Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category

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Kinect lets you play poker standing up

In this week’s installment of 101 ways to use your Kinect we have the motion gaming controller from Microsoft giving us the ability to play poker. The folks over at Poker Listings made use of the open-source Kinect software available out there, and with the use of some macros, configured the Kinect to recognize the gestures to play online poker. Folding, checking, placing a bet, and even raising can all be done with simple hand motions.

While admittedly it looks silly playing poker standing up, waving your hands like a mad man, it does make the game a lot healthier. After all, instead of sitting in front of the computer and clicking mouse buttons, you’re standing and actually using energy waving your arms all over the place. Last time I checked, it burns a lot more calories than clicking a mouse. If you’re keen on finding out how to set up your own Kinect for poker playing head over to Poker Listings’ website. Hit the break for a video demonstration of how it works:

Kinect lets you play poker standing up, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : LG Optimus 2X Review, EVO 4G Review,

DIY Friday: Charge Your iPhone With AAs or Solar Power

Limor Fried’s MintyBoost project is a great example of DIY and commercial tech working together. Take an Altoids tin, a couple of AA batteries, and some very smart hackery, and you’ve got a lightweight USB charger that you can use to charge/run your handheld iWhatever, or almost any other phone, camera, or small device that can take a charge off USB power. About a month ago, she released this video outlining the Apple hackery needed to make this work.

Reverse engineering Apple’s secret charging methods from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Clive Thompson profiled Fried and her company Adafruit Industries as part of a 2008 feature in Wired on “open source hardware.” The idea is that hackers like Fried can use what they find out about consumer devices to make and sell their own products, but also to produce DIY kits and share information with others who then build their own projects.

As a case study in the value of sharing this information, consider Rob Scott. Before he took his son on a week-long bike trip this summer, he used Fried’s schematic to hack together what turns out to be a really striking-looking solar charger for his son’s iPod.

It’s always nice to see what the maker community is doing to accessorize their retail gadgets; the results aren’t always super-polished, but they generally solve real problems in important use cases that don’t get addressed by manufacturers, either because they’re too unusual or they can’t be easily solved by more plugs, more peripherals, more complex devices that cost a lot of money. And in turn, we all find out a little bit more about how these magical devices get put together and how they work.

See Also:

• DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware
• Why Arduino Is a Hit With Hardware Hackers
• Beautifully Hypnotic Video Details Canon Macro Lens Hack
• Hacker Stuffs MiFi Inside iPad, Ruins it in the Process

DIY iPad Arcade Cabinet

iPad Arcade Accessory from hm0429 on Vimeo.

By Chris Scott Barr

ThinkGeek has a knack for teasing us with incredibly awesome April Fool’s products. Thankfully, they also release some of these, provided there is enough demand. I’m still waiting for them to make the iCade that we were teased with a couple of months ago, but they’ve not shown any signs of doing so. Of course that hasn’t stopped one crafty fellow from making his own.

In the above video you can see that they are able to plug in their iPad to the unit, and control it with a joystick and two buttons. This is made possible with an Arduino unit and a bit of tinkering. Sadly, the person hasn’t posted exactly how this was done. I hope they do, as I would certainly like to make one of these for myself.

VIA [ TUAW ]

Mindflex Hacked To Provide Negative Shock Therapy

By Chris Scott Barr

Remember that really cool MindFlex game from Mattel that we showed you last year? It’s been out for a little while now, and has given some modders a few creative ideas. Since it can provide a reaction to brain activity, the possibilities are endless. One group decided to use a modded version of the device as something to promote relaxation of the mind.

Okay, so they probably had no real intentions of using this thing for any real beneficial reason. They just wanted to shock the crap out of people. Essentially they hooked up an electroshock unit up to the device. When someone used more than low frequency brainwaves, they’d receive a painful shock. As you can see in the video, it’s hard to not concentrate when people are standing there heckling you.

This is a hack that you should probably never actually do. Negative reinforcement for using high frequency brainwaves could theoretically cause issues with concentration and cognition. However, for those curious, there are full instructions over on the creator’s website.

(These guys totally get bonus points for the background music.)

[ HarcosLabs ] VIA [ Coolest-Gadgets ]

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