DIY ‘Gameboy’

I love this! Not only will you learn how to make an electronic device but you get to program it and lean how games work. You can download some pre made games too, a maze game, the classic pong, and even a music maker. These should be part of every schools electronics class! At less than $100US each they would be an easy buy for even summer programs. There are even photos of a bunch of Korean grade school kids showing off their Mignons on the site.

The “Mignon Game Kit” is a kitset which enables a minimalist “Gameboy” to be individually designed, programmed and constructed. Workshops and online instructions enable advanced learners to invent and programme their own games. In this way the do-it-yourself console of the “Mignon Game Kit” provides not only the opportunity for basic experiments with micro-electronics for first time users but can also be used as a platform for individual computer games. As opposed to conventional Gameboys the user develops a personal relationship to his device through the processes of self-production and individually determined programming.

migon game kit

DIY, electronics, game, projects, cool

Carry Your Own Robotic Plane

Personal micro UAV

The craft is only 12 inches tall and weighs in at 13 pounds so I wonder what kind of loiter time could be expected from it. Still, pretty cool. One question about all this cool high tech gear the fighter of the future will will be in charge of, will they be able to use it all? With all this nifty intel gear there may be an issue of info overload or better yet what if conflict of intel. What if an attack is planned using info from a high altitude UAV and then at the last moment new photos from a backpack sized UAV shows something totally different behind the hill? If all the info doesn’t get back to the commanders in time there could be quite a mess…

The objective of the MAV ACTD is to demonstrate a backpackable, affordable, easy-to-operate, and responsive reconnaissance and surveillance system. The system will provide the small unit with militarily useful real-time combat information of difficult to observe and/or distant areas or objects.
The system will also be employable in a variety of warfighting environments (for example: in complex topologies such as mountainous terrain; heavily forested areas; confined spaces; and high concentrations of civilians).

Carry Your Own Robotic Plane

UAV, military, robots,

Mechanical Digital Laser Video Projector Project

The 5×7 LED matrix pong game is cool, but the real reason to go here is the mechanical video laser scanner!
Its a 16×16 20-30fps red monochromatic digital video projector. Kind of like what was used in the old Nintendo Virtual Boy but not as high tech.

Motor spins drum with 16 mirrors around at about 20-30 rev/second. The mirrors are tilted differently, so that they draw one line each on the screen. Rotation time is measured by the reading fork and divided by 16*32=512. This is the pixel clock. When the reading fork senses that the wire attached to the mirror drum passes, a new frame starts, and the pixel clock starts. For each pixel, the laser is turned on or off. Simple as that! Each line contains 32 pixels, but only 16 are used. The remaining 16 pixels on a line do either represent the gap between mirrors, or, they are used for calibration. Oh, yes. The calibration. I won’t be attempting that again any day soon. Each mirror is calibrated in the Y-direction by tediously moving them physically. T-e-d-i-o-u-s-l-y. Did I mention that? The X-direction calibration is done with a lookup-table in software. Ahhh… software… 🙂 And there’s your picture. Making video is the easy part. That’s just a matter of changing the picture every 4 or 5 frames or so.

AVR projects

Hi to everyone who saw this on Hack-a-Day, looks like the AVR page is wilting under the load. You might want to give it a try in a day or two.
In the mean time, check this out – Laser MAME!

(Thank you Steve for this cool site)

laser, video, AVR, project, pong,

iPosers

iPose

Pretty much says it all. Go vote for your favorite poser.

The iPose Competition is an all-Greek modeling contest at the University of Arizona, hosted by the fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. Money is being raised from the contest for tsunami relief!
Ten fraternities and nine sororities are competing in the competition. The number of votes received on the iPose web page shall decide the winners of the contest. The top voted male and female will receive a free 20 gigabyte iPod. The 2nd place male and female shall earn an iPod Shuffle and 3rd place earns $50 worth of free music from the iTunes Music Store. Voting is open until 8pm on April 7th. The winners will be announced live on the main stage of ASUA’s annual Spring Fling carnival on Friday, April 8th. Alpha Epsilon Pi will donate 10 cents to tsunami relief for every vote received on the web page from a University of Arizona IP address.

iPose.org