Science Projects

We rarely post Kickstarters, but Chris Walker is a friend of Adafruit’s and he recently stopped by to give us a demo, it’s great – we hope to one day stock them!. AGENT: The World’s Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology @ Kickstarter. New news! 2 days until the end of the campaign 925%+ funded already, closing in on $1 million extra funding being used to hold hackathons, upgrade watchstraps from silicone to leather (optional), licensing international fonts and premium weather data streams, building app store, etc. General highlights: sdk and emulator, .NET Micro Framework dual-processor, built-in power metering 7 days battery runtime (typical), up to 30 days battery runtime (watchface-only mode) watch app store — and you can side-load apps (run *anyapp, no walled garden) we are open sourcing our .NET Micro Framework port for the new SAM4S microcontrollers.

The wireless charging options available on flagship phones is a great feature, but most of us aren’t rocking the latest and greatest cellphone. [Daniel] came up with a great mod that adds wireless charging to just about every cellphone ever, at a very low price and a few bits and bobs ordered off eBay. [Daniel] used a Palm Touchstone inductive charger – available for a few bucks on eBay – along with an inductive charging circuit from a Palm Pixi. This charging circuit was designed to complement the Touchstone charger, and is simple enough to wire up; all [Dan] needed to do was put the coil and charging circuit near the charge, and it output 5 Volts to charge any phone. To get the power from the charging circuit into his phone’s battery, [Daniel] simply wired the output of the coil’s circuit to the USB in on the phone. The space inside his S2 was pretty tight but he was able to come up with two ways to install the charging circuit, for use with either the stock back cover or a third-party case. For anyone with a soldering iron, it’s a quick bit of work to add wireless charging to any phone. We’re loving [Dan]‘s solution, as the Palm gear he used is so readily available on eBay and junk drawers the world over. Filed under: Cellphone Hacks, phone hacks

AVR Programmer Built From a USB Keyboard Recently, my keyboard became louder and louder while typing, so I decided to buy a new one. But what to do with the old one? Ever since I saw the AVR programmer that uses a USB hub, I thought of abusing a USB keyboard for that. Theory Most keyboards have at least three indicator LEDs (Num-, Caps- and Scroll-Lock), which can be controlled from the host using a HID Set_Report request, and thus can be used as general purpose outputs. The inputs are a bit more tricky, since the keyboard uses a scan matrix divided in rows and columns. Most keyboards also do some debouncing and detect rows that are ‘stuck’, which means that we need to simulate the keypress of a single key. If a key has been pressed, the keyboard triggers an interrupt transfer with 8 bytes of data, containing the current state of all keys. The first byte reflects the state of the modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt, etc.) which I’ll be using as inputs. Additionally, the keys can be polled using a Get_Report request to the control endpoint, but the interrupt transfers need to be handled either way, since my keyboard just locked up after the first keypress when I didn’t handle them first.

In New York, our new Citi Bike bikeshare program is really taking off. We were inspired to create a helmet that navigates you to the nearest Citi Bike docking station with LED strip inside. We found this nifty Carrera foldable helmet with spaces that just begged to be illuminated (without compromising the smooth outer safety surface). Check out the video on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo, and build your own Citi Bike Helmet with our step-by-step on the Adafruit Learning System. Customize the code for bikeshare in your city! This project was created in collaboration with Tyler Cooper & Justin Cooper, with major video help from Risa Rose and JM Imbrescia. Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

[Scott Harden] continues his work on a high precision crystal oven. Being able to set a precise temperature depends on the ability to measure temperature with precision as well. That’s where this circuit comes in. It’s based around an LM335 linear temperature sensor. He’s designed support circuitry that can read temperature with hundredth-of-a-degree resolution. Reading the sensor directly with an AVR microcontroller’s Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) will only yield about 1-2 degrees of range. He approached the problem by amplifying the output of the sensor to target a specific range. For the demonstration he adjusts the swing from 0-5V to correspond to a room temperature to body temperature range. Of course he’s using analog circuitry to make this happen. But before our digital-only readers click away you should view his video explanation. This exhibits the base functionality of OpAmps. And we think [Scott] did a great job of presenting the concepts by providing a clear and readable schematic and explaining each part slowly and completely. So what’s this crystal oven we mentioned? It’s a radio project that goes back several years. Filed under: radio hacks

Today is 19th June, and one day later, from 21th June, our 3th anniversary activity will step into  beginning stage, at that time, 100  gifts will be sent out  to our lucky friends. We seriously prepared and will diligently give away every piece of  gift to the lucky birds, because...

The region where the addendum and dedendum meet at the pitch cylinder consists of a bazillion tiny faces

As all 6-year-olds should, [Marc]‘s son is a huge fan of Star Wars. For his birthday party, he wanted a Star Wars themed cake, and making one in the shape of R2D2 seemed to be right up [Marc]‘s alley. Of course any clone of everyone’s favorite R2 unit should also display Leia’s distress message to Ben Kenobi, and [Marc] figured out a way to do just that. Because of R2′s strange and decidedly non-cake shape, [Marc] first constructed a stand out of wood, cardboard, and a PVC pipe to hold the cake into place. The cylindrical droid body is of course made of cake and frosting, with R2′s dome made out of fondant. The PVC pipe running up the center of the droid provided [Marc] with the ability to run a power and video connector up R2′s spine. These are connected to a small projector receiving video from a netbook placed out of the way. You can check out a video of the R2 cake playing Leia’s holographic distress message below. At the end of the video, there’s a 6-year-old birthday party guest saying, “what is that?” It might be time to dig out the VHS player and the non-remastered trilogy, [Marc]. Filed under: portable video hacks

“Virtual gaming headset Oculus Rift raises $16 million from Spark Capital, Matrix Partners:“ Fresh off the heels of a buzzy turn at gaming conference E3, Oculus Rift has raised its first round of funding, according to several people familiar with the situation. The Southern California company, which makes virtual reality headsets for gaming, raised $16 million in its first round of outside capital co-led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners co-led the deal. The round has a $30 million pre-money valuation, people familiar with the matter said. Oculus Rift did not provide a comment for this story. Spark Capital did not return emails. Oculus Rift first caught attention in September 2012 with its Kickstarter campaign seeking $250,000; it wound up raising $2.4 million. Similar to the company’s crowdfunding campaign, Oculus started raising venture capital with a target of just $5.5 million; the round was oversubscribed and eventually expanded to $16 million. Gaming industry insiders called the company the “the belle of the ball” at E3 this year. That’s on the back of a nomination for “best hardware of the year” last year. Its product is not yet commercially available and no official release date has been set for the $300 consumer units in sight. The company recently upgraded to HD, and shipped 7,500 to developers looking to build for the platform. Thus far, Team Fortress 2, Museum of the Microstar, Half-Life 2 and Tuscany Razer Hydra are available to play on the headset with a few dozen more titles in development.

CuteCircuit & Bloody Beetroots: The Mask: CuteCircuit has designed a brand new spectacular Mask for dj Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, aka the Bloody Beetroots. Respecting the original Mask shape, the new high tech Mask lights up adding more adrenaline to the show and even more strength to the music.  The Mask features the latest advances in wearable technology design; the new skintight and ultrathin Mask’s fabric includes LEDs Eyes able to glow in multiple patterns matching the electro house dance punk dj eclectic performance. The new Mask was inspired by the need of the Bloody Beetroots to interact with their audience in a more direct way. The Mask is controlled wirelessly using CuteCircuit’s Q Software. The Mask features hundreds of LEDs that flash and sparkle following the rhythm of the music in a futuristic live performance that is captivating fans all around the world. Don’t miss the chance to watch the making of videos of the CuteCircuit’s Mask “ SBCR presents… Bloody Beetroots Mask Reveal” on youtube. Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!