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Working at a motorcycle shop i am no stranger to alot of motorcycle related accident. so i am currently mking a motorcycle jacket that has turn signals and rake lights in the shoulders and back. it will plug into your motorcycle via coiled power cord

hi,
Iam a roboticists and I like to build robots. Many of you would have heard about the famous problem in control systems called the Inverted Pendulum. I have currently turned my attention towards it and have started doing research on it. within a week or so i am going to start the project.

Basically, it is a benchmark for testing many control theory algorithms including fuzzy and neural networks. it is a system where a stick or a pole will be balanced in the inverted position, automatically. i think everyone would have balanced a stick on one’s finger, my machine would just do that…

Every hobbyist needs one of these; an ATX power supply made into an inexpensive ben top power supply. Capable of supplying a number of voltages, this simple project will be a center piece for any do-it-yourselfist needing a solution to their power needs in testing and fabricating other projects.

On a standard ATX power supply, the PS_ON pin can be identified by the green wire, number 16. When a computer is turned on, this pin is tied low and gives the PSU a signal to turn on its main voltages. Prior to activating the main voltages, pin 9 being +5VSB and purple, provides a constant +5VDC as a standby voltage and can be capable of delivering an amp or more while main voltage is off. It may be useful as an indicator of AC power or an always-on supply for small loads. Other voltages provided include +3.3, +5 main, +12, -12, and -5. Combining these will yield various other voltages that can be calculated by absolute potential.- ted

My friend owns an acupuncture business and runs it himself. He bought one of those wireless (sonic proximity detector) doorbells that rings when someone walks through the door that you have mounted it next to but found that the loud ringing was disturbing his patients.

My solution was to create a device that will flash a backlit sign to alert him when someone enters or exits his business. The wireless (RF) sign will be mounted in his treatment room/s and the detector will be mounted at the main entrance.

- The detector uses a 741 OP amp as a standard break beam detector.
- The output is fed into the parallel port of a PC running any linux 2.4+ kernel.
- The PC runs a very simple C++ application that monitors the LPT port for state changes.
- A prefabricated (rc car) transmitter is connected to another pin from the LPT port.
- When a state change is detected the application alternates high and lows to the transmitter which causes it to turn on and off.
- The transmitter is a two channel (forward/backward, left/right) with four output states. With two small rectifiers you can drive four digital inputs. I.E. Four different color leds or four signs that mean different things.
- The receiver (located in another room) is used to directly drive the LED’s that backlight the sign.

- By using an additional breakbeam detector you could position them so that you could discern the number of people entering and the direction of travel (ingress or egress) and flash of illuminate as appropriate.
- The timing and interval of the illumination is directly driven by the transmitter which in turn is controlled by the LPT port which is controlled by the application.

Linux Application:

/*
This application is enough to get you started. It contains code that will control the output of the data pins on a LPT port. If your IO address is different you’ll have to change this.

This app provides only enough functionality to manually output values to the parallel port. To make it truely useful you would need to create a loop that reads the value of the port until the input value changes. When the input changes you can then automate the output state changes.

Make sure you know which pins are used for what, and that you protect your ins and outs with diodes. (I.E. Protect the output of your detector circuit (that the app “reads” because it is possible to “write” (turn on) to the pin that it is connected to.)
*/

#include
#include
#include
#include
#include

#define BASEPORT 0×378 /* lp1 */

void pulse(int iteration, int duration);

using namespace std;

int main()
{

int iteration,duration;
iteration = 0;
duration = 0;

system(”clear”);
cout<>iteration;
system(”clear”);
cout<>duration;
pulse(iteration,duration);
exit(0);
}

void pulse(int iteration, int duration)
{
if (ioperm(BASEPORT, 3, 1))
{
perror(”ioperm”);
exit(1);
}
for (int x=0;x<iteration;x++)
{
outb(255, BASEPORT);
usleep(duration * 1000);
outb(0, BASEPORT);
usleep(duration * 1000);
}

//This is how you would read from the port
/*printf(”status: %d\n”, inb(BASEPORT + 1));*/

if (ioperm(BASEPORT, 3, 0))
{
perror(”ioperm”);
exit(1);
}
}

I have been working on flight simulators for several years now and I am slowly gaining the knowledge required of the many component required to build one.

There is a lot to learn but there are many opensource projects out there that can be built upon.

- Use FlightGear as base.
- Use COTS PC/graphics cards in genlock/SLI configuration as an image generator.
- Use cots PC to house fererated I/O boards such as those made by moxa and other manufacturers. (Digital and analog input and output.)
- Build flight deck complete with instrumentation, controls, switches, lights, breakers, etc…
- Create motion base. I.E. Put the whole thing on a platform that moves which can create G-forces and feed it input from the physics engine.

There are a ton of implementation details as well but ideally it would be a federated system of diskless servers running linux and opensource software. Nothing proprietary, nothing expensive, no licenses.