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Archive: Electronics

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October 20, 2007

Windbelt: elegant non-turbine wind generator

One of the problems with traditional turbine generators is that they are only really efficient and cost-effective at large scales. They may be great for feeding the grid, but an efficient, cheap, and portable device to power your cell phone or charge a radio a wind turbine will never be. Shawn Frayne's invention, the Windbelt, does not have this problem, and its mechanical simplicity makes you smack your head and wonder why this hadn't been thought of before.

There's no gearbox -- just a thin belt strip stretched taught with a button magnet at one end. When the wind blows, the belt begins to oscillate, moving the magnet in and out of a coil to generate an AC current.

Shawn's Windbelt was one of the award winners in Popular Mechanics' 2007 Breakthrough Awards. They have a video of him discussing his invention and using the prototype and a few dollars worth of electronics to power some LEDs and a clock. He hopes that cheap Windbelt-powered LED lighting will eventually be able to provide an environmentally sound and easily serviceable home-lighting alternative in developing nations. It's such a brilliantly simple design. You can probably build one yourself before the weekend is through.

Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative, Set to Power Third World - Link

October 12, 2007

WaterHobo: robotic trespasser sentry

Tim Higgins had some problems with kids cutting through his yard. His solution is a water cannon sentry that watches the yard and hoses down trespassers. I'm dreaming of making something like this to keep the squirrels off of my tomatoes, so it's cool to see what worked and what didn't in Tim's system.

I decided to go back to a thick client, dump the web camera and moved to an Infrared camera. The most important upgrade was to an open source library that I found called Aforge. Andrew Kirillov has done a fantastic job with his library . It held the foundation of version 2's code base. It provided me with the motion detection I needed plus had an avi writer sample. He also had some great topics on "codeproject.com" on uses of his library.

I haven't monkeyed with it, but AForge looks promising. It's an open source C# framework containing libraries for not only computer vision, but also machine learning and artificial intelligence. If you do your hacking in .Net, AForge might be a good place to start for those computer vision projects you've been putting off.

Waterhobo: Ever Diligent Ever Watching - [via] Link
AForge: C# Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence Framework - Link
AForge.NET Introduction by Andrew Kirillov - Link

October 7, 2007

Recycle a mouse into a camera shutter release

Using an old mouse and a 3/32" stereo jack, Dave Schlier hacked together a nice little shutter release for many Pentax and Canon cameras. One mouse button is used to trigger the half-pressed autofocus mode, and the other triggers the shutter to take a photo.

It will work on Pentax and some Cannon cameras that use a 2.5mm (3/32") stereo monopug that use the middle and inner pins as separate contacts and the outer (large) pin as common.
Supplies: 3/32" stereo jack (solder connections), 3 or 4 wire cable (I used phone wire), old 2-button mouse.

It's a fun way to make use of an old mouse. With the right connector and some slight adjustments, you should be able to adjust this to work with any camera that uses this type of remote shutter release.

Mouse remote shutter release - [via] Link

October 4, 2007

Make a power outage sensor and reboot devices remotely

Dingolishious tipped us off to a cheap way to receive power outage notifications, as well as remotely power-cycle electronics.

Our remote wireless site keep being unplugged or having the circuit trip from some combination of cleaning devices. I took a spare UPS and asked if we could get a $200 SNMP card for it so we would know when the power was off. Boss asked me if we could do it for less.
My solution: $70 IP Power 9200 delux. The IP Delux has 4 voltage input sensors, 4 current sensors and 8 web controlled switches. There is a 5v wall wart plugged into the switched part of the UPS running to a input. When the power goes out the ups kicks in running the POE and the wall wart turns off pin 1 on the IP Delux which sends me an email.

The added bonus is that the POE is now switched so if a AP on one wireless segment locks up I can go in one of the others and power cycle the POE remotely. IP Delux even hosts WAP so I could do it from the cheapest of cell phone web browsers.

I like the idea, and it's a cheap way to monitor power status with a bottom-end UPS. Take a normal "wall wart" 5vDC adapter, plug it into an outlet, and the 5 volt output raises and lowers the input logic pin on the IP Power or your own homebrew monitoring electronics - Link.

September 28, 2007

Atari Punk Console - weekend electronics project

The Atari Punk Console is a simple electronic music circuit that you can easily put together in a weekend. The original concept was created by Forrest M. Mims III, writer of Getting Started in Electronics. At it's simplest it's just a 556 dual timer IC, a couple potentiometers, and a few capacitors and resistors. Hack together a slick enclosure, though, and you've got a beautiful little gizmo that pumps out sick square wave goodness.

GetLoFi has a few good links to schematics, sample audio, and enclosure ideas. Forrest himself even checked in and commented that you can use things like photoresistors or other sensors in place of the potentiometers to have the audio output controlled by the device's environment.

What are you waiting for? Go make an APC and send me a link to your project.

Atari Punk Console schematics - Link
Forrest Mims - Link, Books

September 25, 2007

Using the Wii Remote to correct perspective in digital photos

Daniel M. German found a way to automate perspective correction and projection adjustments for his wide angle photography. He does this by using a Wiimote to record the pitch and roll of the camera at the time a photo is taken. This information can then be fed directly into panotools, instead of manually entering control lines and processing the images to calculate these tilt values after the fact.

I modified an open source DarwiinRemote to record inclination. It happens that if you keep the WiiR in a stationary state, its three accelerometers can be used as two inclinometers. Fortunately most of the time, when one takes a handheld photo, one keeps the camera steady. Steady enough to read the inclination of the WiiR.
I also modified the driver to record the reading from the accelometers, the estimated inclinations, and the timestamp. I would then use the timestamp to match the images from the camera to the readings from the WiiR.

This is a cool idea. I would not be surprized to find high end cameras internally recording and stamping this information into photographs in the near future. A lot of consumer cameras already support panoramic stitching, so with digital accelerometers and tilt sensors being as cheap as they are, why not internally support adjustments like perspective correction or projection remapping?

Using the Wii Remote to correct perspective - Link

September 21, 2007

Recycle an old floppy connector as an SD card socket

You've probably got an old floppy drive edge connector or two lying around from an old computer. You can save a bit of money and recycle these as SD/MMC card sockets for your electronics projects. The card can then be used in MMC mode by just wiring up a few I/O pins.

Rob Wentworth documented using this faux-sd floppy connector to add SD support to his WRT54G router. If you're using the DDWRT or OpenWRT firmware for your Linksys, this hack can give you a huge upgrade with more data storage space and swap ram.

SD/MMC card fits in floppy edge-connector - Link
Adding an MMC/SD Card to the WRT54G - Link

September 16, 2007

Hacking the Hot Wheels Radar Gun

Ed Paradis has put some thought into a couple of hacks for the Hot Wheels toy radar gun:

The Hot Wheels Radar Gun is a real radar gun currently (Feb 2007) available from Walmart and other retailers for about $30 (USD). It is a real radar gun, operating at 10.525 GHz capable of clocking cars, people, pets, and toys.
But before you can play with it, you've got to get the thing open! Here are some pictures of me taking the thing apart.

You can use the radar to detect the speed of moving objects, but Ed also posted some semi-successful (and some not-so, but worth reading) experiments with using the device in a custom circuit to detect the distance of objects for robotic projects. It's also worth noting that the LCD can be repurposed as a display output for your other electronic gizmos. For 30 bucks, it's a pretty good collection of useful robot parts.

Hacking the Hot Wheels Radar Gun - Link

September 12, 2007

HOWTO: Make a Wiimote peripheral - wireless Nunchuck anyone?

The Wii Nunchuck communicates with the Wiimote over I2C, constantly sending little 6-byte packets that describe the anolog stick, accelerometer, and button values.

You might remember that Brian posted about how you can hook the Nunchuck up to an Arduino board and read accelerometer data from it. Chad from Windmeadow Labs, who was responsible for this hack, also put together a howto describing how you can use an Adruino to mimic a Nunchuck, interfacing directly with the Wiimote.

So, you can connect an Arduino to a Nunchuck to read data from it. You can connect an Adruino to the Wiimote to send data to it. If only you could make those two Arduinos talk to eachother... Hold the phone! I posted about a $14 RF serial module from SparkFun that will let you do just that!

It'd be a little clunky because of the size of two chubby Arduinos, but if you can't wait for Nintendo to release a wireless Nunchuck to help you with your WiiSports Boxing habit, all the bits and pieces are here for you. You can get Freeduino bare bones kits pre-assembled from Modern Device for $22 each, so the total would come to just under $60.

$60 of purely awesome wireless Mii punching fury.

There is one caveat: the RF link would not be fast enough to communicate sample data from the nunchuck as fast as it is read by the Wiimote. There's a possible solution, though, for those of you who'd like to give it a try. The Nunchuck board can sample the button and accelerometer data and send it over the air at 2400 baud. The Wiimote-connected Arduino can store the last-received state and just keep sending that same data to the Wiimote at fast I2C speed until the next update is received from the RF connection. I'm not sure how noticeable the sensitivity loss would be, but you should still be able to have a resolution of about 40 sensor updates a second.

Anyone with a couple spare Arduinos want to give this a shot and share the details?

Connect an Arduino to the Wiimote as a perhiperal - Link
Hook your Wii nunchuck up to an Arduino - Link
RF-enable your microcontroller projects - Link
Nunchuck communication details - Link

September 10, 2007

Eyelash switch: cyborg-style human interface device

With some conductive fabric and spirit gum, you can make a simple binary switch that attaches to your eyelids. Andrew Schneider used some of these to make a polaroid camera that takes a snapshot when you blink.

When I first saw these, I was reminded of cyborgs in television and film and how they typically exhibit facial twitches when receiving data or jacking in to the network brain. I always thought the apparent "glitch" was sort of a stupid film device, but mabe it's not that far from the future truth. Left wink, change music track. Right wink, shoot photo with the camera tilak in your forehead. Triple-blink, stimulate adrenal gland to release epinephrine. Eyes closed for one minute, dose of melatonin.

Experimental Device for Performance: Eyelash Switch - Link

September 9, 2007

Arduino Diecimila Upgrade

David sent us an easy upgrade for the Bare Bones Arduino that will give it a couple cool features released with the new Diecimila Arduino, namely the ability to auto-reset after a code upload and a firmware update that will get the board running in 2 seconds instead of 10.

With help from Paul Badger of Modern Device Company and Brian of the Freeduino project this article will show you how to modify the Bare Bones Arduino board to make it compatible with the new Diecimila Arduino. No more pressing the reset button to load your code and no more long waits to see if it runs.

You can do the same with the Arduino NG boards as well. Both mods are just a simple solder job with a 0.1uF capacitor. If you tinker around with Arduino projects, this could be a huge development time-saver.

Bare Bones Arduino Diecimila Mod- Link
Upgrading an Arduino NG to Auto-Reset - Link

September 4, 2007

Fire and robots

Fire and robots. Robot love. Burnination. I came across a couple of pyro-robot soulmates today.

Flameosapien is our familiar buddy, slightly modified with a remote operated flamethrower. The Robosapien V2's remote was modified with an additional 4 channer transmitter. Gas flow is adjusted by a small servo and ignited with a BBQ lighter.

His more autonomous counterpart is a Wiimote controlled robotic firefighter. The Wiimote's IR sensor is used for detecting a fire source (such as a candle) and it relays commands between an arduino board and a nearby computer. It's a pretty simple set-up: the robot turns toward the flame, spins a fan, and drives toward the fire. Crude, maybe, but I dig how the Wiimote is being used as a communication channel for the arduino. This might be a simple way of adding bluetooth capability to your own robot project.

Flameosapien - [via] Link
Wiimote Controlled Firefighting Robot - Link

August 28, 2007

Soldering with a graphite pencil and car battery

Here's a weird arc-welding meets soldering hack. You can use a 12 volt car battery (or charger) and a length of graphite pencil to solder connections. The graphite is connected to one jumper cable and a length of solder to the other. Touching them both to the connection closes the circuit, heats up the connection point, and melts the solder. I'm guessing this works best if you connect the graphite and solder to either side of the component connection, which would conduct over the component lead, heating it and causing the solder to wick into the joint.

I'm not sure how well this works or how hard it is on your battery, but it looks like it might be a good way to solder small and difficult connections without overheating components.

Anyone care to chime in on the effectiveness of this or any specific precautions that should be taken?

Graphite Pencil Soldering - Link

August 13, 2007

HOWTO: Power Over Ethernet on a Linksys WRT54GL router

With a little quick soldering, you can convert your Linksys router to receive it's DC power through the ethernet uplink instead of through a separate power cable. This is incredibly useful if you want to place your router above the ceiling or in a location that is inconvenient to get power to.

After the conversion, the 12v DC from the power adapter is sent along the unused blue and brown ethernet pairs. You'll be able to place your router over 500ft from the switch without the voltage dropping below the 5.5v that the router needs to operate.

HOWTO: WRT54GL DIY Internal POE! (Google cache) - Link

August 9, 2007

HOWTO: sort grab-bag electronics

David from uC Hobby writes:

How-to sort a 1 pound grab-bag of small electronic components. I sort through one of the $1 grab-bags I purchased at the Austin Summer fest 2007 HAM meet up. The reason these grab-bags are cheap is that you have to do a lot of work to make the collection of parts useful. I explain my method and give the tally for the parts.

For some reason, this always brings back memories of dumping and sorting big plastic bags of Lego Technic parts.

Grab Bag Sorting Howto - Link

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