Amazing video of an RCX robot using vision command (or a derrivative) to play pong on a real screen. Jmarco writes: “I have designed a Mindstorm Robot who plays Pong game. It have a Webcam, and it’s controled through Infrared with the laptop computer. There is not trick. It truely plays itself!” [via] Link.
Michael writes: “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I remember reading about an expensive commercial product for it, and there’s a much cheaper product available that is similar, but it records only things of a smaller size and the description seems to imply the recordings can only be played back on these machines, not regular turntables. (It’s a kit, which is nice, but the Gieskes.nl recorder looks much cooler.) I’m interested in trying Gieskes.nl’s project, but I’m wondering if there are other people out there who have done this so I can supplement these instructions a bit. Do you know of anyone else who has information about doing this sort of thing?” Link.
A MAKE reader writes in about some DIY film gear projects: “Today’s posting on Self-Reliant Film considers the pros and cons of DIY film tools, along with a compilation of a number of links (and a reference to the “Crafter’s Manifesto” found in Make)!” The article has a pretty good overview of many of the film gear projects we cover here, including the $10 video camera stabilizer. Link.
Even a baby can be a geek at heart. These handmade baby onezies designs, from perl code to an embroidered classic mac, will make any computer geek parent proud. Thanks Leah!
Link.
Kkassing writes “After setting up two webcams and the new Skype beta to watch my dog while I’m out, I decided to give him some incentive to obey my commands over the internet. So I built an internet powered dog feeder with a Basic Stamp kit and two servos (one to drop the food, one to knock the funnel if it gets stuck). Full source included.” Link.
PaulIE has a great Instructable for bending tubing, he writes “Here I show how to bend aluminum tubing. This is basically documentation of how I built a new bow rail for my sailboat. I trace the curve that I want on some scrap lumber. This scrap will be used to build the bending jig. I’m just using a couple of old 2×4’s. You wood should be somewhat thicker than the diameter of the tub you wish to bend.” Link.
Aplumb writes in with some handy information regarding using a mouse as a scanner we posted earlier:“A lot of cheap off-the-shelf optical mice use this chip. See this photospy I did of a Logitech I did a while back. Note: This chip is designed by the division of Agilent that was spun out and renamed Avago Technologies. See their Optical Mouse Sensors page for more up-to-date info, like the newer ADNS-2610 references.” Link.
