What Does Your Necklace Say?

February 17, 2020 by Brian McEvoy 2 Comments

If we write about sound reproduction, there is a good chance we found a home-made amplifier or an upcycled speaker system. In this case, you don’t use your ears to appreciate the sound; you use your hands or eyes. [ElatisEagles] converted an amplitude sound graph into a wearable bead. Even without much background it should be immediately recognizable for what it is. Presumably, they converted a sound wave to vectors, then used the “Revolve” function in Rhino, their software of choice. Sometimes this is called a “lathe” function. Resin printers should be able to build these without supports and with incredible fidelity.

Some tattoos put a sound wave on the skin, and use an app to play it back, but if you want to wear a sound bite from your favorite show and not get branded as the “Pickle Rick” gal/guy at the office, maybe swap out the color and sound wave before it goes stale. We would wear a bead that says, “drop a link in our tip line,” but you can probably think of something more clever.

We have other high-tech ornamentation that leverages motion instead of sound, or how about a necklace that listens instead.

Continue reading “What Does Your Necklace Say?” →

Soundwave Tunes Up Your Portable Workbench

September 3, 2014 by Adam Fabio 27 Comments

[Tez_Gelmir] built an awesome portable workbench. Not satisfied with just mundane designs, he patterned his box after Soundwave from the classic Transformers: Generation 1 series. This portable bench keeps his tools organized and ready to roll out.

[Tez] has all the basic tool groups covered – screwdrivers small and large, pliers, crimpers, soldering iron, fume extractor, vice, and wire spool. He’s also got room for parts boxes to hold his components.

The basic box is built from a single sheet of 7mm plywood. The front work area is a smaller piece of 12mm plywood. Working with 7mm plywood did prove to be a challenge – [Tez] had to use some very small screws for his hinges. The basic box construction was easy though – [Tez] used a pneumatic nailer and PVA (wood) glue.

[Tez] used a number of 3D printed parts in his design. He kept the Transformer theme going with a Decepticon logo built into his screwdriver holder. The fume extractor and lamp were also especially clever – [Tez] mounted them to drawer sliders, so they are there when he needs them, and out of the way when he doesn’t.

[Tez] spent quite a bit of time setting up his power system, and it shows. The inside of the box is framed with four power points. The main cord has its own “mouse door”, and everything tucks neatly away when not in use.

The Soundwave paint job is what sets this box apart – [Tez] spent quite a bit of time getting everything just right. It looks like Ravage is ready to spring out at any moment.

We really love this setup – Our only suggestion would be to add some sheet metal to protect the corners of the box while in transit.

Continue reading “Soundwave Tunes Up Your Portable Workbench” →

Doppler-effect Lets You Add Gestures To Your Computer

March 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

What if you could add gesture recognition to your computer without making any hardware changes? This research project seeks to use computer microphone and speakers to recognize hand gestures. Audio is played over the speakers, with the input from the microphone processed to detect Doppler shift. In this way it can detect your hand movements (or movement of any object that reflects sound).

The sound output is in a range of 22-80 kHz which is not audible to our ears. It does make us wonder if widespread use of this will drive the pet population crazy, or reroute migration paths of wildlife, but that’s research for another day. The system can even be used while audible sounds are also being played, so you don’t lose the ability to listen to music or watch video.

The screen above shows the raw output of the application. But in the video after the break you can see some possible uses. It works for scrolling pages, double-clicking (or double-tapping as it were), and there’s a function that detects the user walking away from the computer and locks the screen automatically.

[Sidhant Gupta] is the researcher who put the video together. In addition to this project (called SoundWave) he’s got several other interesting alternative-input projects on his research page. Continue reading “Doppler-effect Lets You Add Gestures To Your Computer” →