Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition 2010 Day One Report

June 5, 2010 by Gerrit Coetzee 19 Comments

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) is the precursor to the DARPA Grand Challenge, and in many ways it is just as difficult. We have the pleasure of being at the competition this year with the Tennessee Technological University Autonomous Robotics Team. The teams at the competition pull off some amazing home-brew robotics, so we’ve decided to do a short section on some exemplary robotic hacking each day of the competition.

Today’s robot comes from the York College of Pennsylvania. The robot, dubbed “Green Lightning”, features an impressive set of custom made hardware.

We interviewed the team, and got a pretty thorough rundown of their robot with pictures after the jump. Continue reading “Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition 2010 Day One Report” →

Parallax RFID Reader For Ten Bucks

May 29, 2010 by Devlin Thyne 102 Comments

We received a tip about Radio Shack putting Parallax’s RFID reader on clearance for around $10. The only reference we could find that indicated Radio Shack sold the reader was a review page. The reader originally sold for around $50 in the stores, so getting it for $10 made it worth a curiosity trip to a local Radio Shack. The store we visited did not have the reader marked down in the drawer, but it rang up for $9.97. It is too bad that the reader was so expensive in the first place, otherwise Radio Shack might still be selling them at full price. This is by no means a promotion, we just though we would share the information in case you were interested in getting one yourself. If Radio Shack is out, you could always build your own reader.

The reader we purchased only came with one tag, perhaps that is why the they have been on clearance. Hooked up to an FTDI USB to serial cable, it would repeatedly send out the tag’s number whenever it was in range. We tried an HID-labeled card and a tag of the kind that can be found in books and DVD cases. Neither worked with the reader, but we’ll keep looking.

Thanks to [bluewraith] for the tip.

Propeller Arcade

February 13, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

This arcade cabinet has been saved from a gruesome death. [Oldbitcollector] picked the broken rig up for $50 and is building a Parallax Propeller based arcade machine. This began back in October and he’s just dropped in a newly painted control panel to replace the NES controller seen above. He pulled the replacement screen out of an old 19″ TV and found it to be a perfect fit. We didn’t find a complete list of available games but we know he’s got a menu system to choose the game and have seen Donkey Kong, Frogger, Defender, and at least one other in the videos. There’s less choices than a MAME cabinet but who needs more than a handful of the old 8-bit gems anyway?

Continue reading “Propeller Arcade” →

Hacking A Digital Bathroom Scale

January 31, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

[Micah] was inspired by projects he had seen of people using the Wii balance board as an input. He realized the balance board was overkill, and pricey for many applications. Since it is basically just 4 weight sensors, he thought, why not just use a scale? Often, only one sensor is needed and they’re really cheap from big box stores. He picked up a digital scale and cracked it open. As he moved forward, he wanted to keep this pretty simple. There are other ways of getting the information from a scale, but they have been generally more complicated than what he had in mind. He ended up bypassing the internal unknown microcontroller and just connecting the analog sensors to his parallax setup. You can read all about the process an download some source code on his site.

[via Flickr]

Choreographed Christmas Light Show (x4)

December 24, 2009 by Jake W 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeAwYmQOf3g]

[Lucas] is at it again this year. Not satisfied by the computerized systems available on the market, [Lucas] decided to build on last year’s project. To save a bit of cash, he built the setup around Parallax’s low-cost SX28 proto board. The system is capable of controlling 102 channels, with 8-bit dimming. 6 boards control 7 channels each and are communicated to through a serial protocol (reducing the whole setup to only 36 feet of wiring).

More importantly, he’s teamed up with 3 other neighbors who also share a passion for outdoor Christmas lighting and they’ve put together the Christmas Tour of Lights. Money raised from all donations goes directly to the St. Jude Children’s Reasearch Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

Propeller-based Terminal

July 25, 2009 by Zach Banks 15 Comments

pocketerm

[Vince Briel] has created an embedded device based on the Parallax Propeller chip that acts as a serial terminal. It takes input from a standard PS/2 keyboard and outputs color VGA. It also has a second serial port to connect to a PC for debugging or programming. He is selling kits and has the schematics available. The board has a lot of hacking potential and it could easily be made into a video game or a Wikipedia browser.

[via RetroThing]

WikiBrowser

May 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 33 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1TelXmRQs0]

This project is particularly amusing. It doesn’t have a whole lot of practical use, but it makes up for it in style. They have an SD card with Wikipedia from 2003 downloaded to it. This is accessed with a Parallax propeller microcontroller based system and displayed on a small retro looking screen. We like it. We don’t think we would ever actually use it, but we would definitely keep it around.