原创 Extremely interesting videos and projects

Sometimes it seems as though there's so much cool and interesting stuff bouncing around that you don’t know where to begin. For example, the Mighty Hamster (a.k.a. Mike Field),a computer and FPGA guru who hails from New Zealand, sent me a message saying "Max, watch this video; it takes face tracking and projection mapping to a whole new level!"

Wow. He's right. It does. I'm still reeling from the shock of what I just saw.

Do you remember my recent column Selfies 2.0? I must admit that I was quite taken with the idea of using a wireless gizmo to remotely control the shutter on one's smartphone or tablet computer. Well, Erick Rivera Juarico, just emailed me to say that -- for the last two years -- he and his colleagues have been working on a wearable wristband called the Bitbrick Band.

It seems that this little beauty can control things on one's smartphone (e.g., camera, music player, page change on readers) by means of gestures. It also supports notifications from social networks and fitness activity tracking apps that are integrated into the band. Erick tells me that they've launched this Indiegogo campaign.

I just bounced over to the campaign to take a look. There's a lot more to this than meets the eye. Things like taking hands-free selfies, flicking your wrist to control your music (e.g., play, pause, control the volume), controlling your TV (e.g., control the volume, change the channel), using simple gestures to share your current emotions on Facebook, and so forth.

Speaking of crowd-funded projects, my chum Rick Curl has been noodling about the Sound Effects Shield for Arduino. Rick just emailed me to say "I just found out about this Kickstarter campaign to make user-configurable Arduino shields. They don’t offer an audio module yet, but it still looks to be pretty useful."

You guessed it. I just bounced over to this StickyBUG campaign, and it does look very clever and very interesting.

Last but certainly not least (for the moment), as I was penning this blog, I received an email from my chum Jay Dowling who pointed me at this video of a guy building a chess table.

Jay's accompanying note was short and to the point: "Long to watch, but worth it when you see the effort he put into building it." I agree. Part 1 was almost eleven minutes long and I was glued to my screen all the way through. Part 2 is 14+ minutes long, and I can’t wait to see it.

I tell you, the end result is one of those things that is "a beauty to behold." I would love to create something like this. I also know at least one person who will appreciate all of the work involved -- my chum Steve Manley who is building an 8x8x8 RGB 3D LED cube. Quite apart from anything else, Steve really enjoys working with wood, so I can’t wait to hear what he thinks about this chess table project.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about the videos and projects discussed above, and also to hear if you've run across any interesting videos or projects yourself. One YouTube video I do want to track down is of a guy who constructed a large wooden puzzle similar in concept to this plastic Perplexus Epic puzzle I have in my office. If you know of that video, please post a link to it in the comments below.