This project by some 4th year engineering students will get them ready to build the next Segway.

“This project consists of prototype lab module for Control Systems II. The purpose of this lab is to teach 4th year electrical engineering students how to implement control systems to a real life mechanical system.

The controller seeks to balance the ball on the beam. It is also possible to set a desired position or motion for the ball.”

If you are getting a bit tired of driving your car manually this hack might be for you. The guys from Waterloo Labs built this car that can be driven around using an iPhone. They are using a CompactRIO controller as the brains of the system which might be considered overkill and does come with a hefty price tag of almost two grand!

Thanks to Jody for sending this one in.

 ”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.”

Ben shows us how to get rid of phantom power to save a few bucks.

Thanks for the tip Stephanie.

“In this environmentally friendly episode, Ben channels his inner “Captain Planet” persona and provides viewers with simple energy-efficiency tips. Using recycled parts, Ben also creates a new version of a wall wart that can power several devices simultaneously, such as cell phones, computer monitors and Arduino boards, while still reducing the overall amount of energy used. “

This Interactive Mirror project by OpenGadgets is based on the IOIO Microcontroller which looks like it is very flexible. A 32X16 pixel matrix display is mounted behind a 2 way mirror, this display is connected to the IOIO microcontroller and talks to the Android phone using bluetooth. With the current implementation you are able to send things such as low resolution pictures and video to the display. There is also a version of magic 8 ball that looks like fun.

Thanks to Lior Elazary for sending in this great project. It accomplished a few things, he was able to justify the purchase of a laser cutter and his kids learned come computer basics.  His Mechanical Bit Adder Clock is sure to be built by many since he also made a detailed Instructable for it.

“The inspiration for this project came from trying to teach my son and daughter about how a computer works (in reality, I was always fascinated with mechanical computers and clocks, but I had to give a better excuse to my wife for buying a laser cutter specifically for this project).

The Mechanical CPU Clock shows the basic building blocks of a CPU (ALU.Buses,RAM,registers, and a Control Unit). It executes a set of instructions which will emulate a simple wall clock.”

If you are working on a vision system project that needs to track something your life just became a bit easier. Willem Schwalb just sent in a link to his open source software tracking system, Open Vision Control that can be used to control things such as automated turrets. You can also see lots more videos of the system in operation here.

“Open Vision Control was initially created as a tracking solution for various university projects, as well as the desire for an automated turret/sentry gun. Rather than just having one solution, for example , tracking people and outputting to some controller, it was decided , to make a general tracking software with various features, allowing for various automation and control projects.”

If you need to control some motors wirelessly this Wireless Motor Controller project by PyroElectro might be just the thing to get you kickstarted. The project uses SN754410NE chip to drive the motor and a XBee module to make the project wireless.

“The purpose of this project is to build a system that can independently and wirelessly control two DC motors. To do this, the system will need 4 core components: an input system for the transmitter, a wireless transmitter, a wireless receiver, and a motor controller connected to the receiver.”