This is probably an mbed controlled replica of the Mythbuster's wooden cannon... I will keep my head low when I pass the NXP stand (see you there Simon)

Ultrasonic or sonar cane for blind people ?

Automated lathe for making wooden table legs ?

Not even close... love the idea of ultrasonic cane though.

German flute with air controlled synthesizer

Accelerometer based walking stick pedometer?

Window blind with remote/automatic control.

Data-logging pool cue?

Neutrino detector?

The beginnings of a fred flintstone car? Or a GPS cane with a step counter?

But....Embedded world, Neurenburg... Hmmm, only a 8 hour drive :P

Hmm .... Computer Controlled Lathe ... that would be cool and not too hard to do.

If you wanted to you could modify it later to turn out wooden bowls too.

Nope! This is fun! Keep guessing!

A bit of a long-shot but ... is it a type of scanner for looking at the internal structure of wood?

I think it take ADC samples from the mbed then transfers them into a graphic chart perhaps using the USB device library, do I get a free mbed now.

Some sort of tilt/balance demo with USB?

Looks like a Sparkfun ADXL345 Triple Axis Accelerometer Breakout Board

And perhaps a couple 1-wire sensors on one chain

Is that some blue tacky clay on there to hold in breadboard jumper wires, or some C4 to add a little extra kick to the demo?

Maybe a (via mbed) gesture controlled chainsaw or cutting device? You have to put both hands on the red stripes to start it (temperature or switch controlled).

mbed controlled servo operated baseball bat to beat up 8 bit and 16 bit processors... eehm, I mean evaluate the performance of the bat.

Check out some serious studies on this topic: http://faculty.philau.edu/pastorec/composites/bat%20thesis.pdf

LOL! ... I don't know what it is but if you used gyros and accelerometers ... plus a few servo motors you could make a "walking stick" with remote control ... run it with inverse kinematics and "walk" it around the trade floor with the MBED logo on top .... maybe with a cardboard face ...

So much better than a seal with a ball on its nose.

I'm sure thats not it but feel free to use the idea!!

A robotic arm/leg ? An ARM based arm :)

We made a video on wednesday to go with the demo. Here is the first frame:

...maybe i'll post another frame next week :)

Looking into the dark ...

There could be two hands , hold / shake something in front of a light.

Peter

Okay, I'll go ahead and embarass myself by venturing a guess. T.T. (above) said an ARM-based arm (funny), but I think it looks more like a horn, as on long-horned cattle. There appear to be three pieces of wood joined together at slight angles, making a curve, and each piece is tapered, just like a horn.

I think it has an accelerometer to control the movement of the wooden log, may be a marble or a ball might be placed inside the wooden log as a hole runs through it. The accelerometer could be calibrated to maximum and minimum values by which means it could control the wooden log and move it opposite direction when a threshold is approached. If it is accelerometer only two axis of it are connected to the microcontroller. On the other hand the blue wires coming from the controller are from the SPI pins which means it there serial peripheral interfaced with the controller in which case am not sure how an accelerometer which has analog outputs could communicate with the SPI port... well just waiting for more pics from Simon.

It might be a USB memory. The flash ROM board on left side is connected to the SPI bus of the controller(pin 5(mosi),6(miso) and 7(synchronous clock)). The controller board and flash ROM board are being powered from the power supply from USB which is on the right hand side of the breadboard.

Mbed eyes?

Looks like a Kinect sensor on the pictures. Maybe a cross between the Microsoft and Sony motion sensor systems, with the wooden sticks acting like PS3 motion sticks.

Pandoras box :D

I think it is a magic wand USB based input device to allow a player to cast spells against opponents on the computer screen. It would work similar to a light gun. It would use light sensors connected to the A/D converter to detect if the wand was pointed at the target on the screen and the SPI based accelerometer would then be used to detect spell gestures :)

lol

Yes, I recognise it! I've built one myself! It's a 3-D thermo-matrix machine!

I love Wim Huiskamp's mBat idea. Thanks for the link to the nice thesis! That is some nice work to read in a lost weekend ;-)

But I was thinking about an acelerometer based pointer device.

I do remember on dragons den, a TV/DVD... Remoat controller,that was inside a Harry Potter wand,

Such that longditudinal rotation changed volume, Up/down flicks changed channel/track

But I an still don't know what the C4 is for! !

Ceri

Ok Friends,

the case is clear now. Just went to the toilet and now I know...

The wooden part is the axis for a revolutionary toilet-paper-holder, which contains a gyro-sensor to count revolutions and helping to estimate when paper is going out. Perhaps it might be planned to add a further feature - ordering new paper through the internet...

Am I right?

Does it sound a siren too when you use too much paper or put on the roll the wrong way (what is the right way anyway?) :-)

Gert, i expect a better idee from you :), somthing as: an radar,sonar or ultrasonic thiknes measuring tool for the ice of the dutch waterskating tour, the elfstedentocht. With integrated location tabel with GPS. Good to know that the mbed team is thinking about this problem :). (unfortunately it has no result this time)

FYI, here is the first page of the storyboard I did for the video:

Luckily, even despite all the amazing suggestions so far, I don't think it is going to be an anti-climax :)

If no-one gets it by the middle of next week, perhaps i'll post another frame!

I could see that a door is being opened for some light to fall in and a pair of legs are walking in so it might some sort of sensor based alarm or some robotic walking legs.

Hehe... What about an instant mbed controlled freezing tool to mount on the front of your skates which freezes the water just ahead... This way you are not dependant on the thickness of the ice, or even ice at all :) You could use gyro sensors to predict in which direction you need to fastfreeze for the next stroke....

... A carpenter enters his underground workshop , and makes a wooden sculpture, using his mbed driven machine ! ....

Maybe they are "Techno Trousers"