Slashdot Mirror
Domain: usbuirt.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to usbuirt.com.
Stories · 2
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Building an Open Source "Clicker"?
fieldtest asks: "Most Slashdot readers have read about "clickers", remote control style devices that students use to wirelessly answer a teacher's questions. Unfortunately, as a college student, I have had less than stellar experiences with these clickers. I hear complaints from my professors and fellow students often as well. So, I want to build an open source clicker system for all universities to use. I believe that this is a prime opportunity to show how powerful free software can be. So, what do the talented people of Slashdot recommend?" "The problem is this: a clicker system requires...clickers. What I need are remote controls that have a minimum of 6 buttons (for users to select options with). The sticking point comes when a button is pressed -- the remote must send the option choice, as well as a unique ID specific to the remote, so the clicker software can distinguish between different students.
I've experimented and Googled around. I've tried standard TV remote controls combined with an USB-UIRT receiver, but the range was too low. Googling shows some interesting programmable remotes, but they're far too expensive ($100+) to have each user purchase one.
How should I go about building the perfect clicker and receiver system? Any suggestion is welcome, from IR to radio, from Bluetooth to ZigBee based communications. Recommend a commercial product, or a do it yourself solution. Please also recommend a receiver device, and a way to connect it to a computer. Also, if you recommend that I just build a custom circuit board for the remote control, please give some references and examples of how it should be implemented." -
Voice-Controlled Robosapien
robotsrule writes "Robosapien Dance Machine, a free, open source program hosted on SourceForge, now uses the CMU Sphinx 3.5 speech recognition engine. The Sphinx 3.5 engine is also a free, open source program on SourceForge. You can now control your Robosapien robot using just your voice as well as build fun complex scripts to make your Robosapien robot dance, do comedy skits, and other performances. Currently the software uses the USB UIRT infrared transceiver to talk to the robot. Support for other infrared devices is being added this month. There is a short unrehearsed movie of the robot responding to voice commands that you can watch."