Howard Gordon, of Surveyor Corp, sent us this announcement about a new, affordable stereo vision camera system for robots. I checked out the video with my 3D glasses. Pretty cool.
This past week, we introduced a new open source 3D stereo vision system for robotics and remote monitoring called Surveyor SVS. It features dual processors, dual cameras, and wifi connectivity, and sells for $550. The SVS is intended for researchers, educators and developers interested in enabling depth perception in their applications without the need for an array of active sensors (e.g. laser scanners, ultrasonics, infrared, etc).
This week:
A 31-port USB Hub “Mansion”, Workshop Collection – Children’s Video Playground, Very Miniature Parfaits, Interactive Textbook Graffiti, Nintendo DS Made to Look Like a VAIO, iPhone Icon Cookies, Silent Zoo Calendar, Haruo Suekichi: Steampunk Watch Maker Interview, A Jig for Making Things Look Huge.
31-port USB Hub “Mansion”
USB is technically spec’d to handle 127 ports at a time, so why not push it a little, right? Sasaki Shunsuke of Tokyo University’s Fujita Research Center made this 31-port USB hub stack back in 2005, and there’s even an English page showing how he did it. And no, he won’t make one for you, and the one he has is not for sale.
Workshop Collection – Children’s Video Playground
Workshop Collection is a yearly two-day meeting of 70 groups in which kids and adults get together to have fun with design, music, and other workshops that defy description.
In the video above you can see youngsters playfully making some great stop animations by hitting huge, kid-friendly touch light-style buttons to start and stop the motion. This year the event takes place at the Keio University Mita Campus on October 12th and 13th, and there’s sure to be plenty more kid-crafted works of genius and imagination.
Very Miniature Parfaits
Japan has a deep tradition in the skilled art of plastic food-making, but miniaturization adds a whole new dimension to food sculpture. A 1-yen coin is about 2cm in diameter, so these are some truly Lilliputian parfaits. Nana-san has a blog full of miniature food creations that make a 1-yen coin look pretty big. Check out the Sweet Palette blog for the full story.
Interactive Textbook Graffiti
Who didn’t love destroying the faces of the historical figures in school textbooks? Well, now there’s a website where Japanese can relive their artistic glory days with a souped-up Web 2.0 feel, with plenty of images of the of the most familiar faces of Japan’s gimu-kyooiku curriculum, all ripe and ready to be given lobotomies, gender-bending features, and unibrows.
New website Kyokasho.net offers up hundreds of textbook images (“kyokasho” means “textbook”) of great figures of history for your digital defacement pleasure. Using tools such as a grey lead pencil, a red pencil, and a rubber eraser, users can create online textbook graffiti that recalls tedious school days gone by.
Play begins by first choosing from one of five subjects (Japanese language, Japanese history, world history, music, and the arts), then a target figure. For each historical person, a mock textbook page has been created using text from the Japanese version of Wikipedia. Defamers (or the curious) can also browse galleries of user-created characatures. The use of photos is made possible through the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
Nintendo DS Made to Look Like a VAIO
Here’s a great little case hack where Goteking pulled the VAIO logo off of an old floppy drive and then fitted it into a DS replacement shell. He humorously describes the experience of finding an old floppy drive as being “like Murphy’s law: when you don’t need something, it seems to appear everywhere, but when you want to find that thing, it’s seemingly impossible.” He ended up purchasing a used one in Akihabara. My attempts to avoid this predicament are precisely why my room is such a disaster. I might need that 1997 CRT monitor for something, somewhere down the line, right?
iPhone Icon Cookies
Since those famous iPhone icon cupcakes made the rounds the other day, why not throw in some iPhone cookies by flickr user yuni* as well? Cookies! Yay!
She also made some pixelated Mario cookies too! Pre-baked:
Now, this is by no means the first case of technology-inspired baking, but let’s hope it’s not the last, because this constant stream of nerd-a-licious jpegs might very well be what actually keeps the internet from exploding. Now would someone please make me a Cydia cookie?
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Silent Zoo Calendar
Cute, minimal cardboard cutout calendars that you put together yourself. Shaped like animals.
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Haruo Suekichi: Steampunk Watch Maker Interview
Haruo Suekichi has been featured on the Make blog before, but the wonderfully bilingual PingMag recently did an interview that delves into the life and background of this steampunk artisan who was at it long before “steampunk” became the blog buzzword it is today, having made somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 watches throughout his brassy career.
For close to thirteen years, Haruo Suekichi has been investing hours upon hours every day to develop watches with a Steampunk flair. Reminiscent of Jules Verne and influenced by manga, his finely crafted watches are of a vintage futuristic kind. And what started with an unsuccessful attempt to hawk them at a flea market has turned into an enterprise whose analogue objects of desire are hard to get.
A Jig for Making Things Look Huge
DPZ shows us a simple trick to make little things seem huge. By stringing together two clipboards with two fading perspective pictures at a 90% angle, ordinary objects seem to take on grotesque proportions. Frame the bottle with your fingers on both sides. Now that is a large bottle of Coke!
Sebastian’s work interfacing with old Sega hardware for sound synthesis seems to be paying off – and the results sound quite nice -
In this video, the Sega Mega Drive II is controlled via the MIDI keyboard controller. Various parameters can be controlled from the keyboard, as one can hear in the video.
Another impressive LEGO build, nice illuminated accents -
Real working (electronic) V8 engine made from Lego Technic. This is not a Lego set, but I completely designed and build it myself. It took me about 4/5 months. Enjoy!
Sebastopol, CA area folks: mark your calendars for what’s sure to be a fun family-friendly event -
Zip! Zap! Boom!
Art, Science and Technology Day
An Interactive Event for All Ages!
Saturday, October 4th, 10am-4pm
Admission: $5 per person/ $16 family
Create scrap sculptures at our “Creation Station†See local warehouses and learn from demos in bronze pouring, toy-making, machinery & millwork Interact with Make Magazine’s Firetruck Visit Kidspot, see the shadow wall & marine touch tank Enjoy Children’s Museum of the North BayMuseum on-the-go: Hopper Popper, Ned Kahn’s Wind Wall and Air Cannon Tour exhibit Vortex: Art, Matter & Motion with a guide Marvel at Sonoma County Art Cars including Mercedes Pens, Tumbleweed Houses, and more!
Sebastopol Center for the Arts
6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol www.sebarts.org
(707) 829-4797
Zip! Zap! Boom!
Art, Science and Technology Day
An Interactive Event for All Ages!
Saturday, October 4th, 10am-4pm
Admission: $5 per person/ $16 family
Create scrap sculptures at our “Creation Station†See local warehouses and learn from demos in bronze pouring, toy-making, machinery & millwork Interact with Make Magazine’s Firetruck Visit Kidspot, see the shadow wall & marine touch tank Enjoy Children’s Museum of the North BayMuseum on-the-go: Hopper Popper, Ned Kahn’s Wind Wall and Air Cannon Tour exhibit Vortex: Art, Matter & Motion with a guide Marvel at Sonoma County Art Cars including Mercedes Pens, Tumbleweed Houses, and more!
Sebastopol Center for the Arts
6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol www.sebarts.org
(707) 829-4797
Ponoco has a new service where you can hand-draw something, upload a photo of the drawing, and get a “real life product” of your drawing back (in various materials you can select).
Just a reminder to DC dorks that the we kick off another fall and winter of Metro-area geeky, maker-y fun with the September Dorkbot DC meeting, tomorrow night (9/30/09), at George Washington University. We hope to see you there. Presenters include Bruce Howard with his lightglove virtual controller and Andrew Harris will talk on Functional Programming for Hobbyist-Class Platforms. Hit the link below for more info.
A Car’s Life is an interactive Arcade-style game using YouTube. To make it through a given level, all you need to do is click a button which appears. The video makes use of YouTube annotations, which can be linked to other YouTube videos. It’s a bit like the 1980s Dragon’s Lair in some respects: it has animations and somewhat stretches the limits of its medium, but it also has rather low playability. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games – perhaps like Tube Adventures – might be more interesting in YouTube (anyone wants to write a YouTube-API-based video adventure export functionality for QML, the XML-based CYOA language?)
This is a cheap and simple solution for making a stand for you fish tank. It looks like you could easily scale it to any size you need. Just remember 1 gallon of water is about 8 lbs, so your 125 gallon fish tank is going to weigh at least 1/2 a ton or more.
Who says decorating has to be expensive? This room was completely covered in amazing illustrations, all drawn with a Sharpie Marker. It’s a cheap DIY project, but it’s going to take a lot of time and talent to complete.
When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.
October is only a day away, and you know what that means? Time to start planning your pumpkin carving! If you need some inspiration, Trend Hunter has a great photo set of some amazing Star Wars pumpkins.
