Virtual Reality with Kinect.

Kinect is very popular in Maker/Hacker community. Kinent can help you to detect human motion easily, and people already made so many projects with it. Here is one of the project by combing VR glasses and Kinect, you will be inside a VR world and interact with virtual objects.

Open Source Robotic Platform : Darwin-OP

This cool robot together with a open source framework, you can write your own software to control it. How cool is it? you can take a look of this demo:


and be sure to check out the open source project:
http://darwinop.sourceforge.net/

it is around $9600-12000 US dollars, too expensive for me, but it is nice to see a cool robot:P

AUTOM: the weight loss coach.

AUTOM is a product of Intuitive Automata, Inc. She is a weight loss coach, who help you to keep fit. The robot is now not only working in factory, or a prototype, it is real and interact with you at home! That's awesome! Check the demo video here:

Introducing Autom™ from Erica Young on Vimeo.

OpenCV Face Detection Visualized

I used OpenCV with processing and also in embedded system, the build-in face detector is very easy to use. If you wonder how it works, here is a good video to show you:

OpenCV Face Detection: Visualized from Adam Harv on Vimeo.

and also check out the article here:
http://ahprojects.com/c/ahprojects/research

Android Controlled Robot.

It is a cool project by Radu Motisan, he made a robot and control remotely with his Android Phone via Bluetooth. Source codes for both Android (bluetooth control) & ATmega are available on his website!


Demo here:



Project site here:
http://www.pocketmagic.net/?p=1398

Robot Sing & Dance.

Another awesome japanese robot:P

Robot Archer iCub.

Just came across this cool youtube about a Robot can learn archer.

Foam printer.

Very cool Foam printer:

Tokyo eletronic lover's heaven.

In tokyo, Akihabara is my favorite place. You can get many electronics related stuffs there. Akiba and Patrick @ Tokyo Hackerspace recorded a video introducing Akihabara:

AVR Love Project

kaas has made a very simple project called "2 hour Love project", it is a very simple circuit, no software programming at all. Recently, I found out that Hesit8 has improved this project and make a very cool : AVR Love Project! With the help of Attiny2313, he made some cool led effects. Let's see the demo video:



also the project link here:
http://hesit8.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/avr-love-projects/

Android controlled wireless lamp.

Previously, we discussed about bluetooth module used with Android Nexus One, so today, we would like to present our latest project here "Android controlled wireless lamp", We want to do somethings meaningful with the bluetooth module with Android, so we modify a small lamp and adding the bluetooth connectivity to it.

Sometimes, we may put the phone in bedroom, and we will not know someone is calling. With the bluetooth connectivity, it can communicate with your Android phone at least 10 meters or above. You can put the lamp near your TV or anywhere you stay. Also, you can use Android as a remote control to turn on/off the lamp (or any devices).

Hareware: AVRtiny2313, Bluetooth module, lamp


Ready to go:


Video Demo:

Vollayball Robot

What else can a robot do in the future? Let's play vollayball with her. Why not! Another cool robot from Toshiba, company in Japan.

[DIY] Nexus one case (modify from an Iphone case)

Android is becoming more popular in US, but there is still not so many fancy phone cases available on the market like iPhone 3G/3Gs. I found out some Iphone 3G/3Gs cases can be easily modified to fit on Nexus One, so I give it a try.

Here is the iphone 3gs case,



with the right hand side, upper and lower side opened. So you have the USB connector, power button and volume button fit for your nexus one already!

In order to use this case, we only have to drill some holes on the back, so the nexus one camera and the speaker can be used. The size of the case is already quite fit for my case:)

Here is the modified case (attached on Nexus one):
Back:


Front:


Volume keys:

Small Robot Fish

This is a small robot fish, it looks very simple inside but the effect is quite good! Check it out:

Eye Mario System by Waterloo Labs.

Robot is selling Ice-cream in Japan.

The robot looks like an industrial robot used in Car manufacturing, it is fun to see a robot making ice-cream:)

Large "Game of Life".

Another cool project
by http://www.evilmadscientist.com/go/gameoflife

Exploding electronic components.

It is awesome:


via http://www.electronics-lab.com/blog/?p=4755

The Acroban Humanoid Project

Acroban is a lightweight compliant humanoid robot capable of robust semi-passive dynamic locomotion, life-like movements, and offers the possibility of a new kind of playful physical human-robot interaction. We developped this platform to explore how morphological constraints can simplify the developmental acquisition of complex sensorimotor skills, as well as to explore novel kinds of human-robot interaction.




via http://flowers.inria.fr/acroban.php

Voice Controlled R/C Helicopter.

A new Japanese toy showing off the voice control, It is still easier to control it with the controller :)

Invisible Computer Mouse.

By using infra-red laser and web camera to capture hand movement and finger taping to create a invisible mouse! Neat project.



Detail : http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/mouseless/

Turn on the Lamp by waving your hand.

This is a DIY project called "touchless touch switch led lamp", it uses a capacitance sensor IC to detect the wave of your hand.



Check out the detail HOW-TO: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/07/how-to_make_a_touchless_switch_led.html

Touch screen using Water.

It is truly awesome, the Minamo by Taichi Inoue (Minaemo means "Surface Water" in Japanese). By putting a monitor under the tank, you will control the mouse pointer on the water surface, it is so cool.

Check it out:

AVR night light !

This AVR night light is done by nuumlo, it contains 5 RGB Leds and 5 ping-pong balls as diffuser. The brain is AVRtiny2313. Check out the video:


The control is nice too:)

the project website:http://letsmakerobots.com/node/19149

Love DIY Project Re-Make.

Letsmakerobot.com improved one of my old project, "2 Hour Love Project", they added a Attiny2313 to make it can display words other than static "Love" text. Schematic & codes are available on their website.

Video Demo:

Awesome DIY Magic Mirror for your home.

So Magic mirror is not only for Halloween, and it can also tell you today's weather and stock market information:)




You can buy the kit here:
http://makersmarket.com/products/magic-mirror-kit-with-breathalyzer

Realistic Emotional Robot.

With the advance AI, face recognition and text-to-speech engine technologies nowadays, We will see a robot that can understand you, express her feeling and talk to you in the coming future.

Dr David Hanson, who is trying to make robots that coming close to this, here is a TED talk video, you can see how many amazing robot he made:


The "Zeno" robot that is affordable for consumer, he can understand what you are saying, and response to you.


I am not sure if "Zeno" is still on his way to the market, if it is only $299, I would definitely put my order:)

My 2 wheels Robot Base.

2 wheels robot is the easiest robot base, I am learning by making it out. It is based on AVRtiny2313, I can control it via UART:) You can see my video below, have fun:)

Android & Bluetooth module.

Android phone is becoming more popular, most of the android phones equipped with Bluetooth. Just wonder how we can make use of the powerful android phone to interact with MCU like Atmel AVR, PIC or even Arduino. I think that more interesting projects can be done with the bluetooth connectivity to Android:)

After some studies, I found out that in Android 2.0, Google enhanced the Bluetooth API and come with an Bluetooth Chat sample for communicating devices with RFCOMM (SPP profile). So I did a try and it really works very well!



Let's try it out! The Bluetooth module that I used is a very tiny one with PCB antenna, it can control device over 10 meters at least, good enough for small project:) It is programmed to use as RFCOMM, so it can act as a wireless UART, good fit for all the MCU! With only 4 wires, 3.3v/Gnd/Tx/Rx, no programming needed, you can directly connect the module to your MCU UART.


Here is my demonstration video:


For the bluetooth sample code, you can find it in the Android SDK or here.

Wireless Internet Access via LED lamps.

Can you imagine while the LED is lighting up your desk and streaming video to your laptop at the same time? Scientist he Semi-conductor Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a wireless internet communication system using only Blue LED lights on the ceilings. The maximum speed is around 2Mbps.

Auto-Balanced Robotic Bicycle.

A cool project of making an auto balanced robotic bicycle

Stereo Vision on BeagleBoard.

I tried to use the face tracker in openCV on the beagleboard few months ago, but what I really want to do is using stereo vision on the beagleboard, so I can build a robust robot. I am glad that someone tried before me, so I can learn from his experience:) Nick did some experiments on using stereo vision on beagleboard, check it out:




Nick's URL:
http://whatnicklife.blogspot.com/2010/05/beagle-has-2-eyes-opencv-stereo-on.html

Mind Controlled Robot.

We knew that the mind control is the future, and we don't have to wait, the Emotiv, the mind controller, is available on market! You can play games with this controller or even control a robot!

RFID Tutorial from Sparkfun.com

RFID is a cool technology, you can use it in many creative projects. Good Show, Sparkfun!

Robot can balance on a ball!

It is really awesome, may be we can see a single ball robot in the near future.

Robot Mouth by Japan Engineers.

It knew it is a bit creepy, but still a good research in simulating human mouth and how to pronounce words.

BeautyShot for Android.

I just released my new android application called "BeautyShot". It is a camera application which will make you skin looks better. It segments the photo with the skin color and makes it smooth. It is very hard to implement in the android phone, the memory is limited, the processor is not fast enough and the camera API is not portable etc. I tried very hard to make it possible on the Android phone. If you got an Android phone, you can try it. It is free:)






Samples:
Before:

After:



On Android Market:

BeetleCam Project - Awesome!!

BeetleCam, a project to use remote robot to take photograph, but in the wild!
Let's take a look:

BeetleCam Project Teaser from Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas on Vimeo.

2010 International RobotGames.

It is so cool to gather so many robots! many cool people there!

Use Laser pointer to play a LED board game.

The Laser Command by Eiji is a very brilliant project. He used arduino mini to build a complete LED board game, and just one 8x8 matrix led as the game output & also input device. Player can use a laser pointer to point to the led and start playing the game. The author website has a very good explanation of his project, it is worth to read if you are interested how to use LED as input : http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ehayashi/projects/lasercommand/

Laser Command from Eiji Hayashi on Vimeo.

LED Vodka Label in Real.

Love to see how the scrolling LED label comes into a real product, and this time is a Vodka Label. Check out the demonstration video here:

How to Program a Message on Your MEDEA Bottle from Medea Spirits on Vimeo.

Segway in battlefield.

Segway, is not only provide a personal mobility system. They also make few mobility platforms called Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP) for industrial use. It is very impressive to see how the Segway RMP used in fire training!

Wirewrap tool How-To.

I used to work with wire wrapper when I was in the University. I think it is very useful when you don't want to get your hand dirty with the soldering iron. It is good for fast prototyping, and also suitable for your kid when they are too young to use the soldering iron.

Take a look of this demo video:

wire wrap how-to from j saavedra on Vimeo.

Rescue Robots.

Just found out a cool video by MIT MediaLab, Robot Team. They did a short movie to demonstrate how the robot can be used in real world scenario. Let's check it out:

Auto Smiley Typer.

This is a very neat project, basic idea is using the camera in your notebook and keep detecting your smile. If a smiley face is detected, it will insert a smile to wherever you are typing.

Auto Smiley - Computer vision smiley generator from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

The MPT engine used in this project seems can be used to detect different expressions other than smile. Cool.

Check out the detail Info here: http://fffff.at/auto-smiley/

Cute robot powered by iPod Touch.

Many people got an iPhone or iPod touch, there are many products built around them, like fancy speaker and HiFi. But this cute robot is absolutely awesome, simply put your ipod touch to the dock inside him and It would turn your ipod touch to a robot. It can talk to you, look at you and tell you about the information around the world. It is a very clever design, with the CPU power, OS and connectivity provided by the iPod touch, it can open unlimited possiblities of this robot:) May be third party application developer can develop applications for this robot too!



Communication Robot "robovie-mR2" by ATR. (JAPAN)

Honda: Bodyweight support assist device.

The honda new bodyweight support assist device helps not only elderly people, also helps people need to walk and stand for a long time during work. Imagine in the near future, you will see all people getting a walking device like that:)

Building R2-D2 from scratch.

R2-D2 is one of the famous robot in human history. Victor Franco, who is making remote controlled R2-D2 from scratch at home, which is very impressive!

Please check out the cool *making of* video:


and also check out his R2-D2 blog: http://vfranco.blogspot.com/

Waterpebble reminds you to save Water!

We enjoy a hot shower, and sometimes even forget how much time we spent on bathing:)
It is bad, as we are wasting more water.

A cool product introduced by DryPlanet called Waterpebble. It is a small waterproof device to monitor your showering time. But how it works?

First, it will record the time spend of your first shower with waterpebble. Next time, when you shower with waterpebble, it will measure the water flows and will give you a RED signal if you are overrun!


You can find details here: http://www.dry-planet.com/products_pebble.html

9x9 RGB LED color twitter table made with Adrunio

Developed by macetech.com, a RGB LED table can response to twitter posts. It is gorgeous!

Check it out the demo:

Streaming live video by Ustream

Source code & construction guidelines:
http://macetech.com/blog/node/93#comment-1013

MIT Flyfire, draws everything in the Air!

MIT's flyfire is a micro helicopters equipped with color LEDs inside, when many flyfires flying together, they can form different images up in the sky. The concept is so cool! Here is the concept video:

DIY Hobby center GRAND opening in Philippines

My friend, Dandy, opened a DIY Hobby store in Philippines! He is selling 8051 starter kit, home automation kit and also satellite DIY kit. Recently, also start selling ARM9 (S3C2440) based development platform "FriendlyARM". The basic kit comes with 3.5" LCD, with 400MHz ARM9, which is capable of running Linux and also Android! Check out some photos here:





You can see the FriendlyARM with 7" LCD in this photo, it is really cool! Once installed the Android, you can open the WebKit browser and surf the net with Wifi.


Congratulation to him, and please check it out if you live in Philippines!
Location:http://www.electronicslab.ph/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=d6fedf7919a33df34ad9b6e65a6caf3f&/topic,15240.msg265515.html#msg265515

Home made DIY LED projector.

Getting a decent projector may be very expensive, with limited budget, how about consider to make one yourself? Found an article about making LED projector in Instructables, it is awesome.
Take a look:




Link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How_to_make_a_small_Diy_LED_Projector/

OctARM - Octopus inspired robot.

OctARM can pick up things like octopus, it is awesome. (it looks like elephant to me more), check it out:

Robotic Vibraphone playing MIDI file.

I always want to build a robot that play MIDI on real instrument. Recently, I discovered the "Meet Marv" project is what I want. Marv is a MIDI Actuated Robotic Vibraphone, which can play MIDI file, it is used for future research on musical automation (cool!).


Check out the demo here:


Link:
http://www.robovibes.com/

My Geeky Valentines' Day gift for her.

Just want to share with you all about my latest work for the Valentines'Day 2010. This year, I would like to try something new, I made a church & wedding model for her. I get all the components or models from tomytec, a japanese company made 1:150 scale plastic model like house, church, car etc. I bought a church, tree, flowers and also people models, and start to arrange them in place. I found some photographs of church online, so the arrangement should look real. Most importantly, I added LEDs inside the church, with the USB power +5V, the model look even better at night:) Lets take a look of the photo & video. "Happy Valentines Day" all of you!

Geeky Valentine's Gift for Her

Valentines' day is coming, since you are reading my blog, I am sure that you are geek like me:) One project caught my attention recently, it is easy to make one yourself especially the deadline is coming! The project is LED people, 2 LEDs blink when touching each other, sounds fun. Check the demo video here:


and the schematic and photos:
http://www.cibomahto.com/2008/02/thing-a-day-day-13-led-people/

Free circuit simulator.

When I was still in the University learning basic electronics and circuit designs, we have to do many calculations on paper. It is hard to imagine how the current flow in the reality. Nowadays, there is a good simulator online which is free and powerful, it is pretty promising to me. You can take a look here: http://www.falstad.com/circuit/


via http://www.scienceprog.com/free-fast-and-useful-java-based-circuit-simulator/

JTAG pinout in a single page

JTAG exists in many processors based on ARM and MIPS core. It is useful for debugging and writing flash.

There are different headers for various chip vendors, I found a good page showing a wide ranges of JTAG header pinouts:

http://jtagcables.com/jtag-pinout

Also, there is a free, powerful JTAG tool for Windows & Linux called "Openocd". It supports ARM7 (ARM7TDMI and ARM720t), ARM9 (ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM926EJ–S, ARM966E–S), XScale (PXA25x, IXP42x) and Cortex-M3 (Stellaris LM3 and ST STM32). You can use it with different JTAG dongles as well. Definitely nice to try it out.

Pyxis OS for Arduino.

Instead flashing new program to your arduino internal flash storage, you can now copy the application binary to the SD card and run on the arduino. With the help of Pyxis OS, you will turn your arduino to be a PDA like system. You can have advanced graphics APIs and also run applications from SD card. The biggest problem is that you only allow to write the application in the Pyxis OS specific programming language:( But it is still cool.



In their website, they provide a free PFAT implementation for turning the EEPROM to a file system in AVR. it is free:)

Link:
http://www.skewworks.com/

Living with Robots featuring ASIMO by Honda.

I have talked about the dream the impossible documentary series by Honda, the latest one is really cool which featuring the ASIMO:)

Check it out:

EZ-430 Chronos Wireless Watch controlled Door Entry System.

I have been waiting for cool projects using the TI EZ-430 wireless watch, and it comes up one today! You can unlock the door wirelessly by just taping the watch screen with a sequence. The sequence is then detected by the internal accelerometer and translated to a door lock pattern. If it is correct, it would unlock the door:)

Hard to say how cool is it, Lets see the demo! Cool Project, Ziyan!



Details of implementation: https://ziyan.info/2010/01/secure-wireless-door-lock/

Japanese Dancing Robot Doll.

A cute doll with the humanoid body. It is awesome!

TI eZ430 Chronos Watch get reviewed.

Now you can order @ TI store for $49.

Programming AVR tiny2313 with STK500.

I used AVR tiny13 for most of my small projects, now I am going to move on with tiny2313 because of more IOs available and also with UART support.

Kaasxxx wrote about programming AVR tiny13 with STK500, so I decide to write my small introduction on programming tiny2313.

Step 1. Connect the 6-wire ISP cable between ISP6PIN and SPROG3.



Step 2. Put the tiny2313 on the Socket SCKT3300D3.



I also connected pin PB0 to pin LED0 (as you see the green/yellow cable) to test my led blink test program on tiny2313.

I prepared for a led blink sample code with Makefile (avr-gcc and avrdude targeted for tiny2313), you should modify the download serial port name in the Makefile for your machine. You can download here: avr_tiny2313_led.tar.gz

Hope you found useful;)

AVR development on Ubuntu Linux.

I used Mac OS X for all my AVR developments so far.I got my netbook running Ubuntu and I want to use it for AVR developement recently. It is easier to get all the tools installed as I thought. The following commands do the magic:

sudo apt-get install gcc-avr
sudo apt-get install avr-libc
sudo apt-get install avrdude

Worked like a charm:)