Hardware Hacks: Fire, alarms, touchable boards and NFC rings

The H's Hardware Hacks section collects stories about the wide range of uses of open source in the rapidly expanding area of open hardware. It's where you can find out about interesting projects, the re-purposing of devices and the creation of a new generation of deeply open systems. In this edition: a programmable NFC Ring gets kickstarted, a touchscreen development board, an alarming Pi project, and a Pi with real fire power.

• Wireless Rings: The H has been trying out a prototype of the NFC Ring and can report that the idea has a lot of potential. With two NFC chips, one sits inside the hand as "private", the other outside as "public", the reprogrammable ring is configured from an Android app. It's a cool project which is due to open its Kickstarter on 20 July.
  

• Touchy touchy: Want to develop applications for your own touchscreen-based system? LinuxGizmos.com reports on the $199 Witech Embedded OK210-A which comes with a 1GHz Samsung S5PV210 processor, 512MB RAM, 1GB Flash, two expansion slots, Ethernet, HDMI, five USB ports and a range of wireless communications. Designed for multimedia terminals, IVI and other consumer electronic uses, the Linux- or Android-powered OK210-A could cut build time for some projects.
  

• Alarming: Want to build a configurable home alarm system? Then the PrivateEyePi project may be for you. All you need is low voltage electronic skills and basic Pi and Linux experience to get building the system, which connects door contacts and motion sensors to the Pi and gives you the ability to control the system from a mobile phone or remote computer... or just get email updates on alarms.
  

• Pi au Naturel: Maybe you want to get back to nature with your Raspberry Pi. AdaFruit recently showed how using a BioLiteStove it was possible to power a Pi and screen using nothing but fire. Just one of the advantages of power-sipping embeddable boards like the Pi.

(djwm)