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https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/google-talk-used-for-home-automation-communications-via-android/ | Google Talk Used For Home Automation Communications Via Android | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"android",
"google talk",
"home automation",
"instant message",
"tweetmypc",
"WIndows 8",
"x10"
] | To call [Carnivore’s] home automation project impressive would be an understatement. He’s pulled together
a system that is fast, well presented, and easy to use
. To interface with items in his home he’s using X10 modules, and this example simply switches some table lamps. But the underlying setup seems incredibly polished and should be a snap to extend for just about any purpose.
The guide linked above has all the gritty details, but the best overview is provided in the video after the break. [Carnivore] shows off the Windows 8 machine that acts as the server. It has am X10 transceiver connected to communicate with the appliances. He can control the system from the screen seen above, but everything can also be accessed from his Android phone. Communication between the two is handled by Google Talk, an instant messaging application — but the commands are home screen shortcuts and don’t need to be typed into the Google Talk app. He modified the source code of a program called TweetMyPC to use the Google Talk API which looks for keywords in received messages. The lag on an instant message is far lower compared to SMS or Email so commands are received very close to real-time. Feedback is sent from the server to the phone using a text message. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "927722",
"author": "randomdude",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T19:44:15",
"content": "nice but wouldn’t it be a bit easier if he had used cosm (formerly known as pachube)? It worked great when I used it a while ago. Why overcomplicate stuff ?Ohh and here is an android app that comunicate... | 1,760,376,644.879801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/versatile-motion-dolly-for-time-lapse-photography/ | Versatile Motion Dolly For Time Lapse Photography | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"dolly",
"dslr",
"panning",
"stepper motor",
"time-lapse"
] | This beautiful build is
a motion dolly for making time-lapse videos
. It is at a point where you could consider it complete. After all, the segments featured in the video after the break look marvelous. But [Scottpotamas] has a few additions planned and it sounds like it won’t belong before he accomplishes his goals.
The build is a linear rail on which the camera rides. In the image above you can see the stepper motor which moves the camera mounted at the far end of the rig. This is controlled by an Arduino. Currently the camera is responsible for timing the capture of the images, but [Scottpotamas] says the firmware is nearly ready to hand this responsiblity over to the Arduino. The system is modular, with a simple setting for the length of the track. This way he can swap out for a longer or shorter rail which only takes about five minutes. He also included
support for a panning mount
for the camera. It allows the control box can be programmed to keep the subject centered in the frame as the camera slides along the track.
[via
Reddit
] | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "927109",
"author": "messmaker",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T18:15:49",
"content": "I work for a production company and have been wanting to do something like this for a while, now. In the last few weeks I have decided to add this to my TODO list for this year. Thanks for the inspirat... | 1,760,376,644.330569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/bubble-wrap-cure-for-nexus-7-speaker-distortion/ | Bubble Wrap Cure For Nexus 7 Speaker Distortion | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"bubble wrap",
"distortion",
"nexus 7",
"sound",
"speaker"
] | [Home Brand Cola] is quite happy with his Nexus 7 with the exception of the built-in speaker. It produces fairly good audio quality until he reaches about 50% volume level. Anything above that produces distortion. He figured out
how to fix it using a small piece of bubble wrap
.
The eureka moment came when he was using his Nexus 7 and discovered he could fix the distortion by gripping the top and bottom parts of the case strongly between his finger and thumb. This led him to realize that the speaker unit is a bit loose and the unwanted noise is produced when it vibrates against the case. The video after the break shows the fix, which places a strip of bubble wrap (looks to be about 1″ by 3″) on top of that speaker unit. When the case is snapped back together the packing material helps hold everything in place and now he can use his tablet at full volume without any problems. One of the comments on
the Reddit thread
asks about heat problems with the addition of this plastic. He’s been using it for a few weeks and so far no issues there. | 40 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "926527",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T17:08:05",
"content": "i would have globbed RTV silicone around the speaker housing. Amazing that the manufacturer lets that thing rattle around in there..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,376,644.407207 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/signing-your-3d-prints/ | Signing Your 3D Prints | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"openscad"
] | For all the 3D models out on the Internet, including the STL files on Thingiverse that are copied by other makers every day, there hasn’t been a good way to put your John Hancock on a three-dimensional piece of plastic you’ve designed. [Chris] has been thinking about the fact that an STL file released on the Internet is completely out of the creator’s hands for a while now, and he finally came up with
a good solution to signing 3D prints
.
[Chris] had been looking into ‘stamping’ a maker’s mark on the first few layers of a print, but this wasn’t always practical. Sometimes the bottom of a print needs to be a smooth surface, so [Chris] moved his initials up a few layers into the main body of the print.
By subtracting a 1.0 mm-thick version of his initials from the interior of a print, [Chris] is able to put his maker’s mark on the inside of a 3D object, visible only for a short time during the production process.
The signature isn’t impossible to remove, but it does give a little bit of credit to the original designer, all without some strange DRM scheme or metadata attached to an STL file.
You can check out [Chris]’ printer laying down a few layers of his logo after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv_OQN2H590&w=580] | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "926902",
"author": "Kris Lee",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T17:49:30",
"content": "What is the point of this behind nartsism?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "927351",
"author": "olestra",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T1... | 1,760,376,644.565086 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/electric-imp-makes-a-cat-door-tweet-its-activities/ | Electric Imp Makes A Cat Door Tweet Its Activities | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"cat door",
"cortex-m3",
"Electric Imp",
"php",
"reed switch",
"Sen.se"
] | This
Tweeting cat door uses the Electric Imp
to read a sensor and report back to the server. The hardware is pretty neat. The board hosts an ARM Cortex-M3 processor and gets on your home network via WiFi. The mini-USB cable simply provides the power. Programming is done over the network. Our own
[Brian Benchoff] had a chance to try the Imp out earlier in the Fall
.
Monitoring a cat door is as good a reason as any to undertake a project. The hardware added to the board includes a reed switch mounted on the jamb along with a magnet on the door itself. There is also a blue LED that gives a bit of user feedback. The software isn’t quite as easy but it still wasn’t that bad. As with most web-connected projects getting all the parts to talk to each other was a bit of a chore. The Imp reports back to a server on the local network which then activates a PHP script that uses
Sen.se
to push out a Tweet.
[Thanks Pat] | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "913551",
"author": "Dr. DFTBA",
"timestamp": "2013-01-05T01:30:43",
"content": "I hate to be “that guy”, but using something for its intended purpose… Is most definately not a hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "913553",
... | 1,760,376,644.272722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/is-entropy-slowing-down-your-android-device/ | Is Entropy Slowing Down Your Android Device? | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"entropy",
"random",
"seed"
] | [Lambgx02] got tired of his Android device getting bogged down and decided to dig down to the cause of the issue. His investigation led him to believe that
entropy is causing the slowdown
. He believes that his workaround reduces 90% of the lag on the average Android device.
So how is it possible that entropy is causing the problem? It seems there is a bottleneck when an app requests a random number from the Linux kernel running at the lowest level of the device. Android is set up to use /dev/random for all random number requests, but [Lambgx02] says that location has a very shallow pool of numbers available. When they run out the kernel has to reload with a new seed and this is blocking the app that requested the data from continuing.
His solution was to write his own app that seeds /dev/random once every second using a number from /dev/urandom. He mentions that this might cause a security vulnerability as seeding the random data in this way is not quite as random. There may also be issues with battery life, so make sure to monitor performance if you give it a try.
[via
Reddit
] | 50 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "913449",
"author": "Joe Simpson (@kennydude)",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T22:15:48",
"content": "It’s only noticeable on applications which use random numbers (SSL etc), by basically making the pool of numbers it can pick and use less random, and less secure.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,644.814719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/estimate-velocity-using-quadrature-encoder-data/ | Estimate Velocity Using Quadrature Encoder Data | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"quadrature encoder",
"velocity"
] | Many motors offer a quadrature encoder that give feedback on whether, and in which direction, the motor shaft is moving. But if you’re clever about analyzing the data you can
use a quadrature encoder to estimate motor velocity
. [Jason Sachs] makes the case that it’s fairly easy to get this wrong. Lucky for us he has carefully laid out his process of extrapolating velocity from the two edge-trigger data sources.
The process starts with reading from the encoder. Many chips have peripherals that will interface with a rotary encoder, but hardware lacking that built-in helper can still be used by monitoring pin-change interrupts. Once connected samples are taken over time and the rest is left to the quality of your algorithm.
What can this velocity data be used for? That’s up to you. But we can think of a couple of projects. It may be useful in a spinning POV display like
this FPGA-based beauty
. You also find
quadrature encoders in exercise equipment
. Knowing the velocity will help if you’re building your own computer to replace what came with that Stairmaster.
[via
Reddit
] | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "913426",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T21:47:30",
"content": "“What can this velocity data be used for?”Intelligent interfacing to rotary encoders: turn slow = increment/decrement by 1, turn fast = do it by 10.etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,644.456083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/dedicated-pandora-player-plus-airplay-built-around-the-raspberry-pi/ | Dedicated Pandora Player Plus AirPlay Built Around The Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"airplay",
"debian",
"pandora",
"RPi",
"shairport",
"weezy"
] | [Shaun Gehring] wanted an Internet radio player. Although he did have some troubles along the way, the final project turned out very well. Housed inside this case which used to house a spindle of bland CDs is
a Raspberry Pi that plays Pandora radio and serves as an AirPlay receiver
.
The GPIO header of the RPi makes this project a lot easier. [Shaun] used Adafruit’s breakout board to solder connections for the six buttons and the character LCD screen. Plug some speakers into the audio jack and the hardware end of the deal is finished. The software side of things is very similar to
the BeagleBone Pandora player we looked at in September
. It uses a Linux distribution (Rasbian Weezy) and the Pianobar package.
Pianobar is very versatile. You can control it using a First-In First-Out file. Once [Shaun] figured out how to use mkfifo to set up the file, he was able to control it from a script by monitor button presses and echoing the associated command to the FIFO. The finishing touch was to add AirPlay support via
the shairport package
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "913388",
"author": "raver1975",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T20:28:09",
"content": "Good job on your project. Coincidentally I’m working on documenting my standalone raspberry pi pandora player. I use Dsniff to listen for the URL that Pianobar gets the song from, I then download the son... | 1,760,376,644.50999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/van-de-graaff-generator-built-for-a-few-dollars/ | Van De Graaff Generator Built For A Few Dollars | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"static electricity",
"van de graaff"
] | This Van de Graaf generator
was built using mostly parts on hand. The only thing that was purchased for the project was the Christmas ornament shaped M&M candy tin that serves as the collecting sphere. We didn’t include the in-action shot in the banner because it’s so dark. But sure enough, this will generate the visible sparks that make the device famous.
The gist of the device is that it uses rotating belt to generate static electricity. This potential is stored in the metal collecting sphere on top until a path for discharge is provided. They’re an awful lot of fun in middle-school science class as long hair can be made to stand on end if you touch one while your body is insulated from ground. This build uses a long rubber band as the belt. The band is moved by the motor from a DVD drive tray which is housed in the PVC base. An empty prescription pill bottle bridges the gap between the base and the metal sphere.
If this one is too small for you consider moving to
a 900,000 Volt version
.
[via
Hacked Gadgets
] | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "913353",
"author": "jsngrimm",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T19:25:23",
"content": "Very fun to play around with when the air is really dry in the winter. My dad has a nice stainless steel one he built in college that throws some nice sparks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,376,644.111122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/case-feeder-makes-your-ammo-reloading-more-efficient/ | Case Feeder Makes Your Ammo Reloading More Efficient | Mike Szczys | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"ammo",
"casing",
"reloading",
"tumbler"
] | For those that are into reloading their own ammo you know that getting an efficient assembly line process figured out will make your sessions much more enjoyable and productive. [Msoejacobsk] knew that he could buy a case feeder for his system, but didn’t want to shell out two hundred bucks for it. After a bit of thought he was able to
build this case feeder for around ten dollars
.
The purpose of the rig is to orient each empty casing correctly and feed it to the reloading hardware. This is accomplished by first separating one casing at a time using this angled tumbler. The disc that makes up the floor has slots cut in it which are the size of one casing. When that slot gets to the highest point of its rotation there is an opening through which the casing falls. To ensure proper orientation a V-shaped piece of heavy wire has been place in the middle of the opening. This acts as a fulcrum, letting the heavier base pull the casing in that direction. You can see this happen in the clip after the break.
[Thanks Alex] | 87 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "913308",
"author": "CoolMod",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T18:05:33",
"content": "Really???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "913317",
"author": "nomnim",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T18:17:49",
"content": "Are y... | 1,760,376,644.724082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/04/pictures-from-weather-satellites-with-a-usb-tv-tuner/ | Pictures From Weather Satellites With A USB TV Tuner | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"RTL-SDR",
"RTLSDR",
"software-defined radio",
"weather satellite"
] | Several times a day, a NOAA weather satellite passes over your head, beaming down pictures of weather systems and cloud formations. These transmissions aren’t encrypted, and given the requisite hardware it’s possible for you to download these images from space as [Lovro] shows us
in a tutorial video
.
To get these near real-time satellite pictures, [Lovro] used
one of those USB TV tuners
we’ve grown so fond of. A somewhat specialized antenna is required to receive the right hand polarized transmissions from NOAA weather satellites, but with a few bits of wood and wire, [Lovro] made a helical antenna to listen in on the weather satellites transmitting around 137 MHz. After gathering a whole bunch of data from the satellites with
SDRsharp
, [Lovro] used an
image decoder
to turn an audio file into a picture taken from space just hours ago.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen images from a NOAA weather satellite downloaded with a software defined radio; last year [hpux735]
did just that
with a somewhat inexpensive
Softrock SDR
. [Lovro]’s use of a USB TV tuner to receive the transmission from NOAA satellites is a lot easier on the pocketbook, though, with the largest expense being an investment in time to build a helical antenna. | 40 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "913289",
"author": "jwrm22",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T17:24:05",
"content": "Just WOW!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "913299",
"author": "Pacemk",
"timestamp": "2013-01-04T17:55:57",
"content": "Same h... | 1,760,376,644.975223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/reading-piano-rolls-without-a-player-piano/ | Reading Piano Rolls Without A Player Piano | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"opencv",
"player piano"
] | A while back, [Jacob] played around with a player piano. After feeding a roll into the machine and trying to figure out how a fifty year old machine using hundred year old technology can replicate a skilled pianist, he decided to take a crack at decoding piano rolls for himself.
He came up with a clever way of doing it over Christmas break
, using a camera and a few bits of OpenCV.
The old-school mechanics of a player piano use a bellows and valve system to suck air through dozens of holes, making the action hit a string whenever a hole is present in the piano roll. To bring this mechanism into the modern age, [Jacob] pointed a video camera at the active part of the piano roll and used
OpenCV
to translate holes in a piece of paper to a MIDI file.
The synthesized version sounds just as good as the original paper scroll-based version, as seen in the video after the break. There are a few sync issues in the video and the resulting MIDI file isn’t in the right key, but that’s easily fixed by anyone willing to replicate this project.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXECSFnu9yg&w=470] | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "925229",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T14:13:14",
"content": "Thanks for a great hack. My grandparents used to have a pedal powered pianola, brought back great memories of pushing the pedals with my hands as a kid cause I was too short to reach the pedals when sitting o... | 1,760,376,645.151859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/07/building-a-new-motherboard-for-a-trs-80/ | Building A New Motherboard For A TRS-80 | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"retro hackaday",
"trs-80",
"TRS-80 model 100"
] | The TRS-80 Model 100 was an amazing piece of kit when it was released. Able to run for a week with just four AA batteries and smaller than some laptops today, this portable version of the TRS-80 saw action with war correspondents covering the Falklands invasion. A pedigree a MacBook Pro will never be able to live up to, it seems.
[Hudson] picked up a non-functioning Model 100 with the express goal of
replacing the 30-year-old electronics inside with an updated motherboard
– and also pull up
our retro site
in the process. Armed with a Teensy++, [Hudson] pried open his ancient computer and set to work interfacing the display and keyboard to his AVR dev board.
The LCD display in the Model 100 has a resolution of 240×64, driven by ten Hitachi HD44102 display drivers. Each of these display drivers are responsible for the pixels in a 50×32 rectangle on the screen and are interfaced with a 30-bit wide bus consisting of chip select lines, and 8-bit data bus, and a few other random control lines. [Hudson] plugged this 30 pin header into his Teensy++ and after a bit of ingenuity regarding the strange electrical requirements of the LCD, was able to control every pixel on this 30-year-old display.
The next order of business was interfacing the keyboard with a modern microcontroller. The keyboard is laid out in a normal matrix, but with a few oddities: characters like ~, |, and curly brackets aren’t present on the Model 100. After working these problems out, [Hudson] set to work on a VT100 terminal emulator. This allowed him to run vi and lynx, enabling him to
pull up the Hackaday retro site
in a wonderful forty-column text mode.
Future improvements to this redesign include designing a proper PCB to replace the current protoboard design. The original Model 100 included a text editor and programming language, and adding a Forth implementation isn’t out of [Hudson]’s grasp. It’s an awesome build, and an excellent improvement that will allow [Hudson]’s Trash-80 to see another 30 years of use. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "925077",
"author": "Neil Cherry",
"timestamp": "2013-01-07T13:49:15",
"content": "Very cool hack, and not to diminish its value but what is it’s power consumption? One of the cool things about the Model 100 (I have the NEC PC-8201A) was that it could run on 4 AA batteries.",
"pa... | 1,760,376,645.087458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/06/playing-a-wav-file-with-64-bytes-of-ram/ | Playing A WAV File With 64 Bytes Of RAM | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"doorbell",
"eeprom",
"pic",
"PIC10F322",
"SOT-23"
] | [Jacques] thought his doorbell was too loud, so of course the first thing that came to mind was replacing the electronics and playing a WAV file of his choosing every time someone came knocking. What he ended up with is
a very neat circuit
: he used a six-pin microcontroller with 64 bytes of RAM to play an audio file. (French,
Google translation
)
The microcontroller in question is a
PIC10F322
. one of the tiniest PICs around with enough Flash for 512 instructions, 64 bytes of RAM, and a whole bunch of other features that shouldn’t fit into a package as small as a mote of dust. Without the space to store audio data on the microcontroller, [Jacques] turned to a 64 kilobyte I2C EEPROM. The PIC communicates with the EEPROM with just two pins, allowing it to read the audio data and spit it out again via PWM to an amplifier. The code required for this feat is only 253 instructions and uses just a few bytes of RAM; an impressive display of what a very small microcontroller can do. | 37 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "915170",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2013-01-06T17:23:45",
"content": "The title is misleading… You need way less than 64B of RAM to make it work.In fact, i think it can even be reduced to 2-3B.Its really cool to have customizable doorbells…Im surprised there are no commerci... | 1,760,376,645.342217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/06/hardware-spi-with-python-on-a-raspberry-pi/ | Hardware SPI With Python On A Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"spi"
] | While the Raspberry Pi has very good support for an I2C bus, a lot of very cool chips – including the in system programmer for just about every ATtiny and ATmega microcontroller – use an SPI bus. [Louis] sent in a tutorial for
getting hardware SPI on his Raspi
, and even though it’s rather limited right now, it’s a step in the right direction.
Previously, [Brian Hensley] put up a tutorial for using
the Linux SPI drivers with the Raspi
. [Louis] wanted to play with SPI in Python, so he added a C extension to the spidev.c file (available
here
) that allows him to open an SPI connection, initialize, transfer, and close the connection.
After connecting an Arduino to the MOSI, MISO and SCK pins of his Arduino, [Louis] was able to transfer data from his Raspi over an SPI bus. It should be noted that a level shifter would be a
really
good idea here, but this is an excellent project if anyone would ever want to port AVRDude to Python. | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "915626",
"author": "antiomiae",
"timestamp": "2013-01-06T18:22:28",
"content": "At first I thought this post was saying the drivers most people were using weren’t the hardware drivers but were the bit bang drivers. It looks like that’s not the case. I think this Python module will... | 1,760,376,645.959381 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/06/who-would-win-in-a-fight-robot-lemmy-or-robot-god/ | Who Would Win In A Fight, Robot [Lemmy] Or Robot God? | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"compressorhead",
"robot band",
"robots"
] | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RBSkq-_St8&w=580]
So this is what happens when a fan of The Rock-afire Explosion grows up.
Meet Compressorhead
, a musical trio of hydraulic and pneumatic musical mastery.
Compressorhead is a lean band, consisting of only three members.
Stickboy
, the drummer, is a four-armed beast reminiscent of [General Grievous] that plays a 14-piece Pearl kit with a double bass. His listed influences include [Danny Carey] and the original MPC60.
Fingers
is the guitarist and a wonder of mechanical linkages consisting of 78 hydraulically actuated fingers. Influences include [Yngwie Malmsteen], but with more fingers and less of an ego, we expect Fingers to be an even better guitarist than his idol.
Bringing in the low-end is
Bones
, the robotic tread-mounted bassist for Compressorhead. Like Fingers, he plays an unmodified instrument. He’s also the newest member of the band, completed in 2012.
If you’d like to check out Compressorhead in person,
they seem to be touring Australia
right now. If you’d like to schedule them,
their rider
lists a requirement of 65 Amp, 3 phase power, 3 liters each of hydraulic fluid and motor oil, and suspiciously no requirement for removing all the brown M&Ms from a package. Be sure to check out the videos of the band in action on their
media site
.
Thanks [BadWolf] for sending this one in. | 52 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "914186",
"author": "t&p",
"timestamp": "2013-01-06T14:07:25",
"content": "HOLY FUCK!!! That is the most bad ass thing my organic eye balls have ever seen!I would pay to see a show!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "921752",
... | 1,760,376,645.580625 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/05/brute-forcing-a-gps-pin/ | Brute Forcing A GPS PIN | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"brute force",
"garmin",
"gps",
"robot",
"security"
] | [JJ] picked up a Garmin Nuvi 780 GPS from an auction recently. One of the more frustrating features [JJ] ran into is it’s PIN code; this GPS can’t be unlocked unless a four-digit code is entered, or it’s taken to a ‘safe location’. Not wanting to let his auction windfall go to waste, [JJ] rigged up an
automated brute force cracking robot
to unlock this GPS.
The robot is built around an old HP scanner and a DVD drive sled to move the GPS in the X and Y axes. A clever little device made out of an eraser tip and a servo taps out every code from 0000 to 9999 and waits a bit to see if the device unlocks. It takes around 8 seconds for [JJ]’s robot to enter a single code, so entering all 10,000 PINs will take about a day and a half.
Fortunately, the people who enter these codes don’t care too much about the security of their GPS devices. The code used to unlock [JJ]’s GPS was 0248. It only took a couple of hours for the robot to enter the right code; we’d call that time well spent.
You can check out the brute force robot in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHp4px45uQY&w=580] | 120 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "913768",
"author": "henry",
"timestamp": "2013-01-05T16:10:32",
"content": "Fantastic! what a hack!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "913770",
"author": "mgeap",
"timestamp": "2013-01-05T16:16:57",
"conte... | 1,760,376,645.496836 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/05/hackaday-links-january-5-2013/ | Hackaday Links: January 5, 2013 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"esd",
"indiana jones",
"laser",
"laser pointer",
"reactos",
"rickroll",
"what not to do"
] | Do not aim laser at remaining eye
Over on the reddits, [CarbonGod]
thought he had a slightly overpowered laser pointer
. His red laser pointer had a label that said it outputs less than 5 mW. The only problem is it melted black plastic and heated a thermocouple up to 140°F. [CarbonGod] is begging, borrowing, or stealing a power meter from an engineer friend, but until then
we’ve got measurements from [The_Sourgrapes]
. His lasers put out 105 mW (red), 56 mW (blue), and 53 mW (green).
While <5 mW lasers are fairly safe,
these lasers that are labeled as having < 5 mW of output are not.
Now if we only knew where to buy these overpowered lasers…
It’s impossible to find this video in HD
[Zach] created
a physical rickroll device
. It’s an Arduino and an MP3 shield hooked up to an ultrasonic sensor. When someone walks within six feet of the device, the Arduino starts playing
Never Gonna Give You Up.
When that person walks away, the song is paused only to start again when something else is detected by the ultrasonic sensor. There’s
a hilarious video
of [Zach] triggering his physical rickroll device, or you can check it out on the build page.
Hey, you! Write some code!
[William] wrote in to tell us about a project called
ReactOS
. The goal of the project is to create a free and open source operating system that is binary comparable with Windows XP. Yes, this project has been around for a very long time, but with
Microsoft dropping support for XP
, the ReactOS team could
really
use a few devs to get a beta out soon. If you know a bunch of low-level Windows stuff but haven’t ever contributed to an open source project,
check out the developer’s wiki
.
I’m [Johnny Knoxville] and this is electrostatic discharge
It looks like [Mehdi]
is making a few instructional videos
for EEs and those tinkering around with electricity. So far he has tutorials for
making proper wiring connections
,
what not to do with ESD
, how to
take capacitors for granted
, and demonstrating
how electricity can kill you
.
Penitent man shall pass…. Penitent man shall pass…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj8wXlSXGk0&w=470]
If gift giving were a contest, [Bradley] would win. His sister’s favorite movie is
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
, so when he needed to wrap a gift (a coffee cup, fittingly),
he went all out
. All the challenges required to obtain the Holy Grail are present in this present including the breath of God (needs more circular saws), the name of God (why was the letter ‘J’ even in the movie?), and the Leap of Faith (sand included).
Coming up for his sister’s birthday, a face-melting hair dryer. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "913745",
"author": "elderly",
"timestamp": "2013-01-05T14:16:11",
"content": "even the rick roll is censored in Germany",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "913886",
"author": "Erniejunior",
"timestamp": "2013-01-05... | 1,760,376,645.697148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/03/sump-pump-monitor-emails-and-raises-alarm-if-water-rises/ | Sump Pump Monitor Emails And Raises Alarm If Water Rises | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"alarm",
"ethernet",
"sump",
"sump pump"
] | [Matt] literally finds himself in a sticky situation. There’s an oil slick in his sump well. These wells work in conjunction with drain tiles to pump water away from the foundation of a house. Unfortunately the tar that was used to waterproof the outside of his foundation is also washing into the sump and gumming up the works. The system he built will
sound an audio alarm and send an email if something goes wrong with the sump pump
.
He’s monitoring for two different issues. One technique uses a float valve to sense if the water is too high, signalling that the mechanism controlling the pump has malfunctioned. The other is a current monitor that senses if the sump pump has been running too long (caused by the sump’s water sensor getting stuck in the on position). The one thing he didn’t want to do is control the pump directly as a bug in his code will easily result in a flooded basement. We have the same concerns when considering
building a DIY thermostat
(an error there could mean frozen water pipes leading to flooding). | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "912855",
"author": "atxinventor",
"timestamp": "2013-01-03T18:10:01",
"content": "OT: for a moment I had the silliest reaction as what my mind read was that what the sump pump does is monitoring emails. Now, /that/ would be some hack… OTOH, I have had some issues with a sump pump th... | 1,760,376,645.750852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/03/solar-powered-wifi-radiation-sensor/ | Solar Powered Wifi Radiation Sensor | Eric Evenchick | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"cosm",
"geiger",
"radiation detector"
] | [Manish] packed lots of functionality into this
radiation sensor module
. The device is completely solar powered and weatherproof, so it can be mounted anywhere. It uses a Geiger Muller tube to monitor radiation and connects to the internet using wifi network to report the readings.
The design uses an Arduino Pro Mini to perform the monitoring and reporting. Wifi connectivity is provided by a RN-XV wifi module. A solar panel, Adafruit’s solar charger, and a LiPo battery are used to provide power to the device. It’s enclosed in Adafruit’s IP-66 rated weatherproof enclosure.
A
custom Geiger Muller tube interface
is used to interface with the tube. The interface is simple and cheap. It provides the high voltage required to drive the tube, and circuitry needed to detect the ionization events.
Once the device is connected to the internet, it uploads data directly to
Cosm
. This service lets the data be shared using Twitter, or accessed using an API. The project shows how to build a wireless networked sensor that directly connects to the internet for about $100. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "912838",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2013-01-03T17:09:38",
"content": "The circuit design is awful. That is a good way to kill a gm tube. A gm tube is not hard to drive, you can modify a CCFL supply to drive them cheaply. There are some notes here on using CCFL inverters to dr... | 1,760,376,645.626809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/03/an-absurdly-clever-thermal-imaging-camera/ | An Absurdly Clever Thermal Imaging Camera | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"infrared",
"infrared camera",
"temperature sensor"
] | Thermal imaging cameras, cameras able to measure the temperature of an object while taking a picture, are amazingly expensive. For the price of a new car, you can pick up one of these infrared cameras and check out where the drafts are in your house. [Max Justicz] thought he could do better than even professional-level thermal imaging cameras and came up with
an absurdly clever DIY infrared camera
.
While thermal imaging cameras –
even inexpensive homebrew ones
– have an infrared sensor that works a lot like a camera CCD, there is a cheaper alternative. Non-contact infrared thermometers can be had for $20, the only downside being they measure a single point and not multiple areas like their more expensive brethren. [Max] had the idea of using one of these thermometers along with a few RGB LEDs to paint different colors of light around a scene in response to the temperature detected by
an infrared thermometer sensor
.
To turn his idea into a usable tool, [Max] picked up an LED flashlight and saved the existing LED array for another day. After stuffing the guts of the flashlight with a few RGB LEDs, he added the infrared thermometer sensor and an Arduino to change the color of the LED in response to the temperature given by the sensor.
After that, it’s a simple matter of light painting. [Max] took a camera, left the shutter open, and used his RGB thermometer flashlight to paint a scene with multicolor LEDs representing the temperature sensed by the infrared thermometer. It’s an amazingly clever hack, and an implementation so simple we’re surprised we haven’t seen before. | 35 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "912786",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2013-01-03T15:07:15",
"content": "This is definitely a brilliant idea!And you can also have some sort of realiltime indicatio, if ony for a spot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "912793... | 1,760,376,645.818247 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/03/accurate-timers-with-an-avr/ | Accurate Timers With An AVR | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"clock",
"crystal",
"timer"
] | An awful lot of microcontroller projects use timers to repeat an action every few minutes, hours, or days. While these timers can be as accurate as a cheap digital wrist watch, there are times when you need a microcontroller’s timer to measure
exactly
, losing no more than a few milliseconds a day.
It’s not very hard to get a timer to this level as accuracy
, as [Karl] shows us in a tutorial.
The problem with keeping time with a microcontroller has to do with the crystal, clock frequency, and hardware prescalers of your chip of choice. [Karl] started his project with an ATMega168 and a 20 MHz crystal and the prescaler set at 256. This made the 78.125 interrupts per second, but the lack of floating point arithmetic means one second for the microcontroller will be 0.9984 seconds to you and me.
[Karl]’s solution to this problem was to have the ATMega count out 78 interrupts per second for seven seconds, then count out 79 interrupts for one second. It’s not terribly complicated, and now [Karl]’s timers are as accurate as the crystal used for the ‘168’s clock. | 50 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "912760",
"author": "Arlet",
"timestamp": "2013-01-03T14:10:02",
"content": "Simple solution is to keep an accumulator with the total number of cycles. In this case, the interrupt comes every 19,968 cycles, and a millisecond equals 20,000 cycles. At every interrupt do this:a += 19968... | 1,760,376,645.906705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/03/tentacles-and-phalanges-made-from-drinking-straws/ | Tentacles And Phalanges Made From Drinking Straws | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"drinking straw",
"hand",
"I ain't never seen them fing",
"tentacles"
] | He human hand is one of the most impressive pieces of machinery – biological, mechanical, or otherwise – that you’ll ever lay eyes on. With two dozen degrees of freedom, the hand can gently caress the most fragile flower petal without bruising it, or beat a hammer into an anvil with tremendous force.
Simulating
the human hand, however, is quite a challenge that requires dozens of servos and complex mechanical linkages. [Tomdf] over on Instructables is
able to create hands, tentacles, and other weird biological contraptions
using spring-loaded drinking straws and custom-made 3d printed joints.
[Tomdf] got the idea for drinking straw phalanges after seeing a few 3D printed drinking straw connectors meant to be used for creating 3D objects out of disposable plastic tubes. After designing a new spring-loaded joint for drinking straws, [Tomdf] is able to add a few lengths of thread to serve as ligaments to control the segments of drinking straws. It’s a similar setup to
the horrible demon spawn
we saw at Maker Faire last year, but far more extendable for any project that might pop into your head.
You can check out the drinking straw tentacles in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JtnFIyFmCQ&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urX5DbJPRu8&w=470] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "912722",
"author": "ChrisC",
"timestamp": "2013-01-03T12:31:13",
"content": "Curses we have competition!Easton Lachappelle and I are working on a 3D printed robotic hand/arm robot at the moment.Neat Idea though. I’d seen the straw connectors before and had been working on spring joi... | 1,760,376,646.078437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/battery-teardown-to-get-at-the-cells-inside/ | Battery Teardown To Get At The Cells Inside | Mike Szczys | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"battery",
"cell"
] | Most of what people call batteries are actually cells. All of the common disposable alkaline batteries from AAA to D are single cells. The exception is the 9v battery which actually has six smaller cells inside of it. [Tom] took a
look inside three different batteries to see what cells they’re hiding
. Since he no longer uses the batteries for their intended purposes the individual cells may find a new life inside of one of his upcoming projects.
The six volt lantern battery on the left has four cells inside of it. This is no surprise since each zinc-carbon cell is rated for 1.5V. There’s not much that can be done with the internals since each cell is made of a carbon rod and zinc electrolyte ooze (rather than being sealed in their own packages).
Moving on to the rechargeable PP3 battery in the middle he finds the 8.4V unit is made up of seven 1.2V nickel-metal hydride cells. Many of them were shot, but we’d love to see one of the intact cells powering something small like
a bristlebot
.
The final component is an old laptop battery. Inside are an octet of Lithium Ion cells. The majority register 0V, but a few have 0.4V left on them. This is not surprising. We’ve seen
power tool packs that have a few bad cells
spoil the battery. It’s possible to resurrect a battery by combining good cells from two or more dead units. | 40 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "912511",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T23:26:13",
"content": "I’ve got to share this one…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_8n2Qgguto",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "912514",
"author": "Akoi Meexx",
... | 1,760,376,646.033555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/morse-code-flower-is-trying-to-tell-you-something/ | Morse Code Flower Is Trying To Tell You Something | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"flower",
"led",
"morse code",
"msp430",
"pwm",
"reed switch"
] | To the casual observer this flower looks nice as its illuminated center fades in and out. But there’s hidden meaning to that light. Some of the blinks are longer than others;
this flower is using Morse Code
.
[Renaud Schleck] wanted to try a few different things with his MSP430 microcontroller. He decided on an LED that looks like a flower as it will be a nice piece of decor to set around the home. To add the Morse Code message he wanted something a bit more eloquent (and less distracting) than purely digital flashing. So he took the dots and dashes of the hard-coded message and turned them into fading signals by using Pulse-Width Modulation.
He free-formed the circuit so that it, and the coin cell that powers it, would fit in the flower pot. A reed switch is responsible for turning the juice on and off. When placed near a magnet the flower begins its gentle playback.
[via
Reddit
] | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "912493",
"author": "einballimwasser",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T22:04:30",
"content": "Now, it would be awesome if the leafs would be the antenna and the petal would be another resonator and the LED would therefore blink by the radiation .. the stipe is GND.True morse code is transmi... | 1,760,376,646.122887 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/color-changing-bag-matches-clothing-color-tells-you-whats-inside/ | Color Changing Bag Matches Clothing Color, Tells You What’s Inside | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"bag",
"computer bag",
"led",
"rfid",
"rgb",
"satchel"
] | Adding some lights to your everyday items will certainly give you a style leaning toward the world of Blade Runner. But if you can add functionality to control the blinky components you’ve actually got something. A great example of this is [Kathryn McElroy’s]
Chameleon Bag
. It’s a shoulder bag with a light-up flap. It can color match your clothing, but she also built some features that will let you know what is inside of the bag.
The project started by using a cardboard template in the size and shape of the bag’s flap. After adding an Arduino to control the LEDs and an RFID reader for an interactive element she sewed a replacement flap that also acts as a diffuser. In the video after the break she demonstrates matching the color of her scarf by reading a tag sewn in the end of it. She then starts loading up all the stuff needed for a day away from home. As the keys, phone, and computer are placed in the bag their tags are read, resulting in different combinations of color. Once everything she needs is inside, the flap turns green and she heads out the door.
This will go great with your
illuminated umbrella
.
[via
Adafruit
] | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "912481",
"author": "nyder",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T21:40:57",
"content": "Nice picture, says the item can change color to match clothing, yet in the picture it’s a very ugly pink and the lady is wearing green, grey & black. Doesn’t look to me like it’s changing color to match cl... | 1,760,376,646.170794 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/an-amplifier-circuit-good-enough-to-eat/ | An Amplifier Circuit Good Enough To Eat | Mike Szczys | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"candy",
"gingerbread",
"licorice"
] | [Dino’s] kitchen skills match his hardware hacking prowess. Look really close at the image above and you’ll realize
this collection of transistors and passive components is edible
. Rather than decorating cookies for the holidays he built this audio amplifier from gingerbread, icing, and candy.
The thing is, [Dino] almost always has that extra touch to his presentations. If you watch the video after the break you’ll notice that the sound is not the crystal clear quality we’re used to hearing in his video. That’s because he used
the hardware from which the edible offering was modeled
to do the audio for the presentation clip.
After laying out the design using Express PCB he gets down to business. The base, which is gingerbread, looks just like a square of Radio Shack protoboard. To make the diodes he rolled up some tin foil around a screw driver to use as a mold for sugar and water which had been boiled long enough to give a dark color. A similar technique was used to cast the other parts. Everything was tied together using frosting and pieces of red and black licorice. | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "912441",
"author": "niekblankers",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T20:03:03",
"content": "Not a hack. (sorry)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "912448",
"author": "Dino Segovis (@MakerDino)",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T20... | 1,760,376,646.53144 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/three-conceptual-approaches-to-driving-a-ws2811-led-pixel/ | Three Conceptual Approaches To Driving A WS2811 LED Pixel | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"led",
"pixel",
"rgb",
"ws2811"
] | [Cunning_Fellow] published a post with
three proof-of-concept approaches to driving a WS2811 LED pixel
. We looked at a project early in December that
used an AVR microcontroller to drive the RGB package
. [Cunning_Fellow] saw this, and even though he doesn’t have any of these parts on hand he still spent the time hammering out ways to overcome the timing issues involved with address the device. His motto is “put up or shut up” when it comes to criticizing projects featured on Hackaday. We love seeing someone pick up an idea and run with it.
The approach in all three cases aims to conserve clock cycles when timing the communications. This leaves the developer as many cycles as possible to perform other tasks than simply telling the lights what to do. One approach is an assembly routine that is just a shade slower but groups all 14 free cycles into one block. The next looks at using external 7400 series hardware. The final technique is good old-fashioned bit banging.
[
Photo Credit
] | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "912430",
"author": "Joseph Rautenbach (@joerautenbach)",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T19:28:38",
"content": "Adafruit actually has written a neat library for driving the WS2811 Pixels. They use them in their Flora RGB Smart Pixel and in their NeoPixel strip. The library seems perfect fo... | 1,760,376,646.646501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/a-very-dash-ing-ipad-mini/ | A Very Dash-ing IPad Mini | Mike Szczys | [
"Tablet Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"dash",
"dashboard",
"ford",
"ipad mini",
"truck"
] | The work which [Mark] did to
mount this iPad mini in the dashboard
of his Ford truck is commendable. It looks like it came from the factory this way, and the functionality matches that illusion.
He actually started the project before he had the iPad mini on hand. A PDF that mapped out the exact dimensions was used as a template for the layout and alteration. He took the stereo controls out of the original faceplate. That opening was made to fit the screen by cutting, adding putty, then sanding and finishing.
Since the bezel won’t let [Mark] get at any of the buttons on the iPad itself he picked up an external home button on eBay and mounted it just to the left of the screen. Inside the dashboard a docking connector is responsible for powering the tablet and connecting it to the sound system. There’s even a WiFi connection thanks to the
MiFi
system he mounted in the overhead console. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "912403",
"author": "Rob Tullis",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T18:08:01",
"content": "Would be really nice to read the original article without having to sign up for it… Looks like a really nice build looking at the posted pic though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,646.591227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/a-gamecube-and-n64-console-mashup/ | A Gamecube And N64 Console Mashup | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"casemod",
"gamecube",
"n64"
] | [Hailrazer] over on the Made by Bacteria forums was a bit tired of all his consoles cluttering up the space underneath his TV. No worries, though, because it’s actually fairly easy to
combine a Gamecube and an N64 into one system
that looks very professional.
While [Hailrazer]’s Gamecube was left reasonably complete, not including the addition of a mod chip and SD card to hold Gamecube disk images, the N64 portion of the build required quite a bit of hardware hacking. After finding a Game Boy Advance player for a Gamecube – a neat hardware add-on that allows you to play GBA games on a Game Cube – [Hailrazer] thought he found the perfect enclosure for an N64 case mod.
The guts of the GBA player were thrown out and the guts of an N64 were carefully filed down to fit inside their new home. An
Everdrive 64
holds almost every US N64 release on an SD card, making access to the cartridge port unnecessary.
A switch on the side of the Gamecube toggles the video and audio output between the Gamecube and N64. It’s a neat little setup, and packs two consoles into the space of the tiny Gamecube.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipMUv1SvVaw&w=580] | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "912512",
"author": "lolwut365",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T23:27:29",
"content": "nice hack, 64Drive is a better piece of hardware than the everdrive, but if you’re on a budget I guess its ok to cut corners ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,376,646.467243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/frankenstein-an-all-tube-home-theater-amplifier/ | Frankenstein, An All-tube Home Theater Amplifier | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"home theater",
"tube amp"
] | Here’s an exercise in excess if we’ve ever seen one. While working on his undergrad at Michigan State, [Gregory] thought it would be a great idea to build
an all-tube home theater system
. He calls his seven-foot tall rack of amplifiers ‘Frankenstein,’ and we’ve got to agree this build is an impressive monstrosity of engineering prowess.
[Gregory]’s Frankenstein is a complete 5.1 home theater system. In the interests of sanity, the majority of the equipment in the rack is off-the-shelf gear including a CD player, surround sound processor, and a beautiful McIntosh solid state preamp. The power amps, though, are where this build really shines.
For the sub, [Gregory] built
a wonderful monoblock tube amp
, able to push nearly 300 watts into a subwoofer. The other channels for this home theater system are amplified with
a huge four channel tube amp
providing 480 watts per channel. In total, there are 23 tubes in [Gregory]’s amplifier system, enough to consume 20 amps of filament current.
You can check out [Gregory]’s demo video of his system after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8PRiR43TSU&w=470] | 27 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "912357",
"author": "hekilledmywire",
"timestamp": "2013-01-02T15:34:49",
"content": "Repost(again, this is like the 3rd or 4th time I see this here).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "912378",
"author": "Cold_Turkey",
"tim... | 1,760,376,646.750099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/01/this-day-in-hack-a-day-history-january-1st-2005/ | This Day In Hack A Day History: January 1st 2005 | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"history",
"usb"
] | A new feature that we’re playing with is an occasional look back at this day in Hack a Day history. While we’re still hotly disputing exactly what, when, and how to show, we thought today would be a great day to introduce the idea.
So, in on this day in Hack a Day history we’re reaching back to our very first January 1, which was 2005. There are some interesting things to consider when reading this post. At this point in time, we were still sort of a growth off the side of engadget like [Kuato] from the 1990 version of Total Recall. We were less than a year old and still hadn’t completely developed our style, we didn’t really share much information about the project, and yep, the very first comment is “not a hack”.
Better USB Wireless Security. January 1, 2005.
It is fun to see the lowercase style in effect, and jarring to see the lack of [] around a name. The old black and white pictures are a fun memory. | 42 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "912093",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T20:25:16",
"content": "This is not a hack. (Sorry Caleb, can’t help it.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "912097",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T... | 1,760,376,647.004298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/27/making-a-tardis-bigger-on-the-inside/ | Making A TARDIS Bigger On The Inside | Brian Benchoff | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"augmented reality",
"tardis"
] | Over Thanksgiving, [Greg] had a little time on his hands and decided he needed an afternoon project. Having a few bits of plywood, an xacto knife, and some blue paint on hand meant a miniature TARDIS would take shape on his workbench. After finishing the model, [Greg] continued improving it with a blinky LED when
the thought of adding an interior to the TARDIS entered his mind
. An idea too good to pass up, really.
The TARDIS, of course, is smaller on the outside, so [Greg] needed a way to virtually model the interior of [9] and [10]’s home. After playing around with Blender for a few days, [Greg] had a reasonable 3D facsimile of the TARDIS interior. Now the only problem was to display it behind the front door.
[Greg] whipped up a small app for his phone that reads a zebra print pattern behind the door and overlays the 3D modeled TARDIS interior. Yes, it’s only viewable through augmented reality, but tilting the desktop TARDIS from side to side makes the entire console room visible. You can check out [Greg]’s TARDIS interior in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUBxHd3bMhg&w=470] | 25 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "910181",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2012-12-27T13:09:40",
"content": "Nicely done.I’ve always wanted a life-size TARDIS that would serve as a door to a secret room, or lift to an underground lair, so it really would be bigger on the inside. I know. I’m a nerd. But this is h... | 1,760,376,646.926364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/toner-transfer-for-resist-and-silk-screen-using-printable-vinyl/ | Toner Transfer For Resist And Silk Screen Using Printable Vinyl | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"pcb",
"sticker",
"toner transfer",
"vinyl"
] | This toner transfer method uses a different material than we normally see. The red sheet being peeled back isn’t toner transfer paper. It’s printable vinyl used for both
the resist
and
the silk screen
.
The application process is almost the same as any other toner transfer PCB fabrication material. The printable vinyl stick is first adhered to a piece of paper before feeding it through a laser printer. It is acceptable to clean the vinyl with alcohol before printing if you think there may be a finger print or other oil on its surface. After printing it is carefully aligned with the board and ironed on.
[Mincior Vicentiu] thinks there are a few big benefits to this material. It seems that as you heat the toner it expands and hardens, but the vinyl actually softens to make room for this. We can imagine that this helps alleviate the smudging that sometimes occurs when ironing toner that is simply printed on paper. The other advantage is that the vinyl peels off quite easily after ironing, where as you need to soak paper in water and carefully massage it off of the toner.
[via
Dangerous Prototypes
] | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "910032",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2012-12-26T23:38:58",
"content": "That is the same dude who DP wrote about using the technique to do tonor transfer for etching in Septemberhttp://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/09/29/pcb-manufacture-using-oracal-vinyl-film-laser-printer/he’s ... | 1,760,376,646.865388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/buzzed-buzzer-gives-you-a-breathalyzer-test-while-ringing-in-the-new-year/ | Buzzed Buzzer Gives You A Breathalyzer Test While Ringing In The New Year | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"alcohol sensor",
"breathalyzer",
"buzzer",
"mq-3",
"New Year's Eve",
"Teensy"
] | We’re not sure if there’s enough time to get a parts order delivered, but no geeky New Year’s party will be complete without
a party buzzer that doubles as a Breathalyzer
. The Buzzed Buzzer hides all of the necessary bits inside of a paper and plastic party favor. We guess it only buzzes if you’re over the limit? Actually that’s not the case at all. The accuracy of the sensor used in the project really just measures the presence of alcohol and can’t quantify BAC.
A Teensy 2.0 microcontroller board drives the project. Powered by a Lithium cell, it monitors an MQ-3 Alcohol gas sensor and drives a buzzer. The components are just small enough to be hidden by the cone of the party buzzer. You can see a demonstration of this in the short clip after the jump.
This is a fun project, but we’re still big fans of getting the crowd involved with this
large LED meter which is hooked up to the same style of alcohol sensor
.
[via
Dvice
] | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "909982",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2012-12-26T21:13:18",
"content": "I was about to ask why on earth one would want an alcohol test on new years eve, then read that the buzzer works only if you’re drunk.Good!:^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,646.685376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/raspberry-pi-used-as-a-squeezebox-server/ | Raspberry Pi Used As A Squeezebox Server | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"logitech",
"RPi",
"Squeezebox"
] | [Jacken] loves his lossless audio and because of that he’s long been a fan of Squeezebox. It makes streaming the high-bitrate files possible. But after Logitech acquired the company he feels they’ve made some choices which has driven the platform into the ground. But there is hope. He figured out how to use a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox server so that he can keep on using his client devices and posted details about
the RPi’s performance while serving high-quality audio
.
First the bad news: the RPi board doesn’t have the horsepower necessary to downsample on the fly. He even tried overclocking but that didn’t really help. The good news is that this issue only affects older Squeezebox clients (he had the issue with V3) and only when playing tracks that are much higher quality than a CD (24-bit at 88.2Khz). He has no problem streaming those files to devices that can play them, and can even stream multiple files at once without any issues.
You can install the Sqeezebox server on your own Raspberry Pi
by following this guide
. | 29 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "909955",
"author": "Dmitry Grinberg",
"timestamp": "2012-12-26T20:10:12",
"content": "“the RPi board doesn’t have the horsepower necessary to downsample on the fly”I truly do not believe I’ve ever seen a statement so false in my life. Downsampling audio is a well-understood problem,... | 1,760,376,646.818424 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/26/interfacing-a-gpu-with-a-cpu/ | Interfacing A GPU With A CPU | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"cpu",
"gpu",
"quinn dunki",
"veronica"
] | [Quinn Dunki] pulled together many months worth of work by
interfacing her GPU with the CPU
. This is one of the major points in her Veronica project which aims to build a computer from the ground up.
We’ve seen quite a number of posts from her regarding
the AVR-powered GPU
. So far the development of that component has been happening separately from
the 6502 centered CPU
. But putting them together is anything but trivial. The timing issues that were so important to consider when developing the GPU get even hairier when it comes writing to the VRAM from an external component. Her first thought was to share a portion of the external RAM between the CPU and GPU as a way to push rendering commands from one to the other. This proved troublesome both in timing and in the number of pins available on the AVR chip. She ended up using something of a virtual register on the AVR chip that can receive commands from the CPU asynchronously. Timing dictates that these commands be written only during vertical blanking so this virtual register also acts as a status register to let the CPU know when it can send the next command.
Her post is packed with the theory behind the design, timing tests on the oscilloscope, and a rather intimidating schematic. But the most important part is the video showing her success in the end. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "909844",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2012-12-26T14:30:01",
"content": "impressive as usual",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "909887",
"author": "kevin mcguigan",
"timestamp": "2012-12-26T16:42:14",
"content"... | 1,760,376,647.054749 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/25/magnets-keep-the-shower-curtain-from-groping-you/ | Magnets Keep The Shower Curtain From Groping You | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"magnet",
"shower",
"shower curtain",
"tub"
] | We guess we’re glad to hear that other also suffer from the phantom shower curtain liner. On occasion the shower curtain will start closing in on us around the bottom of the shower. We’re not certain of the phenomenon that causes it. Perhaps it’s static electricity like when a comb repels a stream of water. It could be an issue with rising air though… who know. But [Sk84life0129] has had enough of it. He figured out
a magnet-based solution to stop the shower curtain from groping him
.
You can buy curtain liners that have magnets in the bottom of them to help prevent this. But this is an acrylic tub — not one that’s porcelain-coated cast iron like they used to be — so that’s not going to do any good. Instead, a pair of magnets from an old hard drive were glued to the shower surround. A couple of galvanized bolts had their heads sawn off, and were sewn into pockets in the shower curtain. These hold it taught while you scrub your body, preventing it from reaching out for a close encounter.
[via
Reddit
] | 94 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "909574",
"author": "mrbubl3s",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T22:03:22",
"content": "Truly genius, I can tell now that this generation of people will make the world a better place.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909581",
"a... | 1,760,376,647.514603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/25/train-set-built-in-a-suitcase-does-more-than-youd-think/ | Train Set Built In A Suitcase Does More Than You’d Think | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"model r",
"model trains",
"suitcase"
] | [Mario]
can take his train set on the road with him
because he build the thing inside of a suitcase. That in itself is pretty neat, but he pulled off more than just laying down a ring of track and surrounding it with realistic scenery. This train set is automated.
The suitcase itself looks a bit funny and that’s because it started as a portable phonograph. Removing the turntable and it’s requisite parts made plenty of room for
the N-scale railroad
(that’s really small stuff!). An Arduino with a motor shield drives the train around the loop. A reed sensor below a section of track provides feedback on where the locomotive is in the circuit. When it reaches that point the train stops and a bridge is lowered over the track for some invisible traffic to cross. There is even some audio flair which can be heard in the video after the break. It includes the whistle of the train and the ding of that bell mounted on the top half of the case. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "909578",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T22:16:27",
"content": "N isn’t that small a scale, if you want small then Z scale is like half the size of N, or if you want ridiculously tiny then T scale which is about half the size of Z!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,376,647.175464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/tamagotchi-hacking-in-depth/ | Tamagotchi Hacking, In Depth | Caleb Kraft | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"29c3",
"reverse engineering",
"tomogatchi"
] | In this strangely fascinating talk, you can follow along as
[Natalie Silvanovich] reverse engineers some Tamagotchi
. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in digital pets, you’ll probably pick up a trick or two by listening to how she went about taking over the toy. She can now push her own images to the screen, and evolve her Tamagotchi at will.
Listening to her story you might be able to pick up a few tricks as she takes almost every angle possible. She uncovers the black blobs, she attempts to socially engineer her way into datasheets, decaps chips, she dumps and breaks down code. It is also worth noting that, in the beginning, internet electronics enthusiasts were adamant that it just had a PIC processor inside and they were wrong. Having an internet full of experts is a wonderful thing, except when it isn’t.
Then again, having that internet full of experts might be her savior in the end, she’s missing a piece of software and asking if anyone has it available. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "911597",
"author": "Sasha",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T16:36:02",
"content": "There are a lot of largely fascinating talks from 29C3. One of the most interesting ones I’ve seen was the Cisco phone hacking ones, from the same guy that hacked HP printers last year. You can stream/downlo... | 1,760,376,647.230383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/building-a-hardware-security-module/ | Building A Hardware Security Module | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino DUE",
"cryptography",
"hardware security module"
] | [Stefan] was nervous about putting the secret key for his Amazon Web Services account in his config file. In the security world, storing passwords in plain text is considered a very bad thing. but luckily there are ways around it. [Stefan]’s solution was
to make a hardware security module
out of the newest ARM-powered Arduino Due.
The build puts the secret key for [Stefan]’s AWS account right in the firmware of the Arduino Due (with the security bit on the Arduino flipped, of course). A Python web service then receives sign requests and talks to the Due over a serial port. The Due then signs the request and sends it off to another bit of Python code that handles the AWS API.
Hardware security modules are frequently used by three-letter government agencies to manage cryptography keys and ensure their data are encrypted properly. Instead of a hardware module costing tens of thousands of dollars, [Stefan]’s only cost the price of an Arduino Due; not too shabby for a hardware security module that can sign more than 2000 requests per second. | 32 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "911556",
"author": "Erik",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T14:01:28",
"content": "Neat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "911563",
"author": "hardcorefs",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T14:21:48",
"content": "About as secure as a H... | 1,760,376,647.299822 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/30/ringing-in-the-new-year-with-an-arduino-and-calcium-carbide/ | Ringing In The New Year With An Arduino And Calcium Carbide | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"Carbide",
"carbide cannon",
"New Year's Eve"
] | It’s the first we’ve heard of it, but a New Year’s Eve tradition in The Netherlands called Carbidschieten sounds like it’s just up our alley. Basically, a small chunk of calcium carbide and a little bit of water is placed in a metal milk churn. The carbide decomposes into acetylene and a flame is held up to a small hole in the milk churn. The resulting explosion sends the lid of the milk churn across a field and much fun is had by all.
[Edwin Eefting], [Johan Postema], [Elger Postema] are exploding 1000 liters of acetylene this New Years and needed a safe way to detonate their celebration. They came up with
an electronic ignition system
based on an Arduino that probably makes just as much noise as the explosion itself.
The build is basically an Arduino with a few relays. When a pair of buttons are pressed for longer than a second, the Arduino goes into countdown mode with the requisite alarms and ringing bells. When it’s time to fire the carbide cannon, a power supply is turned on that heats up a glow plug, igniting the acetylene. It’s a great build, and adds an adequate amount of safety for an event involving exploding 1000 liters of acetylene.
You can check out the videos of the countdown timer after the break, or check out the Facebook group
here
.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhiQRcq_gBA&w=580] | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "911380",
"author": "Vincent Taselaar",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T00:23:43",
"content": "there are lots of places where this annual celebration is done.on youtube there are several clips on how it works and ofcourse the outcome: a big BANG!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,647.583503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/30/usb-microscope-used-for-soldering-very-small-things/ | USB Microscope Used For Soldering Very Small Things | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"microscope",
"smd",
"usb microscope",
"video camera"
] | Lasik eye surgery is pretty common these days, but there are of course easier and cheaper ways to solder SMD components. [techpawpanda] wanted a video camera to see what was going on when he placed and soldered very tiny components on his board, but commercial SMD video cameras were terribly expensive. He wound up
using a USB microscope
to place and solder these tiny parts, and we’re thinking his SMD soldering station is the bee’s knees.
[techpawpanda]’s video-based SMD station is built around a USB microscope available at the usual online retailers for $40. This camera is mounted on a wooden base with a USB hub allowing the camera to be plugged in along with a few USB LED lights and a USB fan for a rudimentary form of fume extraction.
The results are impressive – even at 11x magnification, [techpawpanda] can put paste on pads and place even the smallest SMD parts. All this in a device that is small enough to fit in a shoe box, or be tucked neatly away whenever it is not needed. | 48 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "911351",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-30T22:10:23",
"content": "Clever.But in a THREE PAGE write up, they don’t tell WHICH USB Microscope they picked.WTF?They lead in with “there’s a bazillion USB microscopes, most don’t have decent data sheets or omit the key factor... | 1,760,376,648.439222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/30/breaking-the-new-neo-geo-handheld-wide-open/ | Breaking The New Neo Geo Handheld Wide Open | Brian Benchoff | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"AES Unibios",
"linux",
"neo geo",
"Neo Geo X"
] | In case you weren’t aware, there’s a new Neo Geo console on the block. It’s called the Neo Geo X and brings back more than a few pains of nostalgia for classic arcade games of the 90s. After receiving their brand new Neo Geo portables, members of the Neo Geo forum decided to do a teardown on one of their newest consoles and found something interesting:
this thing was made for hacking
.
Officially, the Neo Geo X will get new games released on SD cards. The first run of these consoles – the gold edition – have 20 games preloaded onto the system convientently stored on a microSD card buried underneath the screen. After looking at this microSD card, forum user [Lectoid] discovered the 20 preloaded games and the bios for the system, all completely unlocked and ready for hacking.
Already a few forum members have the AES Unibios running on this tiny portability Neo Geo, giving them the capability to play every Neo Geo game ever made. Since the Neo Geo X uses the same processor as some other handhelds, there’s great hope for completely unlocking this new console and running emulators on it. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "911332",
"author": "joeisi",
"timestamp": "2012-12-30T20:55:07",
"content": "Awesome Read. Burnt 2 hours off of my empty day.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "911334",
"author": "peter",
"timestamp": "2012-12-30T21:17:24"... | 1,760,376,647.687386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/30/prusa-interviews-a-whole-bunch-of-reprappers/ | [Prusa] Interviews A Whole Bunch Of RepRappers | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Interviews"
] | [
"3d printer",
"interviews",
"prusa"
] | Any time a media outlet or conference wants an expert on 3D printing there are two people to turn to. The most famous is [Bre Pettis] of MakerBot. The other is an awesome guy named [Prusa], designer of the most popular RepRap and possibly the most popular 3D printer of all time. He’s been putting his fame to use by interviewing all the big names in 3D printing and putting them all
up on his YouTube account
.
First up is [Kliment]
, RepRap core dev and creator of the Sprinter firmware and Pronterface host.
[Ruben Lubbes], RepRap community guru,
tells [Prusa] about his collection of RepRap parts from famous RepRapper
s. It sound like a quite interesting collection that’s probably very valuable from a historical perspective. Who knows, in a few years it could be as interesting as [Gutenberg]’s first printing press or [Tim Berners-Lee]’s NEXT cube.
Next up is [Tonokip]
. He developed the original Tonokip firmware, the firmware that all major RepRap firmwares are based on.
[Prusa] also
interviewed [Jordan Miller] a.k.a. [jmil]
of the Philly hackerspace Hive76 and the University of Pennsylvania. He made his name in the RepRap community for
3D bio printing
.
Wrapping up the most interesting people, there’s also
an interview with [Sound]
, developer of the Slic3r firmware. We’ve seen
an interview of [Sound] before
, and this interview continues the earlier one by talking about multiple extruders and how awesome the RepRap community is.
Lastly, and unfortunately, is a short video of [Prusa]
interviewing
me
at the world Maker Faire last September
.
[Prusa] is a huge fan of Hackaday, so this interview is just two guys being star struck at each other.
Actually, the 2012 World Maker Faire had the largest number of current and former Hackaday alumni in one place ever. A group interview of [Ian] (now of Dangerous Prototypes), [Phillip Torrone] (Adafruit), [Phil Burgess] (Adafruit), current Hackaday boss man [Caleb] and myself would have been awesome. We’ll try harder next year.
You can check out the good videos after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr-ASAqxiJg&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcCO_aSkhJI&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=issEJV9PD6M&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DXRSwc1fM4&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuxg2L7r1oI&w=580] | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "911355",
"author": "daid303",
"timestamp": "2012-12-30T22:18:07",
"content": "Slic3r is not a firmware. It’s a slicer (who would have guessed?!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "911361",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,647.626938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/29/engadget-trying-out-some-crowd-funding/ | Engadget Trying Out Some Crowd-funding | Caleb Kraft | [
"contests"
] | [
"engadget",
"expand",
"insert coin"
] | Engadget has decided to give this whole
crowd-funding thing a try with a competition called Insert Coin
. This is part of an upcoming event called
Expand
that is supposed to let us get inside information on gadget construction and conception. This actually sounds refreshing compared to the giant commercial that other tech conferences can be (This is why Hackaday has never returned to CES).
Insert Coin is a contest that has hardware at the forefront. If you qualify, you could win $25,000 for your device as well as $1,000 to come show it off at their event.
To qualify, you’ll need to meet the following criteria:
Existing products / updates to existing products will not be accepted.
Product should not be officially announced, though those with limited coverage will be assessed on an individual basis.
Product must not have an existing
Kickstarter
,
Indiegogo
or other crowdfunding effort already underway.
Companies must be ready to launch crowdfunding campaigns around the event.
Products must fall within Engadget’s coverage scope.
Products must have a hardware component and not be purely software or web services in origin.
Inventors will need a working prototype or other presentation for a team of Engadget editors ahead of the event.
Simulations or product renderings will not suffice to enter Insert Coin; what you have to show to us must be functional.
No products from major manufacturers will be accepted.
The rules seem fair and straight forward, and you know that we love the hardware focus of it all. We’ll be watching to see what comes out of this! | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "911025",
"author": "FiveseveN",
"timestamp": "2012-12-29T20:49:56",
"content": "US & Canada only :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "911033",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-29T21:07:38",
"content": "I still t... | 1,760,376,647.736514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/29/bluetooth-hack-for-serioux-panda-speakers/ | Bluetooth Hack For Serioux Panda Speakers | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"a2dp",
"bluetooth",
"panda",
"serioux",
"speakers"
] | [Bogdan] received this set of Serioux Panda speakers as a gift. I turns out that they sound very good and he decided to make them more useful to him by
converting them to work as Bluetooth speakers
.
To begin with he bought the cheapest A2DP device he could find. This is the protocol that identifies a Bluetooth audio device. The unit is designed to provide a Bluetooth connection for a set of headphones. He patched into the headphone port on that board, but also wanted to keep the option of using the Panda speakers’ line-in. To do this he added a 1k resistor to each of the audio channels. A connection was made from the 5V rail of the speakers to power the Bluetooth module rather than leaving it with its own battery.
Speaking of batteries, the Panda speakers can run from three AAA cells. This battery compartment was a perfect place to mount the add-on hardware. But the speaker can still be powered from a USB connector. Above [Bogdan] is using a portable USB power supply. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "911157",
"author": "cde",
"timestamp": "2012-12-30T07:39:55",
"content": "By using the 1k resistors, he basically used it to sum/mix the two signals, bluetooth and line in. Otherwise the better option would be a 5 pin headphone plug, that physically switches signals based on if a 3.... | 1,760,376,647.775738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/29/make-your-own-machinable-wax/ | Make Your Own Machinable Wax | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"machinable wax",
"Paraffin",
"parafin",
"wax"
] | No matter how easy it is to throw a piece of metal or plastic onto a tool and start making chips, the price of materials does add up. [rawkstar320] has been using machinable wax – a very hard wax that is up to the task of being cut with tools spinning at thousands of RPM – to reduce his material cost, simply remelting every part with a mistake.
This wax can be made at home
, it turns out, and [rawkstar] is glad to walk us through the process.
The creation of machinable wax begins by melting a few pounds of paraffin wax in a home deep fryer. Machining pure paraffin would gum up the works of just about any machine, so [rawkstar] throws a few plastic polyethylene bags into the already melted wax.
After casting and cooling, these blocks of wax are ready to be surfaced with a tool and milled into any part [rawkstar]’s workshop is capable of. As a bonus, all of the chips produced from this wax can be recycled and melted down again making for a somewhat renewable material that is perfect for prototyping or casting. | 40 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "910973",
"author": "jeicrash",
"timestamp": "2012-12-29T17:38:16",
"content": "Does this bare any close resemblance to dental wax? It seams it would have a nice high melting point and hold it’s shape very well, When melted though does it melt evenly or do you get bits of plastic tha... | 1,760,376,647.851698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/28/nerf-sentry-gun-for-the-apocalypse/ | Nerf Sentry Gun For The Apocalypse | Jeremy Cook | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Featured",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"nerf",
"pir",
"sentry gun"
] | If you’ve ever wanted to shoot someone with a Nerf gun, but just didn’t have the energy to get off the couch,
this hack may be for you
. It’s also a good way to ward off zombies if another apocalypse, Mayan or otherwise, is on the horizon.
Although the effects are very cool, as seen in the video after the break, the method for making this setup was quite simple. The requirements for this project were that the gun could not be permanently modified, and everything had to fire automatically. These restrictions may have contributed to the simplicity of the design as many of us would start breaking things before we had to.
Instead of some elaborate hack, the trigger was tied back in the firing position at all times. A relay was then used to interrupt the power supply to the mechanism allowing an Arduino equipped with an infrared sensor to automatically control the firing. The setup is explained after the break, but skip to around 1:55 if you’d rather just see the guns in action.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTcF20QnxC8?rel=0&w=470&h=315%5D | 28 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "910735",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-12-28T22:09:24",
"content": "2 rounds per minute…..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "910738",
"author": "Mindcore",
"timestamp": "2012-12-28T22:14:01",
"content": "Yea... | 1,760,376,647.915505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/28/a-portable-cnc-mill/ | A Portable CNC Mill | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"mill",
"proxxon"
] | Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever:
he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to CNC control
, and put everything in a nice box that can be tucked away easily (Italian,
here’s the translation
).
The mill [juppiter]
chose for the conversion
was a
Proxxon MF70
, a very small mill made for jewelers and modelers. After
buying a CNC conversion kit
that included a few NEMA 17 motors, bearings, and mounting plates, [juppiter] set to work on driving these motors and controlling them with a computer. For the stepper drivers,
a few industrial motor drivers were sourced on eBay
, driven by
an i3 miniITX computer
built into the mill’s box. Control is through a touchscreen LCD and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
So far, [juppiter] has crafted a
very elegant wood and brass CNC controller
that allows him to jog the axes around and set the home position. It’s an excellent build that really shows off the power and ability of these inexpensive desktop mills. | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "910636",
"author": "Ian Lee, Sr. (@ianlee74)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-28T17:50:37",
"content": "Nice project!“Control is through a touchscreen LCD and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.”Looks like that keyboard has a cable…. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,647.981487 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/28/ask-hackaday-how-do-you-give-a-project-away/ | Ask Hackaday: How Do You Give A Project Away? | Brian Benchoff | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Ask Hackaday"
] | A few weeks ago,
we caught wind of a DIY version of ‘smart tweezers’
from [Kai]’s workbench that are able to measure SMD resistors, caps, and inductors. At that time, [Kai] hadn’t quite finished the software portion of his build, leaving him with a pile of parts and non-working PCBs. The code is finished now, meaning [Kai]
has a very capable and very inexpensive version
of LCR meter tweezers. He’d like to give back to the open source community and figure out a way to get his tweezers into the hands of makers the world over now. The only problem is he doesn’t know quite how to do that.
We’ve seen smart tweezers before
, and they’re still available commercially for about $300. [Kai]’s version brings down the price significantly, so there is a market for these LCR tweezers. The problem, it seems, is getting these tweezers manufactured.
We’re assuming that soldering hundreds of thousand of SMD parts isn’t what [Kai] thinks is a good time; this leaves a Kickstarter as a non-starter, unless he can contract out the manufacturing.
Seeed Studio
might be a good place for [Kai] to sell his wares, but we’re wondering what Hackaday readers would do in [Kai]’s situation. Obviously he deserves to compensated for his work either through licensing or royalties, but as far as actual advice and recommendations we’re turning to Hackaday readers. | 66 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "910568",
"author": "MZD",
"timestamp": "2012-12-28T14:17:12",
"content": "Where does Kai live? He should get it manufactured as close to home as possible!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "910939",
"author": "fartface",
... | 1,760,376,650.385685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/27/diy-smd-stencils-made-with-a-craft-cutter/ | DIY SMD Stencils Made With A Craft Cutter | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"smd",
"SMD stencils",
"stencils"
] | Unless you’d like to spend hours with a toothpick and a tub of solder paste, stencils are the way to go whenever you’re placing SMD parts. While most commercial and industrial SMD stencils are made out of laser cut stainless steel, [Peter] figured out a piece of plastic and a $300 craft cutter
is equally well suited for the job.
[Peter] has spent some time making SMD stencils out of polyester film in the form of overhead transparency sheets. This turned out to be a wonderful material; it’s dimensionally stable, commonly available, and just the right thickness suggested for SMD stencils. The polyester film was cut on a
Silhouette Cameo
, basically a desktop-sized vinyl cutter aimed at the craft market.
Stock, the Silhouette Cameo rounds off corners, not something [Peter] wanted with features only fractions of a millimeter.
He came up with a tool
to convert the paste layer of a Gerber file into separately drawn line segments, allowing him to cut SMD stencils for 0.3 mm pitch components.
It’s a great piece of work to make very fine pitch stencils, but we’re wondering if this tool could be used on the
much less expensive Cricut
paper and vinyl cutter that is unfortunately locked down with some very restrictive software. | 44 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "910253",
"author": "nah!",
"timestamp": "2012-12-27T16:44:28",
"content": "is the compas supposed to be the craft cutter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "910278",
"author": "Stevo",
"timestamp": "2012-12-27T17:... | 1,760,376,650.465139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/27/overclocking-microcontrollers/ | Overclocking Microcontrollers | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega328",
"microcontroller",
"overclocking"
] | We’re all familiar with overclocking desktop computers; a wonderful introduction to thermal design power and the necessities of a good CPU cooler. [Marcelo] wanted to see how far he could overclock a microcontroller – in this case an ATMega328 – and
ended up with a microcontroller designed for 20 MHz running at 30 MHz.
To verify that his uC could run at higher clock speeds, [Marcelo] began his experiments by uploading a piece of code that toggled a few pins as fast as possible. He needed to upload this code with a common 16 MHz crystal – AVRDude simply won’t work when a chip is clocked at higher speeds.
After successfully demonstrating his microcontroller will turn pins on and off at 30 MHz, [Marcelo] wanted to see if he could do something useful. By editing a single setting in his Arduino boards.txt file., [Marcelo] was able to have his overclocked microcontroller read and reply to characters sent over a serial connection. It worked, demonstrating an overclocked microcontroller could be useful in some situations.
As for what [Marcelo] plans to do with his faster microcontroller, he’s thinking of improving a ATMega-powered VGA color generator. A higher clock speed means he can push more pixels out to a VGA monitor. | 46 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "910227",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2012-12-27T15:20:59",
"content": "This is pretty LOLworthy. Iv seen 72MHz STM32 chips clocked up to 160MHz",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "910364",
"author": "mistress",
... | 1,760,376,650.730273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/01/hackerspace-intro-greenville-makers-in-greenville-south-carolina/ | Hackerspace Intro: Greenville Makers In Greenville, South Carolina | Jeremy Cook | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"GMG",
"Greenville Makers",
"makerspace"
] | If you happen to live in the Upstate of South Carolina, and your New Year’s resolution was to get involved with a hackerspace, the
[Greenville Makers]
are definitely worth checking out. Right now they have several projects their members are working on, including a
VoIP payphone
(work in progress), and of course several 3D printers and various electronics projects.
They meet at 6:00 on Mondays to discuss projects and group goals at their current location at
[CoWork Greenville]
, and have a dedicated space to keep tools and work in progress. They’re actively recruiting new members, so if you’re a hacker, artist, or just like observing other people’s projects, you should definitely give them a look. Alternatively, you can check out
their forum
to introduce yourself.
Special shout out to [Chris] for getting things together originally, as well as [CoWork] for helping establish an initial space to work and meet in. We look forward to some great [HAD] material coming out of [GMG] in the future! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "912069",
"author": "Jordan",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T19:13:09",
"content": "you have two ” at 6:00 on Mondays”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "912077",
"author": "Jeremy Cook",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T19:34:1... | 1,760,376,650.06918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/01/jason-scott-throws-down-a-preview-of-his-defcon-documentary/ | [Jason Scott] Throws Down A Preview Of His DEFCON Documentary | Mike Szczys | [
"cons"
] | [
"defcon",
"documentary",
"jason scott"
] | Let’s face it, we all love DEFCON. Even if you’ve never been there before, we think it would be a huge struggle to find a reader who hadn’t been enchanted by at least one of the many hacks and talks that come out of the conference every year. We’ll prove it to you in a second, but first let’s get to the business at hand. Internet historian and all around good-guy [Jason Scott] has set his documentarian skills on DEFCON and just published
a nearly twenty minute preview of the film
which will leave you with more questions than answers (that’s the point of a teaser, right?). He’s not new to this kind of work. We loved his film
BBS: The Documentary
and can’t wait to see what he’s managed to do when this is released in the new year.
Oh yeah… we were going to prove a point. Some things that came out of the yearly hacker conference which you probably drooled over after the fact include:
Badge hacking
(there’s like
a million
of
these posts
so look around for them)
Messing with OPP (
Other People’s Pacemakers
)
Riding the subway for free
And contests like
Capture the Flag
or
Beverage Cooling
or
Tamper Evasion
This is just a sliver of what this event offers. Should be fun to see all the stuff [Jason] got into that we never even knew about. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "912085",
"author": "barry99705",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T20:09:23",
"content": "Was cool watching Jason zoom around the con on his Segway.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "912232",
"author": "NewCommentor1283",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,650.016925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2013/01/01/thats-not-beer-a-biofuel-fermentation-controller-project/ | That’s Not Beer! A Biofuel Fermentation Controller Project | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"biofuel",
"ethanol",
"msp430",
"temperature controller",
"termperature",
"thermistor",
"yeast"
] | Any home brewer will recognize the setup pictured above as a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. They wouldn’t be wrong either. But you’re not going to drink what results. This project is aimed at providing
a temperature controlled environment for fermenting biofuel
.
[Benjamin Havey] and [Michael Abed] built the controller as their final project in his microprocessor class. The idea is to monitor and control the mini-refrigerator so that the strain of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae yeast produce as much ethanol as possible. An MSP430 microcontroller was used. It monitors a thermister with its analog to digital converter and drives a solid state relay to switch mains power to the fridge. At 41 degrees Fahrenheit this is down below what most lager yeasts want (which is usually in the low fifties). But the nice thing about using a microcontroller is you can set a schedule with different stages if you find a program that gives the yeast the best environment but requires more than one temperature level.
Who knew all that beer making was getting you ready to produce alternative fuels? | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "912010",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T16:14:11",
"content": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsFzeX-k1_E",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "912034",
"author": "Zack",
"timestamp": "2013-01-01T17:41:36",
... | 1,760,376,650.782696 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/retrotechtacular-fluid-coupling/ | Retrotechtacular: Fluid Coupling | Mike Szczys | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"automatic transmission",
"fluid coupling",
"retrotechtacular",
"transmission"
] | We realize the transmission fluid of an automobile’s automatic transmission is used to transfer the power from the engine to the drive shaft. But after watching this Department of Defense video from 1954 we now have a full understanding of
the principles involved in fluid coupling
. Like us, you probably have seen a diagram of a transmission which shows the fan-like blades that are affected by the moving fluid. But it’s worth watching the 12-minute clip after the break to understand how that liquid is moving and why that matters so much in the design. The motion of the rotors, along with the design of the enclosure, causes the fluid to move in a continual corkscrew — the shape of slinky whose ends have been attached to each other. This type of illustration leads to an intuitive understanding of how it’s possible to facilitate an efficient power transfer using a liquid.
Check out some of the comments left in
the Reddit thread
regarding this film. We agree with [Runxctry]; there’s something about the format of the presentation that makes these informative and engaging to an almost addictive level. But maybe it’s just the engineering geek deep inside that’s cause these feelings? | 58 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "911739",
"author": "defaultex",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T23:56:16",
"content": "I understood how they worked from a textbook definition. But the way this video presents it makes it feel so simple that I could build a fluid coupling in my kitchen out of ordinary materials. Really hel... | 1,760,376,650.558693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/ice-record-single-needs-six-hours-in-the-deep-freeze-before-you-can-listen/ | Ice Record Single Needs Six Hours In The Deep Freeze Before You Can Listen | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"ice",
"mold",
"record",
"silicone",
"vinyl"
] | This delightful marketing ploy
requires the listener to fabricate their own record out of ice
. The band Shout Out Louds wanted to make a splash with their newest single. So they figured out how to make a playable record out of ice. The main problem with this is the grooves start to degrade immediately when the ice begins to melt. So they shipped a mold of the record and a bottle of water to a select few listeners (just ten in all). Hear the result in the video after the break.
Now if you want to make something like this for yourself we can help you out just a bit. The mold is made of silicone and it wasn’t so long ago that we saw
a guide for those new to mold making
. The raw material isn’t that hard to find either. The project above tried several different approaches and found the best results can be attained with plain old distilled water. No, the one hard part is figuring out how to make your own master. If you’ve got a way of doing this in the home lab,
please tells us about it
!
[via
Reddit
and
Boing Boing
] | 36 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "911698",
"author": "joseph",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T22:07:17",
"content": "Couldn’t they just play the record IN the freezer to keep it from melting? or is it the action of the needle in the grooves that’s degrading the sound?now, what about casting in something other than ice? e... | 1,760,376,650.277105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/wave-that-roman-candle-around-without-risking-your-digits/ | Wave That Roman Candle Around Without Risking Your Digits | Mike Szczys | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"bottle rocket",
"fireworks",
"launcher",
"roman candle",
"servo"
] | Some people don’t mind missing a finger or two, but we’re quite attached to all of ours. That’s why we’ve never held on to the fireworks after lighting the fuse. [Dzl] and his son wanted to be (at least somewhat) safe while still having that kind of fun. So they built
this rig which lets you wave around a roman candle from a safe distance
. It’s not strictly limited to one type of firework either. You can see there is a PVC barrel which will send a bottle rocket off in whichever direction the thing is pointed. As you’ve guessed, a test run is shown off in the video after the jump.
The rig is build from laser cut nylon parts. Don’t fret if you lack the equipment to automatically reproduce this. It’s not that hard to
fabricate these types of parts by hand
. And the motors that make it go are just hobby servos rigged for continuous rotation. [Dzl] did add external potentiometers for position feedback.
This is a tame way to celebrate the New Year, which is nice if
yesterday’s project
was a bit too hard-core for you.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekphysical/8324494403/ | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "911669",
"author": "dantheman2865",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T20:47:23",
"content": "This needs some Wii-Mote integration!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "911672",
"author": "paryl",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T20:53:45",
... | 1,760,376,650.118773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-friction-welder/ | Make Your Own Plastic Friction Welder | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"friction welding",
"plastic",
"rotary tool",
"styrene",
"welding"
] | [Fran] shows us
how to build a plastic friction welder
. It’s a method of connecting plastic pieces. While it’s new to us, apparently this type of tool was given to kids about forty years ago to use with craft project (when plastic was all the craze).
The tip of the friction welder is a styrene rod. If it’s spun fast enough the friction will cause the material to heat to the melting point, depositing a bead of styrene into the joint. The tool seen here is a cheap DC rotary tool acquired from Harbor Freight. It really did a horrible job, but [Fran] discovered that it was the power supply that was under-rated. When she replace the wire that feeds it and used her bench supply it spit out 16,000 rpm without any trouble. The welding rods can be found at the craft store and fit the chuck of the tool quite nicely. You can see her demo in the video after the break. The seam she’s working on comes out very strong, surviving a slew of violent whacks on the workbench.
We’ve seen a few other methods of welding plastic. One used
a tool much like a soldering iron
, the other depends on
ultrasonic waves and clamping pressure
. | 63 | 44 | [
{
"comment_id": "911649",
"author": "geoff",
"timestamp": "2012-12-31T19:27:38",
"content": "I just tried this with 3mm PLA filament and welded two junk prints together. All I used was a simple Dremel 200. Super easy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,376,650.651907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/25/put-that-headphone-jack-anywhere-you-want-it/ | Put That Headphone Jack Anywhere You Want It | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"headphone",
"jack",
"keyboard",
"yamaha"
] | Check out this brand new Yamaha keyboard. The fact that we’re seeing the guts means that [Todd Harrison] can kiss his warranty goodbye. But by now you should know that he doesn’t look to others when something goes wrong with his electronics. This time around he’s not repairing anything. He didn’t like having to plug in headphones on the rear of the keyboard. He cracked it open and
relocated the headphone jack to a more convenient location
.
As you can see, there’s a ton of room inside once the MDF base which holds the speakers and some sounding boxes has been removed. While he’s in there he takes a good look at the mechanics of the keys. They’re weighted with metal rods (seen above) to help the electronic instrument feel more like an acoustic version to the player. But he doesn’t neglect the chance to gawk at all the electronics as well.
After pulling out the PCB that has the headphone jack on it he goes to work with a solder sucker. With the solder gone he cuts through the glue that holds the jack on the board. All that’s left is to solder some wire in its place and give it a nice project box as an enclosure. To complete the hack he mounts the box on the MDF base and now the headphones connect on the front. See the entire process in the video after the break. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "909536",
"author": "Hmm",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T20:24:27",
"content": "I just don’t understand why he didn’t just buy an extension M->F cord and put it under the keyboard or where he wants.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "9... | 1,760,376,650.835198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/25/router-jig-for-a-perfect-circle/ | Router Jig For A Perfect Circle | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"circle",
"jig",
"router",
"wood"
] | We once enlisted a contractor to cut a plywood circle for a cat condo we were building. Now we’re embarrassed that we couldn’t come up with a solution as eloquent and easy to use as this
circle cutting router jig
which [Grays42] built.
He’s using a small trim router for the job. The jig is made up of two thick-walled pieces of PVC pipe. We don’t think the router is attached to jig. Instead you hold it against the wooden spacer which is on the outside edge of the cut. He doesn’t mention how he made the spacers, but we’d recommend cutting a hole the size of the pipes and then ripping down the middle to remove some of the material (tape the two spacers together during fabrication to ensure proper alignment). It just takes some nuts and bolts from the hardware store to assemble everything.
[Grays42] is using this to cut rings for his telescope build. We have our eye on it for making our own
wooden Bulbdial clock
.
[via
Reddit
] | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "909520",
"author": "geekmaster",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T19:40:33",
"content": "So, this “eloquent” device has the gift of powerful and persuasive speech? Cool! It is elegant too. :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909541",
... | 1,760,376,650.966665 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/25/portable-audio-rig-that-turned-out-great/ | Portable Audio Rig That Turned Out Great | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"marine",
"mdf",
"radio",
"speakers",
"stereo"
] | [Michael] wanted a stereo that he could use outside, be it at the beach, beside the pool, or while tailgating.
He decided to build this boom box himself
, and didn’t cut any corners when it came to a professional looking finish.
Because of the locale in which he plans to use the stereo he went with a set of marine speakers. They’ll have no problem standing up to water, and since they’re used in boats they should also be able to take a beating during transport. To feed it he uses a Lepai T amp which is seen above.
After cutting each piece of the case out of MDF he started working on the openings to receive the components. This involved quite a number of layout lines and some work with a compass to map out the circular openings. He built a recessed panel on the back to interface the power cord for charging. Inside is an 18 Ah battery. A set of switches lets him turn on the charger and choose between powering the amp from battery or from the power cord.
[via
Reddit
] | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "909471",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T14:25:58",
"content": "No handle?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909478",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T16:00:09",
"content": "Wit... | 1,760,376,650.89483 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/update-roll-your-own-gps-can-now-track-twice-as-many-satellites/ | UPDATE: Roll Your Own GPS Can Now Track Twice As Many Satellites | Mike Szczys | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"fpga",
"satellite",
"soft processor"
] | [Andrew Holme] wrote in to tell us about some work he’s done to improve his scratch-built GPS receiver. He figured out a way to use the same hardware but
double the number of satellites it can track to a total of eight
. When we looked at the original hardware about a year ago
it was limited to monitoring just four satellites
. That’s the bare minimum for calculating position data. This will not only help increase the accuracy, but remove the problems that would have been cause if just one satellite was dropped because of an obstruction or other issue.
His solution is based entirely on using the FPGA in a different way. He had taken up almost all of the gates available in the Xilinx Spartan 3 chip. Now he’s implemented a CPU on the chip and is able take some of the work off of the hardware gate design by running code on it. He also found and squashed a bug in how the data was processed. He says his original work wasn’t taking into account the rotation of the earth when determining position. All of these improvements put his accuracy at +/- five meters even when he’s not tracking all eight satellites! | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "909318",
"author": "Tom Sobieski (@TomSobieski)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T23:08:02",
"content": "what is military resolution?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909450",
"author": "jcg",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T... | 1,760,376,651.099498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/how-to-write-your-own-minesweeper-solver/ | How To Write Your Own Minesweeper Solver | Mike Szczys | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"java",
"mines",
"minesweeper",
"solver"
] | We think we have found project that will take over our holiday free time. [Bai Li] just published an excellent article about
writing a program that can automatically solve the game of Minesweeper
. For those of you who are unfamiliar,
Minesweeper
gives you a grid in which land mines have been randomly placed. As you click on boxes to reveal what is underneath you are greeted with a number which represents how many mines surround that box. [Bai’s] project examines how the puzzle may be solved programmatically.
He chose to use Java to write the solver. This works well both reading from the screen as well as simulating mouse clicks on the game. The reading portion of the program uses color detection with a screenshot. There were two problems associated with this, the numeral one is almost the same color as an uncovered square, and the numerals seven and three use identical colors. The input portion was much simpler as he’s able to use the existing Robot class.
The logic behind writing an efficient solver is very interesting. One of the most fascinating examples is shown above. What should you do when there is no possible way to ensure a safe move? As with traditional chess games, [Bai] has the solver calculate all possible solutions and choose the move that has the best odds of success.
His source code is available, but won’t this one be fun to hack out from the concepts alone? For some reason this seems more accessible to us than something like
the Bejeweled Blitz solver
.
[via
Reddit
] | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "909307",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T22:40:00",
"content": "I’ve thought of doing this too. The question I want to answer is: given that many games end with you having to guess where the mine is, what is the best percentage of games you can expect to win?",
"parent... | 1,760,376,651.35407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/robot-can-barely-move-with-so-much-hardware-strapped-to-it/ | Robot Can Barely Move With So Much Hardware Strapped To It | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"mk802",
"motor shield",
"node.js",
"pololu",
"ubuntu"
] | We think that [Andrej Škraba] needs to start looking for a beefier motor platform. This little robot has
so much hardware strapped to it the motors can barely keep up
. But with a little help it can make its way around the house, and it takes a whole lot of connectivity and computing power along for the ride.
The white stick on the top is a single-board computer. The MK802 Mini sports an A10 processor and up to a gig of ram. Just below that is a USB hub which is sitting on top of a USB battery pack. This powers the computer and gives him the ability to plug in more than one USB device. The robot chassis is from Pololu. It uses an Arduino and a motor shield for locomotion, with commands pushed to it via USB.
This setup makes programming very easy. Here [Andrej] has a keyboard and HDMI monitor plugged in to do a little work. When not coding it can be disconnected and driven over the network. He makes this happen using an Apache server on the MK802 and node.js. See a demo of the system in the clip after the break. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "909518",
"author": "blurybury",
"timestamp": "2012-12-25T19:37:09",
"content": "looks so umm crazy tall and moves slow. whats the purpose?id run something lighter than ubuntu to save power. also get smaller lighter usb hub and use a dc/dc step-up to run motors off the main power pac... | 1,760,376,651.541982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/a-concrete-table-with-a-little-blinky-built-in/ | A Concrete Table With A Little Blinky Built In | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackerspaces",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"coffee table",
"concrete",
"glass"
] | Members of the Warp Zone hackerspace wanted a coffee table that was beyond ordinary. They ended up
pouring a concrete base for the glass top
(
translated
). There were several things to address during the design. First off, they wanted to integrate LEDs in the concrete sides. Some consideration had to be made for portability as concrete is very heavy. The final piece of the puzzle was deciding what kind of hardware to place beneath the frosted glass.
The legs were designed with a large cut-out area to keep them as light weight as possible. The cross piece has a set of voids spelling out the name of the hackerspace with some green LEDs. This was accomplished by placing foam cut-outs of each letter in the forms before for concrete was poured. They sealed around each letter with silicone, but still had some seepage most likely caused when jostling the form to help remove air bubbles. Straws were placed in the foam to allow a cable pass through for the electronics. After everything was in place they filled the voids with hot glue to act as a diffuser.
There aren’t a lot of details about the RGB LEDs under the frosted glass. But you can see the light show they produce in the clip after the break.
[Thanks Martin] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "909301",
"author": "EccentricElectron",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T22:28:04",
"content": "DENSE. The word you want is dense, not heavy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "909411",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-... | 1,760,376,651.395825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/olin-college-penny-press/ | Olin College Penny Press | Eric Evenchick | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"press",
"solidworks"
] | Inspired by souvenir penny presses, [Robert] built the
Olin College penny press
. This machine stamps out coins with the school’s name and a variety of other patterns. He built it as part of a mechanical structures course, with the goal of designing something that used large forces.
Crushing a penny takes about five tons of force. To deliver that force, [Robert] used a 1 horsepower motor coupled to a custom 1190:1 reduction drive train, which consisted of sprockets, gears, and chains. The aluminium frame supporting the drive train also had to be designed to withstand large forces.
This required of a lot of custom parts, which were made using a CNC mill, a water jet cutter and a mill. All of the CAD drawings are available for anyone who wants to replicate the design.
This beast of a machine weighs about 90 pounds and can squish 12 pennies every minute. Olin College installed the penny press on their campus for anyone to use for free. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "909217",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T18:06:08",
"content": "Video or it’s not working!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "909220",
"author": "Ian Daniher",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T18:15:25",
"conte... | 1,760,376,651.502328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/hackaday-links-christmas-eve-2012/ | Hackaday Links: Christmas Eve, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3D design",
"Hostess",
"logic gates",
"node.js",
"oled",
"raspberry pi",
"Twinkies",
"web development"
] | It’s Christmas Eve, the perfect time to interact with your extended familial units, eat cookies, nog things up a little, and watch
Die Hard
. Christmas Eve also means it’s a low-effort day here at Hackaday, so here’s a few cool things we’ve run across in the past few weeks.
A Round OLED Display
That right there is a circular OLED display. [ArtistEngineer] over on reddit
found this display on AliBaba
. It’s a 1.13 inch diameter display with a resolution of 128×128 (yeah, we don’t know either). This looks like a great display for a DIY wrist watch, digital gauge, or loads of other devices where a square display doesn’t make much sense.
There seems to be a few circular OLED display manufacturers – including
Truly Semiconductors
who happened to put up
a datasheet for their round display
– but sourcing these in reasonable quantities is a pain. Anyone up for a group buy? Think of the fun you’ll have coding a polar coordinate display!
Computing with transistors
So you know computers are made up of simple logic gates, latches, buffers, and other miscellaneous digital cruft, but how do we turn these digital circuits into a computer? Over the last few months, [Andrew] has been putting up a bunch of blog posts on the application of digital logic. Start out on the
‘Computing with Transistors’ post
before moving on to
The Digital State
and
Circuits and Arithmetic
. There’s some good readin’ there.
Embedding 3D objects in a web page
Go ahead. Click it. It’s
Sketchfab
that allows anyone to publish interactive 3D designs without a browser plugin. If anyone out there is trying to build a Thingiverse clone that isn’t tied to Makerbot, consider using this for the preview page for each object.
Surprisingly, Twinkies were the one thing that didn’t survive the Apocalypse.
While there’s no use in mourning the death of the Twinkie – Little Debbie
also
makes small cream-filled cakes – you might as well include some Twinkies, Snowballs, Ding Dongs, and Ho-Hos in your Christmas baking. [scoochmaroo] on Instructables
put together a list of homebrew recipes
for the now defunct Hostess snack cakes.
Perfect for autonomous robots
[maxogden] over on the gits put together a script for
automatically joining wireless networks
on Linux. This was tested on a Raspberry Pi, and we’re thinking it would be perfect for whatever autonomous creation you’ll be building in your workshop next year. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "909183",
"author": "MoJo",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T16:12:31",
"content": "I’d definitely be interested in a round OLED display. You can get round LCDs fairly easily and they are used for replacing analogue gauges in cars or on control panels.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,376,651.447258 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/24/pulling-the-lcd-screens-out-of-a-myvu-glasses-display/ | Pulling The LCD Screens Out Of A MyVu Glasses Display | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"display",
"glasses",
"lcd",
"myvu",
"teardown"
] | [John Floren] really sells us on a pair of MyVu 301 Video Glasses. He lists the features as being bulky, ugly, and uncomfortable. That’s the reason why he’s showing you
how to crack open the glasses in order to steal the tiny LCD modules
.
The LCD screen for each eye is mounted inside of the assembly seen above. The screen is perpendicular to the wearer’s eye, with some space in the body to facilitate the lens and reflector that enlarge the image and direct it toward the eye. After removing the display from the module [John] tried to hook it up to a camera via the driver hardware which comes with the glasses. It must have been a bit of a head scratcher that all he could get was a plain white image. This is fixed by finding the polarizing filter inside the module and laying it over the screen. This is demonstrated in the clip after the break.
We don’t know where he’s planning to go from here, but we can suggest a few different projects. This hardware could be useful in
creating his own augmented reality hat
. Using it as a video game controller is another thing that pops to mind. Wouldn’t it be cool to have this in the scope sight of a light gun? | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "909169",
"author": "Edward",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T14:53:34",
"content": "I did this as well! I’m planning on hooking it up with a Raspberry Pi to make a wearable computer with a HUD.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909354"... | 1,760,376,651.593157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/23/animated-holiday-wreath-from-a-string-of-led-lights/ | Animated Holiday Wreath From A String Of LED Lights | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"led",
"rgb",
"string",
"twitter",
"wreath"
] | [Dennis Adams’]
wreath lights project
looks pretty good. But he did some amazing coding to produce a whole set of interesting animated patterns that really seal the deal for the project. Don’t miss the video after the break where he shows off all of his hard work.
He started with a string individually addressable LEDs. These are the 12mm variety like what Adafruit sells (we’ve seen them
popping up in a number of projects
). To mount each pixel he tried a several different prototypes before settling on a ring that was 14″ in diameter. The design was laser cut from acrylic, with sets of staggered holes to host each ring of LEDs. The final touch was to add ping-pong balls to diffuse the light.
As we mentioned earlier, the light patterns really add the finishing touch to the project, but there is more functionality there too. [Dennis] rolled in the ability to monitor a Twitter feed with the wreath. When he gets a new tweet, a different animation will let him know about it.
[Thanks Chris] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "908992",
"author": "Mirko Alessandria",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T01:13:11",
"content": "Nice job! :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "909071",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2012-12-24T06:30:46",
"content": "Excelle... | 1,760,376,651.689074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/23/sensor-sleeve-makes-tablet-use-easier-and-benefitial-for-disabled-children/ | Sensor Sleeve Makes Tablet Use Easier And Benefitial For Disabled Children | Mike Szczys | [
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"ipad",
"physical therapy",
"sensor",
"sleeve"
] | Pinch-zoom is a godsend (and shouldn’t be patent-able) and although we mourn the loss of a physical keyboard on a lot of device we use a tablet nearly as often as we do a full computer. But the touch screen interface is not open to everyone. Those who lack full dexterity of their digits will find the interface frustrating at best or completely unusable at worst. A team of researchers from the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium came up with a way to
control touch-screen tablets with a sensor array that mounts on your arm
.
The project — called Access4Kids — looks not only to make tablet use possible, but to use it as a means of rehabilitation. The iPad seen above is running a custom app designed for use with the sensor sleeve. The interface is explained in the video after the break. Each sensor can serve as an individual button, but the hardware can also process sequential input from all three as a swipe in one direction or the other. If they can get the kids interested in the game it ends up being its own physical therapy coach by encouraging them to practice their upper body motor skills.
[via
DVICE
] | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "908898",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2012-12-23T19:21:33",
"content": "If pinch-to-zoom shouldn’t be patent-able, how come no one came up with it first?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "909014",
"author": "M Lange (@... | 1,760,376,651.643134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/23/log-coasters-made-with-just-two-tools/ | Log Coasters Made With Just Two Tools | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"band saw",
"coaster",
"log",
"wood"
] | Still looking for that perfect gift? [Joel Witwer] shows us
how to make a log coaster set and holder
on the cheap. He figures he spent just $5 on the project and from what we can tell that all went to some polyurethane which he used to finish the wood pieces.
It started with an interesting-looking and appropriately sized log which he found on the side of the road. We’re not sure about the ins and outs of drying stock to ensure it won’t crack, but we hope he took that into account. With raw material in hand he headed over to the band saw. The cutting starts by squaring up both ends of the log while cutting it to the final length. He then cut the bottom off of the holder. What was left was set upright so that he could cut the core out of the log. This is the raw material from which each coaster is cut. A spindle sander was used to clean up all of the pieces. The last step before applying finish is to glue the bottom and sides of the holder back together.
[Joel] gave some tips in
his Reddit thread
. He says you should hold on tight while cutting out the slices for coasters because the round stock will want to spin. He also mentions that some of the slices aren’t as flat as they should have been, something to think about if you’re cutting these for yourself. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "908863",
"author": "David Rysdam",
"timestamp": "2012-12-23T17:07:10",
"content": "Doesn’t polyurethane on a coaster kind of defeat the point? I’d leave it as more-or-less bare wood, to absorb the moisture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,376,651.749614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/an-even-more-useless-machine/ | An Even More Useless Machine | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"printer",
"useless machine"
] | Here’s
the most useless machine
we’ve seen so far. It comes from the workshop of [forn4x] and happily turns itself off whenever any one of its eight switches are flicked to the on position.
The build began when [forn]’s Canon 850i printer gave up the ghost because of a broken print head. All the other electronics and mechanics were still salvageable, so it was decided to turn this printer into something a little more useless.
The printer used a regular DC motor with an optical encoder to move the print head. [forn] easily found the schematics for this optical sensor, because of the TTL output was able to read out the position of the slider. The rest of the build is an ATMega8, a servo, and an octet of toggle switches. [forn] has been able to get the accuracy of the servo-controlled arm down to about 0.1 mm, more than enough to accurately turn all its switches off.
You can see [forn]’s most useless machine in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djc8FPHs45o&w=470] | 56 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "908303",
"author": "dALE",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T21:18:47",
"content": "That would be excellent to put in a party room. I’m sure people would love to stumble up to it and flip switches.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "908307... | 1,760,376,651.840166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/wooden-box-repeats-rhythm-used-when-knocking-on-the-lid/ | Wooden Box Repeats Rhythm Used When Knocking On The Lid | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"knock",
"knock block",
"piezo",
"solenoid"
] | [Paul Mandel] just finished
building this knock box project
. It’s a familiar concept that uses a solenoid to tap on the side of the box. The Arduino driven setup monitors vibrations on the lid. When you knock on the box, it records the pattern and plays it back using the solenoid.
He was inspired by
a knock-detecting door lock
. Using that code as the starting point he implemented a system that takes input from a simple push button and echos back the rhythm using the Pin 13 LED on the Arduino board. This is a great way to start as it removes the complexity of driving a solenoid and monitoring a piezo element. After a bit of success he implemented each of those hardware modules one at a time. You can get a look at the final product in the clip after the break.
One of our favorite version of this project is still
the knock block from several years back
. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "907673",
"author": "Circuitmage",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T19:26:34",
"content": "FIRST!Interesting idea….novelty item? Halloween prop? Hmm….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907682",
"author": "bunedoggle",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,651.960595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/raspberry-pi-laptop-is-just-a-little-too-big-for-a-pocket/ | Raspberry Pi Laptop Is Just A Little Too Big For A Pocket | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"laptop",
"raspberry pi"
] | Over on the Parts People blog, [Nathan]
created his own Raspberry Pi laptop
. It’s got all the bells and whistles, including a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and even a 3D printed case.
Of course [Nathan]’s laptop contains a Raspi, but the other included parts are where this palmtop computer is turned into something useful. For powering the Pi and 3.5″ composite LCD, [Nathan] took apart the battery pack from an old Dell laptop. By throwing out the bits of plastic surrounding these rechargeable cells and reusing the battery connector, [Nathan] was able to power the Pi, and all the peripherals for 10 hours.
Also included in [Nathan]’s Raspi palmtop is a 64 GB SSD connected to the powered USB hub. This, along with the 4 GB boot SD card, provides more than enough storage for listening to a music library, or even watching a few TV shows on the 3.5″ screen, | 30 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "907645",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T18:25:11",
"content": "I think the nicest comment I can muster is: Well, you’ve gotta have a hobby.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907658",
"author": "six677",
"timesta... | 1,760,376,652.158398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/open-source-software-defined-radio-transceiver/ | Open Source Software Defined Radio Transceiver | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ham",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"transceiver"
] | As the year draws to a close, we must look back and look at the advances in amateur radio this year. The RTL-SDR tuner hack, a USB TV Tuner to create a software defined radio receiver, is one of the greatest hacks of the last 12 months and a great justification for 2012 being the year of software defined radio receivers. 2013 is shaping up to have even more advances in the state of software defined radio. This time we’ll be transmitting as well, possibly with
[AE9RB]’s Peaberry SDR transceiver
.
The Peaberry SDR transceiver is a kit to both transmit and receive on every HAM band between 160 meters (1.8 MHz) to 17 meters (18 MHz). It does this through a USB interface and a 48kHz, 24-bit interface that is (or will shortly be) compatible with all the major SDR interfaces.
While the Peaberry SDR requires an amateur radio license to operate, we can’t wait to see what else will be coming to the software defined radio scene in the next year.
Thanks [Zach] for sending this one in. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "907580",
"author": "eule",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T16:27:57",
"content": "Offtopic but related: Let’s say i have an old analog TV card. Would it be possible to decode digital broadcasts by software (the card has no MPEG2 chip but can recieve radio btw)? Yes, USB TV sticks are dirt ... | 1,760,376,652.320204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/arduino-compatible-christmas-tree/ | Arduino Compatible Christmas Tree | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"christmas tree"
] | It wouldn’t be the holidays without an LED Christmas tree, and luckily [Danilo] brings the goods with
an Arduiinofied LED Christmas tree
(Italian,
translation
).
In the past week, we’ve seen LED Christmas
trees of digital logic
and a great
freeform circuit version
. Unlike these other builds [Danilo]’s LED tree uses a piece of protoboard masterfully cut into the shape of a Christmas tree. There’s no PCB for this build; just a lot of bare wires and a lot of patience.
Because [Danilo]’s tree makes use of the PWM pins on his Arduino, it was possible to connect his tree to the Arduino with a few 90 degree headers. This provides a great base for his tree and makes it possible to build a professional-looking enclosure for his project.
You can check out [Danilo]’s tree in action after the break. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "907563",
"author": "DanielG",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T15:37:45",
"content": "Ah yes, blinking lights, arduino’s primary mode of usage ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907568",
"author": "T4b",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21... | 1,760,376,652.78366 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/3d-printing-records/ | 3D Printing Records | Eric Evenchick | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"processing",
"records",
"vinyl"
] | This is a working
record created with a 3D printer
. [
Amanda
] came up with a process that converts audio files into 3D models. These models can be printed and played on a standard record player.
The real work is done by a Processing sketch that creates a STL file. [Amanda] started off by trying to create a sine wave. She used this test to optimize the printing process. Then she used Python to extract audio data from WAV files and modified the processing script to process the data. After more tweaking, she was able to get a reasonable signal to noise ratio and minimize distortion.
The resulting records have a sample rate of 11 kHz and 5-6 bit resolution. The sound quality isn’t going to be the same as commercially pressed vinyl, but you can still make out the song.
A
Objet Connex 500
was used to print the records. This UV printer has a 600 dpi resolution, which is means it’s more accurate than extrusion printers. Your mileage may vary using different printers, but all of the Processing and Python code is available with the project write up.
After the break, watch [Amanda] spin some 3D printed records. | 58 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "907497",
"author": "Galane",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T13:15:21",
"content": "Nirvana, good choice of song because that one doesn’t have intelligible lyrics anyway.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "907747",
"author": "Do... | 1,760,376,652.251449 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/we-are-the-borg-we-will-add-heat-and-distance-sensing-to-your-vision/ | We Are The Borg. We Will Add Heat And Distance Sensing To Your Vision. | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"borg",
"eye patch",
"ir sensor",
"sight",
"ultrasonic sensor",
"vision"
] | [Gregory McRoberts] was born with reduced vision in one eye and has never experienced the three dimensional sight which most of us take for granted. Recently he was inspired by the concept of a hearing aid to build a device which can augment his vision. Behold, the very Borg-like
eye-patch that he wears to add distance and heat to his palette of senses
.
The hardware he chose is an Arduino-compatible Lilypad board. It is wired to an ultrasonic rangefinder and an infrared sensor which monitor the area in front of him. The function of his right eye is still capable of seeing light and color, so a pair of LED boards are mounted on the inside. One is connected to the thermal sensor, displaying blue when below eighty degrees Fahrenheit and red when above. The other LED is green and flashes at a different speed based on the range sensor’s reading.
This is distracting when a person with normal sight wears it because of the intensity of the LEDs. We found [Gregory’s] explanation of this (called
Helmet Fire
) quite interesting.
[via
Adafruit
] | 38 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "907129",
"author": "MS3FGX",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T23:28:37",
"content": "Wish the documentation was a bit better, but definitely an impressive build. Is this kind of thing even available commercially?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,652.621983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/tesla-model-s-handle-dispenses-beer-hides-when-done/ | Tesla Model S Handle Dispenses Beer; Hides When Done | Mike Szczys | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"beer fridge",
"dispenser",
"door handle",
"model S",
"tesla"
] | Let’s face it, sometimes you need to take time out from engineering cutting-edge electric vehicles to over-engineer a beer fridge. And to tell you the truth, after seeing what [Matt Brown] managed to pull off we now have a gut-felt yearning for one of our own. He took a beer fridge and
added a vanishing dispenser handle from a Tesla Model S
.
You might be thinking that this an expensive part, and you’ve be more correct than you realize. It’s not even a stock part. This is a prototype that someone threw in the trash. [Matt] plucked it from oblivion and milled a spot for it in the door of the fridge. Your average [Joe] probably doesn’t know that
the Model S comes with handles that pull themselves flush with the body of the vehicle
.
[Matt] dug out insulation on the inside of the door until there was room to cut a hole for the handle. The clamped the assembly in place and used spray foam to re-insulate as well as glue it in place. An Arduino monitors the area below the tap. When you put your glass under the spout the handle extends. When you pull on it a solenoid drives the tap handle forward. This sounds pretty dry, but we think the demo after the break will have you lusting after one as well. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "907105",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T22:32:55",
"content": "Wow nice, glad something that cool was not only saved from the trash but used it to dispense tasty beverages!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907106... | 1,760,376,652.544302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/fabricating-hardware-from-the-original-arcade-pong-schematics/ | Fabricating Hardware From The Original Arcade Pong Schematics | Mike Szczys | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"arcade",
"logic",
"pong",
"schematic"
] | This heavily populated PCB is
a recreation of the original arcade version of Pong
. That is an important distinction because the home version of Pong used a specialized chip to do much of the work. This is basically all stock logic, which explains the high component count. We wonder how many quarters it took just to pay for all 66 chips at the time?
[Pong74ls] was the person who took on this project. There is an original schematic available, but it’s incredibly crowded and rather difficult to figure out. Fortunately [Dan Boris] has already done a lot of the heavy work. He took the one-page nightmare and turned it into
a sixteen page plan for building the original board
(look for the schematic link under technical details).
Before the board could be laid out some redesign work was necessary. It sounds like some of the original chips are out of production and suitable replacements needed to be found. The board was then laid out in Eagle before sending the design off to a fab house. There was just one error which didn’t allow the ball to bounce when hitting a paddle while travelling downward. A couple of jumper wires fixed that right up!
[via
Reddit
]
[
Original Reddit Post
] | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "908263",
"author": "n0lkk",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T19:46:51",
"content": "Nice work, but not completed yet or we weren’t shown it. Needs to be placed in free standing cabinet at comfortable bar stool height with a strong glass tap impervious to spilt beer,and booze",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,652.392024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/firehero-raspberry-pi-controlled-pyrotechnics/ | FireHero: Raspberry Pi Controlled Pyrotechnics | Eric Evenchick | [
"Featured",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arduino",
"hsi",
"propane",
"pyrotechnics",
"raspberry pi",
"ssr"
] | To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the
FireHero 3
. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air.
The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. A server runs on the Pi and allows a remote computer to control the system. The Pi sends commands over serial to the Arduino, which switches solid state relays that actuate the valves.
There’s also some built in safety features: the system won’t boot unless you have the right key and RFID tag, and there are pressure transducers and temperature sensors to ensure the system is operating safely. A CO2 actuated valve can quickly stop fuel flow in an emergency.
Vaporized propane creates the fireballs. The vapor is created by heating the supply tank in a hot water bath. An accumulation tank stores the vapor and custom built manifolds distribute it to the various flame cannons. At each cannon, a silicon nitride hot surface igniter (HSI) is used to ignite the flames once the valve is opened.
After the break, watch a video the the FireHero making some flames. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "908193",
"author": "jh",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T16:54:36",
"content": "FIRE!!! hehehehehe /Beavisnice setup.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "908199",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T17:11:54",
"content"... | 1,760,376,652.739119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/22/building-a-tornado-in-a-bottle/ | Building A Tornado In A Bottle | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bottle",
"hdpe",
"tornado",
"vortex"
] | Recreate the look of a tornado by
building this water vortex art piece
. The components that go into it are all very simple and can be found in your recycling bin with the exception of a motor and a way to drive it. The hard part is going to be getting to the point where you don’t have any leaks.
[Ixisuprflyixi] went with an empty salsa bottle to house the vortex. It’s a pleasant shape for the project since it’s both tall and narrow and it’s got a bit of a sexy curve to it. The base of the machine is a plastic bottle which looks like it might have been for Metamucil, but we’re not sure. The important part is that it needs to be made from HDPE, as a portion of the container will be used to make the impeller. That’s the part that attaches to the motor shaft inside of the container. Give it a spin and you’ve got yourself a tornado in a bottle. See it in action after the jump.
This is a much quicker and easier version than
the one we saw [Ben Krasnow] build
. He ended up doing some
repair work on the gasket that seals the motor shaft
. It’s an interesting read if you are thinking of building one of these yourself.
[Thanks Mark] | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "908120",
"author": "Necromant",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T14:12:25",
"content": "Looks awesome.Не побоюсь этого слова – буря в стакане.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "908133",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,652.673822 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/adding-task-lighting-inside-a-desk/ | Adding Task Lighting Inside A Desk | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"desk",
"led strips",
"reed switch",
"task lighting"
] | [Mahesh Venkitachalam] wanted to light up the dark recesses of his desk. What good is all that storage if you can’t see a darn thing in there? His solution was to
add LED strips which turn on automatically
when the door is opened.
The design is quite simple. A 2N2222 NPN transistor is responsible for connecting the ground rail of the LED strips mounted under each shelf. The base of that transistor is held high with a pull-up resistor. But a reed switch always connects the base to ground when the door is shut. Opening the door removes the magnet that keeps that reed switch closed. This allows current to flow from the pull-up to the base, connecting the ground rail to the LED strips and turning them on. You can see the video demo after the break.
One problem that we see with the design is that these are driven by a 9V battery. Over a long period of time that pull-up resistor will drain the cell. You can pick up a magnetic reed switch at the hardware or electronics store that is rated for 500 mA. If you can stay under that with the LED strips, and get one that is open when the magnet is present you will have zero power drain when the lights aren’t being used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64n8YgJmMOY
[via
Flickr
] | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "907812",
"author": "Hassi",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T23:54:26",
"content": "not to see in Germany, thank you GEMA :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907822",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T00:09:37",
"co... | 1,760,376,652.854028 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/adding-a-timer-feature-to-this-desk-lamp/ | Adding A Timer Feature To This Desk Lamp | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"lamp",
"pic",
"relay",
"shutoff timer",
"timer"
] | [Steven Mackaay] added a simple user interface that implements a shutoff timer for his desk lamp. His project log comes in two parts,
the breadboarding
and
the actual implementation
.
He wanted a few things out of the build. The first is an LED that would help him find the lamp in the dark. The second feature is a shutoff timer with different delay options. To get everything working he used a PIC microcontroller to drive a mechanical relay. That relay switches the mains power to the lamps. Now he uses one button to switch the lamp on and off. The other selects a shutoff timer of one, five, or thirty minutes. Power for the control circuitry is provided by the green wall wart PCB seen in the photo of the electronic guts.
This is a pretty general setup that could be applied to a lot of other mains switching applications. Just connect the logic hardware to
some type of relay
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "907781",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T22:45:33",
"content": "Love how the hot and neutral are ran right next to each other….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "907790",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,652.915746 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/webcam-eye-tracking-moves-robot-powered-skittles-candy/ | Webcam Eye-tracking Moves Robot-powered Skittles Candy | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"advertisement",
"candy",
"eye tracking",
"skittles"
] | This is a great hack,
and
it’s an advertisement. We wish this were the norm when it comes to advertising because they’ve really got our number. Skittles enlisted a few engineers to build
a web interface that moves robot-powered candies
.
When we started looking into this we figured that a few robots were covered with over-sized cases that looked like Skittles. But that’s not it at all. What you see above is actually upside down. The top side of the white surface has one tiny wheeled robot for each candy. A magnet was embedded in each Skittle which holds it to the underside of the surface. The user interface was rolled out on a Facebook page. It uses a common webcam for eye tracking. When you move your eyes, the robot controlling your assigned candy moves in that direction. See for yourself in the cllip after the break.
So we say bravo Mars Inc. We love it that you decided to show off what’s behind to curtain. As with
the Hyundai pixel wall
, there’s a whole subset of people who might ignore the ad, but will spend a lot of time to find out how it was done.
Thanks [GM] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "907819",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T00:03:34",
"content": "I hate to be that guy, but… well this is just silly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907821",
"author": "spag",
"timestamp": "2012-12-22T00:09:13... | 1,760,376,652.959255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/making-graphene-with-a-dvd-burner/ | Making Graphene With A DVD Burner | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"dvd",
"graphene",
"optical drive",
"super capacitor"
] | A group of researchers have figured out
how to produce graphene using a DVD drive
. This discovery helps clear the path for mass production of
the substance
, which was discovered in the late 1980’s. More recently, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a team that produced two-dimensional graphene; a substance one just atom thick. One method of doing so used Scotch tape and is mentioned in the video after the break as a technique that works but is not feasible for large-scale production.
The process seen here starts with graphite oxide because it can be suspended in water. This allows a lab technician to evenly distribute the substance on a plastic surface. Note the use of optical discs. The second part of the process involves hitting the dried layer of graphite oxide with a laser. It just so happens that this can be done with a consumer DVD drive. The result is graphene that can be used in circuits and may have potential as a fantastic super-capacitor.
[Thanks Mark] | 64 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "907697",
"author": "ho0d0o",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T20:08:45",
"content": "Holy crap.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907700",
"author": "Blaise Pascal",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T20:11:45",
"content": "Is this a re... | 1,760,376,653.243764 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/3d-printed-christmas-cookies/ | 3D Printed Christmas Cookies | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"christmas",
"christmas cookies",
"claystruder",
"cookies",
"dough",
"extruder",
"pastruder"
] | Here is yet another way to get into the holiday spirit at your local Hackerspace (or at home if you’re happen to have your own 3D printer). [Ralph Holleis] wrote in to show off
his 3D printed Christmas cookies
. The majority of the info on this project comes from the video embedded after the break. The extruder head he’s using includes a syringe which is filled with what we assume is Spritz Cookie dough. It is squeezed out in a pattern before heading to the oven for baking.
[Ralph] mentioned that he’s using UNFOLD Pastruder as the print head. We looked and couldn’t find that exact design, but it seems like it might be related to
this Claystruder head designed by a user named [Unfold]
. If you have the exact link to the extruder design seen above please let us know in the comments section.
If you don’t already have this type of head it’s just a matter of printing the mounting brackets and buying a syringe to match. But you’ll also need compressed air and a valve to regulate the flow of dough. It might be easier just to
print your own cookie cutters
. This is a great project for people who don’t have access to
a laser cutter for gingerbread house work
. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "907065",
"author": "David M.",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T21:19:03",
"content": "I’m certain the 3d-printed cookies and ones made with 3d-printed cookie cutters taste WAY better than the laser-cut gingerbread (blech).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,376,653.146056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/scavenged-tube-television-makes-a-nice-fish-tank/ | Scavenged Tube Television Makes A Nice Fish Tank | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"aquarium",
"crt",
"fish tank",
"television",
"tv"
] | [McCaulsey] found an old TV waiting for garbage pick-up on the side of the curb. He brought it home and
gave it a new life as an aquarium
.
His technique is a little rough, but the finished look is exactly what he was going for. He picked up the cheapest aquarium set he could find at the pet store. It just happens to have a curved front to it which helps to recreate the look of the original CRT. After removing most of the electrical components he went to work on the plastic fins that were used to mount them. Having somehow misplaced his Dremel tool the work was done with a drill and a 1/4″ paddle bit.
Once the demolition was over he started the rebuild by placing a backer in the tank. This is an underwater image that will save him from having to look at the inside of the TV case through the water. A piece of Styrofoam was used as a base to properly frame the front of the tank. The only thing we can’t tell from the build album is how he will manage to feed the fish without taking everything apart again.
[via
Reddit
] | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "907061",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T21:13:40",
"content": "Hehe, that was an entertaining read.1) Cituke’s right, too small for mulm factories (goldfish). At their current size, you *can* keep the water quality adequate with heavy biofiltration and maybe some li... | 1,760,376,653.293476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/mains-rated-solid-state-relay-test-box/ | Mains Rated Solid State Relay Test Box | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"high voltage",
"mains",
"solid state relay",
"ssr"
] | We like our nice, safe, 5V prototyping projects where the only thing that might get fried is a chip. But there are times when you want to switch appliances for one reason or another and then you’re going to want a mains rated relay. [Viktor] got tired of having exposed high voltage on the bench during the prototyping stage of these projects so
he recently built a solid state relay test box
.
The only thing he bought for the project was the SSR itself. To act as an enclosure he used the brick from an old laptop power supply. This is perfect for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s designed to contain high voltage if there is ever a short or other problem. Second, it’s already setup for incoming and outgoing power. He just needed to remove the guts and mount the relay. Notice that it comes with a clear plastic shield that physically separates the high voltage side from the low voltage control end. This, along with the cable routing, keeps the dangerous stuff on one side to ensure you won’t get an arc to the low voltage portion of the project. | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "907005",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T19:21:22",
"content": "Built something similar with an SSR, but built it into a nice hefty metal power strip. Hooked it up to my serial port, wrote a program, and hey, I can turn things on and off!",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,653.676345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/pymcu-test-project-looks-like-a-minecraft-mob/ | PyMCU Test Project Looks Like A Minecraft Mob | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"pyMCU",
"python",
"servo",
"tkinter"
] | Hackaday’s own [Jeremy Cook] has been testing out the pyMCU board and managed to put together
an animated block head that looks like it could be a foe in Minecraft
. That’s thanks mostly to the block of foam he’s using as a diffuser. The face of the project is a set of LEDs. These, along with the servo motors that move the neck are controlled using Python code which you can glance at after the break (there’s a video demo there too).
We first saw pyMCU
early in the year. The PIC 16F1939 offers plenty of IO and acts as a USB connected bridge between your hardware and your Python scripts. Speaking of hardware, the test platform used to be an RC helicopter. [Jeremy] scrapped most of it, but kept the servo motors responsible for the pitch of the rotors. The board makes these connections easy, and the concept makes controlling them even easier. In fact, there’s only about 17 lines of code for the functions that control the servos. The rest is a simple UI built with Tkinter.
# File: hello2.py
from Tkinter import *
import pymcu # Import pyMCU module
mb = pymcu.mcuModule() # Create a new pyMCU class object from first found pyMCU board
class App:
def __init__(self, master):
frame = Frame(master)
frame.pack()
self.button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red", command=frame.quit)
self.button.pack(side=LEFT)
self.servos_up = Button(frame, text="nod up", command=self.nod_up)
self.servos_up.pack(side=LEFT)
self.servos_down = Button(frame, text="nod down", command=self.nod_down)
self.servos_down.pack(side=LEFT)
self.tilt_left = Button(frame, text="tilt left", command=self.tilt_left)
self.tilt_left.pack(side=LEFT)
self.tilt_right = Button(frame, text="tilt right", command=self.tilt_right)
self.tilt_right.pack(side=LEFT)
def nod_up(self):
print "nod up"
mb.pinHigh(1)
mb.pausems(20)
mb.pulseOut(11,1300,20)
mb.pinHigh(2)
def nod_down(self):
print "nod down"
mb.pulseOut(11,800,20)
mb.pinLow(1)
mb.pinLow(2)
def tilt_left(self):
print "tilt left"
mb.pulseOut(10,1000,20)
def tilt_right(self):
print "tilt right"
mb.pulseOut(10,1600,20)
root = Tk()
app = App(root)
root.mainloop() | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "906979",
"author": "Christopher Antonellis",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T18:25:01",
"content": "wow hackaday is responsive. wow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907032",
"author": "Taylorian",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T20:08... | 1,760,376,653.399361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/modifying-an-eeg-headset-for-lucid-dreaming/ | Modifying An EEG Headset For Lucid Dreaming | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"eeg",
"lucid dreaming"
] | [Michael], [Tom], and a few other people on the Lucid Scribe Database project have been using off-the-shelf EEG equipment to invoke lucid dreaming. Yes, that’s where you take control of your dreams and
become a god.
This requires wearing an EEG setup while you sleep, and these products aren’t very comfortable sleeping wear. [Tom] decided to
take apart a NeuroSky MindWave
and turn it into something comfortable to wear all night.
The folks at the Lucid Scribe Database log their dreams with consumer-level EEG equipment, usually
something made by NeuroSky
. The NeuroSky MindWave is the smallest and cheapest EEG headset available, but it’s still a hard plastic device not conducive to sleeping.
[Tom] removed all the guts and electronic goodies out of his MindWave and attached them to an elastic headband. The MindWave has two sensors – a forehead and ear lobe sensor. For the forehead sensor, [Tom] simply soldered a piece of wire to a penny and attached it to the elastic. The ear lobe sensor in the stock MindWave is a simple clip that was kept in the stock configuration for [Tom]’s mod.
Now that [Tom] has a much more comfortable EEG setup, he can get on with improving his lucid dreaming skills and even try
communicating via Morse from inside a dream
. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "906894",
"author": "psion (@psion)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T16:23:46",
"content": "“… simply soldered a piece of wire to a penny and attached it to the elastic …”Wow. That gives a whole new meaning to the expression, “A penny for your thoughts!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,376,653.507754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/custom-motd-for-the-raspberry-pi/ | Custom MOTD For The Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"bash",
"MOTD",
"Raspi"
] | With so many uses for a Raspberry Pi in a headless configuration – especially with the impending release of the Raspi Model A – we’re surprised it has taken so long for someone to send in a way to
create a custom message of the day
that is displayed whenever you SSH into everyone’s favorite Linux board.
A MOTD is used by servers to display messages to new users, or simply system information for server admins. It’s a simple text file stored in /etc/motd, but with some proper beardly Unix wizardry it’s possible to display uptime, free memory, and even the weather wherever the Raspi is located.
[yanewby] over on the Raspberry Pi forums created a nice little MOTD that grabs weather data from the Internet and displays it alongside
an ASCII rendering of the Raspberry Pi logo
. Of course like everything in Unix, this MOTD can be modified to do just about anything, from checking your Twitter to sending a text message to your phone. | 32 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "906842",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T14:29:38",
"content": "Jesus, all time low.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "907405",
"author": "Ted R",
"timestamp": "2012-12-21T10:12:14",
"co... | 1,760,376,653.744316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/20/two-computer-vision-builds-from-cornell/ | Two Computer Vision Builds From Cornell | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"eye tracking",
"face tracking",
"fpga"
] | [Bruce Land], professor at Cornell, is a frequent submitter to our tip line. Usually he sends in a few links every semester from undergraduate electronics courses. Now the fall semester is finally over and it’s time to move on to the more ambitious master’s projects.
First up is
a head-mounted eye tracker
, [Anil Ram Viswanathan] and [Zelan Xiao] put together a lightweight and low-cost eye tracking project that will record where the user is looking.
The eye tracker hardware is made of two cameras mounted on a helmet. The first camera faces forward, looking at the same thing the user is. The second camera is directed towards the user’s eye. A series of algorithms detect the iris of the user’s eye and overlays the expected gaze position on the output of the first camera. Here’s
the design report
. PDF, natch.
Next up is a
face tracking project
implemented on an FPGA. This project started out as a software implementation of a face tracking algorithm in MATLAB. [Thu-Thao Nguyen] translated this MATLAB code to Verilog and eventually got her hardware running on an FPGA dev board. Another
design report
.
Having a face detection and tracking system running on an FPGA is extremely interesting; the FPGA makes face tracking a very low power and hopefully lower-cost solution, allowing it to be used in portable and consumer devices.
You can check out the videos for these projects after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcYAK2j0KSY&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmCi47hM0nM&w=580] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "906835",
"author": "jpnorair",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T14:19:26",
"content": "There are a lot of eye trackers out there. I did a contract a few years ago on an eye tracker than ran on beagleboard. Suffice it be said, if you use good DSP algorithms implemented carefully, the perfo... | 1,760,376,653.44134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/which-way-do-non-polarized-film-capacitors-go-there-is-an-answer/ | Which Way Do Non-polarized Film Capacitors Go? There Is An Answer. | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"capacitor",
"film capactior",
"orientation",
"polarized"
] | If you, like us, thought that capacitor orientation only matters for polarized varieties like electrolytic capacitors you should read through this article. [Bruce Trump] looks at
why some film capacitors have a stripe printed on one end and why their orientation can matter
.
He has an image rolled into his post showing both axial and dipped capacitors with a black stripe printed on one end of the package. This is an indicator of what is going on inside of the component. The end with the line has a conductive foil layer which acts as a shield. But it seems that this shield will do its job better if you do a better job of designing for the capacitor.
The diagram above shows two op-amp circuits, both using a non-polarized capacitor that will affect the circuit if it receives external interference. [Bruce] discusses various aspects of this phenomenon, mentioning that although these careful layouts can be tested in your designs to prove which has more benefits, simulated applications (using SPICE) will perform exactly the same. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "906554",
"author": "adcurtin",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T00:59:27",
"content": "That cap is “not polarized” in the same way most mosfets aren’t polarized. I.e. it is polarized…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "906566",
"author... | 1,760,376,653.848422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/comprehensive-home-pcb-fabrication-tutorial/ | Comprehensive Home PCB Fabrication Tutorial | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"copper chloride",
"cupric chloride",
"etch",
"etchant",
"pcb"
] | From what we’ve seen we’d say [Jianyi Liu] is really good at etching PCBs at home. Now you can learn from his experience. He just published
a mammoth guide to fabricating your own PCBs at home
. That link goes to his index page which leads to all eight parts of the guide.
He starts off by mentioning that fab house boards are rather inexpensive these days. This will save you a lot of trouble (like acquiring the equipment and raw materials needed to get up and running) but you can’t beat the turnaround time of doing it yourself.
After discussing the particulars about trace width, copper thickness, and a few design considerations he lays out his board and prints the artwork to a sheet of transparency film. A pre-sensitized board is cut to size before a trip through an exposure rig with the film taped onto it. The image above shows him rinsing the board after applying the developer chemical. From here he uses cupric chloride he mixed himself to etch the board. [Jianyi] recommends populating the components before cutting the panel apart — a task which he accomplishes with a hack saw. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "906541",
"author": "circuitpeople",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T00:01:54",
"content": "Yikes. The advertising spam on that site is a little over the top.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "906560",
"author": "zuul",
... | 1,760,376,653.801314 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/stellarino-brings-wiring-style-coding-to-the-stellaris-launchpad/ | Stellarino Brings Wiring-style Coding To The Stellaris Launchpad | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"arduino",
"stellarino",
"Stellaris Launchpad",
"wiring"
] | [Sultan Qasim] wrote in to tell us about the work he’s been doing on the Stellarino library. It’s goal is to break down the coding barriers present for those looking to move from Arduino to ARM. This is accomplished by
facilitating Wiring-stlye code for the Stellaris Launchpad
ARM development board.
Right off the bat [Sultan] mentions that the interface is Wiring-like, but is not compatible with it. This means you can’t just plop your existing sketches into a C file and get them to work with the addition of a simple include file. But what it does do is provide access to the functions to which seasoned Arduino users have grown accustomed. You can see some examples above, including analogWrite(), digitalRead(), and a simple delay function.
We had a quick look at the library. It uses StellarisWare components which are stored in the ROM of the chip (these are all preceded by ‘ROM_’). The one thing missing is the UARTstudio library which apparently carries a license incompatible with GPL. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "906506",
"author": "wolfy02",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T22:10:24",
"content": "well that was fast, the link for the modified CCS has been taken down for TOS violations. if anyone wants to send me a copy i’ll gladly host it until i’m legally obligated to remove it ^_^.",
"parent_... | 1,760,376,653.904216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/months-of-failure-lead-up-to-this-el-panel-dimmer-that-pulses-to-the-music/ | Months Of Failure Lead Up To This EL Panel Dimmer That Pulses To The Music | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dimmer",
"driver",
"EL panel",
"electroluminescence"
] | Way back in March [Ch00f] took on a for-hire project to make a suit that lights up to the music. He decided to build something based around a pulsating EL panel. He’s put a lot of time and tried of a few different techniques, but
he finally has a working EL panel dimmer
.
This is a saga we’ve kept our eye on. The fall seems to have been good to him, after
a failure using TRIACS
he managed to adjust the brightness of some EL wire by
messing with the current going to the driver’s oscillator
. Standing on the shoulders of that success he designed the board seen above by getting serious about audio signal processing. There’s a microphone on the board which picks up sound which is then processed into a signal responsible for the brightness of the EL panel.
There’s a demo video after the break, but you’ll want to dig into his article to get all the gritty details.
[via
Reddit
] | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "906491",
"author": "roboman2444",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T21:43:09",
"content": "Hm… this gave me an idea…Have a very simple script that can change the laptop’s backlight brightness based on music volume.Would be rather simple with bash and some other things (converting the pcm sty... | 1,760,376,653.952574 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/sound-reactive-christmas-tree-makes-folks-happy/ | Sound Reactive Christmas Tree Makes Folks Happy | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"christmas tree",
"rgb",
"sound"
] | This non-traditional Christmas tree in Victoria, British Columbia is bringing people together this holiday season. It boasts
over 800 lights that react to sound
. You can see the pulsing and color changing that go along with some Tuba carols in the clip after the break.
The art installation was commissioned by the Downtown Victoria Business Association. A great big cherry tree was adorned with strings of individually addressable RGB LED Christmas lights. They are controlled by a system which calculates changes based on onset, energy and frequency analysis of sound picked up by multiple microphones. The effect is delightful and it’s not just musicians getting in on the fun. Passersby can’t seem to help themselves from yelling, clapping, and singing to make the tree sparkle.
Also included in the project is an interactive stop-motion animation film. It’s projected on the side of a building and invites viewers to send a text message to interact with it. A video of this is also found after the jump. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "906471",
"author": "My name is bob",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T20:22:41",
"content": "LOL…The guy that texts dumbass…”How Rude!”Genius. That’s all I have to say about these things.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "906484",
"au... | 1,760,376,653.988132 |
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