For this valentines day, my wife got me a MindFlex from Mattel. I have been wanting one of these since they have been on the market. It is a really interesting game where you control a foam ball with your mind. The ball will rise with the more focused you are. Letting your mind wonder and as Morphius likes to say “free your mind”, the ball will lower.
New Years Ball Drop Replica
I was asked to build a replica ball drop for a friend. I had 3 days to get this thing working. It was a fun build, and took a lot of headaches to get it setup. In the end it worked out great.
Android on IRC
I recently gave a lecture on DDoS in my Network OS class. I demonstrated a simple bot on the computers in the class. I also demonstrated how portable devices are capable of running bots as well.
I used Android Scripting Environment (ASE) for the demo. The commands I gave it where text, call, speak aloud, and vibrate. The only draw back ASE has is no real GUI support. I can’t wait for the day when OpenGL ES is ported to python. Anyway, ASE allows access to almost all of the phones featurtes. Here is a link to the API ref: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/ApiReference
Plasma Caster [UPDATE Sept. 24, 2010]
I finaly started working on a moc Plasma Caster like the one attached to the Predators shoulder.
Here are some pictures of the first setup. I plan to make changes.The range finder you see will judge the distance from my face, if I turn my head and it goes too far away, the servo will move in the direction I moved my head to get back in its original position; hence, it will follow my head looking where I look. Tilted head position will be judged from an accelerometer and mapped to the servos as well.
Predator Vision (work in progress)
I thought it would be a good time to share what I am currently working on. A friend from work and I are building costumes. Not necessarily for Halloween, but because I’ve always wanted a predator outfit. Sure you can buy them online, but not with the features I’m adding. I am going to mount a webcam on the mask and put some video glasses in it as well. Something like these:
Wrist Mounted Single Stage Coil Gun
I’ve been wanting to build a coil gun for some time now, and finally got around to getting the supplies. There is nothing special about it, besides being wrist mounted. I use a disposable camera’s capacitor charging circuit to power the coil. I only use one capacitor, the one that came with the camera, so it’s not that strong of propulsion; enough to hurt when discharged on your wedding ring though…
Maverick Mouse
NOTE: Better to watch the video on youtube and viewed full screen.
In this project I take a Nerf Maverick and use it as my mouse for my laptop. This was easier than I thought it would be. It took about two days to do, and I use python for the computer interface. This is much like the Nerf gun for the Wii. You could do the same thing with the gun for the Wii and connect your Wiimote to the PC via bluetooth. That way uses PyGlove as the emulator.
NetBot? IRC controlled air freshner
The idea struck me when my wife always complained about the house stinking when she got off of work. Well, my geek side kicked in and I can freshen the house from any computer connected to the internet via IRC (internet chat relay).
My IRC bot
This is an irc bot I wrote. I first started out with a BotNet for my security class, but decided to make more commands and turn it into something useful. It was interesting and fun to learn about the protocol. It’s an easy protocol pick up on, and can be very useful.
Facial Recognition via Python (non-OpenCV)
After working with the IR, I decided to cut the IR equipment out of the equation and was going to try my hand at facial recognition. This one does not use OpenCV or haarcascades. Instead, it uses a library I found through google called fdlib. It was written in C/C++, so using it with python shouldn’t be a problem. You can embed C/C++ in python via ctypes. You have already seen me use it in a previews post to set the cursor position in windows.
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