technolando

USB Hacking with Arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:24:00 +0000

USB Hacking with Arduino

tramite Arduino Blog di d.gomba@arduino.cc il 06/12/10

[Collin Cunningham] explains USB protocol and manages to connect a USB MIDI keyboard to Arduino using Cirtcuits@home USB Shield.

USB devices are so common nowadays – wouldn't it be nice to use one with your homebrew electronics projects? I wanted to use my compact USB-MIDI keyboard with my homebrew synth circuits. It seemed a simple enough prospect at first – listen to the data output, press buttons, note the changes, and then program a microcontroller to turn those changes into something I could use (like basic serial MIDI data).

via [MAKE]

Writing Hello World on the Android with Eclipse

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 09:24:00 +0000

Writing Hello World on the Android with Eclipse

tramite Antipasto Hardware Blog di Matt il 29/12/10

I've gotten several dozen (!) emails in the past few days from DIY'ers, engineers, hackers, etc. asking for a very simple tutorial - a "hello world android" if you will. It then occurred to me that most of these emails are from people that just got an Android kit for Christmas (thanks to all the help from Matt and Will and Mike to get everything out the door in time).

So here goes. These instructions are summarized over at the wiki on this page.

Step 1: Install Eclipse
Download Eclipse Galileo-SR2 for Mac OS X-32bit or Windows-32bit or Linux-Ubuntu-32bit, and install it to the desktop or some location inside Documents.

Step 2: Install the Android SDK
This is the trickiest step... Download Android SDK Tools for Mac OS X-32bit or Windows-32bit or Linux-Ubuntu-32bit, and extract the archive into the /eclipse/plugins folder. Open Eclipse, select Help > Install New Software... Click Add, in the top-right corner.When the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter the following:

Name: ADT Plugin
Location: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
Note: If you have trouble acquiring the plugin, try using "http" in the Location URL, instead of "https" (https is preferred for security reasons).

Click OK and then in the Available Software dialog, select the checkbox next to Developer Tools. Click Next. Then click through to the end until you're done, and then shut down and restart Eclipse.

Then, click the Eclipse -> Preferences Menu, click the Android category, and browse for SDK location: /eclipse/plugins/android-sdk-2.1_r1. Click OK to apply, and the Target, Vendor, Platform, and API columns should have values, then click OK again.

Step 3: Configure ADB
If you're running on Mac, you're already done. If you 're running on Windows, you have to do a couple extra steps. First, download the SDK from Liquidware - this one is specifically designed to work with the Android DIY Starter Kit and the Android Hardware Development Kit. To install the USB driver, just plug a mini-USB cable into the BeagleBoards USB OTG port, and manually install the driver from your_sdk_path/google-usb_driver into rowboat gadget.

Step 4: Create an Android App
Select File->New Project, and click Android->Android Project. You have options at this point - you can "Create a new project in workspace" and call it whatever you want. This will make a "hello world" template application. Or! You can select "Create project from existing source", and select SkeletonApp. I recommend you do this, and select SkeletonApp. If that doesn't work, then try to default app.

Now, plug in Android, select the main source file (in the left panel, under src -> com.example.android.skeletonapp -> SkeletonActivity.java) and press the Go button (the Green arrow on the top line of the menu bar), and you're ready to go.

Step 5: Customize
The most obvious thing to do is change the "Hello World" text. That's probably the safest way to go to start, just to make sure things are compiling properly. I've changed it to "Hello, inthebitz!" and voila - here it is, functionally working on the Android Embedded Hardware Development Kit:

Turns into this:

Bingo! Dino DNA!

Kinect + Wiimote = Enhanced FPS Gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:39:00 +0000

Kinect + Wiimote = Enhanced FPS Gaming

tramite HacknMod.com - You name it. We hack it. di Saikat il 20/01/11

While Kinect has a few decent games available with it, it doesn't work with games like Call of Duty. Microsoft took aim at the casual gamers first (of course). However, this Kinect hack demonstrates the potential of Microsoft's latest toy when it comes to FPS games. While you won't get precise effects for rapid movements (and might lower your Kill-Death ratio), the near realistic leaning, ducking, and reloading puts you more in the game.
The demonstration uses the Flexible Action and Articulated Toolkit which conerts body gestures and emulates them on screen. About 20 different gestures can be mapped to keyboard or controls for a game. Not all controls of a FPS like Call of Duty can be controlled via Kinect though, so you have to integrate aiming and movement with a Wiimote.

Popular Kinect and Wiimote Projects:

Codebox: What do you want to do with Processing?

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:25:00 +0000

In the comments from the last Codebox, someone asked for more info about video and Processing, which got me wondering: what other topics are people interested in? For example, I'd like to know more about firmata, Android - Processing, and Kinect.
On this last point, BTW, Daniel Shiffman has a great tutorial on Getting Started with Kinect and Processing. Check out this video that shows how to control a sketch using gestures:

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

VR & Kinect

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:25:00 +0000

VR & Kinect

tramite adafruit industries blog di adafruit il 21/12/10

VR & Kinect

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands (video)

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:12:00 +0000

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands (video)

tramite adafruit industries blog di adafruit il 17/11/10

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands (video) @ Singularity Hub – thanks Kevin!

Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect 3D sensor with an iRobot Create platform and assembled a battery powered bot that can see its environment and obey your gestured commands. Tentatively named KinectBot, Robbel's creation can generate some beautifully detailed 3D maps of its surroundings and wirelessly send them to a host computer. KinectBot can also detect nearby humans and track their movements to understand where they want it to go, as you can see in the video below. I had a chance to talk with Robbel and learn more about how this "weekend hacking project" might evolve into some really cool applications for rescuing victims after a disaster.

Drill-based Kinect camera

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:38:00 +0000

Drill-based Kinect camera

tramite Hack a Day di Mike Szczys il 06/01/11

[Brett Graham] and [David Cox] are taking the Kinect out into the world thanks to this handheld hack they call the Drill of Depth. Apparently, the Kinect wants 12V at 1A which is quite easy to provide with a rechargeable power tool like this Ryobi drill. The setup features a 4.3″ touchscreen display, connected to the Gumstix Overo Air that is running Linux. They claim that there's a "legitimate scientific reason" for building the device but they're not sharing it yet.
So what would you use this for? We wonder if it would be possible to roll a GPS into the mix, then use post processing from the captured data to recreate the environment in a virtual setting? Imagine if a weekend spent walking around campus and processing the results let you model your University and make it an add-on level for your favorite game. Or perhaps this could be paired with a regular camera to generate high-quality 3D skinning data for Google Earth. That's what we came up with, what do you think?

Hacked Kinect sees through you

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:52:00 +0000

tramite adafruit industries blog di adafruit il 03/01/11

Hacked Kinect sees through you

The Kinect allows tracking of users without additional markers. We develop a magic mirror that generated an overlay of a video image with volume visualization from a CT volume. Such a system could be used for education of anatomy. The Microsoft Kinect provides a color and a depth image. Using OpenNI and PrimeSense NITE we can get the skeleton of a person standing in front of the Kinect in real-time. We register a CT dataset to this skeleton and do an Augmented Reality overlay of the CT and the person. Using context and focus visualization we only show the CT through a virtual window, while still showing the person. The Kinect is positioned next to a big screen. When standing in front of the system, the system acts like a magic mirror that allows seeing inside yourself. Such a system can be used for educational purposes to teach anatomy. The system is currently a prototype. It does not show the CT of the person in front of the monitor, but a CT of another person. We use the Visible Korean Human dataset that has been provided to us by Prof. Min Suk Chung.

Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, ...

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:48:00 +0000

Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, and more

tramite Top Tech News / Latest - Techweet di Techweet il 12/01/11

Download Squad Thanks to the clever work of Blitz, a marketing agency, you will soon be able to easily interface any program to Microsoft Kinect. Rather than having to hack at the low-level C++ OpenKinect driver, Blitz's solution is to create a socket server, which other programs -- including Flash and Silverlight websites -- can then interrogate.
Discussion: Ubergizmo

Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

tramite Hack a Day di James Munns il 14/11/10

When [Dave] installed hardwood flooring in his house, he needed a solution to help automate the monotonous task of routine sweeping. Rather than go out and buy one of the many existing automated sweep robots out there, he decided to use his passion for LEGO Robotics to design and build a NXT based Swifferbot he calls Pulito. His version implements all the important features such as object avoidance using bump sensors, an IR beacon used to automatically return to the charging station, and a photoresistor to monitor the charge of the battery. [Dave] also includes a nifty LEGO sensor multiplexor, allowing him to save on I/O ports, which is almost worth sharing by itself.
Videos after the break.

MineCraft + Kinect

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 07:58:00 +0000

MineCraft + Kinect

The goal of this hack is to import the data from the Xbox Kinect, process it, and create various effects in the Minecraft universe. The project is currently in its third phase. The first phase aimed to take a snapshot from a Kinect and transform it into a Minecraft save file. The depth and color information was used to approximate the position and types of blocks to best represent the 3D point cloud in MineCraft. The second phase aimed to animate the data captured by the Kinect at 30FPS by means of stop-motion animation.

Hacked Kinect used to make holographic TV – Princess Leia!

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Using a single Xbox Kinect and standard graphics chips, MIT researchers demonstrate the highest frame rate yet for streaming holographic video.

Capacimetro con arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:44:00 +0000

tramite adafruit industries blog di johngineer il 15/09/10

LenP17 built a capacitor meter using the new Adafruit Arduino enclosure and LCD. The cap in question is placed in the sweet spot of a 555 circuit, and the resulting frequency is measured, correlated to a particular capacitance, and then displayed by the Arduino.
More info in the forums.
Nice work, Len!

Termometro con PIC

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:18:00 +0000

PIC Digital Thermometer

tramite Electronics-Lab.com Blog di admin il 02/11/10

This project is digital thermometer based on PIC16F628 microcontroller. The temperature sensor is DS1820 and communicates with the mcu via 1-Wire interface. View schematic and source code on the link below.
PIC Digital Thermometer - [Link]

5 Tones, 1 Arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Because the Arduino is in such high demand for producing multiple musical tones at the same time; [Jeremy Blum] has successfully figured out the math and other necessaries that will take your once previously single tone producing MCU and turn it into a 5 tone producing machine. unsurprisingly its really just some creative use of PWM control but it all works out in the end anyway and helps prevent you from purchasing additional sound generating chips. This truly does open up some new doors, as [Jeremy] shows with his still in production thingamakit like project: ReacXion.

TwitBalloon

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:25:00 +0000

Last weekend, Marcus of interactive-matter and I, gave a small introduction into internet of things and ambient devices at the Good School. The idea was to have two devices that show the current volume of two terms on twitter, e.g. love against hate. The demo should show how easy it is to connect the physical world to the internets. Marcus did the software part, so if you are interested in that, visit interactive-matter. I did the hardware part, if you want see that, just read on.

Parts

So what is needed to build something like that?

Arduino Board with ATmega328
Ethernet Shield
Breadboard
RC Servo
Cardboard
Hot glue (a lot)
Photoresistor, LED and two resistors, 10 kOhm and 100 Ohm
Protoboard, small

Build it

First you have to hack your servo for continuous rotation. A standard servo rotates only from 0 to 180 degrees. You have to hack it so that it rotates continuously forward and backwards. There are many different servos out there and as many instructions how to do that. Just use google. For me it was enough to separate the potentiometer from the servo arm. Important is, that you can still control it like a servo afterwards. That means you still have the red (+), brown (-) and orange (pulse) cable to control the servo. You should also write a small Arduino sketch to check where the motor stands still.

Now cut a servo holder out of the cardboard and glue the servo onto it.

Glue the holder to some cardboard as basement. Then build a barrel out of coasters and cardboard tube. Cut small holes in one of the coaster. These holes are part of the light barrier to count the rotations. I cut only two holes. Less precision and less work.
Then glue the barrel on the servo.

Next we need the light barrier. It consists of a light dependent resistor (LDR) or photoresistor and a LED. Both need a an additional resistor in series. The one for the LED is for limiting the current. It is around 100-200 Ohm, depending on your LED. The other one is to form a voltage divider with the LDR. My LDR has a resistance between 2 k and 50 kOhm. I chose 10 kOhm. The connect the voltage divider to an analog port of the Arduino. Place the light barrier beneath the barrel, so that the LED shines through the holes onto the LDR.

Next, I wrote a small sketch to test the light barrier. It made the servo turn and tried to detect the light flashes of the light barrier. And it worked!

After integrating the software part with Marcus, this is how it looked at our tiny booth.

Conclusion

After all it worked very well and showed, what we wanted to show.
Connecting things to the internet is easy.
Although, there is always room for improvements. After a couple of hours, one of the servo motors began to turn, even if it shouldn't. And as there is no longer any direct feedback, only through the light barrier, it turned half, noticed that and turned back. I had to re-run the test sketch to find the new settings for it's zero point. Next time, I would use a) stepper motors or b) a better light barrier, which could detect rotation direction and more holes.

Equinox Clock

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Equinox Clock via HaD. Bram writes -

Ever since my Remote Context Communicator project I'd been walking around with the idea to make a clock in the same style. I just never had the time. Last summer I did and designed and built the thing. And this is the result!

Ricevitore GPS con arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:10:00 +0000

With SparkFun GPS shield and Nuelectronics LCD keypad shield this project become possible and fairly easy to build as you don't have to take care of hardware and focus on software. So this Arduino GPS receiver is able to do lots of things including: current location display, heading, speed (average and max), distance, bearing, ETA for a way point and date-time.

Project uses a TinyGPS library for easier GPS shield access. So device can be used as normal GPS tracking device the only con is that all information is displayed in text format.

Calcolare il valore delle resistenze per i LED

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:58:00 +0000

This LED calculator will calculate the current limiting resistor value and rounds the resistance to closest standard 5% resistor value. To use this software you need to enable Javascript in your browser.
LED Calculator – [Link]

Suonare con arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:31:00 +0000

Playing one tone with Arduino is easy as there is a ready arduino tone library. But there Arduino has enough resources to do much more than one tone. So what about five? So Jeremy Blum decided to tweak Arduino program in order to play five tones simultaneously. For this he used timer and software interrupts to play five notes from pentatonic scale.

As tones are played mostly on hardware level – there is still enough resources to do other tasks that occupy microcontroller like LED matrix control. So, this one project pushes forward Arduino knowledge to new areas.

Analizzatore di spettro

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:07:00 +0000

Andrei Mehiläinen build this audio spectrum analyzer based on PIC32 proto board. It uses a 320x240px colour LCD and an unamplified audio source can be directly connected like PC's sound card or mp3 player.
Audio spectrum analyzer - [Link]

Amicus: Arduino con PIC

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Amicus is a PIC microcontroller development system inspired by the popular Arduino board and it is using a PIC mcu instead of an ATMEL. The Amicus hardware is open meaning schematic and design files are free to download. Also Amicus software and IDE (integrated development environment) is free of charge. Check details on the link below.
Amicus: PIC microcontroller development system - [Link]

Stampante per muri...

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:50:00 +0000

txtBOMBER via 2020.

The txtBOMBER is a one-hand-guerillia-tool – a machine not much bigger than a pressing iron – that generates political statements on the fly and immidiately prints them on any flat surface. If you feel you are part of our modern viewless generation, the txtBOMBER is the perfect tool for you! Just switch it on, it's powered by a strong battery. And move it along a wall. It's that easy to show your?its?someones? opinion of something?someone?! Hell! You should reconsider if you are keen enough to use it! The txtBOMBER has seven build-in pens to "print" the letters and a micro-controller-brain (Arduino), no need for a computer or any other brain. Oh and it speaks german at the moment

Zenta Strike Again! Archer the Biped!

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:44:00 +0000

If you've read this blog at all over the past few years, you'll know we're big fans of Kåre Halvorsen's (aka Zenta) work. Father of the very popular Phoenix Hexapod Kit, A-Pod the ant bot, and more recently the T-Hex Hexapod (available soon in kit form), it's very obvious that our Norwegian friend has an incredible grasp of Kinematics. Some might even call him a Kinematics Kung Fu Master. It's only natural that he would blow us away with his insane math-kinematics skills when he decided to take a shot at a biped walker. Well folks, he did not fail to impress. Utilizing the new Arc-32 board from Basic Micro, armed with only standard hobby servos and an inhumanly good grasp of math, Zenta has created a new biped named Archer.

Okay, so bipeds have been done before, what makes this special? Not only does it have some of the most impressive Inverse Kinematics I've seen on a non-professional level, it utilizes a pretty innovative COG-Shifter mechanism that can slide the battery and onboard controller from side to side to assist in walking. Want to see it in action? Look no further!

Also, if you can't get enough of Kåre and his awesome Norwegian accent, check out this 'behind the scenes' video where you'll be treated to his very impressive workshop and a demo of how he controls his various robots:

Help Spread The Word:

Computer per scooter con Arduino

noreply@blogger.com (Boris) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:32:00 +0000

Kurt Schulz build a Scooterputer which is a scooter computer based on Arduino platform a custom sensor shield and Liquidware touchscreen OLED display. Main features are: [via]

* Battery voltage indicator
* Time and date
* Temperature
* Lean gauge with resettable max L-R indicators
* Current speed
* Resettable max speed indicator
* Odometer
* 2 resettable trip meters
* Latitude and longitude readouts
* Compass heading readout
* GSM/GPRS quad-band cellular module

Arduino-based scooter computer - [Link]

technolando

USB Hacking with Arduino

Writing Hello World on the Android with Eclipse

Kinect + Wiimote = Enhanced FPS Gaming

Popular Kinect and Wiimote Projects:

Codebox: What do you want to do with Processing?

VR & Kinect

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands (video)

Drill-based Kinect camera

Hacked Kinect sees through you

Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, ...

Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

MineCraft + Kinect

Hacked Kinect used to make holographic TV – Princess Leia!

Capacimetro con arduino

Termometro con PIC

5 Tones, 1 Arduino

TwitBalloon

Parts

Build it

Conclusion

Links

Equinox Clock

Ricevitore GPS con arduino

Calcolare il valore delle resistenze per i LED

Suonare con arduino

Analizzatore di spettro

Amicus: Arduino con PIC

Stampante per muri...

Zenta Strike Again! Archer the Biped!

Computer per scooter con Arduino