For indoor flight this Quadcopter uses 4 Sharp IR sensors, they are able to determine the range of obstacles by bouncing IR light off an object and calculate the angle of return. The flight is amazingly stable, this quadcopter allows for automatic takeoff, landing and hovering. “For the IR range finder (Sharp GP2Y0A02) I needed to use a separate Arduino Pro mini (again we don´t have any analog input free).
Ray Ho and Ayo Ositelu from Cornell University came up with an inexpensive (around $25) way to do eye tracking. They’re using an IR LED and an IR transistor to get the job done. They note that the best way to perform eye tracking is to use a camera and process the image but this would require more processing power than they had. We have seen eye tracking done
The new batch of Cornell University ECE 4760 Final Project are in! There are tons of cool projects as usual, everything from Human Tetris to this MIDI Glove Controller project by Anson Dorsey, Eric Gunther and Jonathon Smythe. The project is based around an Atmel Mega644 microcontroller which has lots of processing capability and all of the projects are developed in WINAVR/GCC. Since the system is outputting MIDI you are
Laser harps seem to be catching on. This one is a work in progress and believe it or not there is no microcontroller or computer controlling the system. For more information have a look at the project page (translated version). “This is my first video showing the sensor-circuit working, that contains 4 opamps (LM358) and only has a +5V supply (no negative supply). You can understand it’s a challenge to
Our friend Csaba Bleuer sent in this crazy project he completed. It is a Rotating LED Globe which is being driven by a ATMega Microcontroller. The globe image was created using a program called BmpToAscii, with this program an image can be converted into Ascii. In this case the Ascii is used to display the globe! We have seen some other spinning LED globes in the past but this one
DIY medical equipment is not a big hobby area but this DIY Pulse Oximeter is one cool device. I have no idea what a commercial Pulse Oximeter but like anything medical the real stuff that is used in hospitals usually costs big bucks. In this case your finger is slipped between two pieces of medical grade oak to take the reading. The project is based around the powerful 68HC908AB32 microcontroller.
If you are looking for a new piece of test gear to help you with your next design have a look at what Matt from Openschemes has come up with. He has taken a Top2005 EPROM Programmer and hacked into a Desktop Test Bench! “Do you ever find yourself wanting an IC tester? Some way to power up an IC and apply various voltages and signals to different pins, in
