And the MOD IN THE USA finalists are….
02.23.10
After a hectic week of reviewing all of the amazing PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA submissions, we have selected three teams of finalists that will get to bring their N900 creations to life and compete for up to $10,000 in prizes.
So, without further ado, the three teams that will be presenting their PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA hacks to the judging panel of industry experts at CTIA in Las Vegas are:
Niko the Robot – Niko the Robot pairs the Nokia N900 with Lego NXT building kit to create a robot that utilizes the Nokia N900 as its ‘brain.’ It will understand commands sent via Twitter to a specific handle, send feedback about the area around it as well as post pictures from the Nokia N900’s camera.
Pit Crew – This mod sets up the Nokia N900 to be the brains behind a slot car in order to compete against human competitors. Using Python code and algorithms, the Pit Crew thinks they can have a Nokia N900-controlled car beat a man-controlled car. Do you?
Bike Dashboard– This set up utilizes several different features of the Nokia N900. From the GPS to the camera, the team behind Bike Dashboard, BrettSarahTops, think they can turn the Nokia N900 into a car-like dashboard. Showing a speedometer, odometer, mapping your route with GPS and even providing a car horn – this app might have it all!
Congratulations guys! And thanks again to everyone who submitted their ideas, it was no easy feat in picking just three teams.
Stay tuned for more info on the new PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA teams over the coming days.
Good luck to all teams!
Looking forward to see the projects brought to life – specially the Pit Crew one. It would be fun to have a competition just with robot cars, too. If you ever plan one, I’m game!
by Ricardo on February 23, 2010 at 9:08 pm
The robot sounds cool. The slot car sounds like it requires nearly no skill. The BrettSarahTops entry sounds like the existing app Carman, and integrates NO external hardware. How was that project even considered? It doesn’t follow the contest rules!!
by Joshua on February 23, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Congratz, teams! I hope you all have as much fun with the contest as we did in round 1.
by Timothy on February 23, 2010 at 9:18 pm
@Joshua: depending on the requirements, the Pit Crew project might be the most difficult to implement (specially if it must adapt itself to different tracks, and if the tracks have places where overtaking is difficult or not possible).
Niko the Robot should not be as difficult to implement, but might be really cool nevertheless.
BrettSarahTops? The description of the project here is a bit vague, so it might bring a few surprises (I hope it does)…
by Ricardo on February 23, 2010 at 9:20 pm
We’re so excited to be chosen! One correction I would make, though is that our team name is BrettSarahtops but the project is the Bike Dashboard.
And to answer Joshua, we will be interfacing with external hardware; the lights, and speakers will be communicating wirelessly over bluetooth.
Congrats to the other teams, we’re looking forward to seeing the other projects!
by Brettsarahtops on February 23, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Ahh Bike Dashboard. That makes more sense now. It still seems very similar to the existing Carman project, but good luck to you nonetheless. Now that I look closer at the Pit Crew description, it seems that they would have to use the camera to track the cars movements unless they actually put an n900 on a slot car, which would be silly. That seems very difficult, especially in one month. I would be impressed if they got that working in such a short time span. I guess I’m just a little bummed that I wasn’t chosen. Oh well, I guess I will just have to build it myself! (maybe with android? haha kidding) Anyone wanna help? tiltpilot.sourceforge.net
by Joshua on February 23, 2010 at 9:37 pm
@Joshua: I have a project similar to yours, but to control a quadrotor helicopter. From my experience, it might not be too easy to control an airplane model the way you suggested, for many reasons: accelerometer lag, BlueSMiRF not 100% reliable (at least under certain conditions), and more lag due to software.
BTW, I think it would be pretty cool to make a slot car out of the N900! And it would be even cooler to put it in an airplane…
by Ricardo on February 23, 2010 at 9:59 pm
@ Ricardo We were planning (and still are doing) building a non bluetooth interface that uses the audio port to communicate with external hardware over serial. That may have less lag then bluetooth (definitely cheaper).
Our submission was to use the audio jack for direct hardware control of a servo. Oh well. Sniff Sniff
http://www.flakelabs.com/index.php/nway/
by michael on February 23, 2010 at 11:43 pm
very interesting project.can’t wait to see the result.
by jacobian on February 24, 2010 at 1:14 am
@Michael: good luck with your project!
OTOH, with a bit of creativity (and external circuits), you can have many different ways to interface devices (you can use the N900 screen as output, just put some sensors over it). Maybe you could use the FM transmitter instead of a direct connection to the audio port…
But I wonder what would happen if your N900 received a call while on the nWay…
by Ricardo on February 24, 2010 at 4:25 pm
@ Ricardo Ha! Hadn’t thought about that. The FM transmitter is a good idea but dependent on Nokia phones. I’m trying to figure out the best cross hardware solution that doesn’t require rooting the phone that isn’t blue tooth.
Always remember to set your phone to silent!
by michael on February 24, 2010 at 5:17 pm
The Bike Dashboard team should consider using the maps from http://www.opencyclemap.org, as they already have bike paths and bike lanes shown on them. They probably already know about this, but just in case they didn’t. Note that will mean using Maemo Mapper rather than Ovi Maps, unless Ovi Maps can be taught to use different map tiles. I don’t know if you can get height data at the same time, but if so that would add significantly to this as a bkiking tool. I’m preparing for a ride up Alpe d’Huez, and need to get an idea of how I am doing on height gains.
When you’re presenting this, tailor it to the audience. For a UK audience, you can point out that refreshment stops are also shown. Gloss over this point when talking with teatotallers…
by Alan Peery on February 24, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Except for the different definition of “bike” (Harley v.s. Trek), my Minigpsd actually does most of what BikeDashboard is attempting. It is for Diablo, but in the Maemo repository with source..
by tz on February 24, 2010 at 10:48 pm
well, sad to say, but those 3 hacks are lacking a lot of imagination.
The other push n900 hacks were really cooler.
Specially the haptic guide and the soldering skaterz.
Are these really the 3 best ideas ? Wow…
by Jesuska on February 25, 2010 at 11:22 pm