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December 28, 2007

xochat.org: make new friends

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My friend Tom Hoffman has set up a Jabber server for XO Laptop users:

I'm having a feeling I'll regret having done this, but xochat.org is now up and running. If you've got an XO you can point it at my Jabber server by popping open a terminal and typing this:
sugar-control-panel -s jabber xochat.org

Then hit ctrl+alt+erase to restart Sugar. You should then see the other people logged in to the server in the "Neighborhood" view. That is essentially the widest view. You should be able to see other users and shared activities, and share your own activities with them, including video.

This is, however, the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge, so don't expect perfection.

This isn't group chat; once you've got it set up, start the Chat activity, share it with your neighborhood, and like magic, you'll find all sorts of people and activities in your neighborhood. Very cool! Link and update

Chumby software development

MakeFan: wrote in to remind us that those cute little Chumby devices are for sale now. The best thing about the little wireless touchscreen appliance is that they were designed to be open and hackable. The underlying operating system is Linux, and there are a number of lower level OS hacks, but you can also pretty easily whip up slick "widget" applications as well, since the Chumby's normal mode of operation is to play Flash Lite 3 applications.

The Chumby developer wiki has source for a number of sample widget applications that will help you get started if you're new to Flash. If you're a seasoned pro, Flash Lite 3 isn't all that different from developing in standard Flash / AS2. You just need to avoid a few features like bitmap caching, and lay off CPU and graphics intensive code.

If you're interested in developing for the Chumby community, but don't have a device, you can make an account on the chumby.com site. After logging in, you can upload your widgets to a "Virtual Chumby" and see how they would run on the device.

Resources:
Chumby Flash development overview - Link
Chumby Flash development forum - Link
Widget development Wiki - Link

Portable laser image projector

This is basic instructions on how to build a portable image projector that uses a green laser instead of normal light. The laser permits images to be cast great distances, and doesn't require focusing - it's always in focus.

Laser Image Projector - Link

The 24th Chaos Communication Congress - 24C3 , some photos...

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The 24th Chaos Communication Congress is underway, and goodness - what an amazing first day! Here are some of my photos...

Some of the sessions I really enjoyed so far...
Steam-Powered Telegraphy
A League of Telextraordinary Gentlemen present the marvel of Telex on the Net - driven by a steam engine

Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers
The evolution of cosmic structure

Building a Hacker Space
A Hacker Space Design Pattern Catalogue

Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers
Hacking with Microcontrollers

Design Noir
The seedy underbelly of electronic engineering

"I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love...".
The image of computers in popular music

Editor's note: Johannes Grenzfurthner gave an AMAZING talk, outstanding work and incredibly fun.

More:

Day one schedule - Link.
The 24th Chaos Communication Congress Link.

Great Year of Weekends!

It's been a great year of weekend projects. There's no new video today, but check out a few favorites from this past year!

The most viewed video from our blip.tv views is how to make a catapult with Bill Gurstelle. We made this podcast at Maker Faire!

The most viewed weekend project video on youtube was the tutorial with Matt Stinchcomb about how to screenprint a t-shirt!

My personal favorite podcast of the year was making a power tool drag racer! Thanks to all the guests that were on podcast and for all the feedback, comments and awesomeness of 2007. If you have a favorite, drop a note in the comments or if there's a podcast you'd like to see made in 2008, don't hesitate to drop me a note!

KMODDL - Kinematic models for design digital library

Clark Collection
Austringer writes -

I was looking for inspiration for a linkage to remotely open the dust collector port on the back of my table saw. What I found was like getting a drink from a fire hose. You have to poke around a bit since they amazing stuff isn't right there on the surface but they have a ton of pictures of static models and videos of the various mechanisms at work. That they have videos of models made using a 3-D printer is like a creamy center made from pure whipped geekyness.

KMODDL - Kinematic models for design digital library - Link.

Headphone art creates insane sound loops

"Headphones", an art piece by Andre Avelas employs 1,000 individual headphone sets where 960 work as speakers and 40 as microphones in order to create a continuous feedback loop that can be controlled on a nearby mixer. The project included an amplification circuit that added more hum to the feedback chain. Pretty interesting use of commonly found speakers. Check the link below for a sound sample to be posted soon.

Photos of the project - Link, artist site, [via]

Bicycle-powered welder

Mike writes -

An inertia friction welder powered by a bicycle. Built in 2 months and at a cost of £302. Finished and run for the first time at around 6pm GMT, Saturday 15th December. Thanks go to Andy for the welding, Steevo for the machining, Martin for grafting, Greg for filming and squeaking, Graeme for his yard and cups of tea, JCB for the use of their workshop and Bolton Steam Museum for the flywheel.

A bicycle-powered welder - [via] Link.

December 27, 2007

Servo hack: make a 360-degree robot drive motor

Servos can work really well as drive motors for a small robot. Their motion is relatively precise and predictable, and they operate on the same voltage as most microcontroller electronics, allowing you to build a simple robot without any additional motor control circuitry.

Standard servos, though, can only rotate through about 180-degrees. Although you can purchase modified servos that will rotate infinitely in either direction, the standard 180-degree servos are more commonly available, are usually cheaper, and you may already have a couple lying around from an old RC car.

Lucky for you, it's pretty easy to modify a servo to rotate infinitely in either direction. Inside your typical analog servo is a small potentiometer that rotates along with the motor output. This acts as a feedback mechanism that controls the position of the motor for a given input pulse rate. Remove this potentiometer along with the mechanical safety stop, and your servo will then rotate in either direction indefinitely. Instead of controlling the position of the servo left or right of neutral, your input PWM signal will now control the motor's speed in either direction (with no motion in the neutral position).

There are two ways of going about this and I've linked to a howto below for both methods.

In the first method, you clip off the mechanical connection to the potentiometer and leave it in place. It stays in the case but doesn't rotate with the output shaft. The bonus to using this method is that you can easily tweak the potentiometer's position to eliminate any motor motion at a neutral state.

The second method involves completely removing the potentiometer and putting a couple of resistors in its place. It's a little more work, but it allows you to slip the potentiometer back in later if you need the standard behavior again. Keep in mind that the mechanical stop will still have been removed, though, so the pot could possibly become damaged if an out-of-range signal is sent to the servo.

Make a 360-degree servo by clipping the potentiometer shaft (video) - Link
Make a 360-degree servo by completely removing the potentiometer - Link

Head tracking with the Wiimote

Really well-done basic introduction to how a Wiimote and Wii sensor bar can be used to create a head tracking system for VR worlds and games. Pretty impressive.

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote - Link

Velleman K8055 USB board and Matlab interface

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Tutorial & files for interfacing with a Velleman K8055 USB board and Matlab - Link.

Metro-Wardrive creates game levels from city access points

Here's an interesting take on urban gaming. "Metro-Wardrive" is an adaptive game that changes its level information according to the environment of the player in an urban center. All local SSIDs are turned into enemies which try to capture your "wardrive-cristal". Really cool idea for a portable game that will never give you the same game board twice depending on your location.

Metro-Wardrive - Link

Murakami's sculptures light up LA's MOCA

We recently visited Takeshi Murakami's show at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary wing. The show was really impressive showcasing over 90 pieces spanning the artist's career, in various media from film and animation to large metal and ceramic sculptures. The show features enormous pieces such as the "Oval Buddha" (2007) (pictured) and a "merchandise" room with hundreds of toys, games, posters, dolls, etc.. from Murakami's portfolio. This show is up until February 11, 2008 so if you are in the LA area, definitely check it out..

Murakami at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) - Link, pic via Scott Waterman

USB gloves heat your hands while typing, make you nervous

If you find yourself in an unheated cabin in the woods this winter or your house has really bad central heating, it might be time to slap on these "USB Heating Gloves". In 5 minutes your hands will heat up to 52 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit), which is probably too hot unless you don't mind cooking an egg on your wrist. We just wonder how easy it would be to hack these and use them as a lie detector device that analyzes the content of incoming and outgoing emails and IMs.

USB Heating Gloves - Link, Check out the Lady version

MAKE @ 24C3 - 24th Chaos Communication Congress

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MAKE and a whole lot of other MAKE-pals will be at the 24C3. We'll see you there! -

The 24th Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It takes place at the bcc Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics and attracts a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopians from all around the world. The 24C3s slogan is Volldampf voraus! – the German equivalent of “full steam ahead” – a particular request for talks and projects featuring forward looking hands-on topics.

24th Chaos Communication Congress
December 27th to 30th, 2007
bcc Berliner Congress Center, Berlin, Germany

MAKE @ 24C3 - 24th Chaos Communication Congress - Link.

Chaos theory schematic

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Ian writes -

In making an electronic circuit exhibiting chaos, one is essentially making an analog computer for the differential equations describing the system. This means that circuits that can differentiate a voltage are needed. In practice, it is convenient to actually do this with electronic integrators, the idea being that the input of an integrator is the derivative of its output. In addition, a nonlinear circuit element must be incorporated, as linear systems cannot be chaotic.

Chaos theory schematic - [via] Link.

December 26, 2007

Boarduino: compact, breadboard compatible Arduino clone

Boarduino is a "breadboardable" Arduino clone created by Ladyada. It has a much smaller form factor and it's designed to plug right into a solderless breadboard, making your circuit prototyping efforts a breeze. How cool is that?

You use it just like a normal Arduino. You can slap the standard Arduino bootloader on it and run all your normal Arduino sketches. The only major difference is that it doesn't have the USB hardware on-board. Instead, you'll need to use a USB-TTL serial cable ($20 at the Maker store). There is a convenient 6-pin header for this purpose.

The whole thing can be purchased as a kit for $17.50 from the Aadafruit store, making this one of the cheapest Arduino kits available. Check her Boarduino page for details on building, testing and using it.

Boarduino: Solderless Breadboard Arduino Clone - Link
USB TTL Serial Cable - Link

Related:
HOWTO run Arduino on the XO Laptop - Link
Physical computing with the Arduino - Link
Hook your Wii nunchuck up to an Arduino - Link
Arduino-powered holiday lights - Link

Jake's Solar Webcam

I wanted a security camera at the front door of my house with two criteria: the camera needed to be wireless and it needed to be accessible for viewing from my computer.

Check out Jake's solar security cam howto. - Link

24c3 Starts Tomorrow!

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I popped over to check out day 0 at the Berlin Convention Center and everything is getting set up for the launch of the twenty-fourth Chaos Communication Congress. Every year for the past 24 years, hackers have gathered to have congress with the Chaos Computer Club to discuss and hear about the latest issues, challenges, and advancements in the hacking world. Plus partake of Club Mate, the refreshing and invigorating hacker beverage of choice. This conference is the place to be between xmas and new years. With their added category for presentations on making and steampunk theme, it's going to be awesome.

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