What project do you wish you had the time, the resources and the knowledge to build?

Dougw my project thought is similar, but no quite so grand. Id like to build a greeter bot, with an animated  screen face, interactive audio, self guided. I had seen one at a kids hospital, but its mobility was really limited. Our library also has a Pepper, it stays closeted most of the time. Its cool, when it runs. It too is not very mobile. 

A raspberry pi 4 could do alot, but really this app really needs fast azure connectivity. 

Animated android faces are very tough - lots of fast motors in a small space. I was thinking ultrasonic motors, but they are way too expensive for my budget, which is why this isn't on my to-do list. Your screen face seems quite possible.

The year was 2011, near 2012, and I had an idea.

I was fed up of sitting down and using a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Repetitive strain injury got in the way and I just wanted to use something that felt more organic. Reminiscing about Virtual Reality headsets I'd used before, P5 Gloves and similar, along with full body tracking of Microsoft's Kinect for the XBox 360 and hearing about the Oculus Rift, and the OCZ NIA, I had project ideas.



What if we tracked the person in the room, and the person supplemented this tracking with muscle readouts using a neural headband.



Perhaps it'd use cameras in the corners of the room, some fancy maths with the cross-sections could simply work out what it can or can't see, it could also do real-time texture mapping with the cameras if we need to.



Though there's some overlap here, there'd be far too much data!

Of course. Time continued and the Oculus Rift came out, and then I hear Valve Software start working on VR - and I notice that they visited my blog (via IP tracking) where I posted these concept images.

Then there were rumors of a Valve VR headset,

and HTC steps up with the HTC Vive, which has BASE STATIONS.

And body tracking!

And Valve turn-up with finger tracking!

Meanwhile, Facebook gives up on the brain interface route: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/14/1028447/facebook-brain-reading-interface-stops-funding/ - while squatting on the patents.

And that leads me to think it hasn't solved the last problem of VR, which is locomotion tracking.

So that's the project(s) that have sat in the back of my mind. Human-to-VR interfaces, and solving what I call "the keyboard and mouse problem".

That's a widespread problem - a fast, intuitive, high bandwidth, interface between man and machine... the quasi good news is that so many companies and researchers are working on it right now that it will probably get better in the near future. The quasi bad news is that it may be quite a while before it really gets great. I am mandated to stay abreast of these technologies for my job, and I find it amazing how much technology is harnessed to tackle this problem, with pretty limited results.

I actually have a P5 squirreled away in a cupboard, procured back when I was designing physiotherapy instrumentation, in this case to explore muscle and gesture controls.

Great Question! I'm curious to see what others bring up.

From a STEM perspective, I wish I could make a 5.25" Floppy Disk. The step I don't have the resources, skill, or knowledge to do is the vapor deposition stage to deposit the oxide particles onto a mylar film. (At least, in my view, that's how I would approach it.)

Non-STEM, I'd like to build my own outdoor brick-based pizza oven. Design it both functionally and stylistically.

Between the two, I could probably build the oven. Though, that might have to wait until I have a different house.

Solar Array positioning arm. sensor track the sun and move the solar array for maximum exposure. I assembled a sensor package to track the sun position but it sits in a box waiting for the motivation to pick it up again.

Brick oven pizza - yum.

Do you have a floppy drive, or do want to build that too?

I have some 3.5" drives but no 5.25" or 8 " drives. Although I have some 8" floppies with some FORTRAN and Macro on them. Probably even have Adventure (precursor to Zork)

That is an awesome project, which puts it somewhere on my bucket list.

E14 community is looking forward to an invite for a backyard brick oven pizza party. The neighbors wont mind. I hope, if there is some spillover in their yards. :-) 

I wish I had the reousrces to buld a 4x4 HDMI multiplexor.

4 HDMI in at resolutions up to 1080p, to 4 HMDI Out, with any combinatin of ins-to-outs.