Home Made Half Life 2 Turret Powered By Pi

January 1, 2016 by Richard Baguley 7 Comments

To help expand his inter-dimensional empire, [Solderchips] has decided to build his own Half Life 2 turret. This, he hopes, will automatically track and shoot anyone who hinders the work of Our Benefactors. He’s documenting the process, and has just published his first step: creating a 3D model of the turret and printing it out. The final project will use a Raspberry Pi and a webcam to track rebels and fire on them automatically, especially those with crowbars.

He’s made a promising start, using a papercraft model of the turret to build the 3D model, then modifying it to accommodate the brains (the Raspberry Pi) and the brawns, a couple of small servos that will move the top of the turret around. The next step will perhaps be to add a tilt switch so that the whole thing falls asleep if it falls over. The thing to learn from this project, is that at some point you just have to stop thinking about it and actually make something. This paper model is a big step toward success compared to carrying around the dream in your head.

We’ve seen a few Portal Turret builds and a very nice Wheatley build, but not a decent Half Life 2 turret build, so hopefully [Solderchips] will see this through to completion and release all of his files.

Art For Planespotters

December 31, 2015 by Elliot Williams 6 Comments

We don’t know art, but we know what we like. And this gizmo by [Johan Kanflo] is right up our alley.

First, [Johan] gutted an old Macintosh Classic computer and stuffed a Raspberry Pi inside. Now this is not really a new idea, but [Johan] did a very nice job with the monitor and his attention to detail shows in the rebuilt floppy-drive eject mechanism. He gives it back that characteristic “schlurp” noise.

Then he outfitted the Raspberry Pi with an RTL dongle running dump1090 software to listen to the ADS-B radio signals. The data extracted from the SDR is piped off to an MQTT server with all sorts of data about the airplanes overhead. Another script subscribes to the MQTT topic and figures out which is the closest and runs an image search for the plane type in question, publishing the results back to another MQTT topic. One final script subscribes to this last topic and displays the relevant images on the screen. Pshwew!

The end result is a Macintosh Classic that’s continually updated with whatever planes are closest to being overhead. We’re not at all sure if this is fine art, or part of the useful arts, or maybe even none of the above. But we really like the nice case job and think that using MQTT as a back-end for coordinating multiple concurrent Python scripts (on the same computer) is pretty cool.

Magic Mirror On The Wall, “Is Pi Or ESP, Fairest Of All?”

December 30, 2015 by Rud Merriam 23 Comments

“What’s the weather like, honey?” “I don’t know. Let me check the mirror.” The mirror?

Both [Dylan Pierce] and [squix] have mirror projects that display the weather. They took two different approaches which makes for an interesting comparison. [Dylan] uses a Raspberry Pi with an actual monitor behind the mirror. [squix] puts an OLED behind the mirror driven by a ESP8266. It appears there is more than one way to hack a mirror, or anything, which is what makes hacking fun.

Raspberry Pi Booting

Framing Mirror and Monitor

[squix] started with a picture frame, adding tinting film to the glass so it would reflect. A small section of tint was removed to allow the OLED to be seen. The ESP8266 software connects to the Weather Underground to get the latest information.

The Raspberry Pi version by [Dylan] puts a 27″ monitor behind the mirror. That is either terribly impressive or way over the top but seeing Linux boot behind the mirror makes it worth the effort. The Pi generates a web page which makes this adaptable as a general purpose kiosk.

A video of [squix]’s mirror in operation, after the break.

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Yet Another Pi Zero USB Hub

December 30, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero was back in stock at Adafruit this week – for about eight minutes. That means a few more people get Pi Zeros, many more will put them up on eBay, and everyone is working on their own version of a Pi Zero USB hub. The latest version of a Pi Zero hub comes from [Nate], and he’s doing this one right. His Pi USB adapter adds four USB ports and features not found in other DIY USB hubs like fuses and ESD protection.

As with other Pi Zero USB hub add-ons, this build relies on a USB hub controller, a few passives, and not much else. The chip used in this hub is the FE1.1s chip, a highly integrated 4-port hub controller that can be found through the usual Chinese resellers. This hub controller doesn’t require much, just a 12MHz crystal, a few passives, and four USB jacks.

Of particular interest is how [Nate] is connecting this hub to the Pi Zero. He’s left the option open for using either a USB cable, or soldering the USB’s differential pairs directly between the Pi and the hub. In either case, the hub should work, and with the addition of the zeners, fuses, and other parts that keep the hub from frying itself, [Nate] might have a very nice project on his hands.

Turning The Pi Zero Into A USB Gadget

December 27, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 60 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero is limited, or so everyone says, and everyone is trying to cram a USB hub and WiFi adapter on this tiny, tiny board. One thing a lot of people haven’t realized is that the Raspberry Pi Zero comes with a USB OTG port, meaning it can function as a USB device rather than a USB host. This means the Raspi can become a serial device with just a USB cable, an Ethernet device, MIDI device, camera, or just about anything else you can plug into a USB port. Adafruit has your back with a tutorial for using the USB OTG port as a serial and Ethernet interface, and the possible applications are extremely interesting.

The only requirement for using the USB OTG port for device applications is an update to the kernel. This is easily installed by dumping a few files on an SD card and a employing bit of command line wizardry. The simplest example is setting up the Pi Zero as a USB serial device, allowing anyone to log into a serial console on the Pi with just a USB cable.

A slightly more interesting application is setting up the Pi as an Ethernet gadget. This effectively tunnels all the networking on the Pi Zero through a USB cable and a separate computer. The instructions are extremely OS-specific, but the end result is the same: you can apt-get on a Pi Zero to your heart’s desire with a new kernel loaded onto the SD card and a USB cable.

This experimentation is just scratching the surface of what is possible with the OTG port on the Pi Zero. MIDI devices are easy, and with a ton of GPIOs, the Pi Zero itself could become a very interesting musical instrument. Want the Pi Zero to be a storage device? That’s easy too. The USB Gadget will end up being one of the most exciting uses for the Pi Zero, and we can’t wait to see what everyone will come up with next.

Let Alexa Control Your Life; Guide To Voice-Enable Everything

December 26, 2015 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

Let’s face it, automation doesn’t feel quite as futuristic unless you can just say what you want out loud and have the machines flawlessly obey. That is totally possible now — and on the cheap. Well, cheap as far as money goes. It can be an expensive learning curve to get it all working. This will help. [Lindo St. Angel] has put together a guide to navigate voice control of hardware using Amazon’s Alexa SDK.

We previously reported that Amazon’s AI had escaped its hardware prison in the form of the Alexa Skills Kit. Yes, calling it the Alexa SDK above is wrong it’s actually the ASK but nobody knows what that acronym is while most recognize the gist of an SDK. It gives you the hooks and the documentation necessary to leverage the functionality in your own applications. The core functionality of Alexa is voice recognition. Even so, it’s still a tall hill to climb.

[Lindo] has broken down the problem into a very manageable example. The Amazon Voice Service (part of ASK) is used for voice recognition and control. Amazon’s Lambda service connects the ASK to your piece of hardware; in this case he’s using a Raspberry Pi as the server. The final step is to connect your hardware to the Pi. [Lindo] is interfacing a keypad-based home automation system with the Pi but the sky’s the limit at this point.

With all the authentication and connectivity laid bare, this is a lot more approachable. The question is no longer can you connect everything to voice control. The question becomes should you give control of everything over to one single online service?

Here Comes Santa Claws

December 24, 2015 by Richard Baguley 4 Comments

Liberty Games in the UK was looking for a fun way to support charity for the holidays, and we think they succeeded. They decided to set up an arcade crane machine to run over the internet, with each type of toy snagged earning a donation. Snag a bear, and they will donate £5 to St Mungos, a UK charity that works with homeless or at risk people. Snag one of the rarer Santa toys, and they will donate £20. It’s a great cause, and a nice hack. Behind the scenes, the Internet side of things runs on a Raspberry Pi connected to a PiRack and a couple of PiFace digital interface cards that are wired into the electronics of the crane machine so they could control the buttons on the machine from a Web interface. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be running when we tried it, but hopefully someone will give the machine a swift kick shortly to get it going until the Hackaday traffic invariably brings it down again.

One of the interesting thing that they discovered while working on these hacks: they have a pay-out ratio that is determined by the strength of the grabbing arm. The owner can tweak this so that the arm does not grab very firmly, which means a dropped bear. Want to torture your friends with hopes of snagging the best stuffed animals?. Follow the example of this claw machine build all from parts on hand.