Human Tetris: Object Tracking On An 8-bit Microcontroller

May 15, 2010 by Phil Burgess 13 Comments

Elaborating on an item previously mentioned among last weekend’s Cornell final projects list, this time with video:

For their ECE final project, [Adam Papamarcos] and [Kerran Flanagan] implemented a real-time video object tracking system centered around an ATmega644 8-bit microcontroller. Their board ingests an NTSC video camera feed, samples frames at a coarse 39×60 pixel resolution (sufficient for simple games), processes the input to recognize objects and then drives a TV output using the OSD display chip from a video camera (this chip also recognizes the horizontal and vertical sync pulses from the input video signal, which the CPU uses to synchronize the digitizing step). Pretty amazing work all around.

Sometimes clever projects online are scant on information…but as this is their final grade, they’ve left no detail to speculation. Along with a great explanation of the system and its specific challenges, there’s complete source code, schematics, a parts list, the whole nine yards. Come on, guys! You’re making the rest of us look bad… Videos after the break…

[G’day Bruce]

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More AVR Tetris

January 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Ben] built an AVR based Tetris game that uses a TV as the display. He linked his project in a comment from the AVR Tetris project featured last week. His work taps the power of his own tvText library to handle the composite video out. Using a TV takes all of the hardware work out of the equation, leaving just the composite jack and a few buttons to connect to the ATmega168 and its 20MHz clock. We’ve embedded the game play video after the break. It’s black and white but also clean and crisp.

[Ben] didn’t include music with his build but another commenter, [Eric], has started to work on that. We can’t help but think that they both should have tipped us off sooner about their projects.

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IPod Peripheral: ISee360i Hacking

January 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[James] has done some work reverse engineering the protocols for the iSee360i peripheral. This iPod addon is a media player housing that features a 3.6″ screen. It can be used to play video on iPods that don’t otherwise have the capability because it just uses them as a hard drive. He picked up the device at a discount chain for $15 and wanted to load his own videos directly from Linux without using the Windows-based software that comes with it. There’s the gotcha; even if you encode a video exactly the same as the device’s example video, it will be deleted the next time you fire up the iSee.

After some trial and error [James] reverse engineered all of the quirky requirements to load video manually. There are strict, case sensitive file naming conventions, every file must have a perfectly formatted thumbnail image, and an index file entry must be made for the video. He’s done the hard work of hammering out the details, now it should be easy to write a Python script to automatically format and copy your pre-encoded videos for use.

MythNetVision To Cure Borked MythTV Hacks

January 13, 2010 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Another group of developers has stepped up to the plate in the never-ending attempt to integrate online streaming video with MythTV. The new plugin is called MythNetVision and aims to bring streaming and downloading video functionality both easily and legally. That means without violating the terms of service of the providing website.

We’ve seen so many attempts that fell short it’s easy to be skeptical about the chances of this plugin actually working. Plugins like MythStream and MythVodka worked only temporarily before breaking and never seemed to provide a reliable option. Many people have tried adding Boxee, Hulu Desktop, or XBMC integration by launching these separate packages via the MythTV UI but that’s far from a clean solution.

It looks like MythNetVision is taking a slightly different approach. Although not yet available, the designers have built the plugin in two parts. The frontend is a fully skinnable user interface that parses RSS feeds to provide the hooks needed to browse, search, and view video. Depending on the content, a browser may be spawned to play the video, it may be played within MythTV’s normal player, or a separate download thread can be launch with video following after the appropriate buffer level is reached. The RSS feeds come either directly from the provider, such as the Revision3 feeds, or a scraper can be written to provide custom RSS feeds from sites that don’t have them.

We’ve seen a glimpse of the progress and we’re optimistic that we’ll see a reliable plugin. Early adoption and user script contribution are the best way to help ensure this so keep an eye out for the public release of this package.

360 Degree Video For Next-to-nothing

January 4, 2010 by Mike Szczys 50 Comments

[Luis], a regular Hackaday reader, sent in some info about his 360 degree video experiments. He wanted a cheap device to use with a video camera, producing video that can be displayed using a free Flash software library.

The hardware consists of a mirrored light bulb, a square of glass, and some threaded rod. The camera lens attaches to the glass with the rod right in the middle. The lens will capture a donut image reflected in the mirror of the bulb. [Luis] then processes the result and uses Ryubin’s Flash Panorama to handle playback. He’s posted two clips as examples, the first of an “Existentialist Suburb Walker” and the second is some test footage while setting up for a shot. You can click-and-rotate the video while it’s playing to look around the area.

This could produce some great driving videos, without the need for multiple cameras. [Luis] does point out some problems with oscillation as the mirror on the end of a rod will amplify the effect of movement on the image.

Beauty In Destruction

October 9, 2009 by Phil Burgess 49 Comments

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

This is not a hack. In fact it’s a promotional montage for a collection of scientific equipment that few of us could likely afford. But like yesterday’s giant marionettes over Berlin, sometimes even a costly and delicately-orchestrated achievement transcends its own not-a-hack-ness, fulfilling our brains’ lust for wonderment all the same.

Kurzzeit of Germany produces ballistics measurement equipment. The video depicts various combinations of projectiles and targets at up to one million frames per second, revealing unexpected beauty in hitherto unseen phenomena, and is the best damn ten minutes you will waste on the internet all day!

Sticky Light

August 4, 2009 by Zach Banks 25 Comments

light

With the availability of webcams and projectors, multitouch and interactive demos have become increasingly popular because they’re so easy. Students at the University of Tokyo took a new approach that uses lasers instead. They created Sticky Light, which uses mirrors, a laser, and a single photodetector. Unlike camera-tracking setups, this system requires no visual processing. The laser moves around and bumps into dark objects, sticking to them. It can follow drawings on the table or objects in space, such as shirt designs. They also created a few basic games and a demo that makes sounds based on the movement of the spots. Video of the project after the break.

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