Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
If your serious about photography and own a Nikon DSLR you might want to have a look at this project. It’s simple enough, he programmed a PIC microcontroller to fire off a series of pulses to an infrared LED that will trip the shutter of a Nikon D70 (should work with other Nikon cameras too, it emulates an ML-L3 remote). It’s a clever project, and easy one too.
Amazing advancements are being made in the area of prosthetic limbs. I have always thought that if I were to lose a hand or a foot I’d want to enlist the aid of some of my friends that build robots to help come up with a mechanical solution to my dilemma. From what I’ve read about body replacements such as these its hard to do better than the old fashioned spring loaded claw/hook. I think that a real solution will only come when battery technology reaches the kilowatt per gram range, or a motor that uses picowatts of power yet still delivers foot pounds of torque are available.
These guys are getting there though. As you can see by the quoted article below, they have movement down:
Funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the IST programme, the CYBERHAND project aims to hard wire this hand into the nervous system, allowing sensory feedback from the hand to reach the brain, and instructions to come from the brain to control the hand, at least in part…So far, the project is racking up an impressive list of achievements. It has a complete, fully sensitised five-fingered hand. The CYBERHAND prototype has 16 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) made possible by the work of six tiny motors. Each of the five fingers is articulated and has one motor dedicated to its joint flexing for autonomous control. It features that miracle of evolution, the opposable thumb, so the device can perform different grasping action
They also have a working solution to the feedback needed to accuratly use a prosthetic hand. This is in the form of Thin Film Longitudinal IntraFascicular Electrodes. Lets hope that testing begins soon for this device, I’m sure that there are more than enough people who would be willing to test this for them. Next they should work on a prosthetic foot. It would have to be cheap enough to be given out by aid orginizations around the world.
I finished my little write up on my digital stereo camera I built a while ago. Go have a look, buy some cameras, and make your own! 🙂
Baring the fact that there is no flash on this camera, this kit is quite cool. After you assemble it you will have a simple point and shoot fixed focus camera. Now, as your building it I don’t see any reason not to add a flash sync contact on the shutter (I did that with a 110 camera in my youth) and who knows what else. Hey, this may become a popular modding platform!
[via Red Ferret]
Now this in a cool hack. He crammed a Famicon (Nintendo) into a hand held unit that he built from the ground up.
The latest issue of the tech DIY magazine is soon to be hitting my mail box, if you don’t have a subscription already you can buy from Amazon (and a nice discount I might add). The editor, Mark Frauenfelder has this to say about the latest issue:
The fourth volume of Make magazine, which I edit, is now available on Amazon.
The major projects include an electric cigar box guitar, a kit to take high speed strobe photos (so you can capture a balloon or light bulb in mid-pop), and how to turn kids’ electronic toys into musical instruments. There’s also a guide to a bunch of different kinds of kits (electronic, beer making, robots, etc) and a how-to by Mr. Jalopy on converting a vintage hi-fi cabinet into an LP and CD ripper, burner, and player.
David Pescovitz started a new column for the magazine called Proto, which profiles cool makers in corporate labs around the world, and Cory Doctorow weighs in on the Supreme Court’s unfortunate Grokster decision.
I’m especially excited about the do-it-yourself section with ways to hack your coffee and espresso makers.
I can’t wait to read this!
Buy MAKE 04 from Amazon here
MAKE site
[spotted over at BoingBoing]