Nokia have released a new product that we think coupled with our PUSH USA winner, Bike Dashboard, could be a great hack for all you eco-friendly hackers and cyclists. Essentially, the new product is an attachable dynamo that connects to your bike, a 2mm jack connects to the phone and powers it from your pedal strokes. Awesome, no?

It’s aimed at countries where bikes are the predominant mode of transport, but will be released worldwide by the end of 2010.

Alex Lambeek, Nokia vice president said in a statement that “Bicycles are the most widespread means of transport in many markets around the world, so this is just one more benefit to be gained from an activity people are already doing,”

Exactly Alex! And just think coupling it with Bike Dashboard you could cycle forever (legs permitting), never got lost and keep your traveling eco-friendly!

We’ll be back soon with more details on the next stages of PUSH, let’s just say get your creative hats on…

My goal for the PUSH N900 Mod  is to use the power of linux on the N900 device to run Boxee (linux) software on the device to access media content directly on the phone.

The user can view and access Boxee on the N900 and use the TVout connection to bring the FULL experience into your living room!

This seems like a perfect fit since both PUSH N900 & Boxee are pushing for hacking of their product!

But I need your help out there!

Heres my one problem. I DONT KNOW LINUX! Basically if its in the repository I use it! I have no idea how to run deb files, use the x-terminal etc. Please contact me if your interested in making this happen and lets submit this together!

Thanks!

-@doctorklein

There’s a specific N900 category that spreads across all areas of the contest, as well as a host of other categories for you to spread your creative and innovative ideas in and be in with a chance to win some of the awesome cash prizes!

Check out the video and rundown of the contest below from our friends at the NSeries blog:

What’s Calling All Innovators all about?
The Calling All Innovators contest is all about inspiring creativity and developing change. Inspiring creativity in the projects submitted by developers working on mobile applications and content for use on Nokia’s latest devices. Developing change in the ways we continue to think about how we use our mobile devices today, and how we might use them in the future.

What are we looking for?
Nokia is inviting individuals to share their mobile technology stories with us, too In other words, we want your story!
We’re looking for stories that show how mobile technology has changed your life for the better. Tell us how mobile technology has enriched your day-to-day experience. Remember: there are NO wrong answers here. We want to know what YOU think. In fact, we expect that your stories and ideas will inspire the creativity of developers around the world as they work to develop mobile applications that can change all of our lives for the better.

To participate in the contest visit Calling All Innovators and post your story! And for any N900 entries, the participants should just put their app under the ‘Entertainment’ category and put in the comments that their submission is for the N900 device.

Good luck!

After this morning’s tense breakfast meeting which saw all three of the PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA finalists pitching their ideas to the judges and answering their questions, we can now announce the official PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA winner.

So, without further ado, the judges’ choices are:

1st Prize: Bike Dashboard: winning the cash prize of $10,000!

2nd Prize: Niko: who has been awarded with a $5,000 cash prize

3rd Prize: Pit Crew: who has been awarded with a $3,000 cash prize

The judges were seriously impressed with the ingenuity of all of the hacks: “Seeing what these teams were able to create using the Nokia N900 in just a few weeks time is a true testament to the spirit of human innovation,” said Eddie Hold, Vice President, Current Analysis. “It’s refreshing to see what people can come up with when they are supplied with tools like an open platform – such as the one that the Nokia N900 operates on. Kudos to Nokia and the participants for cultivating this kind of consumer innovation.”

It was no easy feat in selecting just one first prize winner!

People’s Choice Award:: Pit Crew: :winning an additional cash prize of $1000!

The People’s Choice Award has been a hotly contested feature of the official Nokia booth during CTIA, with a host of attendees casting their vote for which of the three finalists’s concepts they think deserves to be crowned the people’s champion. Massive congratulations to Pit Crew for scooping the title and thanks to all the CTIA attendees who cast their votes.

Please join the PUSH team in congratulating all three teams of finalists, in making it to the final and for showing what’s capable with the N900 and their tremendous creativity.

As many of you will know, tomorrow is a big day for PUSH, it’s the day that the panel of judges will be awarding the MOD IN THE USA team they think deserves the prestigious title of first prize winner of ‘PUSH N900 – MOD IN THE USA,’ at CTIA Wireless 2010!

The judges include Chris Ziegler of Engadget, Bonnie Cha of CNET, Sascha Segan of PCMag.com as well as two new judges: Eddie Hold, VP of consumer electronics at Current Analysis (an industry analyst firm) and Ira Frimere, who was the US product manager for the Nokia N900. With these judges, there’s plenty of experience when it comes to all things mobile on the panel.

The judges will be having an exclusive PUSH N900 breakfast meeting tomorrow where each of the teams will have 15 minutes to present their concept and prototype and answer any of the judges’ questions. The judges will then confer and make the final decision on which of the teams they think deserves the honor of being awarded first place and the accompanying $10,000 cash prize and which of the teams should be crowned with second and third place.

The official announcement will be going live on the blog around 12 Noon PST tomorrow, be sure to check back!

UPDATE:
Check out these sneak preview shots from inside CTIA as the three teams of finalists set up in preparation for their presentation to the panel of judges tomorrow morning!

Well, the last week of developing is over and what a week it’s been! We have had some great breakthroughs and we are happy to say that all is done and working great! The bike we ordered for the competition came in just on Tuesday so it was perfect timing. We took it for a test drive and then got to work setting up our mod and seeing how it looks on the bike. It looks pretty awesome. We’re proud. We can’t wait to show it off at CTIA in just a couple days. Wish us luck!

The camera was the most challenging feature to integrate. As other teams, we had problems with gstreamer, but after many days of working, re-working, searching for help (thanks everyone!) and a few nights of sleeping on it we figured it out! Now, there is a preview display on the Bike Dashboard’s UI and it takes a nice picture.

Though nothing we did ended up being quite as simple as we had hoped, it was great to program on/for the N900! We’ve definitely learned a ton and feel like we’re already winners. We’ll post a video from the conference showing it all working. In the meantime, here’s a video after our last test ride:

As you’ve probably seen by the latest blog posts and coverage across the Internet, NIKO is the Twitter-controlled N900 robot finalist and we want the PUSH community to get involved with taking control of him!

Below are the commands to control NIKO!

To make NIKO move forward, tweet: @N900Niko move forward

To make NIKO move backwards, tweet: @N900 move backward

To make NIKO turn to the right, tweet: @N900Niko turn right

To make Niko turn to the left, tweet: @N900Niko turn left

To make Niko turnaround, tweet: @N900Niko turn around

To make Niko take a picture and upload it to Twitpic, tweet: @N900Niko photo

Looking forward to seeing you guys take control and feel free to comment below with the pictures Niko sends you.

It’s been a long and busy weekend and we have made some progress. We figured out how to mount the N900 to the bike! We took a bike reflector and Brett used a dremel to cut away certain pieces. This helped it fit better onto the N900 phone case we attached it to. The piece originally intended to mount the reflector was attached to the back of the N900 phone case so you can just slide it right on when you’re ready for a bike ride. Here’s a video of Brett using the dremel:

Here’s a video of Sarah demonstrating how the N900 will slide on to the mount:

Brett and I are almost done with the Bluetooth feature and we’ll be updating you on that soon.

There’s only a little more than a week to go and we’re in a mad rush to get things done. The weekend started off with switching all our code to Python since there was better support for Python on Maemo than Java for device specific things such as the GStreamer for multimedia.

I’ve never programmed in Python before but I got PyDev plugin for Eclipse and searched up a lot of Python how-tos on the Internet. For the functionality I needed from NXT and the camera I spent a lot of time on maemo.org searching for packages such as json and gstreamer. Accessing the camera was not intuitive at all so I resorted to a command line call which the KAPing With The N900 (another PUSH N900 team) used. The maemo.org thread can be found here.

I didn’t run into Bluetooth driver problems with Python so that definitely made my weekend better. The NXT-Python package worked really well but documentation was on the weak side. I had to play around with the motor controls a lot until I got Niko to turn or even move forward properly.

At the end of Sunday I got the N900 posting to Twitter, taking a photo with flash on, posting to TwitPic, and even got the Lego components working! Here’s a video of Niko’s first completely automated movement, camera capture, touch sensor, and posting using just the N900!

We have ignition! We’ve managed to connect our microcontroller to the HO slot car racetrack without triggering any catastrophic events. Watch in this video as we use a light sensor and microcontroller to alter the speed of the car.

In this setup, the microcontroller is using an external power supply at 9V DC to provide extra power for the track.  After a little testing, it turns out that the maximum voltage needed for each lane is around 8V DC, and as you can see, 9V+ DC is more than enough power to send this car skidding off the track.