Clay's Blog - Hardware Hacking

Antikythera Model Completed

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:00-0600

A couple years ago, I wrote about the world's earliest known computer, the Antikythera, finally being decoded as a result of X-Ray Tomography. Now two years later, Michael Wright, a former curator at the Science Museum in London, has built a working model of the device. I absolutely love that the Antikythera was finally cracked by an interested "amateur" - though this is probably a misnomer. In any case, Wright is clearly an extraordinary hardware hacker, rather than a research scientist. And I really love that he was able to do what many others have not. Here's the article on Wired.com, which includes a video interview from New Scientist with Michael Wright.

Digital Projection, Spatial Augmented Reality, and Shape Grammar - SIGGRAPH 2008

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:38:00-0600

It's been an inspiring conference so far. The classes I've attended have been excellent. On Monday I attended the half-day course on projectors and spatial augmented reality for (I think) the 4th year running. Ramesh Raskar and Oliver Bimber were fantastic as usual. They were joined this year by Aditi Majumber who spoke about large-format displays and Hendrik Lensch who spoke on computational illumination for 3D scene modeling. One of the things I really get excited about in this class is what Raskar calls RFIG. In essence, this entails adding a photosensor to an RFID tag and then projecting structured light from a handheld projector on the photosensor in order to acquire a relative position for the tagged item. With the unique identifier and the relative position, we can query a database and then project useful information about the identified items directly on the items themselves using our handheld projector. All this is made possible by very small and relatively inexpensive handheld computers with wireless network access and attached projectors. You can check out their work, including the full-text of their book, Spatial Augmented Reality, on the supporting website: SpatialAR.com. Great stuff. [More]

Multi-Touch Displays Redux

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:55:00-0600

In an earlier post, I wrote about Microsoft's Surface technology and work done at NYU on multi-touch display technology. Peter Hutterer at the University of South Australia's Wearable Computer Lab has just demoed a new version of his MPX, Multi-Pointer X Server under Linux. There's an article on his blog and a video of his multi-touch extension of MPX under Ubuntu. Here are the hardware details. Now I just need to get my hands on a compatible touch screen and try this out

Antikythera Decoded

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:09:00-0600

Scientists using the latest X-Ray Tomography equipment have finally gotten a clear picture of the complex mechanism that represents the oldest known computer. The Antikythera was found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece and dates from circa 200 BCE. The computer was used to track and predict moon cycles. Tony Freeth and Mike G. Edmunds from University of Cardiff, Wales, published their findings in the journal Nature. Here's the NYT article.

Replacing an Apple iPod Mini Battery

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:13:00-0600

So my mom and dad weren't using an iPod Mini they had laying around and the battery wasn't holding a charge for more than an hour, so they asked if I wanted it. My wife didn't have one of her own, so I figured I could get a replacement battery and change it myself. How hard can it be?

[More]

Re-Purposing That Stupid CueCat Optical Reader

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:26:00-0600

Back in the early days of the Internet boom, a nasty little company created a piece of hardware and software called the CueCat. If you were a Wired or Forbes subscriber, or if you were a frequent RadioShack shopper, you may still have one of these little kitties laying around your home or office. I did. [More]