Hacking & Inventing With the Arduino
So I've been thinking about tinkering with Arduino stuffs as a hobby.
Being someone motivated by lofty goals... putting on the brainstorming hat... I like to think of 100 nifty things, maybe a dozen of which I'll ever actually accomplish. So if anyone can think of any nifty thing I could add, please let me know. Honestly, I probably won't ever, but it might give me some good idea, so please, any wacky thing, do share.
I'd like to build a crazy techno hoodie or coat or vest. Most commonly known as "wearable electronics" or "wearable computers". I'm not shooting for anything terribly "useful", in the strictest sense... not at first anyway. But something techno-art-project-bling... in a hacker-nerd, educational, look-how-easy-this-is sorta way.
It could have a electroluminescent strip on my arm that shows nearby wifi-strength... Sorta like this.
Eventually, I'd like to be a walking wifi hotspot. System designed to connect to some other nearby wifi... or just allow for local gaming... maybe i could flip a switch route wifi traffic through my jailbroken iphone's 3G.
It could have a similar strip on my other arm that has some sort of light grid that can do things like this except maybe instead of sound, it visualizes AM/FM... or some other range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe a Geiger counter visualization... how much does a Geiger counter cost anyway?
It could have a speaker system built in. But I'd prefer to wait until i can get ahold of some carbon nanotubes.
It could have a build in TV-B-Gone in the sleeve. Initially I'll push a button, eventually, I could make the sleeve respond to some hilarious spider-man gesture to activate.
It could have a build in a kinetic or solar energy harvesting system to store energy into the whole system. As a sweet bonus, I could charge my iPhone with something hacked from a charge kit. (/hat-tip Brett M. & Tim A.)
It could have a GPS system. It could store a map of everywhere I've been. If I lose it, I could log into a website and find its location.
I could deploy a couple RFID detectors around my apartment, the system could tell me if my garment is in the closet, or the bedroom or the living room.
If I have three friends, and we each have this garment. I want my broach to burns red when neither of my friends are near. If one of them is within some range, my broach glows yellow. When the three of us are united. My broach shines green. Its easy stuff.
It could have a tube I could breath into to give me my B.A.C. I would make jokes about it being the reclamation tube of my still suit.
All this got me thinking about design ethic in a more abstract cultural level, and that lead to a whole other post about Cyberpunk vs Steampunk vs Siliconpunk.
This might make some kind of ultra-uber-nerd. But I suppose its a better hobby than human sacrifice.
But really my biggest fear is being arrested as a terrorist. How would i travel with this thing? Getting on a plane with it would most likely require an on-the-spot circuit diagram lesson, or a strip search. I could check it, but whats the point of building awesome environment sensitive wearable electronics if you can't wear them out and about in life.
Being someone motivated by lofty goals... putting on the brainstorming hat... I like to think of 100 nifty things, maybe a dozen of which I'll ever actually accomplish. So if anyone can think of any nifty thing I could add, please let me know. Honestly, I probably won't ever, but it might give me some good idea, so please, any wacky thing, do share.
I'd like to build a crazy techno hoodie or coat or vest. Most commonly known as "wearable electronics" or "wearable computers". I'm not shooting for anything terribly "useful", in the strictest sense... not at first anyway. But something techno-art-project-bling... in a hacker-nerd, educational, look-how-easy-this-is sorta way.
It could have a electroluminescent strip on my arm that shows nearby wifi-strength... Sorta like this.
Eventually, I'd like to be a walking wifi hotspot. System designed to connect to some other nearby wifi... or just allow for local gaming... maybe i could flip a switch route wifi traffic through my jailbroken iphone's 3G.
It could have a similar strip on my other arm that has some sort of light grid that can do things like this except maybe instead of sound, it visualizes AM/FM... or some other range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe a Geiger counter visualization... how much does a Geiger counter cost anyway?
It could have a speaker system built in. But I'd prefer to wait until i can get ahold of some carbon nanotubes.
It could have a build in TV-B-Gone in the sleeve. Initially I'll push a button, eventually, I could make the sleeve respond to some hilarious spider-man gesture to activate.
It could have a build in a kinetic or solar energy harvesting system to store energy into the whole system. As a sweet bonus, I could charge my iPhone with something hacked from a charge kit. (/hat-tip Brett M. & Tim A.)
It could have a GPS system. It could store a map of everywhere I've been. If I lose it, I could log into a website and find its location.
I could deploy a couple RFID detectors around my apartment, the system could tell me if my garment is in the closet, or the bedroom or the living room.
If I have three friends, and we each have this garment. I want my broach to burns red when neither of my friends are near. If one of them is within some range, my broach glows yellow. When the three of us are united. My broach shines green. Its easy stuff.
It could have a tube I could breath into to give me my B.A.C. I would make jokes about it being the reclamation tube of my still suit.
All this got me thinking about design ethic in a more abstract cultural level, and that lead to a whole other post about Cyberpunk vs Steampunk vs Siliconpunk.
This might make some kind of ultra-uber-nerd. But I suppose its a better hobby than human sacrifice.
But really my biggest fear is being arrested as a terrorist. How would i travel with this thing? Getting on a plane with it would most likely require an on-the-spot circuit diagram lesson, or a strip search. I could check it, but whats the point of building awesome environment sensitive wearable electronics if you can't wear them out and about in life.