Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered.
The day has passed, the party is gone, and all that’s left is the final interview. The Light Hack Crew gave us a somewhat shorter response then what we were used to, but it turned out to be just as sweet.
>Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for HackaDay. We love when a hacker is willing to share their work with us.
>How did you and your team get together? Any fun backstory you care to share?
LIGHTHACK CREW is a trio of 3 crazy coconuts from Perth, Australia . [Dave] and [Tom] have been friends from way back, and [Sharna] is a friend from way, way back,
>Have you and your team worked on any other projects? Cellular related projects? N900 projects?
No this is our first one together.
>What was your main inspiration for your team’s project?
It was [Tom’s] idea for focusing the project of light graffiti, and that made me think of [Sharna] as she is a graffiti stencil artist.
> How do you think people will react when you finish/release?
People will love it as it is fun to create light graffiti and easy to do, all you need is the hacked N900 and the electronic LED can.
>Do you have any future plans with your team? Continued N900 development? Update your current projects?
Hopefully continued development of the Light Hack software and bring it to other devices
>What do you think of the other winners?
well as a skater, long boards mainly, I’m interested in the soldering skaters team, the others are great too,
>Questions from our commentators.
>What are you thoughts on Arduino? Do you intend to use one in your project?
[Tom] is the electronic genius, but I’d say he found the Arduino pretty straightforward.
>How is working with the N900 hardware and software?
Great from the little I have looked at and used, the phone is very powerful, its not running a snapdragon but damn can it multi task! the open source Maemo OS is very cool, the fact that it is linux makes it so much easier to develop for, as so much is setup for it already – SDK installed VM image is the way to go.
>What do you think about the movement of cell phones towards open source software, such as the Maemo? Do you plan to, or have you ever tried Android?
I think its great, I tried the iphone, but objective C was new to me, along with the $100!, haven’t had the time for android yet. But would like to check it out.
>(If you use a secondary power source, example – to run motors) What kind of battery life is expected for your project?
We use 4 AA or 4 AAA batteries at the moment. Im sure we could wire up any sort of battery. The battery life isn’t too bad, as the Bluetooth really only is used when the buttons are pressed, and the LED’s are quite efficient.
>Can we get a list of what you’re using in your project? (example – bluetooth sets, motors, dedicated sensors, etc)
HARDWARE: Bluetooth module, PIC microcontroller
SOFTWARE: I used C, for the language, GStreamer framework for capturing the video, and some basic algorithms for image processing: subtraction and a moving average filter for noise removal.
>And yes, we actually had a reader (Joe) ask the following (feel free to omit)
>How often do you change your underwear? Underwear?
Its 38 degrees im just wearing my boardies J
Thank you again!
