We have seen what the inside of a Kinect looks like, now we can interface to the cool box if electronic bits. Hector Martin apparently hacked some code together and got it working 3 hours after he got his hands in the Kinect! From what I see this thing has tons of potential. The Wiimote Hacks were being created at a fast and furious pace after it was opened and
Brad from Brads Electronic Projects shows us how to make 8 RGB LEDs create a large circular display. He uses a spread sheet to create the HEX data that the PIC microcontroller will be using to turn on the RGB LEDs to make the system display what you would like but the display data is stored on an EPROM to allow for large moving displays. Reminds me a bit of
If you are wanting to play with a bank of LEDs have a look at the TLC5947, it outputs 24 channels of constant current LED outputs. This RGB LED Circuit uses the TLC5947 and demonstrates how capable it is. If you want to have a look at the code for some ideas you can see the project page here. “It uses one TLC5947 per 24 channels, which does 12-bit PWM
It is sometimes fun to think of a cool problem and come up with an electronic solution. Have a look at this project that Matt Meerian from Home Brew Electronics put together, it is a way to Shoot a Bullet through a Spinning Propeller Blade. This was a common problem years ago when planes needed to have a forward mounted gun shoot through a center propeller. Matt thought it would
Stanislav Ponomarev has been working hard with his NerdKit Microcontroller. He developed an impressive RGB LED Tetris Game. I think this version is probably more fun than the original version. 🙂 I could just imagine scaling this up and playing it on the side of an apartment building with each window acting as a pixel of the game. Stanislav will send in the code and schematics as soon as they
iFixit has cracked open a Microsoft Kinect and wow is there a ton of technology packed in there. This sensor bar is the total opposite of the Wii Sensor Bar which has virtually no tech in it. After seeing what makes the Kinect tick I totally understand why Adafruit Industries has offered a $2000 bounty for the first person to write some open source drivers for the Kinect. I have
Doug Smith demonstrates how to use Pulse Injection to find problems with printed circuit boards. He built a small probe that allows him to poke around all areas of the board to see if there is any areas which are sensitive. This method is probably not economical for a hobbyist to use unless you can find the Fisher PG EFT that Doug used in the Apex Electronics bone yard for
