Gesture Sensor Teardown Reveals Intel Heritage

June 9, 2023 by Al Williams 5 Comments

A few years ago, there was a rush of products on the market to detect motion. The idea being you could interact with your computer like they do on science fiction movies, with giant expressive hand motions in the air. Most of these were aimed at desktop computer users but one company, YouSpace, wanted to bring this technology to retail stores. [IMSAI Guy] got one of their sensor devices and decided to see what was inside it. You can see, too, in the video below.

The device appeared to have a laser inside, which motivated the teardown. We aren’t sure exactly what YouSpace had planned, but you can see their now-defunct website on the Wayback machine. The use cases listed didn’t really help us get a clear picture, so maybe that was part of the problem.

Getting into the device was the first challenge. Like many modern smartphones, there didn’t appear to be any fasteners, so you simply had to pry the case apart. Inside the case: a tiny circuit board and a metal assembly containing the laser and cameras that were easy to remove. The main PCB appears to be an Intel off-the-shelf board that was in many Intel RealSense products, and currently go for about $50 on eBay. The camera assembly looks a bit like an Intel D430, so it is possible the entire thing was off-the-shelf hardware. Even the little connector board is, technically, a D400 Interposer.

The peek into the structured light project under the microscope was interesting. We expected it would look different, and [IMSAI Guy] clearly didn’t expect its appearance either. The chip was made to beam a known pattern that the cameras would use to deduce the shape of the surfaces it hits.

If you can find these on the surplus market, they would probably be a good deal if you need this hardware which is typically pretty expensive. Just beware, though. Intel announced in late 2021 they were “winding down” RealSense. We don’t know if there will be third-party support in the future or if the whole product line will just be orphaned.

We’ve seen the occasional project that uses structured light. The technique can be very precise.

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There’s Only One Way To Play A Star Wars Game

March 1, 2021 by Jenny List 2 Comments

Most computer and console games have a variety of different control schemes depending on the controller peripheral the player has to hand. For Star Wars games the fight scenes may be playable with a gamepad, but perhaps that leaves a little to desired in the realism department. In that case, [Leonardo Moreno] has the solution, in the form of a motion sensing light sabre for gaming via gesture control.

The first part of any light sabre project is the sabre itself, and for this he uses soft transparent PVC tubing. This might seem an insubstantial choice, but makes sense when the possibility of hitting an expensive television or gamers monitor with it is considered. Up the pipe goes a piece of LED strip, and onto it a hilt containing an Arduino and an MPU6050 gyroscope sensor. The physical controls come courtesy of a small analogue joystick and a trigger fashioned from a wooden clothes pin. The result may be a little rough and ready, but it’s undeniably a light sabre. Full instructions and software can be found at the link.

Light sabres have been a perennial build, but few have captured the original better than this laser based one.

Flexible PCB Earrings Put The Art In Art Deco

May 24, 2020 by Kerry Scharfglass 5 Comments

Earrings have been a hackers’ target for electronic attachment for quite a while, but combining the needed components into a package small enough to wear in that finicky location is quite a challenge. If [Sawaiz Syed]’s Art Deco Earrings are anything to go by, ear computers have a bright future ahead of them!

This is a project unusually well described by its name. It is in fact an earring, with art deco styling. But that sells it way too short. This sliver of a flex circuit board is double sided to host an ATtiny, accelerometer, LDO, and eight 2020 formfactor controller-integrated LEDs. Of course it’s motion sensitive, reacting to the wearer’s movement via LED pattern. [Sawaiz] makes reference to wearing it while dancing, and we can’t help but imagine an entire ballroom all aglow with tiny points of LED light.

The Art Deco Earrings are also set apart by the thoroughness of their documentation (have we mentioned how much we love detailed documentation?). [Sawaiz] not only drops the source in your lap, but the README in the Github repo linked at the top walks the reader through each component of the design in detail. Plus the PCBA render is so complete it includes a model of the wire loop to fit through the wearer’s ear; how cool is that? The single piece that’s still in progress is the battery. The earring itself hosts an LDO, so all that is required is stashing a battery somewhere discrete, perhaps in the user’s hair? We’re looking forward to seeing what [Sawaiz] works out.

For the full effect, check out the gif of an assembled unit in action after the break.

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Teardown Of Costco Ceiling Light Reveals Microwave Motion Sensor And Hackable Design

March 30, 2020 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

[hclxing] eagerly picked up an LED ceiling light for its ability to be turned on and off remotely, but it turns out that the lamp has quite a few other features. These include adjustable brightness, color temperature, automatic turnoff, light sensing, motion sensing, and more. Before installing, [hclxing] decided to tear it down to see what was involved in bringing all those features to bear, but after opening the lamp there wasn’t much to see. Surprisingly, besides a PCB laden with LEDs, there were exactly two components inside the unit: an AC power adapter and a small white controller unit. That’s it.

Microwave-based motion sensor board on top, controller board for LED ceiling light underneath.

The power adapter is straightforward in that it accepts 100-240 Volts AC and turns it into 30-40 Volts DC for the LEDs, and it appears to provide 5 V for the controller as well. But [hclxing] noticed that the small white controller unit — the only other component besides the LEDs — had an FCC ID on it. A quick bit of online sleuthing revealed that ID is attached to a microwave sensor module. Most of us would probably expect to see a PIR sensor, but this light is motion sensing with microwaves. We have seen such units tested in the past, which links to a video [hclxing] also references.

The microwave motion sensor board is shown here, and underneath it is a dense PCB that controls all other functions. Once [hclxing] identified the wires and their signals, it was off to Costco to buy more because the device looks eminently hackable. We’re sure [hclxing] can do it, given their past history with reverse-engineering WyzeSense hardware.

DARPA Enlisting Nemo And Dory To Find You

February 7, 2018 by Roger Cheng 9 Comments

The ocean is a hostile environment for man-made equipment, no matter its purpose. Whether commercial fishing, scientific research, or military operations, salt water is constantly working to break them all down. The ocean is also home to organisms well-adapted to their environment so DARPA is curious if we can leverage their innate ability to survive. The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (yes, our ocean PALS) program is asking for creative ideas on how to use sea life to monitor ocean activity.

Its basic idea is simple: everyday business of life in the ocean are occasionally interrupted by a ship, a submarine, or some other human activity. If this interruption can be inferred from sea life response, getting that data could be much less expensive than building sensors to monitor such activity directly. Everyone who applies to this research program will have the chance to present their own ideas on how to turn this idea into reality.

The program announced it will “study natural and modified organisms” (emphasis ours.) Keeping an open mind to bio-engineering ideas will be interesting, but adding biohacking to the equation also adds to the list of potential problems. While PALS will keep its research within contained facilities, any future military deployment obviously will not. Successful developments in this area will certainly raise eyebrows and face resistance against moving beyond the lab.

But such possibilities are still far away in a future that many never arrive, as is common with DARPA initiatives. Very recently we talked about their interest in brain stimulation and we’ve been fascinated by many DARPA initiatives before that. If PALS takes off, their living sensor nodes might end up face to face with the open-source underwater glider project that won this year’s Hackaday prize.

[via Engadget]

Lighting The Great Indoors With A Solar Security Light

July 17, 2015 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

Look at any list of things to do to make your house less attractive to the criminal element and you’ll likely find “add motion sensing lights” among the pro tips. But what if you don’t want to light up the night? What if you want to use a motion sensor to provide a little light for navigating inside a dark garage? And what if the fixture you’ve chosen is a solar fixture that won’t quite cooperate? If you’re like [r1ckatkinson], you do a teardown and hack the fixture to do your bidding.

[r1ckatkinson]’s fixture was an inexpensive Maplin solar unit with PIR motion sensing, with the solar panel able to be mounted remotely. This was perfect for the application, since the panel could go outside to power the unit, with the lamp and PIR sensor inside. Unfortunately, the solar cell is also the photosensor that tells the unit not to turn on during the day. Armed with scratch pad and pencil, [r1ckatkinson] traced the circuit and located the offending part – a pull-down resistor. A simple resistor-ectomy later and he’s got a solar-powered light working just the way he likes it.

A simple hack, but effective. Seeing off-the-shelf gear modified is always a treat. Of course there’s something to be said for the more home-brew approach to security lighting, too.

Motion Light In Dark Stairwell Brightens Trips To The Basement

March 8, 2015 by Rich Bremer 34 Comments

WARNNG: Walking around in the dark could be dangerous to your health! You may bump into something or worse, take a tumble down the stairs. Safety conscious [Ganesh] has come up with a solution for us folks too lazy to manually turn on a light. It’s a simple light controlled by a motion sensor that anyone can put together.

The meat and potatoes of the build is an off-the-shelf motion sensor, the same kind that is used in a home security system. We humans emit infrared energy and that is just what this sensor ‘sees’. The motion sensor is powered by 12 VDC and has a pair of DC output leads that are used to control a relay. [Ganesh] used an standard hobby relay board with built in power spike protection diode and transistor to supply the current required to trip the relay. Closing the relay sends mains power to the AC light bulb. Both the triggering threshold and the ‘on’ time are controlled by potentiometers integrated with the motion sensor.

Check the video out after the break of the device working its magic and lighting the way to [Ganesh’s] basement dungeon…

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