Friday, 21 November 2014

How To Make Your Own Stylus Pen - 100% Effective & Easy

15 comments

Make Your Own Stylus Pen With Household Material Which Works Flawlessly









What Is A Stylus ?


Stylus is a great tool for drawing purposes. Samsung's S-Pen is one of the most famous stylus that come to our mind. These are extremely accurate and small. But such pens dont work with normal capacitive screens which almost 99+% devices uses. The reason being that, the screen is designed to ignore anything less than ~1/4cm radius in order to avoid any unwanted touches getting registered. Hence we need to have a stylus with ~1/4 cm radius or greater to have an impression registered.

How Stylus Works? 


Capacitive screens are by far the most sensitive screens out there. A capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also an electrical conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing. 

In a capacitive screen only conducting materials work- finger, iron/aluminum etc. Our stylus should also be made of conducting materials.



Other Methods Available To Make Stylus


There are lots of methods available on internet to make a stylus pen . I have tried almost every one of these methods.They are;
  1. Using a cotton swab and attaching it to a metal piece. Disadvatage: Swab needs to be wet all the time, and screen gets filled with water soon.
  1. Using an aluminum foil wrapped around pencil or metal container. Disadvantage: Precision is utterly poor, scratches the screen more often, not suitable,
and the list goes on. So far i haven't seen any method to make a permanent , effective stylus pen that wont wet/ tear my screen apart. 
Then i decided to experiment on normal stuffs in our household. In about an hour i found my solution.


The technique i used is - mix a conducting material like graphite ,available in pencil lead with a suitable adhesive/resin binder like fevicol and paste this onto any metal piece, that way it will still be soft (wont scratch) and very much conductive to register on capacitive screen



Finished Stylus : Video




Make Your Own Stylus : Lets Get Started



Things You Need



  • Pencil Lead / Graphite - Get any pencil you have, HB,B,3B,5B, anything you have. I used 5B, as it has a bigger and softer lead with more graphite content.




  • Fevicol / Any Resin Adhesive to act as the binder to bind the graphite powder.

  • Metal container- I Used a metallic 'Pen Refill'. any thin metallic container easy to hold will do. No need to worry if you didn't get anything metallic, we have a work around too.

  • Knife to scrape the graphite from pencil. 

  • Any round metallic object to attach to the tip of refill. If you have a cylindrical metal container of ~1/4cm radius , then no need for this object.

See, all the materials are available in our house. They are really cheap and wont cost you more than 50Rs.
How To Do:

  • Scrape the lead from pencil using a knife, make sure the powder is fine and not coarse,as heavy particles might scratch the surface of screen.

  • Add fevicol to this fine powder and mix thoroughly untill you get a thick black paste. The blacker the paste, the better.


  • Take the metal container or refill and apply this black paste on it. Add a thick layer, then let it solidify. Since fevicol or resin adhesive will shrink more than 50% of its wet volume, you need to apply more of the paste at some intervals, you get the required diameter. 


  • If you didn't get the metal container, just apply the black paste all over the body in normal thickness, this ensure that the material will be conducting. 

  • You can test it at each layer addition, using your device, whether it works okay. If not continue to apply paste on it.




When it solidifies you will have a smooth and highly responsive stylus pen. Use it to navigate , draw , anything you can wih finger, but with better precision and accuracy.

Here is a sample drawing i did on Autodesk Sketchbook Pro using my stylus pen. 



































Have fun with your pen. Also check out my Video to see how the finished Pen works on Nexus 7.

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Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Android 5.0 Lolipop Review: Elegance Meets Performance

7 comments

Android 5.0 Lollipop Is Out. Lets See What We Got!




































From the start of November, Google has been rolling out OTA updates for their Nexus range of devices. Its not just Nexus devices, but few other ones also will get a taste of the new 'Big' android update.The Nexus 6 and 9 came with Lollipop pre-installed, and updates are also available for the Nexus 4, 5, 7 (2012 and 2013) and 10. Motorola's also rolling out Android 5.0 to the Moto X (2014) Pure Edition and 2014 Moto G,and Nvidia SHEILD tablet too gets loliipop.







































Lets Take A Look!



  • Really Impressive Design. White Gives it Elegeance
  • Notifications are looking much better
  • Supports Guests / Multiuser accounts
  • Great performance upgrade
  • New trusted face included smart lock


  • Few Bugs,I encountered frequent 'Google search crashed' message.




Total Experience:



















































  • Really smooth and innovative material design.White makes it looks elegant. 

  • The new notification enabled lock screen is a great addition, It is okay for those people who has nos issues in other people seeing the details of their notification if they reach the lock screen. No need to worry u can disable or tweak it in settings.

  • Now coming to performance, I have to say it feels smoother than kitkat, apps jumping out as soon as u touch it, and I still have 500+mb ram to share. ART really make it fluidic.

  • The ripple effect when you touch an item on menu brings an eye-catching experience.

  • Battery stats will show you how much time you will get at current pace.

  • Clicking on android version from settings>about device, will get you to an android easter egg, a flappy bird inspired android jumping game, but the level of toughness is brought to a new level. My current high score is 2. I really don't care much.

  • At first I had a frequent crashing of Google search. But now its no longer bothering me.

  • The default Google gallery is replaced by photos, for which you have to enable Google+.
  • Battery backup is doing good so far, will do a complete check later. 

  • One touch WiFi and Bluetooth buttons are available on the drop down notification bar. Which has saved a lot of precious time for me, rather than using a widget.


Unlike previous is updates, this one just takes it to a new level. The BIG Android update really deserves a good appreciation. Its a great blend of style and performance.
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Sunday, 22 June 2014

Make Your Own Gaming Steering Wheel Using Android

12 comments

How To Make Your Own Gaming Steering Wheel Using An Android Device








There are lots of PC racing games out there. The best known sims are Grid series, Dirt series, F1 series ,NFS Shift & Shift 2 unleashed,Test Drive Unlimited 1&2 ,etc.
But soon as you play these games, you will come to relaise that such games were not meant to be played on a keyboard. Even using a controller wont give you the satisfaction.

The best way to enjoy such games will be to use a Gaming steering wheel. Which will give the exact simulated feeling. But the main issue with such wheels is that they don't come cheap. Logitech wheels will cost you around 10-27k INR.

So i decided to make my own wheel so that i could play those simulation games. It wont be as good as such market wheels. But will be fun to toy with.

The basic working principle is to use the android device's built in accelerometer to sense the degree of tilt and convert that to PC input (just like the analog buttons on controller).

Lets see how its done.

Video Link With Gameplay :




 

 

Important Items Required to start:

  • Android Device with working accelerometer and Wi-Fi feature
  • Laptop/PC with a wireless network connectivity (Wi-Fi).
  • Connectify ( PC ) / Mobile hotspot feature ( Android ) to establish connection between
  • Vjoy x86/x64 application for PC
  • JD SimWheel app for android
  • JD SimWheel server for PC

Download Links:












Making The Wheel:

Items required:

  • Bendable PVC pipe 50inch (127cm) long
  • Two rigid PVC pipes of different diameters. (eg: shorter 1 inch and longer 3/4 inch)
  • Wooden/Plastic board of 50"+ length
  • Cardboard Box for holding the full steering system.
  • Keyboard/gamepad for accelerator+brake.(optional-You can also use JD Simwheel buttons on android as accelerator and brake.)
  • Sealant eg: M-seal, Araldite

Finished Steering wheel:-



Procedure:



  1. Bend the PVC pipe of 50" length filled with sand to form a circle.
  2. Join the two ends securely. to form a rigid circular ring.
  3. Fix the bend pipe on to the wooden board using screws.
  4. Take the large 1" diameter PVC pipe and cut a hole on the center of wooden board ,then fix it properly using any sealant.
  5. Using a cardboard piece create a container for holding the android device, securely fix it on the center of the wooden board using glue.
  6. Fix the longer 3/4" PVC pipe on the Cardboard box for the assembly.
  7. Use a smaller cardboard box for making the accelerator and brake pads as in the figure below.
 






Now Let's Set up the wheel - JD Simwheel:

  1. Install Vjoy x86/x64 application on PC.
  2. Install JD SimWheel Server on PC.
  3. Install JD Simwheel App on android device.
  4. Using Connectify on PC/ mobile hotspot on android to interconnect android device and PC/laptop.
  5. Check above video for viewing all steps for connection process.
  6. Run JD simwheel server on PC and then run JD SimWheel app on android.
  7. Select "Play" .On first run it will ask you to copy the IP address shown on server. Enter the address as it is.
  8. Now Run the game you want to play. Change the controls as required.





For advanced configurations you can use x360ace to emulate the device as an xbox controller or wheel.

All the games I tested have been working properly with the wheel. 

Feel free to comment...

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Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Root Samsung Galaxy Grand Quattro GT-I8552 [CWM+ Root +Unroot]

26 comments

How To Root Samsung Galaxy Grand Quattro GT-I8552 [CWM+ Root +Unroot]









I have got my hands on a new Galaxy Grand Quattro White 8GB. First impression was really good. Compared to the Original Grand , the most striking difference is the reduced screen size. Quattro has a 4.7inch screen compared to the 5inch one from Grand. Also the Camera is 5MP instead of 8MP. But picture quality is decent. You also get many modes and options from camera.

 Performance wise ,it was good. It runs on Android JellyBean. The one thing i didnt like on Quattro is the 480x800 resolution. I mean come on , we have already passed the era of those resolutions. Its time to move on to the HD realms. Basically we expect a minimum of 720p. As a result the pixel density is lower compared to most of its competition. 

Since there is a Grand 2 out on the market @ 20k Rs., the price is justified for this device.

Any how, Lets just get to our topic here. This article will help you to flash CWM recovery , then root and also shows you how top unroot Samsung Galaxy Grand Quattro.

Warning:

  • Rooting voids warranty. Do this steps under your own risk.
  • We are not responsible for any damages occurred to your devices.
  • Try this only for Grand Quattro.


Downloads:



Part A
 
Part B



Part C
       Unroot Zip     




Let's Begin:


Part A - Flashing CWM recovery using ODIN.


  • Install the Samsung USB Drivers before doing these steps.
  • Enable USB Debugging in your Device : Settings>Developer Options > USB Debugging
  • Extract ODIN zip file
  • Run ODIN as administrator 
  • Put your device in download mode. To do so, press Volume Down And Home And Power Button all together and when it vibrates release Power Button but keep pressing left ones. You should have a triangle with an android janitor while it's saying downloading ..VOL UP TO CONTINUE...
  • Now connect USB to PC ,you should see a blue rectangle with COM:xx and saying Added. It means that your device is ready to be flashed.
  • Go into the PDA section and select your .tar file.(CWM Recovery)
  • Don't check any option (F.reset time and Auto reboot are checked by default) So just uncheck Auto Reboot.
  • Now click Start.
  • When it's finished, it should say that "Res OK" in Odin..
  • Now remove your USB and then remove your battery and put it back and go to Recovery Mode (Volume UP And Home And Power Button all
    together and when it vibrates release Power Button but keep pressing left ones). 
  • Now you are in CWM recovery.
 





Part B: Rooting Your Grand Quattro


  • Make sure that you have installed CWM-[completed Part A]
  • Switch off your phone. Boot into CWM recovery by Press Volume UP And Home And Power Button all together and when it vibrates release Power Button but keep pressing other ones
  • Select update zip
  • Apply update from sd card.
  • Choose SuperSU_v1.65.zip [if this doesn't work use SuperUser. I prefer the former ] and press yes to apply update.
  • Now click Reboot.




Part C: Unroot Galaxy Grand Quattro



  • Switch Off Device.
  • Boot into CWM Recovery. Press Volume UP And Home And Power Button all together and when it vibrates release Power Button but keep pressing
  • other ones.
  • Select update zip
  • Apply update from sd card (first option).
  • Choose Unroot.zip and press yes to apply update.
  • Now click Reboot.
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    Wednesday, 23 April 2014

    Galaxy S5 Icon Pack For Samsung Galaxy Y GT-S5360

    6 comments

    Flash Galaxy S5 Icon Pack For Galaxy Y GT-S5360









    This is a Galaxy S5 Icon pack, which is almost similar to the original one. Thanks to ImBJ for developing this icon pack for Galaxy Y. Its really cool and vibrant on Galaxy Y. Give an extra bit of juice to your Galaxy Y.



    Warning:

    • Your device must be rooted. Try this link to root Galaxy Y -Link
    • We are not responsible for any damages occured to your device.
    • Do this at your own risk

    Downloads: 

    Galaxy S5 Icon Pack



    Let's Begin:



    • Switch Off your phone. 

    • Boot into CWM recovery.

    • Go to "Mounts and Storage". Then select "mount /system"

    • Flash this Icon pack file.

    • Go back and Select " Reboot Now"





    You have succesfully flashed Galaxy S5 Icon Pack on your Galaxy Y .

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