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Augmented Reality Project Utilizes the Nintendo DSi

✇Hackaday
By: Lewin Day

[Bhaskar Das] has been tinkering with one of Nintendo’s more obscure handhelds, the DSi. The old-school console has been given a new job as part of an augmented reality app called AetherShell. 

The concept is straightforward enough. The Nintendo DSi runs a small homebrew app which lets you use the stylus to make simple line drawings on the lower touchscreen. These drawings are then trucked out wirelessly as raw touch data via UDP packets, and fed into a Gemini tool which transforms them into animation frames. These are then sent to an iPhone app, which uses ARKit APIs and the phone’s camera to display the animations embedded into the surrounding environment via augmented reality.

One might question the utility of this project, given that the iPhone itself has a touch screen you can draw on, too. It’s a fair question, and one without a real answer, beyond the fact that sometimes it’s really fun to play with an old console and do weird things with it. Plus, there just isn’t enough DSi homebrew out in the world. We love to see more.

3 apps to turn your old smartphone into a dashcam

✇How-To Geek
By: Rich Hein

I used to spend a lot of time commuting, but these days I’m lucky enough to work remotely. My wife isn’t. She drives about 20 miles each way on busy highways, and like a lot of people, I worry about her every time she pulls out of the driveway. Late last year, I bought her a dashcam. It’s nothing fancy, just something recording in the background, but she really likes it and says it gives her peace of mind. That alone made it feel worth it to me.

3 free, open-source apps that saved me from photo library chaos

✇How-To Geek
By: Rich Hein

Managing a photo library is easy when it’s just yours. It got a lot harder for me when I also became responsible for keeping photos organized for my wife and mother-in-law. Different habits, different expectations, and everyone still wants their pictures to be easy to find and safely backed up. Over time, that turns into a messy sprawl of folders, duplicates, and “where did that photo go?” conversations.

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