Author Archives: Drew Littrell

Kinect Visualizer Demo Gives Winamp a Run for Its Money

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Winamp eat your heart out, because thanks to the Microsoft Kinect in the hands of [Samarth] there’s a new way to make your screen dance along with you. He created a music visualizer demo that takes advantage of the 3D depth camera on Kinect by outputting a fun pixelated silhouette and color changing strobe. When there are big high-hat hits or bass thumps the camera feed reacts accordingly (as any good visualizer would). He even uploaded his code for the project just in case anyone would like to take a look at it.

The visualizer utilizes the OpenKinect-Processing library which …read more

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Kinect Visualizer Demo Gives Winamp a Run for Its Money

Posted on by

Winamp eat your heart out, because thanks to the Microsoft Kinect in the hands of [Samarth] there’s a new way to make your screen dance along with you. He created a music visualizer demo that takes advantage of the 3D depth camera on Kinect by outputting a fun pixelated silhouette and color changing strobe. When there are big high-hat hits or bass thumps the camera feed reacts accordingly (as any good visualizer would). He even uploaded his code for the project just in case anyone would like to take a look at it.

The visualizer utilizes the OpenKinect-Processing library which …read more

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Single Board Computer Plays Nice with NVIDIA GPU

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It’s about convenience when it comes to single board computers. The trade-off of raw compute power for size means the bulk of them end up being ARM based, but there are a few exceptions like the x86 based Udoo Ultra. The embedded Intel 405 GPU on the Udoo Ultra is better than most in the category, but that won’t begin to play much of anything outside of a browser window. Not satisfied with “standard” [Matteo] put together his build combining an Udoo x86 Ultra with a NVIDIA 1060 GPU. It seems ridiculous to have an expansion card almost three times …read more

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What’s Inside that New Mac Mini Anyway?

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It’s been four long years since Apple has refreshed their entry-level desktop line. Those that have been waiting for a redesign of the Mac Mini can now collectively exhale as the Late 2018 edition has officially been released. Thanks to [iFixit] we have a clearer view of what’s changed in the new model as they posted a complete teardown of the Mac Mini over on their website.

One of the most welcomed changes is that the DDR4 RAM is actually user upgradeable this time around. Previously RAM was soldered directly to the motherboard, and there were no SO-DIMM slots to …read more

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How the Sony PlayStation Was Hacked

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Playgrounds were the comment sections of their day. Every weekday from exactly 1:17 PM until 1:43 PM there were swings to be swung, rumors to be spread, and debates to be settled by whomever was the loudest (some things never change). Allegiances were formed and battle lines were drawn based solely on what video game console you supported. It was this playground system that perpetuated the urban myths of the time.

For PlayStation fans there was the myth that you could save Aerith from her fate in Final Fantasy VII if you just cast the right spell, or the secret …read more

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LED Stick Person Costume Lights Up the Night

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Sometimes a simple idea can yield fantastic results. A few runs of LED strips fastened to a black hoody and sweatpants and just like that…a LED stick person costume for Halloween. The creator of the “Glowy Zoey” [Royce] originally put together some glow in the dark stick person suits to stand out when hitting the slopes at night. Now he’s taken that simple idea for a costume and made a small business out of it.

“I had a lot of extra parts laying around. I gathered everything up and got to work soldering.”  – Royce Hutain

The suits themselves consist …read more

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Prototype Proves Wii was Two Gamecubes Taped Together All Along

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Say what you will about Nintendo’s little purple lunchbox, the Gamecube, but it was home to many delightful experiences from Super Smash Bros. Melee to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We now know it was also home to one of the very first Nintendo Wii remotes as well thanks to the recent listing from [Kuriaisu1122] on Yahoo Auctions.

The prototype Wii remote is a wired design and features a proprietary Gamecube controller cable. Notable differences include the two buttons toward the bottom are labeled ‘B’ and ‘A’ respectively. This shows that Nintendo always intended to have players hold the …read more

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Parcelcopter Drone Project Delivers In Rough Terrain

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It’s a known fact that the last mile is also the longest mile in the parcel delivery service. The further removed from a hub city a delivery location is, the more required stops in between. Every part of the process slows to a glacial pace when the drop-off spot is inaccessible by land or air. Now apply this in the case of a medical emergency, and timing is everything.

Enter the joint project between [DHL and Wingcopter] dubbed Parcelcopter 4.0. The half plane, half helicopter drone design was recently tested over a six month period by making medical supply drops …read more

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That Time Atari Cracked the Nintendo Entertainment System

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It was darkest hour for the video game industry following the holiday shopping season of 1982. The torrent of third party developed titles had flooded the home video game console market to the point of saturation. It incited a price war amongst retailers where new releases were dropped to 85% off MSRP after less than a month on the shelves. Mountains of warehouse inventory went unsold leaving a company like Atari choosing to dump the merchandise into the Chihuahuan desert rather than face the looming tax bill. As a result, the whole home video game industry receded seemingly overnight.

One …read more

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Teardown: Sony’s New Aibo goes Under the Knife

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In a complete surprise, Sony has moved to release the latest version of their robotic dog series, Aibo, in North America. The device is already out in Japan, where there are a number of owner’s clubs that would rival any dedicated kennel club. Thanks to the [Robot Start] team, we now have a glimpse of what goes into making the robotic equivalent of man’s best friend in their teardown of an Aibo ERS-1000.

According to Yoshihiro of Robot Start, Aibo looks to be using a proprietary battery reminiscent of the Handycam camcorders. Those three gold contacts are used for charging …read more

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