NBC 2009Apr05

From Noisebridge
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Sensebridge Cyborg Meeting April 5th, 2009

Introductions[edit]

  • Rachel - doing "eyes on back of the back" vibro-vest
  • Rendy - likes buildings things out of electronics. From the meetup list - and Rachel has been telling him about Noisebridge. He made the microphone-armature breathalyzer. Can we make an inverse volume control for karaoke mics?
  • Matt - interested in anklet project
  • Skory - linguistics, bought an electronics book.
  • Eric - anklet, mechanical and electrical engineering
  • Corey - Denise invited him. Wearable computer boots which flash, which sense when you tap/kick something. Communicate with other similar boots. Click your heels three times and they turn ruby. Works with Swarm, which is doing something similar with hexagon thingies.
  • Mikolaj - anklet as well. Wants general spacial awareness like Rachel's vest, context sensitive - longer distances when you are on your motorbike (motorbike has radar rangers), etc. $5 modules for cruise-control distancing (radar) available now (message to list about this). (left early)
  • Michael Kan - touted Design Engineering Thursdays again
  • Denise - making converse shoes!

Boots Discussion[edit]

Denise is going to do boots.

Can we put a pico projector in them?

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/08/gps-alarm-shoes.html http://theaphroditeproject.tv/photos/

Discussion of Ultra-sonic Rangers[edit]

Kinda crappy at distances larger than 3 feet

Want three directions - the three lanes behind you (left, center, right).

Phased array may be possible & better, but would probably require a fixed (not fabric) armature

LIDAR - could we rig up our own to avoid the expense of commercial systems? Story about 3D scanning using laser, wine glass and turntable with matlab script to do the math.


Order Distributions[edit]

RBBBs, Batteries, and Shift Registers are all in.

Mikolaj paid Skory & Eric for RBBBs and Batteries

Rachel paid Eric for Batteries

Show & Tell[edit]

Rachel: Has lamont shift register to drive motor. Has functioning circuit using ultra-sonic ranger ("sensor module"). The Maxbotics works better than the Parallax Ping))), and it's half the size and easier to work with. They can also be daisy chained. Range is about 3 feet reliably, Ping))) was about 2 feet. They also sell different focussed version - more focus gives more distance, but less angle. Difference may be in code only. So sensing is a large problem - she needs 10 feet!

Eric & Skory: New armature, with pockets & velcro & ribbon cable. New small circuit using RBBB and Shift Register. Analog compass which turns on motors? Ten pins sticking out in a circle. Dinsmore 1490 Compass Chip Stat Page Dinsmore Sensors home page Super promising for an entirely analog compass vibro-anklet, which would be much simpler and cheaper than current Ardiuno one, but of course less flexible.