We're Getting Fancy Here

For our latest project we have decided to get all fancy, we have a bit of a complicated circuit and rather than getting 8 breadboards with wire going every which way we're building a custom circuit board. It reminds me of when I did this in high school with a sharpie, transparency paper and acid. It seems however there are companies that do this for you which is all well and good, but you don't get the fun of acid burning your friends. To each his own (or her own) I guess.

Here's a nice 3D view of our custom board so far designed by Barron (we picked him to do it because he sits behind me, it just turned out he's also really good at it).

Waterloo vs the PhDs

I know we've been a bit quiet lately, our day jobs lately have been more day-and-night jobs. But don't worry we're back (like Die Hard....with a vengance!). We are moving forward on our latest project. Mind Controlled Mario.

We have successfully figured out how to control an NES from a computer using LabVIEW so the hard parts over. Now we just need to figure out how to design our own isolation system, measure microvolt signals on your skin, interpret these signals and translate them to some sort of external movement on the NES. How hard could that be, I mean its not like there's PhD research being done on this or anything. Oh wait ... there is? Then allow me to compare our iPhone remote controlled car to on done by PhD research.

Our Car ("Wendy")	German Car
$13,000	$200,000+
1 Month	2 years
Couple of undergrad degrees	PhD and research group
Built from scratch	Built on DARPA car

So bring it on PhD research.

REMIX!

The fine fellow behind the "Eating the Road" blog has remixed our video with Mistah F.A.B.'s Ghost Ride the Whip. You may recognize Eating the Road from his recent feature on Digg: "Where Should I Eat? Fast Food Edition (Flowchart)".

I must say, I've been watching this on repeat for most of the past three days...

"Some people are just WAY too smart"

"Some people are just WAY too smart."
-Chris Willis, KXAN Austin News Today host

The Austin News Today team featured our car on their broadcast this morning. Special thanks to NBC affiliate KXAN's Kate Weidaw for coming out to see our car and putting together a great story. Check out the video below.

Check out the story they published on their website as well. See the how we did it page they talked about also.

Live, Local, and Loving Lincolnshire

Waterloo Labs had another interview with the BBC today about our iPhone controlled car. This time, Will was interviewed by Tom Morris for the tech segment on the local broadcast for BBC Lincolnshire. Check out the interview below:

(download)

We're Big in Europe

Hunter's BBC Radio 2 Scotland interview with Gary
(download)

Stephen's BBC Radio 5 Live interview on the Breakfast show with Shelagh
(download)

We awoke yesterday morning to find a fun little tweet at us from the BBC (and no I don't mean Bob's Box Corporation) asking us to call them. Hunter obliged and was met with the FANTASTIC news that BBC 2 and BBC 5 Live radio were interested in featuring us. After a few logistics, Good Morning Scotland and BBC 5 Live Breakfast both conducted phone interviews with Hunter and Stephen, respectively, this morning, with the rest of us eagerly listening, ready to jump in should the opportunity arise.



Of course there was a fun time difference so we all got to stay up past our bedtimes (which we normally do, but this time we were inside and not out in the garage).

See how we built a car controlled by an iPhone on our website.

Driving a Car with an iPhone - Episode 3

It's finally here!

In part 1 of this episode, we give a overview of how we turned an Oldsmobile Delta '88 into a remote control car in just 4 weeks. We built our control systems using a few motors, potentiometers, a Compact RIO embedded controller, and LabVIEW. We then set up wi-fi communication so we can drive the car from an iPhone as well as from a modified Power Wheels truck.



For detailed plans, parts lists and code available for download, check out our website at EngineerAwesome.com. Also, check out part 2 of the video for a more in depth how-to on this project, including more awesome footage.