We’d bet that most readers stream video as the lion’s share of their entertainment consumption. It’s getting easier and easier thanks to great platforms like XBMC, but not everything is available in one place, which can be a bit off-putting. [Tony Hoang] is trying to simplify his viewing experience by creating one remote to rule all of his streaming software. He’s got an HTPC connected to his entertainment center, and used a bit of scripting to add some functionality to this Lenovo N9502 remote control.

The hack is entirely software-side. The remote already works quite well, but he remapped the home, end, and page up buttons, as well as the mouse controller. The three buttons will launch XBMC, Hulu, and Netflix respectively. They are also set to kill the other applications before launch so that one button will do everything needed to switch between one another. The mouse remapping takes care of up, down, left, and right keys for navigation in the UI and control of the playing videos. See a demo of the setup after the break.

Everything was done with autohotkey scripts for Windows. But this should be easy to code with other OSes as well. If you’re prone to have a slip of the finger you might want to work out a double-click to launch the applications so you don’t accidentally hit a key in the middle of your favorite show.

Although it could be debated as to whether or not this is a “hack,” since the equipment used is built for excavation, the scale of it seems deserving of a mention. In the linked article, [Joe] is quoted as saying, “the common misconception here is that the RC’s are not here to excavate my basement, but rather the basement excavation project is here for the RC’s.”  This could be a motto for most makers/hackers in that projects are frequently not done for the resulting product, but for the experience of making something your own.

According to [Joe], he excavates 2 – 3 cubic yards per year with his little RC vehicles.  Living in Canada as a rancher and farmer, he’s required to be near his home to feed his hungry animals even during the cold winter months. During this time, there can be very little to do. After sometimes working 16 hour days during the summer, he needed something to keep him occupied close to home. Be sure to check out the excavation video after the break, or check out the original article for even more pictures and video!

Although not the biggest hexapod walker we’ve seen by any means, this one is nonetheless worth a mention. Made with windshield wiper motors, PVC pipe, and lots of wood, it’s still a good size ‘bot. It’s a work in progress, but check out the video of it’s legs being tested as well as one of it’s preliminary assembly after the break.

Control is similar to this little hexapod that we’ve featured before in the the front and back legs are driven by a motor and linked together using threaded rod.  In this case though, the rod is 1/4 – 20, much larger than the 4-40 rod used by it’s little predecessor. Also unlike little PegLeg, the middle legs are independently actuated, not linked together. This should allow for some different modes of locomotion.

Different modes of locomotion, that is, if it’s able to walk. Although able to pick itself up, the middle legs are barely strong enough to support the large battery and powerful, but heavy, automotive motors. This is an introductory post to this project, and everything will hopefully be worked out and explained in time. Be sure to check back and see how this robot progresses, and the details of the different elements of this ‘bot.

Special thanks to [Evie] the dog for posing next to this RC walker in the photo!

As a learning experience [GeriBoss] put together an IR remote control receiver board for his PC. His want of volume control from across the room was reason enough to undertake the project, and he got to work with a 38 kHz receiver module and Manchester encoding in the process.

The decoder portion of the project is built around an ATtiny2313 chip. The external interrupt pin (INT0) is connected to a TSOP31238. When it decodes a valid remote code it pushes a character to the RS232 chip connecting to the computer’s serial port.

We think this is a wonderful accomplishment for [GeriBoss], but we encourage him to refine the design further. You’ll notice in the image there’s a USB port on the board which is only used to provide regulated power. We know it’s possible to use V-USB with the ATtiny2313 to add USB functionality and this would be a great way to learn about it. We’d also like to mention the resistor and capacitor suggested for filtering the IR receiver module signal. We’ve included the recommended application schematic for that part after the break.

When [Matt] started building his multirotor helicopter, he was far too involved with building his craft than worrying about small details like how to actually control his helicopter. Everything worked out in the end, though, thanks to his homebrew RC setup built out of a USB joystick and a few XBees.

After a few initial revisions and a lot of chatting on a multirotor IRC room, [Matt] stumbled across the idea of using pulse-position modulation for his radio control setup.

After a few more revisions, [Matt] settled on using an Arduino Pro Mini for his flight computer, paired with a WiFly module. By putting his multicopter into Ad-hoc mode, he can connect to the copter with his laptop via WiFi and send commands without the need for a second XBee.

Now, whenever [Matt] wants to fly his multicopter, he plugs the WiFly module into his MultiWii board, connects his laptop to the copter, and runs a small Python script. It may not be easier than buying a nice Futaba transmitter, but [Matt] can easily expand his setup as the capabilities of his copter fleet grows.

Video of [Matt]‘s copter in flight after the break.

Half the fun of buying toys for your kids is getting your hands on them when they no longer play with them. [Kerry Wong] seems to be in this boat. He bought a Syma S107G helicopter for his son. The flying toy is IR controlled and he reverse engineered the protocol it uses. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of thing with the toy. In fact, we already know the protocol has been sniffed and there is even a jammer project floating around out there. But we took a good look at this because of what you can learn from [Kerry's] process.

He starts by connecting an IR photo diode to his oscilloscope. This gave him the timing between commands and allowed him to verify that the signals are encoded in a 38 kHz carrier signal. He then switched over to an IR module designed to demodulate this frequency. From there he captures and graphs all of the possible control configuration, establishing a timing and command set for the device. He finishes it off by building a replacement controller based on an Arduino. You can see a video of that hardware after the break.

We’ve seen our fair share of remote-controlled planes turned into UAVs and FPV platforms, but the Techpod is the first airplane we’ve seen specifically designed to be used as a camera-equipped robotic airplane.

The Techpod is the brainchild of [Wayne Garris]. He has been flying camera-equipped FPV airplanes for a while now, but recently realized the current offerings of remote control planes didn’t match his needs. [Wayne] decided to design his own plane specifically designed with a pan/tilt camera mount in the nose.

[Wayne]‘s prototype was designed with some very fancy aeronautical design software packages and milled out of foam. From the videos after the break, we can see the Techpod flies beautifully, but needs the Kickstarter community to bring his model to the masses.

The specs for the Techpod put it up there with other high-performances FPV and UAV models; with its 102 inch (2590 mm) wingspan and a pair of batteries wired in parallel, the Techpod can stay aloft transmitting video for up to one hour.

Video of the plane in action after the break.

After a year of development, the OSRC is ready to hit a manufacturing plant. This transmitter (and receiver) for remote control cars, airplanes, quadcopters, and semi-autonomous drones features modular everything and allows you to transmit video from the cockpit and display it on a screen in the palm of your hands.

This isn’t the first time we’ve posted something on the OSRC, but since then [Demetris], the team lead has released a ton of information on the capabilities of the OSRC main unit, the clip-on FPV display, and the receiver and transmitter modules made to operate with the OSRC.

Unfortunately, [Demetris] spent a good deal of money developing the OSRC and is now doing a pseudo-kickstarter, ostensibly to gauge interest and allay a bank’s fears when applying for a small business loan. If all goes as planned, the OSRC base unit should cost somewhere around €300, a significant sum, but really not that bad considering the OSRC simply does more than other high-end RC transmitters.

We’re hoping enough people will step up and promise to buy the OSRC after it goes into manufacturing, otherwise we’ll be waiting a few more years before the big names in the RC transmitter game manage to come out with a similar product.

This device is a prank or gag that [Eric Heisler] came up with. It will intercept IR remote control codes and play them back after a bit of a delay. The example he shows in the video (embedded after the break) catches the television power signal from a remote, then sends it again after about thirty seconds. This shuts off the TV and would be extremely annoying if you were unable to find the device. Fortunately (for the victim), [Eric] included a piezo buzzer that Rickrolls after sending each code. Just follow that tune to find the offending hardware.

He chose to use an ATtiny10 microcontroller. It looks like it’s realizing its full potential as the six-pin package use all available I/O to control the IR receiver module, an IR led, and the buzzer. It runs from a coin cell without regulation and the circuit was free-formed on a tiny surface mount breakout board which hosts the microprocessor.

Producing micro robotics is not yet easy or cost-effective, but why do we need to when we can just control the minds of cockroaches? A team or researchers from North Carolina State University is calling this augmented Madagascar Hissing cockroach an Insect Biobot in their latest research paper (PDF). It’s not the first time the subject has come up. There have already been proofs in research and even more amateur endeavors. But the accuracy and control seen in the video after the break is beyond compare.

The roach is being controlled to perfectly follow a line on the floor. One of the things that makes this iteration work so well is that the microcontroller includes a new type of ADC-based feedback loop for the stimulation of the insect brain. This helps to ensure that the roach will not grow accustom to the stimulation and stop responding to it. Since this variety of insect can live for about two years, this breakthrough makes it into a reusable tool. We’re not sure what that tool will be used for, but perhaps the next plague of insects will be controlled by man, and not mother nature.

[Thanks Ferdinand via NBC News]

Just the other day we were reading a Reddit thread asking about how to control a television with a smartphone. The conversation started by talking about adding an IR LED to the phone.  Then it was suggested that there should be standalone Bluetooth devices that convert commands to IR, and came around to the ideas that TV’s should ship with native Bluetooth hardware. We couldn’t agree more but we’re also not about to replace our TV just for this option. That’s why we were delighted to find this project waiting on our tip line. It’s a method of controlling a camera shutter from a smartphone using Bluetooth. But the technique will work for any device which uses an infrared remote control.

The video after the break shows two different devices controlling the camera shutter. As you can see in the diagram above, the iPhone is the master controller, connecting to a Bluetooth headset mounted on the camera. That headset was altered to feed the speaker connections into an IR LED pointed at the camera’s receiver. The iPhone plays an encoded audio track matching the IR remote command, resulting in the properly formatted message flashing on the LED. The watch doesn’t have the ability to playback audio, but it can send a message to the phone, which then plays the proper audio track through the headset.

Google TV is a network connected television. It does what you would think: plays television programs, streams media from the internet, and allows you to open URLs on your TV. But one nice feature is that it can also be controlled over the network rather than just via an IR remote. Google publishes apps which make this simple with a smartphone. But the communications protocols are open source, so [Leon Nicholls] wrote a Google TV remote control library in Java.

The video after the break shows him pairing a Raspberry Pi with his television. The image above is the pairing verification code you must enter on the remote hardware before control is authorized. Apparently this is a step that needs to happen every time if using Google’s Anymote library. [Leon] improved that, by saving the pairing data so that the first authorization is all that it takes.

He figures this could be used for home automation. We’re not sure what we’d use it for but we’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

Not since the great jukebox war of 2007 has anyone been as dangerous as a drunken friend with a wallet full of one dollar bills. Now whenever [Reza] goes out to the pub, he can play tracks on the TouchTune jukebox for free.

TouchTune jukeboxes are basically a computer with a touch screen monitor connected to a club’s sound system and the Internet. Unlike old timey 45 or CD-powered jukeboxes, the Internet connection allows you to feed in a few bucks and play just about every song that has ever made the Top 40. TouchTune jukeboxes come with a remote for the barkeep and of course these remotes are sold online.

[Reza] got his hands on one of these remotes and found a handy button labeled ‘P1′ that adds a promotional credit to the TouchTunes jukebox – basically, a free song. Just taking a TouchTune remote to the pub probably wouldn’t work, though, as each remote is paired with its jukebox with an 8-bit ID.

To get around not knowing the ID for each TouchTune device, [Reza] simply tried them all with the help of an Arduino. After connecting a 433 MHz radio receiver  to a logic analyzer, [Reza] set the remote ID to 0 and pressed the promotional credit button. The remote ID was then set to 255 and the free play button was pressed again.

This gave [Reza] a whole bunch of binary digits, the only difference between the remote with an ID of 0 and 255 being the 9th through 16th bits. By sending the promotional credit code over a 433MHz transmitter and incrementing the remote ID each time, [Reza] was able to try every remote ID and get a free credit every time his Arduino ran some code.

In the interests of portability, [Reza] made his own small board with a 433MHz transmitter that is easily pocketable for the next time he heads out to the pub. Finally, a solution to the guy who is willing to blow $20 on Aerosmith.

[Andrew] has enjoyed the company of [Pepper] the parrot for more than a decade, but the screeching of a bird in the next room is something you just don’t get used to. [Pepper] gets very lonely some times, and short of having someone carry him around on a shoulder, there’s not much that will calm this parrot down. [Andrew] had the idea of allowing [Pepper] to wander around the house with the help of a mobile platform. Thus was born the Bird Buggy, a parrot-controlled vehicle built just for [Pepper].

The buggy itself is a basic two-wheel drive platform driven with a small beak-compatible joystick mounted just forward of [Pepper]‘s perch. With this system, it’s possible for [Pepper] to follow [Andrew] through the house. [Andrew] wanted to make sure [Pepper] couldn’t drive into walls or table legs, so a suite of sensors on the front stops the buggy whenever an object is detected.

One very cool feature of the bird buggy is its ability to drive itself to a recharging station. It does this with the help of a webcam and OpenCV and a pair of markers just behind the charging port. When the Beagleboard on the buggy sees the green and yellow markers for the charging port align, it knows its directly in front of the charging port.

You can see [Pepper] driving his new whip around after the break, along with a very cool demo of the bird buggy docking with its charging port.

[Reza] continues his work with the remote control protocol for a Touch Tunes Jukebox. This time around he had a universal remote PCB fabricated and wrote code to skip to the next track. Regular readers will remember that he started by making an Arduino transmit all possible remote codes to give him free credits. This dedicated board will do the same thing, but he had to come up with a way to sniff the remote code inorder to skip songs he doesn’t like.

The problem with trying to skip tracks is that it takes over four minutes to transmit the a command with every possible remote control code. [Reza] mentions that at this rate the song will probably be done playing before the proper code is tried. So he refocused his efforts to use the device to capture the remote code for the Jukebox at the local bar. If you happen to be there when the bar tender uses the remote, you can then go back to your workshop and reverse engineer the signal to get at the code. The obvious next step is to write firmware that can automatically parse the captured signal. This is not an easy task as the board is prone to capture garbage if there is too much RF noise in the room.

Controlling your car over WiFi is good, but mounting a webcam on it so you can actually see where you’re going is even better. [Michael] goes over how he made his wifi car with some great videos in the post about it.

The car used is a seemingly standard RC unit, which came with a speed controller that was recycled for network use. [Michael] removed the standard radio, but having this controller available kept him from having to engineer an H-bridge circuit. The radio was then replaced with a WiFi module from Sparkfun.

There were a few problems with the IP camera to begin with, as the lag was originally unbearable. After some tricks that would qualify as a good hack in itself, the camera was eventually able to perform on an acceptable level and output data to the FLTK app he used to control everything.  Check out one of his videos below of this car in action.

If that wasn’t enough RC fun for you, check out how to control your tiny RC car with a computer.

We’d bet that most readers stream video as the lion’s share of their entertainment consumption. It’s getting easier and easier thanks to great platforms like XBMC, but not everything is available in one place, which can be a bit off-putting. [Tony Hoang] is trying to simplify his viewing experience by creating one remote to rule all of his streaming software. He’s got an HTPC connected to his entertainment center, and used a bit of scripting to add some functionality to this Lenovo N9502 remote control.

The hack is entirely software-side. The remote already works quite well, but he remapped the home, end, and page up buttons, as well as the mouse controller. The three buttons will launch XBMC, Hulu, and Netflix respectively. They are also set to kill the other applications before launch so that one button will do everything needed to switch between one another. The mouse remapping takes care of up, down, left, and right keys for navigation in the UI and control of the playing videos. See a demo of the setup after the break.

Everything was done with autohotkey scripts for Windows. But this should be easy to code with other OSes as well. If you’re prone to have a slip of the finger you might want to work out a double-click to launch the applications so you don’t accidentally hit a key in the middle of your favorite show.

This television is perfect except for its low resolution and the fact that it can’t be seen by the naked eye. [Chris Shen's] art installation, Infra, uses 625 television remotes as pixels for a TV screen. There’s a little bit of insight to be gained from the details which [Chris] shared with EMSL.

The remote controls were all throw-aways. Even if there are problems with the buttons, battery connectors, or cases, chances are the IR led in each was still functional. So [Chris] patched into them using about 500 meters of speaker wire.

Why 625 pixel? Because that’s how many LEDs the Peggy board can handle. We’ve seen this open source LED board driving video in other projects. Here it’s been connected to each remote using Molex connectors. Each of the headers has the same pitch as a through-hole 5mm LED. The entire board was filled with them, and a mating crimp connector terminates the end of the wire coming out of each remote. This makes setup quite easy as the remotes don’t have to be installed in any particular order as long as the physical location matches Peggy’s grid.

You can get a glimpse of the piece playing video in the clip after the break.

[via Reddit]

Think back to your school days when each student would make a box which would receive Valentine’s cards from their friends. We have fond memories of buying cards with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them. We guess this tradition is still going strong. Instead of making a receptacle out of a shoe box  [Dr Franken Storer] helped his seven-year-old build this remote control R2D2 with sounds and lights. Yeah, it’s totally cheating. But who can begrudge a hacker dad a little fun?

The bot started as a desktop trash can. It features a domed top which looks just like the droid, but also has a hinged opening where the cards can be placed. To the lid he attached a tilt switch that triggers a Radio Shack sound player to provide the sounds. These sound modules are popular in a lot of projects like this doorbell hack. The final touch (aside from the droid decor on the outside) was to add a remote control car that lets his son drive R2 around.

We asked for more details and he delivered. You’ll find his lengthy description of the project after the jump.

Inspiration – (Dr. Evil voice on) When I was in first grade, like many of us we were tasked with building the “best” valentine’s day card box and then seeing who won. I tricked mine out, wrapped it in foil, used pink and purple hearts, and made the opening the shape of a heart, I thought for sure I’d win. Then a girl named Ashley’s mom walked in with a 4’x4’ platform. On it was a castle, I’m taking 4-5 stories high, detailed block looking castle. Complete with operating draw bridge to put the cards in. Clearly I lost. I vowed that day that when I had my own kids, I would help them build the card holder of all card holders and avenge my loss, and I think we did that here. Of course I just told my 7 year old that I thought it’d be cool and I’d help him out, but selfishly, I’m hoping somewhere out there Ashley’s kids dad is nowhere near as cool and they are dealing with some tin foil shoe boxes…. (Dr. Evil voice off now)

My son is an avid Star Wars fan, loves it, and has recently gotten into Legos/tinkering with me. So I figured now was the time to do something fun. The idea of using a desktop sized trash can as R2 popped into my head when he came home from school talking about building his valentines box. From there I figured I’d add lights, then I thought about sounds, and my 7 year old son Seth suggested me make it move. The plan was to allow him to drive it around to collect the valentines, and as the kids added them the tilt switch would cause R2 to make movie sounds. We accomplished all goals and it only took the better part of a Saturday to do!

Step 1 – we bought the perfect size can on Amazon:

[link removed; search Amazon for Umbra mini recycled]

Step 2 – while we waited for it to arrive I found online some Japanese build your own paper R2D2, sadly the link with the PDF’s was no longer available, luckily I found where some other guy saved it and re-uploaded it on the internet. The PNG from the PDF we used is attached. I essentially took the “trash can” part of R2D2 and stretched it to fit across 3 pieces of 8.5×11 paper. The can part of the trash can is about the perfect height, and I had to trim a few inches off the paper for the perfect fit.

Step 3 – We test fitted the paper design to the can with tape – the only issue we ran into was that the can ever so slightly gets smaller at the bottom of the can than the top, given our timeline I couldn’t re-oriante the design to the proper angles to make it look and fit just right, so we fudged it a bit but it still looks great. We sprayed the paper and the can with 3M picture safe spray adhesive from Walmart and carefully applied it to the can.

Step 4 – We spray painted the top of the can with some silver plastic spray paint from Walmart, then printed some random shaped squares and the top circle design the best we could (I’ll admit I used MS Paint for the shapes!!!) We cut them out and also spray adhesived them on.

Step 5 – The radio shack parts list:

1. You need a record/play back device – http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102855

2. You need a 7 color LED – http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3060680

3. 800 ohm resistor (or get as close as you can with what they have in stock, we bought a 470, 200, and 120 ohm resistors and tied them together.

4. 9v battery

5. Metal LED holder (makes it look cooler and easier to mount to the trash can lid) – http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062559

Step 6 – Last two parts – we bought an $8 RC car at walmart, and a tilt switch from the Best Buy mobile audio install bay.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Install-Mercury-Switch-Clear-IBMS-5/dp/B0068AEZBG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1360869361&sr=8-3&keywords=tilt+switch

2. New Bright RC/Truck (local walmart had them for $9, radioshack had a similar sized truck but it was $13, so we returned it)

Step 7 – See the pictures. I cut the huge clear plastic housing off of the tilt switch from best buy, and zip-tied it through a hole I drilled in the side of the swinging trash can lid

Step 8 – Drill and mount the LED to the front of the can ( used the second LED holder with no LED to mimic what R2 looks like, but mounted it too high)

Step 9 – Record R2D2 sounds from the internet onto the radioshack device – we found some great ones on Youtube.

Step 10 – since it was going to 1st grade, I cut the “record” switch to prevent accidently losing the R2 sounds at school, and the mic off of the recording device once we had the sounds, we also removed the play back switch and soldered leads to the tilt switch to active the sounds.

Step 11 – Splice into the 9v battery leads and wire them to the LED/resistors as shown:

Step 12 – We took paper the size of the bottom of the trash can, and held the RC truck over it. We traced around the tires, then transferred that pattern to the bottom of the can and used a utility knife to cut out the 4 rectangle holes for the drive wheels (allowing extra space for the front wheels to turn). I also notched and area to make the on/off easier to get to, and we then zip tied the truck to the bottom of the can. To finish it, we cut a cardboard circle and laid it over the truck to give a false bottom to the can and keep cards from getting caught in the wheels while driving.

Step 13 – Hook up the 9v, test your tilt switch, and go for a drive! Seth loves R2, and though he was bummed I couldn’t mimic the rockets that allow R2 to fly in one part of the movie, he still loves me for what we did accomplish. I’ll update you on whether or not he wins once I know!

Step 14 – Optional – Seth wanted to add legs, so after the fact he freehand drew them, colored them himself, and then we cut them out of cardboard and attached them, I have to agree with him they completed the look!

If we had more time, and a bigger budget, it would have been cool to make R2’s head spin after a card was dropped in, but there is always next year, and my 2 year old to live through in the future!

Anyone who’s traveled the grounds of a cattle ranch will tell you there’s a lot of stopping to open and close gates. But this project is aimed at letting you operate the gate from the comfort of your vehicle. It uses a spool of wire as the gate, lowering it for vehicle access with the use of a remote control.

The base station uses a solar panel to keep the battery topped off. But if you’re not frequently using the system it shouldn’t take much electricity at all. An Arduino board listens for the signal from the remote control. It then unspools the wire until it lays flat across the ground and can be driven over. Once the car has passed another click of the remote raises the gate back into position. There’s even a version that uses two gates which make up a cattle corridor.

We were thinking that it would be easy enough for the cows to push right through this. But after seeing the clip after the break it’s obvious they like to follow the rules.

[Thanks Mark]