AR Flash Library Released

July 21, 2009 by Zach Banks 11 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMpJLTU9qCA%5D

[onezerothrice] has been working hard on creating ARtisan, a flash library for bringing augmented reality to the browser. His goal in creating the library was to make AR projects quicker and easier to develop. The library can provide the location, size, and rotation of multiple markers on screen with little work from the developer. It is licensed under the GPL and comes bundled with Papervision3D, another flash library for manipulating objects in 3 dimensions. He has posted several demos with source and accompanying video.

Gimbal Camera Stabilizer

July 15, 2009 by Zach Banks 38 Comments

steadycam

Professional cameramen use steadicams to make their shots look smooth and clean. However, their prices are generally way too high for an indie’s budget. Previous attempts have tried adding a counterweight and moving the camera away from the hands. [YB2Normal] took a different method and used a bob and gimbal to hold the camera upright. The gimbal is free to rotate along 3 axes, so the camera can stay in place. The whole thing cost less than $15. The first video he made with he mount is after the break.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXB0ncUQLn4%5D

Related: Building a Snorricam

[via Gizmodo]

Automated Paintball Sentry

June 26, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee 32 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYKwih8Izk]

Reader, [Ben Godding], sends in the video for his senior design team’s automated paintball sentry. The frame is made of plasma cut aluminum. The paintball gun uses a custom hopper mounted remotely from the gun body. It has two webcams offering a 160 degree field of vision, and the image processing is done by a dual core pentium CPU booting windows xp off a compact flash card. The computer interfaces with the 1/4scale RC servos using a PIC24. The paintball sentry can either be configured via a computer GUI when a monitor is available or a baclkit keypad and 4×20 charachter display in the field.

Related: [Jared Bouck]’s paintball gun turret

64 Synchronizing Fireflies

June 25, 2009 by Zach Banks 14 Comments

screenshot_007

[Alex] of tinkerlog created a set of 64 RGB fireflies that synchronize to blink all at once. We covered the kit earlier, but he has assembled a set of 64. Each firefly is independently controlled by an ATtiny13 that reads a phototransistor and lights up an RGB LED. The fireflies are programmed to blink a certain rate, but blink faster if they detect other blinks. After a few cycles, the fireflies begin to blink in unison. When the fireflies are arranged in different configurations, different patterns emerge. He is selling kits and has instructions for building your own. Videos of the fireflies after the jump.

Continue reading “64 Synchronizing Fireflies” →

SPDIF Switch

April 16, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 58 Comments

switch

When [linux-works] found himself needing a switch that could convert coax to opto, he made one. The main chip is a cd4052 cmos analog switch, which he says is really cheap. The rest is pretty self explanatory. This setup can switch between 4 different inputs as well as do the coax to opto conversion.

Space Invader Button

April 14, 2009 by Eliot 36 Comments

[Marcus] saw [Alex]’s 64 pixel project and decided it could be implemented in even less space. Pictured above is his Space Invader button with a bicolor LED matrix. The controller board is all SMD and piggybacked on the matrix. An ATmega164P drives the 24 pins via transistors. In addition to animation, the board can do LED sensing too. It’s a very clever project and [Marcus] has some notes about working with such tiny components. You can see a video of it below. Continue reading “Space Invader Button” →

Spatialized Umbrella

April 12, 2009 by Eliot 20 Comments

umbrella-1

Reader [Joe Saavedra] sent in his latest project: the spatialized umbrella. The base of each umbrella rib features an LED, speaker, and distance sensor. These are connected to an ATMega168 microcontroller running the Arduino environment. The IR sensor triggers a rain drop sound based on proximity. Shorter distances mean more droplets are played. The sounds are generated using a lookup table and the digital pins. You can see the demo video embedded below.

Using the Arduino environment without the associated board is part of another idea that [Joe] is working on. The MapDuino Project uses the standard Arduino hardware for programming, but then transfers the chip to a more barebones circuit in target project. They based their initial work on the ITP breadboard Arduino. Continue reading “Spatialized Umbrella” →