breathing
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Breath powered USB generator does charging on the go
Hey, we're tired of waiting for wireless charging solutions to actually hit the market just as much as the next guy (or gal), but one inventive soul took that frustration out on a swank DIY project that elicits energy from simply breathing. We've seen the use of hot air in powering gadgets before, but this homegrown USB charger was assembled by simply using "parts scavenged from an old CD-ROM drive, a basic electronic circuit, and a few rubber bands." The chest-worn device was intended to output around one-watt for charging a cellphone, which could purportedly juice it up in just under three hours, but unfortunately for us all, this seemingly brilliant device only mustered about 50mW of energy. Of course, that's still getting somewhere, but we're not exactly keen on wearing this thing around for an entire day in order to add a few battery bars to our mobile. Nevertheless, the creator doesn't look to be giving up on it so soon, and hopefully v2 will allow our breath to add new life to our lappies or electric cars, eh?[Via Slashgear]
Toy car controlled by breathing
While controlling a full-sized automobile with a PSP may be impressive, at least this project has some amount of practicality. Musicians and singers, listen up, because this breathing-controlled car could provide the perfect mix of practice and pleasure to get your controlled breathing, well, under control. Even if you couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, Matthew Brown's creation gives you a chance to have some fun while blowing off some steam. The aptly named "Breath Control Car" was designed to make the mastery of controlled breathing a bit more enjoyable, and he pulls it off by using a MIDI breath controller to channel puffs to a MAX/MSP. MIDI signals are converted to serial data, where those signals are beamed via Bluetooth to a PIC chip, and finally to a servo that directs the car. If all that sounds like hot air, here's the deal: the harder you exhale, the harder it steers right, while softer breaths steer it left. The forward and reverse functions are handled by a simple remote-control, presumably to avoid hyperventilation. If you've been tooting your horn about getting serious with your breathing, but need a more riveting reason to practice, watch this machine in action to see what Matthew's breath car can do for you. [Via Makezine]