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Below are 6 journal entries, after skipping by the 100 most recent ones recorded in
Hack a Day's LiveJournal:
| Monday, December 23rd, 2013 | |
| 9:00 am | Holograms With The New Kinect
The Xbox One is out, along with a new Kinect sensor, and this time around Microsoft didn’t waste any time making this 3D vision sensor available for Windows. [programming4fun] got his hands on the new Kinect v2 sensor and started work on a capture system to import anything into a virtual environment. We’ve seen [programming4fun]‘s work before with an extremely odd and original build that turns any display into a 3D display with the help of a Kinect v1 sensor. This time around, [programming] isn’t just using a Kinect to display a 3D object, he’s also using a Kinect to capture 3D data. [programming] captured himself playing a few chords on a guitar with the new Kinect v2 sensor. This was saved to a custom file format that can be played back in the Unity engine. With the help of a Kinect v1, [programming4fun] can pan and tilt around this virtual model simply by moving his head. If that’s not enough, [programming] has also included support for the Oculus Rift, turning the Unity-based virtual copy of himself into something he can interact with in a video game. As far as we can tell, this is the first build on Hackaday using the new Kinect sensor. We asked what everyone was going to do with this new improved hardware, and from [programming]‘s demo, it seems like there’s still a lot of unexplored potential with the new Xbox One spybox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQZQeCumz Filed under: Kinect hacks   |
| 6:01 am | Fubarino Contest: The Problem Of Being Very Good At Foosball
[Sebastian] came up with a solution to this problem: a KickerClock – something between a chess clock and an automated score keeper for foosball. The device has two seven-segment displays for each team, and a countdown timer for both of the four and a half minute rounds. All the documentation is up in [Sebastian]‘s Google Drive, and he plans on adding a few neat features such as automated score keeping. The easter egg for this submission? The buttons for scoring each goal are used as combination lock. By scoring eight black team goals (H=8), one silver team goal (A=1), three black goals (C=3), and eleven silver goals (K=11), the Hackaday URL shows up on the seven-segment displays. Extremely well hidden, and a great way to efficiently waste time at work. Video of the KickerClock, and the easter egg, available below. This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!
Filed under: contests   |
| 3:00 am | 3D Printering: Making A Thing In AutoCAD, Part II
It’s time once again for another part in 3D Printering’s series of Making A Thing. Last week was a short tutorial on the beginnings of making a thing in AutoCAD. This is an extremely complex software package, and in a desire to make things short and sweet, I broke this AutoCAD tutorial into two parts. Since we already covered the 2D design portion of AutoCAD, part II of this tutorial is going to turn our 2D part into a three-dimensional object. Check out the rest of the tutorial below.
Our Thing
Just like all of these Making a Thing tutorials, we’re using this object pulled out of a nearly 100-year-old textbook on drawing and drafting. We already have a 2D projection of this part, from the previous AutoCAD tutorial, so let’s just dig right in. Views and Presspull
With being able to see the Z axis sorted out, the first order of business is making a 2D object 3D. You might think the command we want to use here is extrude. You’d be terribly wrong, though. The command we want to use is called presspull. Extrude is an AutoCAD command that pulls the highlighted objects (in our case, the lines making up our part) through the Z axis. It doesn’t make your lines a solid, though, so unless you’re designing single-thickness vases to print on your RepRap, there isn’t much use for extrude. By selecting the presspull command from the ‘solid’ menu in AutoCAD, we can click on the object we want to pull up into the Z axis and make them solid. If you’re following along with this tutorial by copying all these steps, highlight the main part of our ‘thing’, type in presspull, and type in the height you want to pull it up to. In our case, we want this part of our ‘thing’ to be 7/16″ thick, or 0.4375 in decimal inches.
Editing SolidsYou’ll notice our ‘thing’ is missing something – the flange on top with the drilled hole. Not to worry, because by playing with the box and cylinder solids we can add that part in. Here’s our process in handy animated .gif format, complete with a textual description of how to do it.
Switch to the NE Isometric view. From the Home tab, select box. This is a tool that allows us to draw a box in three dimensions, by selecting two points on the X and Y axes, and extruding it up through the Z axis. From the 100-year-old drawing we’re working off of, the top of our box should be 7/16″ tall for the base, then another 7/8″ tall to get to the midpoint of the cylinder we’re going to put on. That adds up to 1.3125 decimal inches, so click one corner of our 2D box, click the opposite corner, and type in 1.3125. Now we have a bit of a challenge. We need to add the ‘dome’ on our part. This is easily made with the cylinder tool, but we need to make sure it’s aligned on the center of the edge of the box we just made. If you’re following along with this tutorial, you’ve already experienced some of the ‘snap-to’ effects, but nothing that’s a midpoint yet.
OSNAP. Yep, the command you want to type in is called osnap. That joke gets really, really old after the first week of a drafting class, by the way. Osnap enables different snap-tos, allowing you to draw something from the midpoint, endpoint, and center. By default midpoint isn’t selected. Click that check box and get hit OK. Draw your cylinder, then from the solid tab, click Union, select both the box and the cylinder and hit enter.
We’re nearly done here. All that’s left to do are the drilled hole through this flange we just created and the counter bore. First we’ll work on the drill that’s 7/16″ in diameter. Not radius, diameter. Using your new-found osnap skills, draw a cylinder that is 0.21875 decimal inches in diameter. Pull that through our flange and subtract it, just like we unionized the box and cylinder above. The counter bore is left as an exercise to the reader because It’s the exact same process. Wrapping things upSince our goal is to design a part for a 3D printer, we’ll need to make an STL file. This is done with the export command. It’s a simple process, but there is one catch: you must select all the objects in a part before saving. Right now, our ‘thing’ is made of two parts – the weird circle thing with a slot, and the dome thing with a hole and counter bore. We could export both these parts together, but that’s rather inelegant. Select Union, click both parts, and hit enter. Then export to .STL.
Will you look at that. We made a thing. You also just learned AutoCAD and the Escape key on your keyboard is crying. Compared to the previous tutorial of making a thing with OpenSCAD, designing a 3D printable object with AutoCAD isn’t more difficult, it’s just different. Next week, sometime after Christmas, we’ll check out some more 3D design software and make our ‘thing’ once again. If you have any suggestions on what software I should feature, drop a note in the comments. I lost the Post-It that had all the softwares I was planning to use. Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, Hackaday Columns   |
| 12:01 am | Hackaday Links: December 22, 2013
[Korben] is using a picture frame as a Bluetooth speaker (translated). He hacked a Rock’R² for this project. It’s a device that has a vibrating element which can be used to make any hollow item into a speaker. Entertain yourself over the holidays by mastering the Apollo Guidance Computer simulator. It’s a JavaScript version of the computer used in the modules of the Apollo moon missions. [Thanks Gregory and Paul] Here’s a little mirror attachment that lets you use your laptop as an overhead projector. [Ian] calls it the ClipDraw. Affix it to the webcam and use the keyboard as the drawing surface. Since it’s simply using the camera this works for both live presentations and video conferencing. What we can’t figure out is why the image doesn’t end up backward? This guide will let you turn a Carambola board into an AirPlay speaker. Those who suck at remembering the rules for a game of pool will enjoy this offering. It’s some add-on hardware that uses a color sensor to detect when a ball is pocketed. The Raspberry Pi based system automatically scores each game. We spend waaaay too much time sitting at the computer. If we had a treadmill perhaps we’d try building [Kirk's] treadmill desk attachment. It’s made out of PVC and uses some altered reduction fittings to make the height adjustable. It looks like you lose a little bit of space at the front of the belt, but if you’re just using it at a walking pace that shouldn’t matter too much. You can have your own pair of smart tweezers for just a few clams. [Tyler] added copper tape to some anti-static tweezers. The copper pads have wires soldered to them which terminate on the other end with some alligator clips. Clip them to your multimeter and you’ve got your own e-tweezers. Filed under: Hackaday links   |
| Sunday, December 22nd, 2013 | |
| 9:01 pm | Fubarino-Contest: 1980′s CD Player with MPD
[Ronald] had to scramble to get his submission in, but we’re glad he did. His demo video shows the display of a 1980′s CD player working with Music Player Daemon. It’s really just the original display itself that works, but the project is not yet finished. However, is far enough along to show our URL when a track reaches the 22:00 mark. The display is driven by an ATmega32 chip which uses a USB connection to receive commands from the computer running MPD. [Ronald] had troubles figuring out how to send int values over USB so he hacked his own protocol that just uses the LSB of each byte coming over the bus. After the break you can see the video, and read the description which he included with his submission. There is also a code package available here. This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!
Filed under: contests, home entertainment hacks   |
| 6:01 pm | Automated Drink Mixer Is the Life of the Party
The software uses an overarching state machine, so the system polls for input from the menu at idle. When it receives an order, the lazy Susan rotates the glass to the right spout or series of spouts and then returns it to the starting point. [Justin] and [Austin] controlled the position of the glass with an IR emitter and phototransistor. This pair detects the black strips of tape around the edge which are spaced 60° apart. A comparator digitizes the signal and triggers an interrupt in the software, which counts the number of 60° slices. A full demonstration is waiting for you after the jump. Before you jump: drink responsibly, kids. If you aren’t up to that particular challenge, make yourself an alcohol-aware LED ice cube. If you need more LEDs in your life, whip up the Inebriator.
[Thanks Bruce] Filed under: Holiday Hacks, Microcontrollers   |
[Sebastian] works at an engineering company testing car ECUs, head units, and all the confusing wiring harnesses found in the modern-day automobile. It’s good work, but not exactly fun, so [Sebastian]‘s bosses bought a foosball table so the employees could unwind. The foosball tables have been there for several years, and now everyone at the company is really, really good at twirling little football players on a stick. With their current rule set (at least 6 goals and 2 goals ahead), matches last at least twenty minutes.
In 
Hosting a New Year’s Eve party, but don’t want to be stuck behind the bar all night? You could set out a bowl or two of