Projects we'd like to start
Phil W's projects
Here's some of my projects which go on and off the backburner. I guess this is a sampling of the type of stuff I'd like to muck around with. Not sure if this is the best page for it, but hey.
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Remote control submarine with live video feed
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Web-based remote control car/plane/submarine
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Self-powered underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA without the SC) (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFIlNbRQwQ4 for demo of prototype)
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3D LCD display (using polarised glasses - similar concept to shutter glasses but without needing a cable to sync to monitor)
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Walk-on-water boots (for fishing I guess)
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Ski Wings for cross country skiing so you can cruise when the wind is behind you.
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Remote control autonomous skidoo for back-country snowboard trips. Basically, you ride the skidoo up the hill, then it drives itself down to meet you at the bottom.
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Bed that gets lifted vertical in the morning as an entirely unignorable alarm
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Solar powered desert rover that cruises around the outback and does stuff. Like, I dunno, looks for gold or something, and then comes back and tells you the coordinates of where all the gold is. And then profit.
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Real estate website that is actually easy and nice to use
Adrian Swanepoel's projects
RoboMagellan
Autonomous robot with simultaneous mapping and location.
AUV and/or ROV
An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a robot which travels underwater. In military applications, AUVs are also known as unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUV
Remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) is the common accepted name for tethered underwater robots in the offshore industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROV
Sydney has al lot of water to be explored and mapped.
ROV’s are relatively easy to build and operate, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/robotrov/ for many design ideas.
Handbag with built in light
A handbag with light/lights that switches on when the bag is opened includes rechargeable LiPoly battery.
The LillyPad series of open source hardware should work perfectly.
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardLilyPad
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?c=135
Open Source PLC
A programmable logic controller (PLC) or programmable controller is a digital computer used for automation of electromechanical processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or lighting fixtures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller
I feel that a project such as this will go a long way to make home automation more affordable.
There are several passers/translators for Ladder available which can be adopted to use with this. http://www.cq.cx/ladder.pl
The “processor unit” will need to be a microprocessor such as the AVR32 (yes this is still an MCU, but can be used as an MPU, alternatively an ARM7 type MPU can be looked at), while IO modules can be microcontroller based such as the ATMega’s. An open bus architecture such as I2C can be used for communication between the microprocessor and microcontrollers while CAN can be used for communication with HMI’s.
Gavin Smith's projects
Since others are posting their projects, I'll do the same. Some info here. All these are in various stages of completion.
Jon Hirsch's projects
Just some stuff I would like to do if I had the space.
- MAME arcade cabinet pref. cocktail style or coffee table.
- Kayak, I've made one already out of plywood and fibreglass but I need another.
Lachlan Pease's projects
- Arcade Cabinet related projects (hoping to use them to restart UNSW's GameDevSoc)
- Simple API, to lower the barrier of entry to simple gamedev
- Various interfaces, from traditional (joysticks) to experimental (tilt-table control for neverball, capacitive sensors, etc)
- Coin slot mechanism, for use at public events
- Cheaper version of the BlinkMM
Andrew P's Projects
- Web-based remote control car/plane/submarine (good ideas are clearly common Phil)
- 1976 Suzuki GT250 motorcycle restoration
- Wiimote controlled anything - especially Augmented Reality Papervision
- DESTROY MY STUFF .COM - send us your stuff and choose how you want us to kill, blow it up, drill, burn etc - Maybe we need a Ballistics Safe area and lot's of high frame rate HD webcams
Jason Ball's Projects
- The Ever-growing irrigation controller/tank manager/plant waterer (http://jasonfball.blogspot.com)
- The new and quickly hashed up cat waterer... keeping the buggers out of my garden ;)
- Recently - environmental monitoring for work (generator/ups/power)
Woody's Projects
- Conversion of 1963 Cortina to Battery Electric / Industrial AC direct drive
Terry's Projects
- A (probably) charlieplexed clock based (probably) on interesting bottles (probably) mounted on an attractive (probably) timber backplane. It'll need to be networked and use NTP time synchronisation. It'll hopefully be capable of alpha-numeric display and be able to read an ICS calendar and display the events of the day with an alert/alarm of some sort for high-priority events. If it does something visually attractive in between time updates all the better.
- Man-Pack kit. Essentially a backpack containing DC power, transciever(s), antenna(s) and peripheral for pedestrian mobile radio operation on HF. Needs to be light-weight, robust, water-resistant and as compact as possible.
- USB-based amater radio/computer interface. Must support transmit audio, receive audio, push-to-talk and computer-control. The idea is to make something compact and robust to suit Man-Pack operation with a low power netbook and transceiver.
- MAME cabinet. Two-player coffee-table style. I miss my arcade games and I want somewhere to put my drink while I play. Unanswered questions at the moment are: choice of motherboard, how to do pumping sound cheaply, dimensions/design of physical cabinet, choice of monitor and mounting details, selection/source of glass top and how to make the thing aesthetically pleasing. Could involve pub-based research.
- HF transceiver. Ideally will be single-sideband to suit voice and data-mode operation. Low power is fine. Some frequency agility is desirable. Multi-band would be nice.
- Find a low cost alternative to NSLU2 for embedded projects. I'm not convinced Arduino is grunty enough for the sorts of things I want to do, SheevaPlug is interesting, but form-factor undesirable. Extra-cool would be to design it myself, or to extend an existing Open-Hardware design.
Franc's Projects
City of Sydney - By George! Hidden Networks
http://www.lanewaysbygeorge.com.au/default.aspx
Flow Tunnel
After seeing one at the Montshire Museum I had have my own.
http://maxn.posterous.com/
Comments (8)
Phillip Wright said
at 10:07 pm on Apr 26, 2009
NAND to Tetris looks hot - count me in - Phil W.
IainC said
at 3:45 pm on Apr 27, 2009
Phillip and Adrian, I'm playing with ideas involving an autonomous RC plane - I've got an Ardupilot and GPS on the way (but I'll be waiting a few weeks for the xy ir sensor module to become available). If you want to throw around ideas about Arduino/GPS controlled stuff, we should meet up for a drink.
Adriaan Swanepoel said
at 8:04 am on Apr 28, 2009
Hi Ian, are you the number 12 Ian on the RSVP list? We can have a chat then. I would like to arrange an event similar to the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle comp, just need to find a venue that will allow arial vehicles.
IainC said
at 5:42 pm on Apr 28, 2009
@Adriaan Yep, #12 is me. See you next Monday...
Andrew Peel said
at 1:09 pm on May 5, 2009
@Iain @Adrian @Phil
I'm up for the FPV RC stuff with Phil too. I'm ordering Video Tx/Rx this month - with HeadPlay goggles next month. I wonder if they'll work underwater in the submarine.Have we all seen DIYDRONE.COM? nice IR sensitive blimps.
Gavin Smith said
at 3:55 pm on May 17, 2009
Just added links for my new 3D printer and some samples of printed objects.
http://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/Makerbot
http://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/makerbot-build
Max Nippard said
at 5:13 am on Jul 4, 2009
I've been thinking about a sub with video too. Snorkelling's fun but doing it with robots is beter!
anyone know what signals get through salt water well?
James Gardiner said
at 6:58 pm on Jun 8, 2010
Hey Gavin
I am just finishing off ordering all the parts for two Reprap Mendel machines (3D printers - reprap.org). I am running a winter studio at UTS (architecture), in which two teams will be putting the machines together, printing two new sets of RP parts for another two Mendels and then we will experiment with add-ons and improvements.
We should probably print a set of parts out for Silicon Beach Sydney.
After spending too many hours looking at all of the materials sourcing options, I decided to buy all the parts in from O/S in kits. Many of the parts were 3 -6 times more expensive in OZ. Ended up costing about $1250 delivered.
Nice to see there are others around doing similar things. The Reprap Sydney group seems pretty dead (http://forums.reprap.org/list.php?30).
J
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