BlackBerry PlayBook protects your milk from aliens

Using a BlackBerry PlayBook for Rapid Prototyping

Now user devices are the most profitable investment of money, because offer their owners lightning fast speed and high performance. It’s just great for most users, but what about those who like to make their own hands, whose hobbies are prototyping, for example, for students? Often they non-standardly use conventional devices, destroy reliable models and are not afraid to mess their hands to create something new.

Yes, such people are especially pleased with the new devices, and experience says that the power of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and its performance are unmatched by tinkerers.

Modern electronics has enough complexity, so you should not even think to start development from scratch. Good bricks will be needed to realize your idea. Surely you will use as many purchased components as possible, and you most likely will not want to be attached to bulky staffers.

Fortunately, there is a BlackBerry PlayBook. It is a powerful and portable tablet with a great user interface and affordable development tools . It seems to be the perfect platform providing a user interface, data processing, and more.

So how do you start prototyping ideas with the PlayBook? Arduino comes to the rescue.

Arduino is a hardware computing platform whose main components are a simple I / O board and a Processing / Wiring development environment. Arduino can be used both to create stand-alone interactive objects, and to connect to software running on a computer.

Wikipedia

The Arduino platform offers a wide range of products, ranging from various Arduino boards with a different form factor, to I / O cards (“shields”), which make it easy to connect external devices. It is also worth noting a number of clones of the Arduino platform itself.

A truly global challenge

To restore justice, you need to catch a milk thief!

How can milk be protected from aliens? Let's try filming a vile milk thief on a PlayBook camera. Unfortunately, the tablet’s camera does not see in the dark, which makes it difficult to detect intruders in a dark kitchen late at night.

So you need the PlayBook itself, an IR sensor, a servo drive to move the sensor, and the ability to control the servo drive and process the IR sensor data.

Connection

Connect to a tablet in pictures.







Done.

Implementation

Arduino uses an IR sensor to detect targets. The IR sensor itself is located on the servo drive and scans the desired area (i.e. the kitchen). Data is transferred to the PlayBook, which runs an application that displays a location map and monitors movement. If movement is detected, the application emits an alarm and takes a picture.



Now, let's catch the thief and put an end to the theft of milk! The video shows the operation of the system in action.



Information gleaned from Inside BlackBerry Developer's Blog . Unfortunately, the developers do not yet provide technical details. However, they promise to lay out the sources and instructions in the near future.