This Basic Stamp Microcontroller Based Garage Parking Assistant may be overkill for the application but that is what makes it fun. What fun would it be to hang a tennis ball from the ceiling when you can use technology to give you a traffic light that represents your optimal parking distance.

"The Garage Parking Assistant makes it easy to pull in the garage by signaling you with a traffic-light style display of when to pull in (GREEN), slow down (YELLOW) and stop (RED). If you pull too far in the Red LED blinks to let you know. Although this type of project has been done before I wanted to take my own approach and simplify the code and hardware while making it easy to adjust/personalize for your own use. By default all measurements are in inches, although you could easily use centimeters since that value is available as well. The range of the PING))) sensor is split up into four zones labeled Zone1 through Zone4. Please see the first attachment for a map of the zones. The values for each zone are inches from the sensor/wall."

(more…)

This Underwater ROV Project has lots of documentation of a cool work in progress. There are lots of challenges that were faced along the way that may save one of us some time on one of our future projects.

Here are a few videos of the unit in action.

"The ROV submerging technique was originally using part of a bicycle inner tube and a car windscreen washer pump. However this method was very slow to respond and difficult to control and ended up either dropping the ROV like a stone to the bottom or rising to the top. Probably a little worrying having water pumped into the same chamber as the electronics but I tried to make it as reliable as possible and with this in mind I incorporated a leak detection unit which alarms on the GUI and automatically surfaces the ROV. I gave up on this submerging method when pumping water inside caused excessive internal pressure and blew off the end cap on the ROV despite being held in place with two clamps."

(more…)

This technology looks like it works very well. I have seen lots of 2 LED motion sense units but the third LED seems to add lots to the capability. Now if only someone came up with an open source version of it since the prices seem a bit high.

"As you move in your chair and rotate your head small amounts : your game-view will precisely correspond. You never have to look away from the monitor because all aspects of your motion are amplified and adjustable. There are only 6 ways you can move around in 3D space. There are 3 ways to lean, and 3 ways to rotate. The technical term for all of these movements is "6 Degrees of Freedom" (or "6DOF"). True 6DOF support is one of the main things that puts TrackIR well ahead of any other input device."

Re-purposing old computer parts is great since it prevents working equipment from finding their way into the landfill. This XY Plotter is a great example of re-use of old equipment.

"This XY plotter was made by the group at Next Window and is the work of Paul Marson and Keith Colson, for the purposes of calibrating touch screens. It uses components that were salvaged from two old Kodak flatbed scanners. Belts, motors, driver boards and the stepper motors themselves are what is used for this machine and gives a resolution of 16 micrometers per step, far better accuracy that what is actually needed."

The most impressive part of this Lego NXT Rubik Cube Solver is that the NXT module does the computing that solves the cube! I wouldn’t have thought that would have been possible without having a PC do the calculations.

Video after the jump.

"Tilted Twister solves Rubik’s cube fully automatically. Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister’s turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces of the cube. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube."

(more…)

I haven’t seen the movie yet but I hear it is good. This Batcycle is a high tech model of the motorcycle from the movie.

"To celebrate the release of Batman’s latest film, “The Dark Knight”, the NXT BatCycle was created! Armed and dangerous, the BatCycle can handle any opponents it may encounter with its’ hidden rocket launcher that expands from the body of the bike. With its’ large wheel area, the NXT BatCycle can also stand and move unaided*! The BatCycle is a possible NXT (NeXT) generation of the Dark Knight’s vehicle collection, and has been designed in terms of style to be as similar to Batman’s other vehicles (Batmobile, Batwing, Batboat, etc) as possible."

RoboTurk is a great example of technology being used to help save lives. It uses Microsoft technology at the core to perform some very complex tasks.

"RobotTurk is a prototype Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) equipped with a camera that is capable of streaming live video of disaster struck areas to ground command stations. The helicopter carries onboard an eBox compute-unit that runs Microsoft Robotics Studio, allowing the robot to execute specific command issued by ground statation or to auto-fly or safely land. The ground stations utilizes Windows Server 2008 Media Services that capture, process and streams video. The disaster coordination users utilizes Microsoft Virtual Earth as a mapping tool and Silverlight streaming to show the overlaid video on the maps."