National pie week ends on a Pi high

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Gadget Master features cool, homemade electronic gadgets proudly brought to us--by you!

Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

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Video: Get to grips with the BeagleBone

We're all for BeagleBoards here on Gadget Master and this is one I meant to flag before - Texas Instrument's system has a little brother: the BeagleBone, powered by the company's Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

"It builds in the most loved features of the BeagleBoard but has shrunk the size and price while adding more I/O connections," boasts TI in the video below. The RRP is $89.

To get started, simply plug it into your PC (Windows MacOs or Linux) and you can begin development... It will appear as a Flash drive and you will be able to extract the files to get you going.

Features of the hardware spec highlighted by BeagleBoard.org include:
    * Board size: 3.4" x 2.1"
    * Shipped with 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
    * Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
    * Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1" spacing
    * On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
    * Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.

What is the BeagleBone capable of doing? They are glad you asked...

At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.

Read more details >>

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FTDI adds touch capability to its open source platform

Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) has added a touch control input/output application boards for its Vinco development module, writes Richard Wilson.

The Vinco Touch Key applications board, which the supplier calls a shield mates with the Vinco motherboard, and incorporates a STMicroelectronics STMPE821 8-channel general purpose input/output (GPIO) capacitive touch key controller IC.

The shield has 8 touch keys which employ a capacitive sensing technology, responding to physical input stimulus from the user. It also has a set of 4 push buttons and 5 GPIO-controlled LED indicators.

The touch keys are capable of passing input data to the Vinculum-II (VNC2) dual port USB host/device controller IC on the Vinco module via an I2C bus, where it can be processed by the IC's integrated 16-bit microcontroller core.

Access to the Vinco pulse width modulation (PWM) interface is also available on the header pins. The shield requires a 5V supply, which can be drawn from an external supply or through the Vinco motherboard connections.
 
"The new Touch Key shield demonstrates the Vinco platform's ability to utilise the Android Open Accessory initiative, so that devices using the Android operating system, such as tablet PCs, can control items of external hardware through a human machine interface (HMI), over USB," said Dave Sroka, global product director at FTDI.

The shield is supplied in a 55.4 mm x 68.6 mm  form-factor, the established format of the Arduino Duemilanove and Uno boards.

There are free software libraries, drivers and source code. An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes a code editor, 'C' compiler, assembler and debugger.

The FTDI Vinco Touch Key shield is available at a cost of $33.75 for single units.
 
More information is available for download at:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/DataSheets/Modules/DS_Vinco.pdf

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I can't believe someone makes... a "Shut-up" device

When the person next to you on the train or the bus insists on talking loudly into a phone about what's for dinner or who was drunkest last night, or you're on an early train home and it coincides with chucking out time for the local sixth form college and dozens of boisterous teenagers have to talk across each other at 90db, wouldn't you just love one of these...

 

Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara (National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology) and Koji Tsukada (Ochanomizu University) have invented a "SpeechJammer".

 

It looks a bit like a speed-gun, but when you point it at a person's mouth peace and quiet dewscends.  It records the speaker's voice through a directional microphone, adds a 0.2 second delay and fires it straight back at the speaker.

Human brains need instant feedback and the continuous "echo" of their voice disrupts the thought process and brings "target" to a stop.

It may be hard to believe that someone makes these, but as a commuter I think I want one!

Source: Gizmag

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When you can't find the camera you want

Sponsored by Digi-Key
Gadget Master features cool, homemade electronic gadgets proudly brought to us--by you!

Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

Why not submit your own pride and joy for publication in Gadget Master? Send us your project details here.

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Robot helicopters perform James Bond tune

Sponsored by Digi-Key
Gadget Master features cool, homemade electronic gadgets proudly brought to us--by you!

Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

Why not submit your own pride and joy for publication in Gadget Master? Send us your project details here.

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