Collaborate Disseminate
Honestly, we never wondered how those old film cameras used to put the date stamp in the lower right-hand corner of the frame. Luckily, [Ben Krasnow] does not suffer from this deplorable lack of curiosity, and his video teardown of a date-stamping film camera back (embedded below) not only answers …read more
Continue reading [Ben Krasnow] Looks Inside Film Camera Date Stamping
You’ve got to hand it to marketers – they really know how to make you want something. All it takes is a little parental guilt, a bit of technical magic, and bam, you’re locked into a product you never knew you needed.
This prototype flight tracking nightlight for kids is …read more
Continue reading Ask Hackaday: How Would You Build This Flight Tracker for Kids?
A few years ago, new, innovative pico projectors, influenced by one of the TI development kits, started appearing in Kickstarter projects and other various DIY endeavours. Those projects fizzled out, most likely due to the cost of the projectors, but we got a few laughs out of it: that wearable …read more
Listen, it hurts to hear, but somebody needs to say it. It’s over, OK? You’ve got to admit it and move on. Sure, you could get away with it for a week or two in January, but now it’s just getting weird. No matter how hard you fight it, the …read more
Continue reading Teardown: AppLights Personalized Projection
If you are a Hackaday reader, you probably like space in real life, fiction, or both. A trip to a planetarium is a great treat, but what if you could have a planetarium in your backyard? [Ecasill] thought so and used a Zip Tie domes kit to create just such a thing. It takes some sewing and a projector, but there’s a problem. The dome needs to come down if there is going to be bad weather. The answer? Magnetic dowel rods.
Because the magnets are brittle, plastic dip covers them after epoxy sticks them in place. The cloth has …read more
Projection mapping might not be a term you’re familiar with, but you’ve certainly seen the effect before. It’s when images are projected onto an object, usually one that has an interesting or unusual shape, to create an augmented reality display. Software is used to map the image or video to the physical shape it’s being projected on, often to surreal effect. Imagine an office building suddenly being “painted” another color for the Holidays, and you’ll get the idea.
This might seem like one of those things that’s difficult to pull off at the hobbyist level, but as it turns out, …read more
Continue reading Raspberry Pi Projection Mapping Crash Course
[Ted Yapo] has big ideas for using Augmented Reality as a tool to enhance an electronics workbench. His concept uses a camera and projector system working together to detect objects on a workbench, and project information onto and around them. [Ted] envisions virtual displays from DMMs, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other instruments projected onto a convenient place on the actual work area, removing the need to glance back and forth between tools and the instrument display. That’s only the beginning, however. A good camera and projector system could read barcodes on component bags to track inventory, guide manual PCB assembly …read more
Continue reading Bringing Augmented Reality to the Workbench
[Dr. Roel Vertegaal] has led a team of collaborators from [Queen’s University] to build TeleHuman 2 — a telepresence setup that aims to project your actual-size likeness in 3D.
Developed primarily for business videoconferencing, the setup requires a bit of space on both ends of the call. A ring of stereoscopic z-cameras capture the subject from all angles which the corresponding projector on the other end displays. Those projectors are arranged in similar halo above a human-sized, retro-reflective cylindrical screen which can be walked around — viewing the image from any angle without a VR headset or glasses — in …read more
Continue reading A Telepresence System That’s Starting To Feel Like A Holodeck
We’re all slowly getting used to the idea of wearable technology, fabulous flops like the creepy Google Glass notwithstanding. But the big problem with tiny tech is in finding the real estate for user interfaces. Sure, we can make it tiny, but human fingers aren’t getting any smaller, and eyeballs can only resolve so much fine detail.
So how do we make wearables more usable? According to Carnegie-Mellon researcher [Chris Harrison], one way is to turn the wearer into the display and the input device (PDF link). More specifically, his LumiWatch projects a touch-responsive display onto the forearm of the …read more
Continue reading Roll Up Your Sleeve, Watch a Video with This Smart Watch Forearm Projector
Laser projectors like those popular in clubs or laser shows often use mirror galvanometers to reflect the laser and draw in 2D. Without galvos, and on a tight budget, [Vitaliy Mosesov] decided that instead of downgrading the quality, he would seek an entirely different solution: a spinning mirror drum.
He fires a laser at a rotating drum with twelve mirror faces, each at a different adjustable vertical angle. The laser will hit a higher or lower point on the projection surface depending on which mirror it’s reflecting off – this creates resolution in the Y direction.
Timing the pulsing of …read more
Continue reading Laser projector ditches galvanometer for spinning drum