Hackaday Links: Sunday, April 14th, 2013

April 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

We figure we have to start off this week’s links post talking about PETMAN. Boston Dynamics shows off the humanoid robot donning a full chemical suit. It’s a lot scarier than when we first saw it as a couple of legs a few years ago [Thanks Joshua].

Seeing something like that might drive you back to smoking cigarettes. But since that’s pretty bad for your health perhaps you just need a mechanical chain-smoking machine to take the edge off. That thing can really suck ’em down! [Thanks Mike]

Last week’s links included a bit about the Raspberry Pi 2.0 board version’s reset header. [Brian] wrote in to share a link for adding reset to a 1.0 revision board.

Speaking of RPi, [Elvis Impersonator] is using it to automate his garage door with the help of Siri.

In shop news, [Brad] needed to sharpen a few hundred pencils quickly and ended up melting the gears on his electric sharpener. Transplanting the parts to his drill press gave him more power to get the job done in about six minutes.

And finally, you can forget how to decipher those SMD resistor codes. Looks like surface mount resistors might be unmarked like their capacitor brethren. We were tipped off by [Lindsey] who got the news by way of [Dangerous Prototypes and Electronics Lab]

Siri Controlled Arduino Using Ruby

February 1, 2013 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

siri-proxy-ruby-arduino

This snippet of Hello World code lets [Nico Ritschel] turn the Pin 13 LED on his Arduino on and off using Siri, the voice-activated helper built into iPhones. The trick here is using the Ruby programming language to get Siri Proxy talking to Arduino via the USB connection. He calls the project siriproxy-arduino.

On one end of the hack resides SiriProxy, a package not approved by Apple which is capable of intercepting the Siri messages headed for Apple’s own servers. The messages are still relayed, but a copy of each is available for [Nico’s] own uses. On the other side of things he’s building on the work of [Austinbv’s] dino gem; a Ruby package that facilitates control of the Arduino. It includes a sketch that is uploaded to the Arduino board, opening up a Ruby API. The collection of code seen above defines the pin with the LED connected and then listens for a specific Siri commands to actuate it.

Take a look at [Nico’s] explanation of the module in the video after the break.

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Garage Door Opener Using Siri And Raspberry Pi

December 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

Screenshot from 2012-12-11 09:54:36

[DarkTherapy] wrote in to tell us about his garage door opener that works with Siri and a Raspberry Pi. It’s pretty hard to find a picture that tells the story of the hack, but here you can see the PCB inside the housing of the garage door opener. He patched the grey wires into the terminal block. On the other end they connect to a relay which makes the connection.

On the control side of that mechanical relay is a Raspberry Pi board. This seems like overkill but remember the low cost of the RPi and the ability to communicate over a network thanks to the WiFi dongle it uses. We think it’s less outrageous than strapping an Android phone to the opener. To make the RPi work with Siri he chose the SiriProxy package. We’ve seen this software before but don’t remember it being used with the Raspberry Pi.

There is certainly room to extend the functionality of a system like this one. It would be trivial to add a combination lock like this one we build using an AVR chip. It would also be nice to see a sensor used to confirm the door is closed. Even if you don’t need to control your garage this is a great reference project to get the RPi to take commands from your iOS devices.

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Giving Siri Control Of Some Smart Bulbs

November 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

After getting his hands on the Philips Hue smart lightbulb [Brandon Evans] cracked open some of the hardware to see what is inside. He also spent time working out the software tricks necessary to use Siri to control light bulbs from iOS.

If you haven’t heard of the Hue product before it’s an LED bulb that fits in a standard medium base whose color and intensity can be controlled wirelessly. Included in each unit is Zigbee compatible hardware that lets the bulbs form their own mesh network. [Brandon] didn’t crack open the bulb since these things cost a pretty penny and disassembly requires cutting. But he did point us to this post where [Michael Herf] shows what the bulb’s case is hiding. We do get to see the other piece of the puzzle as [Brandon] exposes the internals on the base unit that bridges the mesh network to your home network via Ethernet. An STM32 chip is responsible for controlling the base unit.

Aside from a look at the guts [Brandon] hacked Siri (Apple’s voice activated virtual assistant) to control the system. You can see a demonstration of that in the clip after the break. The details are found in the second half of his post which is linked at the top. The code is found in his siriproxy-hue repository.

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Forget Siri – Make Wolfram Alpha Your Personal Assistant

January 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

So you can spend a bundle on a new phone and it comes with a voice-activated digital assistant. But let’s be honest, it’s much more satisfying if you coded up this feature yourself. Here’s a guide on doing just that by combining an Asterisk server with the Wolfram Alpha API.

Asterisk is a package we are already familiar with. It’s an open source Private Branch Exchange suite that lets you build your own telephone network. Chances are, you’re not going to build one just for this project, but if you do make sure to document the process and let us know about it. With the Asterisk server in place you just need to give the assistant script an extension (in this case it’s 4747).

But then there’s the problem of translating your speech into text which can be submitted as a Wolfram query. There’s an API for that too which uses Google to do that translation. From there you can tweak abbreviations and other parameters, but all-in-all your new assistant is ready to go. Call it up and ask what to do when you have a flat tire (yeah, that commercial drives us crazy too).

[Thanks M]

Dial 1 To Get Siri As Your Operator

December 13, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 33 Comments

Back in the days of yore when hats were fashionable and color TV didn’t exist, there were real life people who would answer the phone if you dialed 0. These operators would provide directory assistance, and connect you to another number (such as KL5-8635). Apple’s Siri is a lot like an olde-timey phone operator, so [davis] decided to put Siri in an old rotary telephone.

The build started off with a very inexpensive Bluetooth headset and very old rotary phone. The single button on the Bluetooth headset was wired to a contact of the dial – in this case, the number 1. Dialing 1 shorts two contacts in the phone and the Bluetooth headset turns on.

[davis] came up with a very easy build but dialing 1 just isn’t the same as dialing 0. Connecting the Bluetooth button to 0 closes the button for too long. He says ‘0 for operator’ could be implemented with an ATtiny or similar, but we’re wondering if [davis] could make due with a dial-less candlestick phone.

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Siri As A Lippy And Sometimes Profane Television Remote

November 30, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

If the addition of Siri to your iPhone has given you a somewhat-real life companion (and hope that you might not be forever alone) this hack is right up your alley. [Todd Treece] built a hardware fixiture for the living room which bridges the gap between Apple’s new digital assitant and your television.

The box itself is an Arduino with a WiFly shield and the hardware necessary to make it a universal infrared remote control. He mounted it on the underside of his end table, with the IR LED in line-of-sight for the television. Using SiriProxy he’s added functionality that lets you request a channel change either by the name of the network, or the channel number.

As you can see in the video after the break, Siri has some strong opinions on the quality of programming for certain channels. That and contempt for your inability to just change the channel yourself. But this setup does augment your remote control experience by giving you a synopsis of what’s playing right now for the channel you’ve requested.

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