One of the best ways to allow other devices to use your phone’s data plan to get on the internet (a process called tethering) is to have your phone become a little wifi hotspot. Then, any wifi device can get internet access via your phone. To do this with the HTC Aria, follow these steps:
Continue reading
The Philips 900NC webcam is Linux compatible (Tested with: Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04 & 10.04). Under V4L2 it supports 640×480 at 15fps out of the box. (The webcam’s box claims speeds of up to 90fps, but that is only for smaller resolutions, custom windows drivers, etc. You may be able to get better speed with an optimized Linux driver, but out of the box performance is satisfactory.) It supports ZoneMinder, but only if you set up the exact correct Device Format (NTSC M) and Capture Palette (YUV420).
It has good low-light performance, although it will not work in complete darkness without additional IR illumination.
The grand plan for my Mysterio costume is to have a backpack worn fog generator using dry ice. (I’m not sure I’ll have time to get the fog generator or the strobe lights working, as I don’t even have the jumpsuit or boot covers finished yet, but I had the PVC parts so I started work on it.)
The Plan: Have warm water in the pipe–possibly with a loop of plastic tubing wrapped around my torso fed by a pump, which would have the dual effects of keeping my special effects water near body temperature, and cooling me off, which is important in Atlanta in the summer. I’ll have a basket of dry ice inside the tube that can be lowered using string, and a fan blowing air down the top of the pipe. The Dry-Ice Fog will billow out the sides of the T pipes and look really cool emerging from under my cloak. (How I wear the fog generator is not yet part of the plan, but I’m imagining something like a backpack, or suspending it from my cowboy collar.) It will be mostly hidden under my cloak, but since I had the emerald green spray paint left over from my color matching paint buying discovery, I decided it should be color coordinated.
Cost saving measures: I bought $5 worth of PVC parts (a 4″ piece of low pressure tube, a “knock-out” cap to seal the bottom, and a 3″ to 1 1/2″ 4-way adapter. By using the $1 knock out instead of a full 4″ PVC cap I saved several dollars and made the bottom of my fog generator “flat” instead of rounded. As it will not be under any pressure other than the weight of the water and dry ice, it should hold fine. [And if it doesn’t, I always have my “Uh oh, I think my water just broke” joke all lined up.]
I also saved money (and bulk) by using a 3″ 4-way adapter, instead of a 4″ one. A 3″ PVC pipe will fit perfectly inside of a 4″ PVC pipe if you rasp off the small protrusions. (The fact that I was informed of this by a “plumber” also shopping in the Home Depot plumbing aisle slightly scares me….but since I’m not actually running pressurized water through it, and it saved me another five dollars, I decided to follow his advice.)
I drove to Home Depot hoping to find some spray paint to somewhat match the color of my gloves. As it turns out, even with an entire wall of spray paint, the only color selections with a “green” hue are limited to neon green, emerald green (which I bought, as it was closest to what I want, and may be useful in the future) and a leaf green. None of them were quite right, but I also made a discovery about the house paint counter.
Home Depot will sell you “sample” pre-mixed paints in 7.5 oz bottles to “test” a color for $3! Continue reading
The pictures above show my right-hand Mysterio costume glove, on it’s own and with the bracer.
A note: I do not recommend that you sew your own costume gloves. It’s a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, which you can probably better spend on other aspects of your costume. However, if you have decided that your gloves NEED to be made out of specific fabric to match other aspects of your costume (such as Mystero’s boots), here is how to do it. Continue reading
Here is a picture of the sphere, cape, and bracers put together. Obviously, I need to work on the green jumpsuit, gloves, and boots.
After a bit more work on the sphere, I am now able to see out of it relatively well. I used a standard green & yellow dish scrubbing sponge to buff/scratch away some of the reflective coating from the inside directly in front of my face when wearing it. I don’t have a lot of peripheral vision, and the view is slightly dimmed, but it’s much better than before. If you look very closely from the outside you can see that the “viewport” portion of the glass sphere is slightly less reflective than other areas, but because it’s dark inside the sphere I get the same effect as a one-way mirror. I have covered all of the rest of the interior of the sphere with packing tape as a poor-mans tempered glass substitute, but I will still be very careful walking or navigating steps while wearing the costume.
Today I sculpted some fillets onto my mysterio bracers using Sculpy (An oven baked modeling clay). This gives the “hooks” a more three dimensional appearance, a bit more strength, and smooths out the connections between the hooks and the bracer itself. I only used 35g of Sculpy per bracer, so the hooks are not extremely wide, but I’m glad I added them, even if it will end up taking me 5 extra hours of work.
In the picture, the bracer on the left has the Sculpy, and the one on the right is pre-Sculpy. Continue reading
Today I started on the actual costume part of my costume (as opposed to the props) and found 3 yards of remnant fabric ( $1 per yard!) that is approximately the correct color for my mysterio cape. Because the costume needs something that is closer to a cape than a full cloak, I made a “half-circle” cloak, which typically falls over the shoulders but doesn’t completely close in the front. [A full circle cloak is MUCH more massive and would hide most of your body.] The trick to cutting an even half circle is to fold your fabric in half, have somebody hold a piece of string at the corner, and trace out a quarter circle (with a washable fabric marker if you have one). When you cut out the quarter circle and open your fabric back up, both sides of your half-circle match. Then do the same folding trick when you cut out a neck hole. Remember, you can always cut more, but adding fabric is hard. If you get lucky and find a knit fabric that doesn’t fray, you may not even have to hem the edges.
Roomba with stuck bumper sensor
The above video shows a roomba with a stuck front bumper sensor. As you can see, the robot keeps backing up and trying to turn away from
the phantom obstacle it thinks is in front of it. This particular sensor was triggering because lint had gotten into the optical beam path and was blocking light to the photodiode detector even when the bumper was not being hit. I was able to repair it by removing the bumper cover (unscrewing 4 screws) and vacuuming out the hole where the plastic pole from the bumper goes between the IR diode and photo-transistor.
Continue reading
I glued the “hooks” or “spikes” to the mysterio bracers and they look very nice! I had been considering using clay or shape-lock to “fill in” the areas around the hooks to make them more “3D”. But after examining them, I think I may simply leave them as they are now. I kind of like the flat/sharp look. Next up, selecting cloth for my costume, and matching spray paint.