Alright class, quiet down and open your books to the chapter on Manchester Encoding. [Brian J Hoskins] did just that when building this RC5 decoder. This protocol is commonly used in television remote controls. You use them on a daily basis, don’t you think it’s time you understood what’s going on? Check out his writeup and learn the dark art of invisible light communication. Or just skip the learning and follow our how-to.
[Thanks Tim]
It hurts us to look at this quadcopter, agonizingly so when we watch the video after the break. That’s because we feel the unstoppable compulsion to build one. This four-rotor helicopter has a lot to be proud of; it features Gyro stabilization, Xbee remote control for very long distance operation, and computer interface for data graphing and calibration.
We like the quadcopter that we came across at CES but building one of our own is more fun than buying it ready-made. The pain we’re feeling is mostly in our pocketbook. To help ease the agony we scoured the parts list and the assembly instructions in order to get an estimate of what this might cost. We’re looking at around $415 plus shipping, not including transmitter and receiver for controlling it. Yep, that’s a sharp stabbing pain but we’re not sure we can just let it go.
An unemployed electrical engineer can be a very dangerous thing. [Cybrown] has turned his skills toward darker, more awesome applications by building an armed unmanned aerial vehicle. This is a remote control airplane that has a movable camera mounted in the cockpit. Video and GPS data are sent back to the pilot who views the picture via a wearable display. We’re betting this doesn’t have the range that the 100km UAV did, but that’s good because this one brings doom from the skies. Check the wings in the picture above, this RC is fireworks-enable. We’ve embedded flight footage and attack video after the break.
Update: Here is a forum post covering this nugget of awesome. There are just a few details but the entire thread is interesting. Someone pointed this out in the comments but they don’t get credit because they didn’t leave a link.
Here’s one that brings back that giddy feeling we got when the original episodes of thebroken were posted all those years ago. The lunatics over at Waterloo Labs have altered a beat-up Oldsmobile for remote control via laptop, iPhone, and…. wait for it… Power Wheels.
Brake and gas pedals are actuated using a wrench connected to a motor bolted to the floorboards of the car. The steering wheel has been replaced with a gear and connected to a motor using a motorcycle chain. Much like the van we saw last month, an iPhone app has been written to wirelessly control the car of doom. This leads to some car surfing and ghost riding the whip in the video after the break.
To our delight, they’ve also implement the most unorthodox automotive interface yet, Power Wheels. A chain has been added to measure the orientation of the toy steering wheel, and an optical encoder is used to measure the speed of the tiny electric vehicle. It looks like it doesn’t do the best job of translating to a full size vehicle, but it maxes out their style points.
Continue reading “Remotely Control Your Crappy Car (dangerously)”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-9_dMJKh9E&feature=player_embedded%5D
Robotic claws are awesome, period. [Jeremy’s] Remotely controlled robotic claw, thats just a whole new level of cool – even if the intention is to just pick up blocks. The setup is simple enough, a Parallax Propeller controls the whole system by first polling a web server for changes in variables that the user has invoked. Those changes are then passed to relays that control the claw. To keep from fumbling in the dark, he’s even included a webcam. We hate to see that he’s used such expensive equipment to just control a toy, but maybe one day he’ll move to bigger and better things.
The Spirit of Berlin team has developed an iPhone app to remotely control a minivan. They didn’t have to do much to the vehicle to get this working because the platform was developed for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. The iPhone connects with the driving circuitry via WiFi and offers a gas button, a brake button, and a steering button to enable the accelerometer for turning. The front camera video is transmitted to the iPhone in real-time.
In the picture above you can see the operator in the center of the van’s camera view. It looks like the van’s top speed is limited, but remembering our own ineptitude in piloting RC vehicles, we hope this doesn’t result in a Darwin Award. We’ve embedded a video after the break. Everyone loves to see some Mario Kart reeneactment. You can catch some around 2:28 into the video. Enjoy.
[David] had an Arduino in search of a project. He decided to make an Arduino powered iPod remote control using an ipod connector breakout board and a 3.3v to 5v level converter (both from SparkFun). The circuit was built on a mini breadboard, controlled by an Arduino Mini, and housed in an Altoids tin. To talk to the iPod the Apple Accessory Protocol is used. With driving in mind [David] connected a Staples Easy Button as the play/pause button. This is a good example of how to interface Arduino with iPod. Using his example code we’d like to see more people working on homemade iPod accessories.
