Tag Archives: sensor

When a father makes a gadget for his unborn son, that’s true dedication. Corey Menscher designed and built the Kickbee for his pregnant wife. The baby kicks her stomach, a piezo sensor reads it and another module twitters the response for all to see. Can you guess what microcontroller is used to control all of this? Take a guess. Yup. ...

Few things in this world possess the security that an apelike creature from the Himalayan region provides. Yet, if you can’t find the abominable snowman you can always name your portable security device after it. The difference? This yeti is no myth and it just might save your hide when everything goes SNAFU. Enter the YETI Portable Security System YT-100. ...

I’ve always wanted to integrate a touch pad into my clothing and thanks to Hannah Perner-Wilson (aka Plusea), that dream could become a reality. For those not familiar with Plusea, she’s all about wearable computing. Her latest work, the Knit Touchpad, is just like the touchpads we use on our notebooks, except this one is made of fabric. It works ...

Check out Guilherme Martin’s first attempt at making a robot. He uses an Arduino and motor shield with one servo for steering and a standard DC motor for movement. It’s dubbed “baratinha” meaning “little cockroach” in Portuguese. Using two micro-switches as if they were antennae, baratinha is able to detect obstacles in its way.� It’s just like a real cockroach ...

Apparently, NXT STEP blog reader DTAAX’s watch must have broke, which would explain why he designed this LEGO sundial. This DIY finds a new way to tell time the old way. It was built using the LEGO NTX platform (plus a PDA for trigonometric functions) using a slew of light and touch sensors, allowing the sundial to perform like any ...

Remember that fishy business about the potential for hackers to prematurely shut off a pacemaker via a wireless communicator? Since many people use pacemakers to keep their heart beating, scientists are taking this loophole extremely seriously and have raised a solution to the issue. Proposed is a cloaking device, an external attachment that the pacemaker owner would wear, resembling a ...

That Nintendo Wii sensor bar isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. Alan Parekh explains it’s simplicity by exposing it’s composition of just a few IR LEDs. Then, he manages to turn an ordinary TV remote control into a working Wii sensor bar. All it requires is a few holes drilled in that old remote of yours. And if ...

In The Matrix, robots are self-aware of their existence. This is a bad thing as it eventually leads to the enslavement of mankind. The idea of a human brain inside a robot is intriguing for anyone whose ever wanted to put their brain in a robot body to become an Adrian Barbobot. Scientists are getting closer to that vision, having ...

We’ve seen artificial corneas that could replace damaged organic corneas, but how about a digital image sensor that adjusts itself like a human retina? That’s exactly what John Rogers at the University of Illinois is creating. An improved method of transferring silicon sensors onto a curved surface allowing for the sensor to capture wide-angle views with low distortion. Because it ...

This robot may not be well versed enough in sports to partake in Robot Soccer, but it’s certainly lazy enough to be a sports fan. With three different modes of control: universal remote, beacon navigation, and thermal sensor following, the RoboStool tries its best to find you, so it can take the weight off your feet or die trying. Labeled ...