DIY 'Descriptive Camera' captures images, prints out prose Apr 25th 2012, 21:03  Have you ever wished that cameras could capture not only an image of the scene in front of them, but also describe it to you in plain English? Ok, what if it bypassed the whole "photo" thing and just spit out a slip of paper with words on it? Well, if you're still interested, the impressive Matt Richardson (of Make fame) has a project right up your alley. The Descriptive Camera is a relatively simple device really. A Logitech webcam is connected to a BeagleBone dev board, which is in turn plugged into a thermal printer from Adafruit. Obviously, the tech required to analyze a scene recognize the objects then convert that pile of pixels into a slice prose is outside of the budget and capability of your average DIY project. So Matt turned instead to Mechanical Turk, Amazon's marketplace for HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks. Images captured by the cam are uploaded via the BeagleBone, where an actual person describes what he or she sees and the resulting literature is printed out. For more details and images check out the source. DIY 'Descriptive Camera' captures images, prints out prose originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Matt Richardson | Email this | Comments | Former MakerBot exec launches Solidoodle sub-$500 3D printer Apr 25th 2012, 20:36  Let's be honest -- we all want a a 3D printer to call our own, right? Price has always been a significant barrier to the dream of printing pretty much everything your imagination can conjure (barring some hardware limitations, of course). For its part, MakerBot has made some significant strides toward tearing some of those barriers, and now Solidoodle, led by that company's former COO Samuel Cervantes, is looking to take the trend even further. The company's current self-tilted model starts at just under $500. The printer, which is now up for pre-order, can print plastic pieces up to 6" x 6" x 6", and "all you need to supply is a computer and power." Also, interestingly, "a 200-pound man can literally stand on top of the machine while it's printing. " So, that's a bonus. Check out a video of the printer in action after the break. Continue reading Former MakerBot exec launches Solidoodle sub-$500 3D printer Former MakerBot exec launches Solidoodle sub-$500 3D printer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink The Verge | Solidoodle | Email this | Comments | |