Well, Ford has decided to add a new Parental Control to their cars by having a Smart Key with a chip that can limit how fast your teenage daughter/son drives, how loud the stereo is played, and other features that can help your child stay out of trouble.

I think this is a really good idea and it won’t cost the car manufacturer another dime since most of that is already controlled by a car-resident computer.  The only money they will really have to spend is on the chips inside the key but that still should cost less than a quarter per chip as mass production.

I think this is fantasy of movies coming to life as now we are really trying to control how a person drives.  There will be negatives like when you are trying to get away from a serial killer, a 80MPH speed limit won’t help.  But I am sure people will find a way to hack this too, maybe it is pointless for smarter teenagers but we will get the rest of them.

In addition to implementing a speed limit, the key can be used to limit the volume of the car stereo system and emit a chime for six seconds every five minutes until the driver puts on a seatbelt.

MyKey can also be programmed to chime once each time the car reaches 45 mph, 55 mph, and 65 mph to alert young drivers about their acceleration.

Another feature, useful to anyone who fails to notice when the fuel light goes on, chimes when the car is 75 miles from empty. (The light on a Ford usually goes on at 50 miles to empty.)

via cnet

Here’s a cool new iPhone app called Dynolicious that will turn your iPhone into a real Dyno using iPhone’s already-capable accelerometer.

This is definitely going to beat buying a stand-along Dyno or making an accelerometer yourself.

Dynolicious is the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Dynolicious uses the hardware built-in to your iPhone to measure the performance characteristics of your vehicle. No external wires or equipment is necessary, simply slip the iPhone into a cradle or cupholder and go!

Some of the performance metrics Dynolicious can measure:

• 0-60 Acceleration
• 1/4 Mile Elapsed Time
• Lateral G’s
• Horsepower

Unlike other accelerometer-based performance meters, Dynolicious uses the advanced data-handling and display capabilities of the iPhone to make the most of your performance testing. Dynolicious maintains a history of test runs, showing you averages and trends in your results. Dynolicious also allows you to enter modifications performed to your vehicle, and will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses.

via autoblog

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

This is a great project for your school final project.

Continue reading ‘DIY - How to Make a Wireless Accelerometer Mouse Pointer!’

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Remember I did a G-Force Meter couple years ago? Here’s another cool DIY G-Force meter. The only difference it that it uses 7-segment display and a PIC18F series microcontroller.

After seeing so many applications using acceleromters making a simple project of my own with this cool sensor just seemed natural.
The main application of the accelerometer is either for sensing tilt or sensing acceleration. For this application A G-Force meter for my car will be made to see how many “G’s” I pull while driving.

via HackedGadgets

Related:

How to make a G-force meter in 1 minute!

Check out this cool remote controlled golf ball you can get to control the way the ball spins! I might need this for playing for some money on the course…

“The ball has a little spinning gyro in it, and when you activate it from the remote it spins off in random directions. The acceleration varies depending on the ground, and due to its small size it obviously works best on smoother surfaces such as green and tees. All you have to do is make sure you’ve completely charged the golf ball in its neat little charging cradle, switch on the transmitter, and select the frequency band shown on the ball. Push or pull back the control shaft on the transmitter to drive or vibrate your golf ball and wait for the inevitable laughs. Utterly daft, and it’ll probably even improve your handicap.”

via

This is kinda cool experiment on eggs and dropping them from the roof.
I wonder if they’d try some memory foam…

via