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Archive: Wireless

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January 8, 2010

Automatic wireless drink mixer

The Automatic wireless drink mixer is a final project for a group from the University of Washington's Electrical Engineering department (ee478). There's a wireless touchpad interface that talks to the main unit via xbee, an RFID cup interface that keeps track of what you drink, and the whole thing is controlled by a PIC32. [via borntechie]

January 4, 2010

DIY diamond chop saw

Need to cut tiny parts, and don't have access to a commercial wafer dicing machine? So did amateur radio enthusiast Tony, who needed to cut small pieces of 50 ohm microstrip lines for a 47 GHz radio he is constructing. His solution was to build a homebrew diamond wafer saw, using a diamond wheel from ebay, the bearings from a hard drive, and some custom electronics.

We covered Tony's saw back in July, when he put out the first part of his tutorial. Flash forward six months, and he completed a four part (1 2 3 4) tutorial documenting the project. Well done, and excellent writeup!

Bluetooth Ericofon

SQNewton didn't just crack open a bluetooth headset and cram it into a cool retro handset casing; he developed his own hardware to produce a fully-functional, self-contained phone that uses the Ericofon's original rotary dial, gives dial and busy tones, mimics the original Ericofon ringer, and has voice-recognition dialing to top it off. [via Hack a Day]

December 30, 2009

In the Maker Shed: Chumby Guts

We still have a few more Chumby guts ready for you to hack, modify, or you can just make a cool enclosure and enjoy. What's a Chumby? Glad you asked! It's an amazing little piece of technology that lets you get what's best on the web and delivers it right to you on it's 3.5" touch screen LCD. You can play games, check the weather, twitter, news, music, and even watch YouTube videos. All of this is done via you home's wireless Internet connection. Get 'em while you can, we have very limited stock!

Here's what comes in each kit:

3.5'' LCD (320hx240v 16bpp TFT) with Touch Screen
Texas Instruments TSC2100 Programmable Touchscreen Controller with Stereo DAC
Plastic Front Bezel
Gasket
Aluminum Frame
4 x Screws to attach Aluminum Frame to Front Bezel
350MHz Freescale iMX21 MC94MX21DVKN3 ARM9 controller Motherboard Circuit Card Assembly with Samsung 64MB SDRAM on 32-bit data path and Hynix HY27US 64MB NAND Flash ROM
Kionix KXP74-1050 3-axis accelerometer
Daughtercard Circuit Card Assembly
Three USB 2.0 full speed ports, one internal, two external
Chumbilical Flex Cable from Daughter card CCA to Motherboard CCA
Wifi Riser Circuit Card Assembly
USB Wifi Dongle based on the Xterasys 3135G 802.11g USB Wifi adapter (ralink chipset)
Flex Cable for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
3 x Screws for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
3 x Standoffs for screws for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
2 x 2W StereoSpeakers
4 x Screws for Speaker to Plastic Speaker Holder
Plastic Speaker Holder
Switch for Bend Sensor
Plastic Switch Holder
2 wire cable with 2 pin connector (from Daughterboard CCA to switch)
2 x Screws to Attach Switch to Plastic Switch Holder
12 V DC 1A Power Supply
Built-in microphone

(Note: actual parts may vary slightly due to manufacturing and availability)

December 18, 2009

The Copenhagen Wheel

The Copenhagan Wheel recently demonstrated at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change is a clever device that can store energy every time you apply the brakes and then reapply it in the form of motor assist as you ascend a hill on your bicycle. Developed by MIT researchers, the Copenhagen Wheel also acquires speed, distance, and direction data from an array of sensors inside the device and transmits it via Bluetooth to the cyclists mobile. [via geekygadgets]

Over the past few years we have seen a kind of biking renaissance, which started in Copenhagen and has spread from Paris to Barcelona to Montreal," says Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory and the Copenhagen Wheel project. "It's sort of like 'Biking 2.0′ -- whereby cheap electronics allow us to augment bikes and convert them into a more flexible, on-demand system.

December 15, 2009

SPARK Project #3, Post #5

In my previous SPARK post, I created a program that sends serial port commands via an XBee transceiver to control lights plugged into a modified power strip. It was nice to see this level of functionality, but since this is my last SPARK post, I wanted to add a little pizzazz to the project. The eBox 2300 computer I am using has audio in and audio out. I thought it'd be cool if I had lights flashing in coordination with music. The more lights I have, the cooler the effect. So I grabbed several more of my hacked power strips, added some code to the Windows Embedded program, and had a nice little light show sequenced to flash along to Herbie Hancock's Chameleon.

The power strips happen to be great project enclosures for my line voltage powered electronics.

Continue on to the SPARK site for video of the flashing light array and more information about hacking power strips for XBee control!

December 14, 2009

Nook eBook reader rooted

It's been out less than a week and the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader has already been rooted. Interestingly enough, it would seem that the eBook reader's default custom Android system is installed on a MicroSD card. Upon gaining root access applications such as the terminal emulator have been successfully run on the e-ink display. For a detailed teardown check out the nookdevs wiki. [via AndroidandMe]

December 8, 2009

SPARK Project #3, Post #4

In my previous post, I finally started to make some progress with my Windows Embedded CE project. I was able to get a simple test application running which could send and receive messages via a serial port on my iCop eBox 2300 computer. I first sent messages to a host computer using an RS232 crossover cable. Once I confirmed that there were no problems sending and receiving messages or changing the baud rate, I cut the cable and plugged in a pair of XBee modules in place of the crossover cable. I wasn't ready to install custom device drivers in my Windows Embedded CE operating system image, so I used an XBee serial explorer ordered from SparkFun to connect an XBee to the eBox computer. After confirming that everything was working as expected, I was ready to modify the serial port test application to run my wireless light controller.

The secret sauce is my home-brew Arduino clone running from a capacitive power supply.
More about that next week!

Before I continue, I want to briefly reflect on some of the steps required to get my program to finally work. I initially suspected that I had a serial port buffer overrun problem, since I couldn't send messages longer than 16 characters. When I noticed that my serial port test program would hang at the end of a serial port transmission of any length, I started to think that the problem may be interrupt related instead of buffer related. If the serial port call was waiting for a "buffer empty" signal before it returned control to my program, hanging at the end of a transmission meant that it never got that signal. Since I had been editing a number of serial port settings in the BIOS and registry while trying to disable or reroute serial debugging messages, I might have inadvertently modified a critical registry key. Rather than retrace my steps and restore the factory settings, I started with a clean copy of the BSP to build the operating system image. I had also notice that many of the build directories for my Visual Studio 2005 installation were pointing to a more recent version of Visual Studio on my computer. After mapping all the directories to the correct location, I rebuilt the operating system using clean copies of all the drivers and BSP.

Finally, everything worked flawlessly when I tested the new operating system with the simple Visual Basic serial port terminal example from Samuel Phung's Windows Embedded CE 6.0 online resources.

Follow along at the SPARK site!

December 1, 2009

SPARK Project #3, Post #3

In my previous post, I described how I was able to program an iCop eBox to transmit date using an XBee wireless link. The program was written in Visual C++ and executed serial port commands to send data to a host computer. I had previously set up the XBees to communicate at 115,200 baud, but the Visual C++ serial port configuration defaults to 9600 for the baud rate. I was able to find sample code for It and it was relatively straightforward to add code to my program whichchanged the baud rate to the desired value.

Then things got a little strange. I noticed that every time I ran my program, it would hang after the serial transmission. I also found that the program would crash if I tried to send more than 16 characters. There's a long list of possible causes for such crashes, and I started to debug them one by one. The important part of this story is the outcome. Honestly, debugging can be unpleasant. I like a good challenge and have always enjoyed solving puzzles, but that's not how I wanted to be spending my time with these SPARK projects. So back to the outcome of the story. After taking many small steps backwards in the debugging process, I finally managed to make a huge leap forward, out of programming darkness. I now have a Visual Basic program running on my iCop eBox, and it's sending and receiving data from another computer using XBee transceivers.

Why is this so great? That's a fair question. Read on at the SPARK site for the answer!

November 25, 2009

XBee Wireless Temperature Sensor

This wireless temperature sensor project uses an XBee, breakout board, and simple power supply to transmit temperature data to an Arduino base station. This looks like it could be easily expanded into a whole house monitoring system. [via Arduino.cc]

I decided to explore the more advanced features of XBee radios by building a remote temperature sensor. You can get quite a bit of control over an XBee radio without a microcontroller at all. You can configure the radio to send sensor readings at particular intervals when it detects changes on certain input pins.

November 24, 2009

SPARK Project #3, Post #2

Blinking an LED and transmitting text to a serial terminal is not the most exciting thing in the world, but it's very cool to breathe life into a balky computer, even at the most basic level. Also, I have worked with enough development tools to know that it can be a lot of work going from the first build to basic function. Many vendors, like National Instruments, Texas Instruments, and others, have recognized the value of making a good first impression, while preserving all the power and sophistication available to the user. I do understand that ease of use can be hard to achieve, especially with complex, powerful tools. I own a small Sherline CNC mill that I built up with 3-phase brushless motors, a custom motor controller, and optical limit switches. It was a fun project, especially building the machine and seeing it run for the first time. I use it much less frequently than I would like, but it's been very handy for many of my projects. The mill is powerful enough for small projects, and simple enough that I can ignore it for several months without forgetting how to use it. I also have a little experience running large industrial CNC mills. I could make a lot of cool devices if I had a 5-axis commercial CNC machine, but using the machine effectively would require a substantial and continuous investment of time. Given what can go wrong, improper operation resulting from infrequent practice can be disastrous.

I've experienced a similar comparison between Windows Embedded CE and other prototyping and development tools I've worked with. For simple embedded projects, I use a wide variety of tools, from Arduino to ARM and others. I like to program in C or C++, using assembly only when I have to. I have been known to slip uLinux into projects when I can. These systems are like the Sherline CNC mill. They have limitations, yet are valuable from an ease-of-use perspective. Windows Embedded CE is more like the large industrial CNC mill - very powerful once time has been invested.

Now about those XBees, check out the Microsoft SPARK site for more!

November 17, 2009

SPARK Project #3, Post #1

For my third and final SPARK project, I'm going to continue building on lessons learned from Project 1 and Project 2. I've found Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 to be a powerful tool, but getting started is not a trivial process. Despite a sophisticated IDE, configuring and building running systems can be challenging, especially when the hardware isn't working as expected. So I'm going to continue where I left off with Project 2, and create the building blocks to control external devices using a serial interface.

A number of my projects have required wireless communications. I've tried many wireless systems, and one of my favorites is the XBee transceiver from Digi. They are easy to configure and use, and there is a wealth of example code to drive them from a wide variety of computing platforms. The high-power version can transmit over long distances, and at 250kbps, the data rate is excellent. I frequently use the devices as a simple wireless serial link, although they are very effective for point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-point communications.

Follow my exploration of Windows Embedded CE driving xBees on the Microsoft SPARK site!

November 6, 2009

Claim virtual turf with real-life balls

Want to claim your city as your own? Competing with a rival gang for turf, and want to avoid messy knife fights? Well now you can, thanks to Urban Defender. Working over a short time period, a team of students from Zurich University of Arts built a system to claim buildings by throwing a specially equipped ball at them. Impacts are detected by an accelerometer connected to an Arduino, which is wirelessly connected to a Beagle board which uses a GPS to coordinate the hit to a specific address.

They apparently didn't have time to finish the multi-player version of the game, but I think the concept is too good to let die. Someone should definitely hook this up to the social networking game foursquare. As a bonus, you could use the sensor units to play the actual game four square when you get tired of fighting for turf.

November 5, 2009

R1 tactile radio prototype

The user interface to the R1 radio is both familiar and unique. Roll up and down for volume or scroll left to right to tune. It's brilliant in its simplicity and rather stylish in a contoured minimalist design. [via GeekyGadgets]

An analog radio is one of most important product for a blind people. In the using a behavior of how people manipulated rather than burying all of interaction in to the product. So adjusting radio to the right station would require a new kind of manipulation rather than simply tuning a knob. 'R1' has designed for them to control the radio more intuitively. By using a wheel structure user can control the radio by physical movement. The 'R1' allowed users to turn gadget on or off and to control volume and tuning simply by physically rolling the radio forward, backward and sideways.

October 20, 2009

iPod-controlled RC car

More Dorkbot Austin goodness! John Boiles demonstrated this radio-controlled car steered using his iPod's built-in accelerometer via its built-in WiFi transmitter. All you have to do is tilt the iPod, and the car goes. It starts to move around 1:10.

Open Source Nintendo DS Bluetooth adapter

Gordan Savicic and Gottfried Haider of DSbrut fame have tipped us off that they've just released their DS Bluetooth adapter for the Nintendo DS.

Almost two years in the making, we're happy to finally release our DS Bluetooth adapter. The tiny Slot-1 cartridge allows you to hook up the Nintendo DS wirelessly with other devices such as GPS-receivers, robots and so forth. Today we're making all materials of the project openly available, including the schematics and a GPL-licensed software library for the Nintendo DS, because we believe in open hardware design and want to encourage collaboration in the hardware hacking community.

If you've got a homebrew Nintendo DS project that we should know about leave a link in the comments.

October 2, 2009

Yankee Steam-Up this weekend in Rhode Island

Continuing a great tradition, the New England Wireless and Steam Museum is hosting the Yankee Steam-Up, where you can see steam engines large and small, stirling engines, running antique engines and vehicles, and much more. There is also a Marconi-era wireless museum with fascinating equipment from the early days of radio, including a Massie Station spark gap transmitter.

Check out some great videos of running steam engines from last year's event here.

The Original Yankee Steam-Up:
For model makers, machinists, engineers & historians
Saturday October 3, 2009
8:30AM-4:00PM
1300 Frenchtown Road, East Greenwich, RI 02818
Steam & Compressed Air for Models.
Licensed Boilers & Licensed Engineers.
New Englands Largest Steam-Up Boiler.
Giant Working Steam Engines & Hot Air & IC.

Admission is $15.00 for adults, children under 12 are $5.00. All Steam-Up proceeds go to upkeep of the museum. Parking is free, and there is food at the event.

September 18, 2009

Wi-Fi dowsing rod

Dutch maker Mike Thompson designed and built this Wi-Fi dowsing rod by joining old and new to deliver a whimsically arcane device.

Todays technology advances at such a speed that often consumers are left in awe of it all. The high tech terminology, the ultra small, ultra portable, metallic or white devices we carry around with us are, to the vast amount of consumers, simply baffling. The Wifi Dowsing Rod aims to work against this. By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on century's old technology, the user feels immediately at home with the product, whilst feeling less intimidated by the simple shape and natural materials.

[via techchee]

September 17, 2009

JeeNode, a low cost wireless sensor node

This JeeNode wireless communication platform looks like a fun and cost effective way to get into experimenting with RF communication. By combining an Arduino-compatible processor (ATmega328) with a low-cost HopeRF radio module, they were able to make a tiny, fairly well featured kit with wireless capability. They are offering them for sale as a kit, or, since it is an open source hardware design, you can just download the PCB layout and roll your own. I can think of lots of applications (remote candle lighter, interactive cat toy) that aren't worth a full xBee-based solution, where it would be handy to have a development board like this that I could just drop in and use.

September 16, 2009

Mobile Art and Code is November 6-8th in Pittsburgh

Interested in the future of mobile computing? Have a killer application or art project that incorporates a wireless element, but don't know where to get started? Then you don't want to miss the Mobile Art && Code Symposium, which is taking place this November in Pittsburgh. Unlike traditional conferences, this one is aimed at anyone who has an interest in the subject, young and old. From their website:

ART && CODE is an event series and online community dedicated to the democratization of computer programming for artists, young people, and the rest of us.
This November 6-8, we continue our successful workshop/lecture series with MOBILE ART && CODE: Mobile Media and Interactive Arts - a symposium on the aesthetic and tactical potentials of mobile, networked and locative media. The three-day event will feature intimate, practical, arts-oriented programming workshops for popular mobile platforms (such as the iPhone, Android, Nokia S90, PBX telephony systems, and SMS hacking) along with an all-day series of free lecture presentations that contextualizes the use of these technologies in a variety of contemporary critical, artistic and design practices.

Conference registration is not yet open, but will be soon.

[photo by Golan Levin]

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