interested in this part, check out the library file that [Alan] wrote for it.

Intruder Alarm McDonald’s Toy Hacking

April 8, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

[malikaii] needed to set up some kind of tripwire style alarm system for his office. His bosses kept sneaking in to find him slacking. So, like any loyal hacker, instead of just working harder he built an alarm system. After a failed attempt to recreate an IR alarm circuit he found on the web and built from old appliance parts, he found the Hack a Day article about harvesting McDonald’s toys. The end result was a fully functional IR detecting alarm for the office doorway. This is pretty simple really, the best kind of hack.

Home Cinema 3D (or Just Tick Off Theatergoers)

March 4, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 55 Comments

After a visit to the local theater and discovering the use of IR 3D glasses (for films such as Avatar), the team over at Furrtek wondered how they worked, and more importantly, how the glasses could be manipulated to tick off audience members. While the original intentions seem a bit childish, they did mention that their final setup could also be used for a home cinema with IR 3D glasses.

Onto the good stuff: the glasses receive IR light pulses timed with the movie to black out the appropriate eye with the appropriate frame and producing a 3D effect. With the use of IR Investigator the team grabbed said timings; it was then simply a matter of building their own IR projector, and bringing it back to the theater to annoy the crowd setting it up for their 3D home cinema.

Python IR Tracking For The Handicapped

February 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Techb] had a friend who was paralyzed after an accident and could no long use a computer. He rigged up an amazingly simple mouse interface using python to implement infrared tracking. The controller was built from an old hat by adding an IR LED and wireless mouse modified so that the button could be clicked by the user’s mouth. A webcam with exposed film used as a filter can track the IR LED and take input from the wireless mouse buttons.

This setup, which draws inspiration from Wii Remote white boards, is much simpler than the Eyewriter (and doesn’t shine an IR LED into your eye). Although [Techb] wants to add facial recognition to the system, there’s something to be said for such a simple implementation.

[Thanks Wolfmankurd]

PicAxe LEGO Tank

February 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[TomTheGeek] built a LEGO tank with a PicAxe controller. Locomotion is supplied by a Lego Power Function motor controller. He cut an LPF extension wire in half so that he could patch into the PWM signals without altering the motors themselves. You can make out the control circuitry and a small breadboard in the tank’s turret. [Tom] added a laser pointer to the tip of the barrel but we’d like to see an IR LED. The tank is controlled by a infrared remote control and adding TV-b-gone functionality to the toy would create something of a Rube Goldberg feature for turning off the tube. But alas, there’s no programming space left for that as the PicAxe 08M is limited to 256 bytes.

There’s a video after the break of this little demon tracking its way around the room. This is a nice addition to the other LEGO tank we saw a while back.

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Location Tracking Using IR Throwies

December 30, 2009 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Joe] and his team hacked together some location tracking using IR throwies for their final project. The challenge they undertook was to find a way to track the orientation of a sculpture in the form of a rotating metal cube. The end result dips its toe into the augmented reality pool but the methods are what interest us.

They wanted this to work day or night so contrast would be a major issue if working completely with image manipulation. Having a simple way to pick out the corners of the monotone block would make this process a breeze. They ended up using magnetic throwies that have an infrared LED which can easily be picked up by a webcam no matter what the ambient light issues happen to be.

After the break you can see these guys out in the wild testing the system. We’d like to note the diffusers used in the project. We’re used to seeing ping-pong balls as diffusers but this is the first time we’ve noticed Styrofoam balls being used.

Continue reading “Location Tracking Using IR Throwies” →

Capturing Bullet Speed

December 13, 2009 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Sometimes it’s amazing how slow our sense of time is. We find [Maurice’s] bullet capture system a great example of this. A pair of IR sensors spaced two inches apart can capture and calculate the speed of a projectile. Couple this with a user-input distance from the sensor to the target and a microcontroller can extrapolate the exact moment to trigger a camera to catch a bullet in mid-air.

As with his other projects, all the details on how to build and use this system are available for your perusal.