Dec 08

AR.Drone gets Urbi open source robot interface drivers, tracks a red rubber ball like nobody’s business (video)

Posted in: augmented reality, AugmentedReality, hack, open source, opensource, remote control, RemoteControl, robot, robotics, Today's Chili, video
Just when we thought that Parrot’s iPhone-controlled airship couldn’t be any more of a blast, a gentleman named Psykokwak (yes, really) has been hard at work on an implementation of the URBI (Universal Robot Body Interface) for the AR.Drone. And what’s more, he’s gone and written a twenty-five line script that lets the thing to pick out — and shadow — a red rubber ball. Pretty awesome, right? You’ll need an AR.Drone of course, as well as a computer (clients are available for PC, Linux, and Mac), the interface of your choice (joystick, keyboard, whatever) and of course — for the current demonstration — a red rubber ball. For the technical nitty gritty, check out the links below. But before you do make sure you peep the demonstration video after the break.

Continue reading AR.Drone gets Urbi open source robot interface drivers, tracks a red rubber ball like nobody’s business (video)

AR.Drone gets Urbi open source robot interface drivers, tracks a red rubber ball like nobody’s business (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 29

Neato XV-11 robot vacuum gets its very own open source LIDAR hack

Posted in: diy, hack, hands-on, household, laser, open source, opensource, robot, Robots, Today's Chili, video
There’s nothing like a little bounty to light a fire under a group of open source fanatics, is there? We saw this principle applied recently when Adafruit offered up cold, hard cash for an Open Source Kinect driver, and now one enterprising reader over at robotbox.net has gone and hacked the LIDAR unit on a Neato XV-11 robot vacuum — and won $401 for the effort. What’s this mean to you? Well, the gentleman (who goes by the nom de hack Hash79) can now read data sent from the optical ranging hardware on the vacuum to a PC. There has been a pretty enthusiastic group of hackers surrounding the device for a while now and now with a little hard work (and a $399 autonomous robot vacuum) you too can have a 360 degree scanning LIDAR with one degree accuracy and a 10Hz refresh rate. Pretty sweet, right? Video after the break.

Continue reading Neato XV-11 robot vacuum gets its very own open source LIDAR hack

Neato XV-11 robot vacuum gets its very own open source LIDAR hack originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 28

DARwIn-OP humanoid revealed, ready to open source your robotics program

Posted in: open source, opensource, robot, Today's Chili

The next version of the RoboCup-famous DARwIn bot is about ready to give the Nao a run for its money. The new DARwIn-OP from Robotis and Virginia Tech’s RoMeLa (led by Dr. Dennis Hong, who joined us on the Engadget Show earlier this year) is just about to land, and the first pictures of the finished thing have started to circulate. While the bot is designed to perform, with sensors and servos suitable for higher-end robotics, the main thrust of the design is the open source and modular nature of the hardware and software. The bot can be purchased as a product from Robotis, but the CAD files are publicly available, and its plastic parts can be fabricated by the end user to save money (you do have a 3D printer, right?). Rumor has it the robot will retail for around $8,000, around half the cost of its closed source Nao competition. The full unveil of the robot is due at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots a couple weeks from now.

DARwIn-OP humanoid revealed, ready to open source your robotics program originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 27

Symbian Foundation axing websites on December 17th, source repositories available ‘upon request’

Posted in: nokia, open source, opensource, operating system, OperatingSystem, os, symbian, Today's Chili

We’d heard that the Symbian Foundation would undergo some drastic changes as it transitions to a licensing body, and here’s number one — every official Symbian website will be shuttered on the 17th of next month. That goes for every page from symbian.org down to the Symbian Twitter and Facebook feeds, and the source code itself will be shelved. If you want access to any of it, even the databases of user-generated bug reports, you’ll have to ask the Foundation for a hard copy and pay a nominal media and shipping fee after January 31st. We’re trying to reach Symbian right now to figure out the full repercussions of this move, but assuming Nokia’s promise to keep Symbian open-source still rings true, you might want to start stashing away the repositories and setting up mirrors before the Foundation drops off the face of the web — and perhaps the Symbian crowdsource community, too.

Symbian Foundation axing websites on December 17th, source repositories available ‘upon request’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Nov 2010 13:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 22

Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video)

Posted in: hack, Hacks, kinect, Microsoft, mod, mods, open source, opensource, Star Wars, Today's Chili, video, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox360

What, you didn’t think the Kinect open source community would just take a break for the weekend, did you? Microsoft certainly wouldn’t want that, and after seeing how much shadow puppetry warmed our hearts, we wouldn’t want it either! Thankfully, someone in this world can now track a wooden stick to emulate a lightsaber in real time, bringing one classic meme that much closer to actuality (and the promised Star Wars Kinect game not even parsec closer to release). If that’s not enough, we also have a demo made that converts hand-waving to MIDI notes — which, as creator Ben X notes, puts him one step closer to Ableton Live integration — and a pretty pretty wild visual of body dysmorphic disorder (and a chubby cat) courtesy of the powerful open source Cinder library and a Vimeo user who goes by “flight404.” If those were appetizer and two-part entree, respectively, our post-meal coffee would be a pretty sharp critique on Kinect Joy Ride — where it seems, on at least one track, you can nab a bronze trophy by staying as still as humanly possible. All the footage you seek is after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video)

Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink technabob, Create Digital Music, Reddit  |  sourceYouTube (1), (2), (3), Vimeo  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 20

Microsoft: I’m a PC, and Kinect open-source drivers were my idea

Posted in: education, hack, hacked, Hacks, kinect, Microsoft, mod, mods, open source, opensource, Today's Chili, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox360

When word first reached Microsoft that the open-source community would hack the Kinect, the company’s response was pretty heavy-handed: “Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products,” a rep told CNET, pledging to “work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.” But now that Kinect mods blow our minds on a near-daily basis, Redmond has changed its tone. Microsoft’s Alex Kipman told NPR Science Daily listeners that as far as the company’s concerned, the Kinect hasn’t actually been hacked thus far, and that Microsoft actually left the camera’s USB connection unprotected “by design” to let the community take advantage. Though he and fellow Microsoftie Shannon Loftis wouldn’t commit to official PC software drivers for the device, he did say that the company would “partner sooner rather than later” with academic institutions to get the hardware doled out, and suggested that some universities started playing with Kinect even before its commercial launch. Read a transcript of the pertinent section of the podcast after the break, or listen for yourself at our source link starting at the 18:22 mark.

[Thanks, Fred T.]

Continue reading Microsoft: I’m a PC, and Kinect open-source drivers were my idea

Microsoft: I’m a PC, and Kinect open-source drivers were my idea originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Nov 2010 12:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 19

Russia working on a national OS, Linux ‘at the end of its life cycle’?

Posted in: Linux, Microsoft, open source, opensource, os, Today's Chili
Remember when the Russian government confiscated computers from environmental activists, and then justified it by saying they were looking for unlicensed Microsoft software? And then Microsoft went ahead and gave a unilateral software license to all the NGOs and media outlets in the country? And then Putin wrestled an alligator? Well, it seems like the software giant and the land of Dostoevsky and Rasputin have been at cross-purposes for quite a while now. Indeed, Glynn Moody’s Open… blog has been tracking the country’s progress in developing its own Linux-based Open Source OS (similar to efforts by Cuba and North Korea) for some time, although as of yet it doesn’t look like there has been much success. At any rate, Microsoft Russia president Nikolai Pryanishnikov doesn’t seem to be threatened by the prospect: “We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS,” he is quoted as saying in an article at cnews.ru. “And, moreover, [Linux] is at the end of its life cycle.” Oh, really? Please don’t tell Tux just yet… the news would break his heart.

Russia working on a national OS, Linux ‘at the end of its life cycle’? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 10

Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download

Posted in: hack, kinect, Microsoft, open source, opensource, Today's Chili, video, xbox 360, Xbox360

This is a little confusing, but it looks like there’s another Kinect driver out in the wild, and this one is actually available for download. The folks at NUI Group, who posted results first, are working on an SDK and Windows driver for all the capabilities of the device, which they plan to release as open source once their $10k donation fund is filled up. Meanwhile, hacker Hector Martin has performed a quick and dirty hack of his own (three hours into the European launch, no less) and has released his results and code into the wild. Sure, pulling data from the IR and RGB cameras and displaying it is a lot different than actually making sense of it, but if you’re just looking for a way to plug your Kinect into your computer and squeeze some fun visuals out of it (and you’re smart enough to deal with some pretty raw code), it looks like Hector is your man of the hour. Peep his video proof after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download

Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink AddictiveTips  |  sourceOpen source Kinect driver  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 06

Indamixx 2 Atom-powered MeeGo tablet touts rockstar looks, $999 price tag

Posted in: audio, intel, Linux, maemo, meego, multitouch, Music, open source, opensource, slate, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, Today's Chili, video

Indamixx — get it?! — may be a relative dark horse in the race to tablet supremacy, but those looking for something a touch outlandish can’t possibly ignore the company’s latest. The self-titled Indamixx 2 slate has just recently broke cover, with a prototype boasting Intel’s single-core 1.66GHz Atom N450 (a dual-core chip is slated to hit the finalized version), 2GB of RAM, a trio of USB 2.0 ports, a VGA output, Ethernet socket and analog audio input / output jacks. There’s no exact word on the screen size or resolution, but the kicker is the software — this guy’s loaded with Transmission 5.0, a music-centric OS that’s actually built around MeeGo.

The creators say that they chose MeeGo due to its fondness of multitouch inputs, and based on the videos we’ve seen of it running, it definitely looks like a wise choice. Moreover, those looking to use this for more traditional tasks will be thrilled to know that they still can, and considering that it’s Linux underneath, the limits are near-endless when it comes to tweaking options. For those in no position to wait for the final build, you can hit the source link in order to snag “beta hardware” for $999; we’re hoping that those who wait will be treated to far more sensible pricing, but there’s no question that we’re intrigued either way. Hop on past the break to see this bad boy get down.

Continue reading Indamixx 2 Atom-powered MeeGo tablet touts rockstar looks, $999 price tag

Indamixx 2 Atom-powered MeeGo tablet touts rockstar looks, $999 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Nov 2010 12:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MeeGo Forums  |  sourceCreate Digital Music, Indamixx  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 03

Fedora 14 now available for download, complete with MeeGo trimmings

Posted in: Linux, open source, opensource, operating system, OperatingSystem, os, Today's Chili
Ubuntu may be the Linux distribution of choice for many these days, but it’s hardly the only game in town, and one of the other big players has now gotten an update that might just sway some folks back to its team. That comes in the form of the Red Hat sponsored Fedora 14, which is aimed specifically at “developers, system administrators and open source enthusiasts.” If that includes you, you can expect to get a slew of mostly behind-the-scenes updates, including a new software framework for Spice desktop virtualization, a range of new debugging features, an updated tech preview of the GNOME shell environment that will be part of the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release and, of particular note, some software from the MeeGo community that promises an “enhanced experience on netbooks and small devices.” As with previous Fedora releases, it’s also available in a number of different “spins” to suit your tastes and needs and it’s, of course, completely free. Head on past the break for the complete press release, and hit up the link below to download the OS.

Continue reading Fedora 14 now available for download, complete with MeeGo trimmings

Fedora 14 now available for download, complete with MeeGo trimmings originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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