Well well… look who has finally decided to move his blog design out of the dark ages!  I’ve spent the last month or two working on this new blog design – I really hope you like it!  It takes advantage of a whole bunch of new wordpress blogging features like nested comments, better tag support, and widgets.  For all you newcomers, here’s a shot of what jeremyblum.com used to look like:

RIP Previous Blog Layout (2007-2010)

Compare that…to this!

The Shiny New Website Design!

If you have any comments on the new design, please feel free to let me know what you think!

Pardon the stupid title for this post.  It’s simply what popped into my head.  Anyways…I’ve got a new episode of techbits!  It’s been several months since the last episode, but hopefully my recent electronics projects have kept you entertained in the meanwhile.  This time, I’m talking about analog and digital signals – Both of which are inescapable in computers and all other electronic devices.  Enjoy!

Update 5/19/10 – I have uploaded the final report, code, schematics, laser-cutting files, and sound effects!  Read on to download them.

Introducing the SudoGlove Control System!  This is my final project for INFO4320 at Cornell Engineering.  It was developed by me and three other students: Joe Ballerini, Tiffany Ng, and Alex Garcia.  You get geek points if you can figure out why we decided to call it the SudoGlove.  Here’s a hint…

SudoGlove aims to bridge the gap between the user and traditional physical hardware devices. Given the high learning curve in understanding how to use foreign technologies, we hope to break away from conventional control mechanisms and explore an intuitive way to control these devices. SudoGlove provides a tangible interface that relies on hand gestures to wirelessly control any device or software. By removing the distance between the user and traditional hardware devices, our goal is for SudoGlove to feel more like an extension of the body as opposed to an external machine.

As an investigation into this idea, the goal of this project is to capture simple hand gestures from the SudoGlove and use that input to wirelessly control a modified RC car. Controlled variables include speed, steering, forward/reverse, headlights, siren lights, siren sounds, and a horn using a combination of flex, force, vibration, and gyroscopic sensors.

News: SudoGlove has been featured on Hack-a-Day!

Read on for a demonstration video, photo gallery, additional information, and downloadable content!

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

THE TEAM

We’re crazy engineers and there’s no telling what we may do next!

SYSTEM COMPONENTS
The SudoGlove Control system consists of three main components: The actual glove, the control pack, and the RC car.  The glove is a standard Reebok glove with 5 sensors sewn in (thanks to my girlfriend for teaching me how to sew – Picture on the right).  The sensors include a flex sensor on the index finger, two force sensors on the ring and pinky fingers, a vibration sensor in the palm, and a two dimensional gyroscope on the wrist.  A small protoboard houses 3 status LEDs, and a connector for the 12-conductor wire that goes to the control pack.

The control pack contains an arduino mega, prototyping shield, XBee and XBee shield, 9V Battery, illuminated power switch and a connection for the glove.  The case was designed in the Alibre Cad program and laser-cut using the Epilog Laser in Cornell’s Computational Synthesis Lab.  The top of the box was etched using this laser as well.

The final system component is the RC car.  We removed all the original electronics and kept just the two motors and the chassis.  An XBee wireless module receives commands from the glove, and an arduino pro mini processes these and tells the car what to do.   An H-Bridge is commanded by the arduino and drives the motors in the appropriate directions.  We modified the car chassis to include 2 headlights, 4 siren lights, and speaker for playing sound effects.  The speaker is controlled by a SOMO audio module which communicates with the arduino as well.

PHOTO GALLERY

view slideshow

SOURCE CODE, SCHEMATICS, AND DESIGNS
These materials are made available via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to modify and improve upon these materials as much as you like, but share your improvements and credit myself, Joe Ballerini, Alex Garcia, and Tiffany Ng as the original authors. Please do not use these materials for commercial purposes.

Download SudoGlove – Final Deliverable
Download SudoGlove – Code
Download SudoGlove – Schematics
Download SudoGlove – Laser Cutting Files
Download SudoGlove – AD4 Sounds (for use with SOMO Audio Module)

Ahh yes, the joys of college – awesome people, parties, concerts, quadrangles (they are important!), problem sets, final exams, and of course, awesome prototyping equipment.  Take for example the objet 3D-Printer.  We use one in Cornell’s Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL), where I am employed as an undergraduate researcher.  But the information sciences department also has a 3-D Printer in their Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Lab.  The Prototyping and Physical Computing Class I’m enrolled in this semester tasked us with designing a 3D puzzle to be printed on one of these machines, so that’s what you’ll see in the video after the break (and the CAD picture above).  This is my third and final design project for this class.  Check out my first two here, and here, and stay tuned for my group’s final project! You can view all my mini projects for this class on my secondary youtube channel.  The source code, schematics, and STL/CAD designs are available after the break as well!

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

DESIGN GOALS

For this project, my goal was to design a complex 3D puzzle that could double as an aesthetic lighting effect when completed. The puzzle consists of 22 pieces in total: a base, a top, eight rods, and three layers of four pieces each. Each of the layers was designed with the intent that they should be radically symmetric from a middle point, though it is possible to assemble the puzzle in any way you wish. Different assemblies will result in different lighting effects once the tri-color LED is turned on. Hollow spaces within the puzzle allow the LED light to diffuse through the material and create a glowing light once completely assembled.  Note that in the accompanying alibre design files, a ninth rod is shown in the middle of the puzzle. This was printed as a backup piece incase another rod was lost (they are quite small). In the final configuration, this rod is not used, and an LED sits in its place.

SCHEMATIC

SOURCE CODE, SCHEMATICS, AND DESIGNS

These materials are made available via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to modify and improve upon these materials as much as you like, but share your improvements and credit myself as the original author. Please do not use these materials for commercial purposes without first asking for my permission.

Download 3D Puzzle Source, Schematics, Designs, and info

Remember the last design project I posted?  Well this second one is for the same Physical Computing class, but is totally different.  This time, the assignment was to create a Jack-in-the-Box toy.   To make mine unique I added password protection and an alarm system to the box.  Check out the video below to see what I’m talking about.  As always, I’m making the source code and schematics available below via a creative commons license, so grab it after the break!

I have also made some other mini projects for this class. I’m posting videos of all assignments for this class on a separate youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/jeremyeblum.

Update: Hack-A-Day Featured this project on their blog!

READ ON TO LEARN HOW IT WORKS AND TO DOWNLOAD SOURCE CODE/SCHEMATICS

DESIGN GOALS

For this project, my goal was to develop a protected Jack-in-the-Box.  In other words, I wanted a toy where you have to enter a special code or the box will not open.

Break-In Detection

1. Use a limit switch under the lid to detect if the lid is being opened without a code being entered
2. If the lid is opened like this, the box will sound an alarm using the built-in speaker, and the Jack will not come up

Code Requirement

1. Use three momentary push-buttons to accept a 6 digit code
2. When this code is entered correctly, the box will play a happy tune on the speaker, and the jack will popup
3. To close the box after opening it, press all three buttons simultaneously.  The box will then start checking for new inputs, and the alarm will be re-enabled.
4. When this code is entered incorrectly, the box will make a sad noise, and the jack will not come up

Construction

1. The box is designed in Alibre, then laser cut
2. An ordinary door hinge is used as the hinge for the box
3. A servo motor and attached arm are used to both open the box and to pop the Jack up
4. An internal speaker plays alarm sounds and tones when entering codes
5. A limit switch under the lid detect when the lid is opened or closed
6. A handle was created using staples – it is necessary to use as extra weight on the limit switch
7. The hinge, speaker, and switch are screwed directly into the laser cut acrylic using bolts and heat-molded threading that are designed to be melted right into holes in the acrylic

Software

1. The software is specifically designed to make it easy to change settings
2. It is even possible to change the passcode and the length of the passcode by only changing two constants
3. The software uses the pitches and servo libraries to control the servo and speaker respectively

HARDWARE USED

1. Socket Cap Screws: http://www.mcmaster.com/#91292a014/=6i7q7a
2. Threaded Heat Inserts: http://www.mcmaster.com/#94180a321/=6i7q7d
3. No-Mortise Fastinge Door Hinge:  Available at most Hardware Stores
4. Limit Switch: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2049718
5. Servo Motor: http://www.jameco.com
6. Speaker: http://www.jameco.com

SCHEMATIC

There are several key components shown in the schematic.  Starting at the left is the 5V regulator and motor.  Because USB cannot provide enough current on its own, an auxiliary 9V battery is regulated to 5V to power the servo motor.  The motor’s position can be adjusted to a precise angle using a pulse-width-modulation (PWM) output from the Arduino.  Next is the speaker – Its tone is adjusted based on the width of the PWM signal that it receives from pin 10.  Using the pitches library, it is easy to program it to play a short tune.  To the right of the speaker are the keypad buttons and their corresponding LEDs.  When a button is depressed, it both illuminates the LED (to provide visual feedback to the user), and it sends a high signal to the corresponding arduino pin.  Using software debouncing, these signals are analyzed and checked to see if they match the required password.  The last portion of the circuit is the limit switch and accompanying debouncing circuitry.  Because the switch is used as a hardware interrupt (to ensure intrusion attempts are always caught), software debouncing cannot be used.  This is because the millis() and delay() function are inoperable within interrupt functions.  To debounce the switch, a simple RC circuit is used, where the time decay constant was made to be 200ms, or approximately the amount of time that it takes for the button output to stop fluctuating.  Since capacitors cannot charge instantaneously, their voltage output approaches zero as an exponential decay function while the button bounces.  Its voltage only passes the threshold digital voltage once, resulting in a debounced signal.

ADDITIONAL USAGE SCENARIOS

While designing my Jack-in-the-Box, I realized that this design would actually be perfect for protecting something like a wedding ring.  Instead of putting the “Jack” on the end of the acrylic rod, you could put jewelry of some kind.  You would have to enter a passcode and your jewelery would be presented to you.  In addition to the audible alarm, you could potentially have a camera take a picture of the intruder to further protect your jewelery.

SOURCE CODE, SCHEMATICS, AND DESIGNS

These materials are made available via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to modify and improve upon this code as much as you like, but share your improvements and credit myself as the original author. Please do not use this code for commercial purposes without first asking for my permission.

Jack-in-the-Box Source, Schematics, Designs, and info

Behold! My newest little project. This one isn’t as complicated as some of my other creations, but it’s still a pretty cool little device that I put together.  I made this as a project for my INFO4320 class at Cornell: “Intro to Rapid Prototyping and Physical Computing”.  The assignment was to use a multicolor LED to react to some kind of stimuli.  So, I figured I’d make my stimuli this very blog!  Using a combination of PHP code on this site, a python script, and an arduino, I’m able to monitor website visits, and the OS/Browser of people visiting in (nearly) real time.  As always, I’m making the source code and schematics available below via a creative commons license, so go nuts!   A video is worth about 116,987,432 words by my calculations, so watch the video below to see how it works!

I have also made some other mini projects for this class.  I’m posting videos of all assignments for this class on a separate youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/jeremyeblum.  I’ll be posting the more interesting ones (like this one), on my normal channel as well.  But if you wanna see everything I’m up to, go subscribe to that other channel!  I’ve started work with three other group members on our final project for this class.  It’s ambitious, but if we can get it to work, it’s gonna be really cool (Hopefully on par with the Nerf Sentry Gun from last year)!

READ ON TO LEARN HOW IT WORKS AND TO DOWNLOAD SOURCE CODE/SCHEMATICS

DESIGN GOALS

For this project, my goal was to develop an LED display device that could provide me with real-time statistics about my website. I designed my project to collect and display three types of information:

1. Number of Visits by Human Users
   1. Determine if a user is human, and record their visit as a timestamp, keep 1 month’s worth of timestamps
   2. Parse this list of timestamps to determine number of visits in last 24 hours, week, and month
   3. Set “goal” values and have LED increase in intensity as the number of visits gets closer to the goal for a given time frame
   4. A different LED color represents each time span (ie. Day , week, month)
2. Browsers Being used by Visiting Users
   1. Gather browser statistics, and keep them for most recent 1000 visits
   2. Determine Browser Percentages and vary LED intensity for three colors corresponding to Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Other
3. Operating Systems of Visiting Users
   1. Gather Operating System statistics, and keep them for most recent 1000 visits
   2. Determine OS Percentages, and vary LED intensity for three colors corresponding to Windows, Mac, and Linux

HOW IT WORKS

1. PHP script running in footer on each page of my blog first checks against a list of webcrawler identities to determine if the visitor is human
2. If visitor is believed to be human, the current unix epoch time stamp is appended to a text file
3. Additionally, the text file is checked for entries over one month old and they are removed
4. Length of OS and browser text files are checked. If there are more than 1000 entries, leading entries are removed
5. Based on user agent string, OS and Browser are detected and each are appended to a text file
6. Python Script running on local computer allows user to choose which statistic they would like to monitor
   1. Number of Visitors Mode
      1. Visitor text file is read into array from server
      2. Visits in past month are determined by length of array
      3. Visits in last week are determined by subtracting 1 week in seconds from current unix time
      4. Visits in last 24 hours are determined in similar fashion
      5. Statistics are printed and compared against goal values
      6. Command is translated into form for serial transmission to Arduino like this “004175250” – each three numbers represent brightness for an LED on scale from 0-255
      7. Values are sent over serial to Arduino
      8. Script repeats every 5 minutes, downloading updated information
   1. Browser Mode
      1. Browser text file is read into array from server
      2. Array is searched for string matches for each browser option
      3. Percentages are determined based on total list length
      4. Statistics are printed
      5. Command is translated into form for serial transmission to Arduino like this “050150050” – each three numbers represent brightness for an LED on scale from 0-255
      6. Values are sent over serial to Arduino
      7. Script repeats every 5 minutes, downloading updated information
   1. OS Mode
      1. OS text file is read into array from server
      2. Array is searched for string matches for each OS option
      3. Percentages are determined based on total list length
      4. Statistics are printed
      5. Command is translated into form for serial transmission to Arduino like this “050150050” – each three numbers represent brightness for an LED on scale from 0-255
      6. Values are sent over serial to Arduino
      7. Script repeats every 5 minutes, downloading updated information
7. Arduino receives 9-bit value over serial connection
8. First 3 bits determine green brightness, second 3 determine blue, and the last three determine red
9. Arduino flashes through each of these colors adjusting their brightness to correspond to the values it received over serial
10. On/Off Switch is connected to interrupt and can start/stop Arduino at any time, even in the middle of a sequence.

SOURCE CODE AND SCHEMATICS

These materials are made available via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to modify and improve upon this code as much as you like, but share your improvements and credit myself as the original author. Please do not use this code for commercial purposes without first asking for my permission.

Download LED Website Monitor Source Code and Schematics

Yesterday I released my longest single video to date, in which I cover everything you could ever want to know about LCD monitor specifications. Check it out below! Oh, and I’ve included a Topic Selector in the video that will allow you to jump to a particular part of the video..if for some reason you don’t want to stare at me for 15 minutes ;).

In other news, the 2009 UC Member Awards have come to a close.  I managed to pull ahead with the most total votes, but my brother came in a close second, so he’ll be receiving a free UC.net t-shirt.  Keep an eye out, he’ll probably be wearing it in his next youtube video.  And be sure to check out the full breakdown of the results, to see who won each category!

The title says it all!  Visit m.jeremyblum.com from your mobile device to access a mobile-friendly version of my blog.  I’ve only been able to test it on my Motorola Droid so far, so please let me know how it looks on your phone.  Alternatively, scan the QR-code below using your smartphone.

Well, it’s taken me forever, but I finally managed to upload a new video!  TechBits 11 is embedded below – I’m discussing the differences between Solid State and Mechanical Hard Drives.  Don’t forget to subscribe to me on youtube!

In other news, the 2009 UltimateComputers.net Member Awards are currently underway.  You can vote for members in a total of nine categories, and the user with the most votes overall by January 15th will win a free t-shirt! GO VOTE NOW!

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve actively updated  my blog or my youtube videos.  Even my presence on UltimateComputers.net has gone down as of late.  As many of you probably know, I’m currently in my sophomore year at Cornell, studying electrical and computer engineering.  This semester has been a tremendous amount of work, certainly more than I’ve ever had to handle before.  As a result, I’ve had to prioritize my time, and I had to make sure I didn’t start failing my classes just because I was behind on videos and blog updates.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel!  I’m in the middle of finals week now, with three done so far (differential equations, electricity and magnetism, and computer instrumentation design), and two more to go (digital logic design and microeconomics).  I plan to do some work on the ultimatecomputers.net site over winter break, including a needed upgrade to the forum software, some new features, etc.  I also plan to start catching up on video’s and bringing TechBits back to life.

The Solar House Control System…

What have I been so busy with!?  Well, in addition to classes, I took on a leadership position in Cornell’s Solar Decathlon Team.  The solar decathlon competition took place during the first two weeks of October, so from the very first weekend that school started (in August) up through October, I basically did nothing but focus on getting our Solar House ready to display to the world.  Before taking the home down to the international Solar Decathlon competition in DC, we first displayed it to the public at the Great NY State Fair.  During the first 8 weeks of classes, I spent every weekend, and some weekdays in either Syracuse, or DC – hence why I had no time to make TechBits episodes…  In addition to working on the home’s automation, electrical, and entertainment systems (see the picture above), I also gave tours, talked to the media, and developed the team website, along with Dan Strongwater (a Junior at Cornell who was on the team as well).

Upon the completion of the competition (see the results here), myself and a few others decided we wanted to continue the momentum from the team, without the restrictions of the competition (ie. only using solar power when geothermal, wind, etc are also clean and renewable).  So, we formed the Cornell University Sustainable Design Team, and we are currently gathering support from all the colleges within Cornell.  We hope to start designing a new structure next summer.

Machine Metabolism…

As if that all wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I also started research at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab after the Decathlon ended.  I’m developing a sensor interface for a robot that scales and dismantles structures (see the picture above).  The whole deal is called a “machine metabolism” – the robot is like an enzyme crawling around on a protein and reshaping it.

So that’s what I’ve been up to!  I think next semester is going to be pretty hectic too, but I think I should have a bit more time than I did this semester…  I look forward to getting back into some youtube videos, and UC.net soon!