Music selection is usually a boring process. It usually involves some common interface such as scrolling through titles on a portable player, using a remote for your stereo or a mouse on your computer. With this RFID Music Selection called the RFiDJ from Roteno Labs music is represented by tiles and the tiles graphically represent the music that can be expected. I can think of lots of opportunities for developing this much further into a very immersible system. Have a tap sensor so that a tap on the tile will play the next randomly selected song by that artist. I think having this at a party and have a system where guests can add their favorite song to a playlist is also something that would be very interesting!

"The RFiDJ project is my first attempt at an application in Imperceptible Computing. After work I like to listen to music/radio for a bit to unwind. This usually involves logging into my HTPC and selecting a playlist. For this project I attempted to change how I interact with my music and HTPC. Using RFID tags and photo frame coasters I am attempting to simplify the interface to my music."

Morten Bentsen, a 17 year old from Norway made a system that would show him the quality of his internet connection at a glance. If you are into online gaming this could be something useful.

"I recently made an indicator to show the status of my internet connection. It consists of a small VB.net application, which pings a certain site with a set interval (both user-changeable, and sets the DTR-pin of a serial port (port name is changeable) depending on the ping-answer. The DTR-pin goes to a small mosfet, which controls a small telecom relay. The relay is switching 24 volts to the LED-panels this is great for LAN-parties, because the participants can easily see if they are the only one who dont have internet, or if the whole party has lost it. There is one problem though, when I watch videos at youtube, the lights are blinking, because youtube is using all my bandwidth. (yeah I know, my internet connection sucks :D)"

Instead of purchasing a new iMac Dremmel Junkie opted to add some new features to his original iMac G4 such as a touch screen!

"Because the monitor connects to its controller through a proprietary connector its difficult to use with upgraded equipment. My solution was to put a shelf on the back for the connectors. I then upgraded it with a surface acoustic wave touch screen, its high resolution does not distort the image at all."

There are lots of Nerd Kits project examples available. Josh Davis used the LED Array Sign project and added a cool option for the sign to display voice messages left with the help of a Google voice to text service. Josh has documented the project here and has made the code available.

Via: Make

"On the software side of things, there are two python scripts that make everything happen.  The one called voice2led.py is a script that reads a text file and prints whatever is in it to the sign. The other python script, named checkvoicemail.py is where all the cool stuff happens.  Using the PyGoogleVoice module of python, this script checks my Google Voice account for voicemails."

If you like classic video games and robots you need to have a look at this Roomba Pac-Man system. At a glance it may look like a fun game where the Roomba cleaners are being controlled by a bunch of remote controls that people are controlling. That low tech scenario could not be further from what is actually happening here. There is lots of tech making these Roomba robots play!

"By utilizing service discovery and ad-hoc networking, all of the robots operate independently and autonomously. There is no centralized controller controlling the game, each robot makes its own decisions and sends its own commands. Pac-Man is the only robot that takes human input, and this is simply in an "augmented control capacity" where user input is limited to valid directions of travel (no passing through boundaries). The laptop and GUI provided for the operator provide no computational support for the game, its simply a node that allows the operator to issue commands. A good example of the level of autonomy in the robots is when a ghost kills Pac-Man. Upon determining that it has killed Pac-Man, it issues a command to Pac-Man to let it know it was killed, and then informs all of the other ghosts that Pac-Man was killed. Pac-Man performs his death, and then informs all of the other robots that they need to reset for another round."

This Open Source Sentry Gun project is not as advanced as some of the Sentry Gun Projects that we have seen but it is something that can be built on and has the ability to become a robust platform. If this is something that you would like to contribute to why not contact the author and see how you can help.

Thanks Diederick

"What can you attach to your sentry as a dispenser? Anything that can attain its target in a straight line is better than anything that has a parabolic trajectory, this since the software doesn’t take distance and therefore trajectory into account. In addition that you will need a mother of a targeting algorithm in order to make this work you will also need to factor in distance and other environmental factors in order to attain your target, so slingshots, catapults or trebuchets are out. "

If you like guitar hero and are into sports then you need to have a look at this Kasabian Football Hero project!

Via: Engadget

"An experiment to create a giant (three stories high!) guitar game controlled with footballs. Football Hero is played by a team of insanely gifted young freestyle footballers. The game is programmed with the Kasabian track Underdog."