Hackaday Links: March 21, 2012

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Don’t get your dirty fingers on the glass

[Poke] sent in a video of him using Android devices with a wiimote and PS3 controller. The build uses the Joystick2Touch and the USB Joystick Center app. Root is required, but this will be very useful when tv-sized Android devices start showing up.

Wonderful restoration work

[John] sent in an Instructable on restoring an ancient typewriter. It’s almost beautiful seeing all those delicate metal parts so finely cleaned and reassembled.

Proof of the Big Bang is in one of these articles

[Paleotechnoligist] has been reading the technical journals from Bell Labs. These people were the Google of the 20th century and did some amazing stuff. Here’s the math for getting to the moon and a thing about “cellular telephony.”

Oooohhh extruded aluminum

[Richard Sum] sent us a pic of his new 3D printer kit he’ll be offering soon. Very professional looking.

Flying like a three dollar bill

[Yannick] and [SaakNeMah] sent in this video of a guy strapping on bird wings, running down a field, and then flying for about 100 meters. The project is Human Birdwings and it’s gotten an amazing amount of press coverage. We’re calling fake on this for three reasons: the wings didn’t produce lift, the camera angles are all wrong (only applicable if there was a single flight), and this guy would be a gazillionaire if his wings actually worked. Argue amongst yourself in the comments; we’d love to be proven wrong.

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Android rolled into Linux kernel 3.3

March 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The latest version of the Linux kernel was just released on Sunday, and there’s a little bonus which we think is worth considering. It seems that many changes from Android made their way into version 3.3 of the Linux kernel.

This may not sound like much, but it’s a great example of the power of open source. Since device specific changes based on the Linux kernel must be released under the same license, hardware manufactures are compelled to release their sources. But normally this would only help you if you have the expertise to slog through their code and find the parts that you need for whatever purpose you have in mind. But with these changes being rolled into the main kernel you should be able to run your own distributions on Android devices relatively easy; hardware support is already in there. Of course there’s still a lot of expertise that goes into cross-compiling an OS.

This may have the potential to open up old Android hardware as a development platform. Think of how Chumby hardware has been used in robotics projects. Now what if your old Bluetooth and WiFi enable cellphone had a stock kernel that was as easy and open to use in your own projects?

[Thanks Adam]

Filed Under: android hacks, linux hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Using the nook as a keyboard

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Andrew] has been pining for an Optimus Maximus – a keyboard with a small LCD screen in each key – for years. Like a lot of people, he love the idea of a completely configurable keyboard, but balked at the two thousand dollar price tag. Although it doesn’t have full color OLED screens behind each key, [Andrew]’s nook simple touch can be used as a keyboard just the same.

After rooting his new nook, [Andrew] had a very nice tablet computer, and the only Android device with an e-ink screen. Although[Andrew] never wrote an Android app before, he wanted to do a proof of concept build to see if a nook keyboard would actually work. The “keyboard app” is actually just a webpage hosted on his home server. When he presses a virtual key, JavaScript sends an ASCII value back to the server where it is decoded and sent to xte.

[Andrew] says his build works, but not very well. Opera mini doesn’t like the homebrew server he set up, and Cyrillic characters are a no go. Still, it works, and looks like an awesome application for an e-ink tablet with a proper Android app. Demo after the break.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: android hacks, peripherals hacks Tagged With: , ,

Control an Arduino from Android over Bluetooth

March 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether you’d like to do some real-time logging of data, or just want to control a project with your Android phone, [Thomas]’s Arduino-Android Bluetooth connection instructable is sure to be useful

[Thomas]’ build uses the very inexpensive JY-MCU Bluetooth module that’s available on eBay or dealextreme. This Bluetooth module ties directly into the Tx and Rx lines of the Arduino so a wireless serial connection between an Android device can be established. On the Android side of the build, Python for Android and the Scripting Layer for Android allow for reading wireless sensor data over Bluetooth.

While connecting an Android device to an Arduino is also possible with an IOIO  or an Android Open Accessory dev kit, we haven’t seen much (barring this) about controlling or reading simple electronics with Android over Bluetooth. Sometimes you just don’t need an awesome dev board to bodge up a simple project, so we hope [Thomas]’s very nice instructable will help get a few more builds off the ground.

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3D printing from an Android device

March 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[skullkey] over at the House4Hack hackerspace in Pretoria, South Africa wanted a way to get kids excited about technology and desktop fabrication labs. Wanting to give kids a visceral feel for the march of technology, he created Makerdroid, an android app that allows for the creation 3D objects on an Android tablet and preparing them to be printed on a Reprap or Makerbot.

What’s really interesting about this build is not only the fact that [skullkey] and his lovely beta testers are generating .STL files on an Android device, the object files are also being converted to GCode on the Android, without the need for a conventional computer. Makerdroid uses the very popular Skeinforge to generate the instructions for the printer (although a lot of people are switching over to Slic3r).

Makerdroid doesn’t need a PC to print objects out on a 3D printer, but we think the process of shuffling GCode files from a tablet to the printer with an SD card is a little archaic. It might be possible to print directly from an Android tablet over Bluetooth with the Android Bluetooth Reprap app that is currently in development. Still, we love the idea of printing objects we just created on a touch screen, as shown in the Makerdroid demo video after the break.

[Read more…]

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Monitoring and controlling your garage door from afar with an IP camera

March 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

remote-control-garage-door

Last year, [Mark Simonelli’s] wife asked him if he could design something that would allow her to remotely check if their garage door had been left open. [Mark] jumped at the chance to tinker with electronics and designed a system around an old TrendNet IP camera. When remotely connected to the camera using IP Cam Viewer Pro for his Android phone, [Mark] could watch the video stream and also trigger the garage door opener via a small relay circuit he built.

His remote opener worked well, but his camera unfortunately lacked any sort of IR vision/low light capabilities. Since his camera wasn’t very useful in the dark, he decided that he needed to add some way to trigger a light when remotely monitoring his garage. He figured the best way to do this would be to control a power strip-connected light using a circuit similar to the one he built to open the garage door itself.

He stopped by the hardware store and picked up a cheap power strip, disassembling it and removing the power toggle once he got home. He fitted it with a small 5v relay, which he connected to the camera’s terminal block. While he admits that it might not be the absolute safest solution, he can easily control both the light and the garage door with a simple swipe of his phone’s screen.

Continue reading to see his remote controlled power strip in action, and be sure to swing by his site to see more details about his camera-controlled garage door opener.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: android hacks, digital cameras hacks, home hacks Tagged With: , , , ,
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