Using Rock Band / Hero Games as Instrument Trainer

With the flood of dumbed-down instrument games like Guitar Hero that do wonders for your button pushing but don’t do much for your guitar skills, there has been a flood of innovators trying to rig controllers that will make real instruments work in the game.

In the above video, we see a simpler solution. Instead of focusing on the instrument, focus on the sound. By using the Rock Band mic, she is able to control the game via flute.

Obviously, this would be better if the game were designed for such, but I don’t see much chance of that coming from the big developers. What we need is a good open source program to do for the mic what StepMania did for the dance pad. If anyone out there knows of a good equivalent, let me know and I will update this post accordingly.

(via Neatorama)

The Human Body Used as a Conduit for Data

The ALPS device pictured above creates a modulated electric field capable of traveling through the human body, using it like a wire. They have it set up to transfer a photo from the unit, through your body, and into a handheld device.

It has obvious potential for things like having your cellphone pick up data from things you touch, ID cards, and in implanted devices.

(Via CrunchGear)

Books for Dummies

If you are the computer geek of the family, you’ll appreciate the above clip. The disconnect between technophobes and technophiles isn’t a recent occurrence, but lately it is becoming less about class and more about interest and aptitude. Computers are constantly conquering previously analog realms, from calculations, to games, to news to photography, to shopping, dating and socializing, it is getting hard to be a member of society without a certain amount of proficiency. Those who are only now finding something that engages them on the computer are having a tough time of it. A small group of them take to it like a duck to water, but the rest often find themselves utterly lost in a set of conventions that, while sensible and simple, are completely alien. The video above seems at first glance to be a ridiculous spoof, but it’s a little scary just how close it comes to the truth.

How to Levitate Objects With Your Mind (open Thread)

A few things I took note of recently, but didn’t find the time to write up properly:

Upon going through my logs, I was amused note how highly I ranked for the search term “how to levitate objects with your mind”. I’ve never written about any such thing, but it reminded me of a couple of recent products:

• The Mind Flex (made by Mattell) Is a new game with a sensor that reads your brain waves and uses them to control a fan that flies a ball around an obstacle course. I’m not sure how much this gives you for those ‘real’ telekinesis skills, but it looks like a good party game after a few drinks.
  Buy the Mattel Mindflex Game here.
• The Force Trainer works along the same lines, levitating a ping pong ball in a tube.
• Emotiv is a new (out soon) video game controller headset that reads brain waves in order to perform game functions. It isn’t going to replace your old controller in the short term, but may be handy for things like switching weapons and function keys. If I were severely handicapped, I would be filled with a lot of hope by these devices. I bet Stephen Hawking  would dominate with this (get well soon man). The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator is a similar product, and I’m sure there are many more to come.
• On the levitation front, we have already posted the FunFlyStick, and the Levitating Coaster, which can levitate objects up to two pounds.

RealView3D is a 3D scanner. Just place your object on the turntable, and the scanner will spin it and scan.

Rubik’s pepper mill.

This guy built an awesome mousetrap out of delicately balanced kitchen items and a strobe shutter camera to capture the whole escapade on film. Cute pictures.

Is someone always one step ahead of me? I plotted here to build a portable pathway out of moss to follow me around, but this guy did it.

Please consider this to be an open post as well. Feel free to post a link to your blog, throw up a link to something you think should be featured on this site, or talk about what is on your mind. All comments will be moderated, so don’t be spammy.

Don’t Piss Off Crows (mutually beneficial synanthropy)

I’ve always had a great admiration for crows. While other animals retreat from society, or scuttle around at night, crows embrace it and take an interest in finding ways to make the system work for them. I’ve witnessed them just down the street from my home using cars to crack walnuts. Most of the ways they have adapted society to their needs weren’t taught to them by people, they figured it out and taught their friends. 

Joshua Klein has shown himself to be smarter than the average crow, and if this works, the average person, by taking things one step further. He designed a vending machine for crows. They put in a coin, it spits out a peanut. He calls it mutually beneficial synanthropy. In the video (another great TED Talk) Klein explains how the system trains the crows. I don’t think this will be necessary. Once the first few learn how to use it, the whole continent will know in short order. Sure, it starts with picking up loose change they find lying around, but pretty soon you have murders of crows mugging people in dark alleys for their change so they can get their peanut fix. 

The crazy thing about crows is they are smart enough not only to figure out how this works, but also to teach their friends. They are natural pack rats and are attracted to coins anyway. There are a lot of crows in the world, and a lot of loose change. Klein professes an interest in advancing the project to teach crows how to pick up trash or other beneficial tasks, but I’m still back at the vending machine concept. The idea really is brilliant. I wonder what else we could teach them to do?

Yessss….everything will go according to plan…*cackle*

Persistence of vision app for the iphone

Light Writer is an iphone app that displays flashing lights in order to create a persistence of vision effect. It allows you to write messages or images in the air with a wave of the hand. It sounds like a great way to quietly send a message to anyone in sight. I imagine it would only be effective in pretty dark conditions ,but I’m betting we haven’t seen the end of this app. It could be big. Available here via itunes.

(via crunchgear)

Logic Wireless: Logic Bolt – Projector Phone

 

A while back I posted a review of a laser projected keyboard with bluetooth connectivity, and was wondering how long it would be until our cellphones simply projected a keyboard and display, essentially creating a full sized laptop that would fit in a shirt pocket. That day is approaching faster than I anticipated. Logic Wireless will get you half way there with this phone it is displaying at CES ‘08 going by the name ‘Logic Bolt’, which contains a projector capable of projecting an image up to five feet away with two hours worth of battery life.  The phone has a touch screen and a 3 megapixel camera, and will sell for around $600.

(via MobileCrunch)

Laser Communicator

The coherent nature of laser light, combined with its low-divergence beam, makes it perfect for all sorts of fun projects. This is one you can do at home with simple, cheap parts. When you speak, the microphone picks up your voice and converts it into a signal that is used to vary the output of a  laser pointer.  The receiver is a solar cell attached to a piezoelectric speaker. With a pair of each, you can stay in communication as long as you have line of sight. It has the benefit of being hard to eavesdrop on as well. Pdf with instructions here. (Via crunchGear)

a similar project could be made to use the reflected light of a laser pointer off of a window to pick up vibrations and transmit sounds from distant buildings.

HUD for Billiards

These are some top notch geeks. They built a setup to compute and project the trajectories of pool shots directly onto their table. It doesn’t work terribly well, but I think it is mostly a problem of low end hardware and strange setup. Why didn’t they put the webcam by the projector, pointed at the mirror?  By having it in the corner they make things immensely more difficult to compute. For more info and the code, go here.

I think once Surface goes mainstream, innovations like this will come in a flood.

Laser Interface

 

These tiny units project a virtual laser keyboard on your table. They are fully functional and even make those little clicky click sounds while you type (optional). It uses a couple of sensors to measure the shadows thrown by your fingers from the projected light in order to indicate their positions. There are several on the market now, including this one conveniently located on amazon. It is compatible with bluetooth and USB, most operating systems, mobile and otherwise, and runs on DC, battery, or USB.

One of the first things that occurred to me when I saw this is that someone needed to make one for DDR/Stepmania. Remove the need to store and stand on a giant mat. Apparently someone is at least partially on that trail (via Engadget), although the execution looks relatively weak at the moment.

Obviously we will be seeing a lot more of this kind of tech soon. I’m hoping in the near future laptops will come inside cellphones. Just drop it on the table and project a keyboard and screen. You could probably do that now with a pico projector, a good cellphone, and one of these.
You can purchase it at ThinkGeek Electronics

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