Posted December 6, 2013 by Chris

"I continue to believe that stylus input — annotations, sketches, mark-up, and gestures — will be an important aspect of interaction with slate computers in the future, particularly when used effectively and convincingly with multi-modal pen+touch input. It also seems that every couple of years I stumble across an interesting new use or set of techniques for motion sensors, and this year proved to be no exception."

Posted December 5, 2013 by Chris

"I got a new phone a couple of weeks ago: the Nokia Lumia 928. It has a great camera, so I decided to build a rig for panning and tilting it. The robot features two degrees of freedom that can be manipulated independently, is controlled through Bluetooth via an easy to use remote, and rotates the phone exactly around where the lens is located."

Posted December 4, 2013 by Chris

"Use Vaseline as a resist and a bath of salt and vinegar to etch away the copper from copper fabric to make circuits and sensors! Inspired by instructions from Rehmi Post and Kit Waal."

Posted December 3, 2013 by Chris

"The challenge here was to integrate different technologies in a working project. In particular I wanted to use the iPhone to send/receive data to/from an Arduino, build a remotely controlled robot using a WiFi network and hook up a data logger station capturing the different sensor data."

Posted December 2, 2013 by Chris

"The final idea was to embed a LED and copper coil assembly inside the titanium ring, illuminating it from under the stones when it was in close proximity to an induced alternating magnetic field. Autodesk Inventor helped me develop all of the dimensions and constraints for the design. Having some help, I was able to obtain her ring size and the rest of the measurements were based from there. "

Posted November 30, 2013 by Chris

"Here is a stab at the Arduino compatible Sanguino board (albeit simplified). It’s pretty standard except we’ve removed the reset circuitry and alot of the pins. We still have 4 controllable pins, one for the LED and three spare for something fun in future. Once again the plastic was printed before dropping in pre-tinned components and finally printing the metal tracks."

Posted November 29, 2013 by Chris

"Here’s a cheap way to build your own fully customisable infrared PC remote control. If you already have a suitable infrared remote control going spare you can build one of these for under £4, it will allow you to use most infrared remote controls to issue keyboard commands on your PC."

Posted November 27, 2013 by Chris

"Since I’ve written a Tetris in Python half a year ago, It wasn’t that difficult for me to write this one for the Arduino. Other than the four arrow keys that are also used for the Snake game, another tact switch was added to immediately drop a piece to the bottom."

Posted November 26, 2013 by Chris

"There is no denying it, Analogue VGA is on the way out. Which is a shame really, because it is so easy to get an FPGA to drive a few resistors and put a picture up on the screen. It’s a great ‘stretch’ project for the FPGA first-timer. But it does have a downside. Each bit of colour resolution required 1 I/O pin and 2 resistors, and then there is an additional couple of sync pins to."

Posted November 25, 2013 by Chris

"During the last months I’ve been working on a 2-wheel balancing robot (also named inverted pendulum). In the meantime you can find a number of similar constructions in the world-wide-web. Most of them are constructions built from self-made parts. Very few use Lego mindstorms parts. I believe that here the first one is described for which fischertechnik components were used. Due to its artistic balancing act I have named this robot ARTIST."