One of the more exciting things to come out of CES so far is the upgraded version of the Parrot AR.Drone. This quadcopter made a splash at last year’s show, with its on-board camera, WiFi connectivity, smartphone control, open source software, and under $300 price point.
This year, the Drone is back and it’s now sporting an updated 720p camera, HD recording, geo-location tech, automatable fly and record capability, and much improved flight control software and hardware improvements for better auto-stabilization and flying. The AR.Drone can be controlled from both Android and iPhones. The Drone is sold as a flying game platform — as a toy — but with these changes, this becomes a serious device and fits right in with PT’s prediction about 2012 being the year of the drone. The AR.Drone 2.0 will retail for the same price as the original and is expected to be available in Q2 2012.
To see some of the cool things that people are doing with AR.Drones, see Dronehacks.
Lumarca is a projection-based 3D volumetric display, which is collaboration between Albert Hwang, Matt Parker, and Elliot Woods. In 2010, they were the winners of Red Bull’s “Create the Future” contest at World Maker Faire New York. With a height of fifteen feet, the latest iteration of the Lumarca concept is the tallest yet and will be on display at Eyebeam in New York City starting tomorrow night.
Lumarca at Eyebeam
Thursday, January 12, 2012 – Saturday, February 4, 2012
Opening party Thursday, January 12, 6pm – 8pm
Eyebeam
540 West 21st Street, NYC
Remember Dazzle, the method of complex geometric camouflage painting introduced in WWI (designed to disguise the direction, size, and types of ships at sea)? Last year, ITP student Adam Harvey’s Dazzle CV project brought a similar technology to modern facial recognition software. Using hair and make-up tricks, Adam realized you could fairly easily defeat facial recognition algorithms found in CV software and face-recog bots like the ones that Facebook and Flickr uses. And, you get to look like a neo-tribal cyberpunk in the process. He describes CV Dazzle as “antagonistic technology.” Eye of HAL, your move. [Thanks, Jake!]
In fact, this is a two-dimensional video image projected on a curtain of water vapor produced by an ultrasonic humidifier hacked onto a laminar flow nozzle made out of a bunch of drinking straws. Not strictly a hologram, but still a very cool thingum. It’s the work of Chris Weisbart, aka YouTuber ChristopherTalosian, and comes to us via Mike Senese, who provides this description:
Based on the concept behind commercial units, but using everyday items (drinking straws, scrap PVC pipe, a kid’s humidifier from the thrift store, some scrap computer fans), he rigged up a device that creates a thin, even sheet of vapor mist. Almost translucent, but able to catch the light projected onto it from a rear-facing projector — which gives an eerie, floating hologram effect…
Extremely clever trick from designer John Leung, who’s put a coffee table with an optical grill on top of a rug patterned with a few “hashed” frames of a simple, looping animation. The net result? As you move around the room, the patterns on the rug, viewed through the table, appear to move. Dude Craft has a great “scanimation” tutorial that demonstrates how to make images of this type. [Thanks, Matt Mets!]
Animator Charles F. Hamper of Monterey Motion Graphics published a cool tutorial on how he makes his own adjustable stop-motion puppet armature parts from hardware-store raw materials including stock brass, threaded rod, and lamp parts. The images are small, but they’re big enough to see what’s going on.
Radio whiz Greg Charvat just published this video showing off a very cool experiment with the low-cost coffee can radar system he and co-workers developed, in the fall of 2010, for MIT’s open courseware initiative.
In the video, Greg describes and demonstrates a simple circuit that causes a red/green LED on the receiving antenna to glow one color when the amplitude of the received wave is positive, and another when it is negative. Moving the LED back and forth in front of the transmitter, while taking a long-exposure photograph, gives a visual map of the wavefront in space. Impressive! [Thanks, Greg!]
We’re giving away amazing kits from our new Make: Ultimate Kit Guide EVERY DAY — thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, including MakerBots!
To celebrate the release of our latest publication, the Make: Ultimate Kit Guide 2012 (and its companion website), we’re giving away at least one of the cool kits reviewed in the issue each day during the holiday season.
Today’s kit giveaway is the DIY Hologram Kit (a $100 value!) Here is MAKE Toolbox editor Arwen O’Reilly Griffith’s review from the issue:
Making holograms became faster and easier a few years ago when Litiholo introduced its Instant Hologram film. Like old Polaroids, these film plates require no developing after exposure, which means, in about an hour, you can make your own transmission hologram of anything that will sit still next to the plate. The kit also includes an LED darkroom light and the SafetyLight Laser Diode that you use to both make the exposure and view (or “reconstruct”) the hologram.
To be eligible for today’s giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment below in this post. The entry period for today’s prize will be until 11:59pm PST tonight. We’ll choose one person at random, you’ll be notified by email, and you’ll have 48 hours to respond. The Winners List is kept on the Giveaway landing page. That’s it! No purchase necessary or anything else to do. Please leave only one comment per post. You can enter as many giveaways as you like until you win. This giveaway is for US residents only. You also must be 18 years old to enter (Kids: Ask your parents to enter). See the Kit-A-Day Giveaway landing page for full sweepstakes details and Official Rules.
Important Note: If you enter this drawing, when it’s over, please check the place where you registered to comment (eg. Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter). Some people are winning these kits and then not responding when we send them a message using the available means of contacting them. We want to make sure you get your giveaway!
Instructables user dimovi took an old LCD monitor and moved the top polarizer from the surface of the screen to a pair of glasses worn by the user. Others who look at the monitor, without the polarized glasses, see only a white rectangle. Besides the übergeek cool factor, the mod could be quite useful if you’re concerned about folks looking over your shoulder at the coffee shop.
(If you’re scratching your head right now, and could perhaps use a brief refresher on how liquid-crystal displays work, you’re unlikely to find a better one than Bill Hammack’s excellent video on the subject.)
My friend Karen Nazor send me a link to this video of animations being created, phenakistoscope/persistence of vision-style, on bicycle wheels, using paper cut-outs in the spokes. Really nifty. [Thanks, Karen!]
One of the more exciting things to come out of CES so far is the upgraded version of the Parrot AR.Drone. This quadcopter made a splash at last year’s show, with its on-board camera, WiFi connectivity, smartphone control, open source software, and under $300 price point. 
In fact, this is a two-dimensional video image projected on a curtain of water vapor produced by an ultrasonic humidifier hacked onto a laminar flow nozzle made out of a bunch of drinking straws. Not strictly a hologram, but still a very cool thingum. It’s the work of Chris Weisbart, aka YouTuber 
