Imaging

Arduino Shield Makes 8-Pin Chip Programming a Snap

Arduino Shield Makes 8-Pin Chip Programming a Snap

I was delighted to see the positive reaction to my latest video, Shrinkify Your Arduino Projects, which is based on a tutorial by MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group. Their tutorial walks you through the process of not only using the Arduino as a programmer for 8-pin ATtiny chips, but also how to use Arduino code and the Arduino IDE to program them. In order to make this process easier, Randy Sarafan created an Arduino shield for programming these diminutive chips. Head over to his Instructable to get the board and learn to build your own!

Continue Reading Matt Richardson6
Light Painting a B-25 Bomber

Light Painting a B-25 Bomber

LA Photographer Eric Curry’s series “American Pride and Passion” is just beautiful. Each piece is achieved using a very simple technique: The scene is staged in darkness, a camera positioned to record it, and different parts individually illuminated—say, with a flashlight—while a long exposure is recorded. The many resulting images are composited in appropriate software, and with considerable artistry, to create the glowing, ethereally-lit finished pieces.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan6
The XKCD “Giant Head” Enhanced Depth Perception Project

The XKCD “Giant Head” Enhanced Depth Perception Project

Many of you will probably have seen this one from late August, already. I haven’t found any indication that Mr. Munroe has actually done this, yet, but there’s no reason the idea shouldn’t work, in principle. To do so requires a viewer with an individually addressable video display for each eye, but these are not too hard to come by. And large-parallax static stereograms taken using widely-separated synchronized cameras are well known.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan50
X-Wing Soap Box Racer

X-Wing Soap Box Racer

From Instructables user The Papier Boy. Complete with freaking-out R2 unit! “The spinning droid was constructed of Styrofoam and painted to look like R2-D2. I used one of my daughter’s old toys to create the motion. The toy had a gear on it that spun when a button was pushed. I cut the toy in half (it was too big) and mounted the toy to the underside of the body and glued the droid head onto the gear. To control the spinning I used an old NES controller. ..”

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan2
DIY Capacitive Touch Brush Stylus

DIY Capacitive Touch Brush Stylus

Check out this capacitive touch brush stylus from Instructables user Margarita Benites. Using an old paint brush and some conductive thread, Benites recreates a traditional paint brush stylus that works with modern capacitive touch screen devices such as tablets and handsets for a fraction of the cost of a commercial version.

Continue Reading Adam Flaherty