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https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/reverse-geocache-based-on-stm32-and-gps-wristwatch/ | Reverse Geocache Based On STM32 And GPS Wristwatch | Mike Szczys | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"bus pirate",
"reverse geocache",
"stm32"
] | [Renaud Schleck] somehow got lucky enough to find a GPS wristwatch in the trash. It had a broken LCD screen so its wouldn’t be of much use on that next hiking trip, but he knew it still had potential. He used the GPS module and a few other parts to
build this reverse geocache box
.
Reverse geocache is a container that is locked, opening only in a pre-defined geographic location. We’ve seen plenty of these projects around here, like
this one that talks
, or
this one which was given as a Christmas gift
. They’re popular projects both because of the unique method of getting at the prize inside, and because it doesn’t take a whole lot of hardware to build one. Once [Renaud] had the GPS module he simply need a user interface, locking mechanism, and a microcontroller to pull it all together.
The interface uses a screen from an old cellphone and one push button. The latching system is a tiny geared motor salvaged from a Laptop optical drive. These, along with the GPS watch board are all monitored by the STM32 microcontroller which he programmed using OpenOCD and the Bus Pirate.
[via
Reddit
] | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "906457",
"author": "o2",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T19:46:12",
"content": "I am the person he offered the box to, I can attest it worked great, and if your are nice, I’ll telle you what was inside !!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,655.538953 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/stellaris-launchpad-and-booster-packs-used-as-frequency-analyzer/ | Stellaris Launchpad And Booster Packs Used As Frequency Analyzer | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"booster pack",
"fft",
"spectrum analyzer",
"Stellaris Launchpad"
] | [Jordan Wills] got tired of being limited to eight pixels of resolution and having jumper wires littering his work space. He set out to upgrade his
Stellaris Launchpad frequency analyzer project using booster packs
. You may remember the initial iteration of the project which
used an 8×8 LED matrix to map audio spectrum
. With this upgrade he’s really putting the power of that ARM chip to use.
His first improvement with this project was to spin his own audio input board. It has a standard headphone jack for input and a few passive components to shift the signals to rest nicely within the ADC measurement range. The shield has two double pin headers and a group of four stand offs to serve as legs. This way it plugs into the female headers on the bottom of the Launchpad and provides a stable base for the assembly.
The second portion of the setup is an LCD booster pack for the hardware. Kentec manufactures this 3.5″ 320×240 LCD (EB-LM4F120-L35) complete with a resistive overlay making it touch sensitive. The increase in resolution, and availability of different colors gave [Jordan] plenty to work on. Since this add-on is designed for the Launchpad and has a driver library already available he was able to focus on adapting the FFT output for display and adding in new features. Don’t miss seeing what he’s accomplished in the clip after the break. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "906395",
"author": "willaim",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T17:43:11",
"content": "How accurate is it at close to $90 you could pretty much buy a better oneya ya the part of putting your own together… still pretty cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,655.700716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/o-christmas-tree-of-digital-logic/ | O Christmas Tree Of Digital Logic | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"74xx",
"christmas tree",
"led",
"logic chip"
] | [Chris] over at PyroElectro is getting into the swing of the holidays with
a LED Christmas tree build
. Unlike the other electrical Christmas trees we’ve seen this holiday season, [Chris] designed his tree entirely with digital logic – no microcontrollers included.
The tree [Chris] constructed on a piece of perf board is a beautiful spiral arrangement of 64 green LEDs.While we’re sure getting all the LEDs soldered to the right height, [Chris]
makes it look so easy
to create 3D structures with circuits.
The LEDs are driven with a set of eight shift registers, themselves clocked by either a predictable 555 timer chip or a pseudo-random pattern generated with a circuit built from a few hex inverters. By setting the tree to the sequential mode, a pair of lights travel slowly down the spiral of the Christmas tree. If set to random mode, an random number of LEDs light up and walk down the array of LEDs.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZNFbE0fO0U&w=470] | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "906347",
"author": "janin",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T16:16:01",
"content": "I’m a bit confused by the claim that microcontrollers are not digital logic, but it’s pretty cool. I wonder if he could get rid of the last analog part (besides the clock generator) by replacing the random p... | 1,760,376,655.646153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/man-proposes-to-girlfriend-with-an-arc-reactor/ | Man Proposes To Girlfriend With An Arc Reactor | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arc reactor",
"proposal",
"servo"
] | Thinking long and hard about how to propose to his girlfriend, [Ed] hit upon a great idea: u
se an arc reactor as the ring box
, with enough LED lights to outshine all but their love, and servos to present the ring and tug at the heartstrings.
[Ed] set about giving his now-fiancé from his arc reactor heart by building a simple circular arrangement of adafruit RGB LED strip and an Arduino. There are two modes for this arc reactor: a light up mode that simply looks awesome, and a ‘ring mode’ that uses two servos to open the front cover and bring the engagement ring into view.
After [Ed]’s fiancé said yes, the cover in the center of the arc reactor closes for its continued use as a desk ornament. You can check out [Ed]’s proposal contraption in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_rNg1WmcIo&w=470] | 18 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "906321",
"author": "KillerBug",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T14:09:49",
"content": "That’s a great idea…if she hadn’t liked it then he would have known it was not meant to be.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "906331",
"author": "... | 1,760,376,655.907593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/building-pong-for-an-8-pin-micro/ | Building Pong For An 8-pin Micro | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"pic",
"PIC12F",
"pong"
] | For playing around with video signals and trying to create a an interesting microcontroller project, you can’t do better than the classic Pong. We’ve seen our share of microcontroller-based pong builds, but rarely have we seen an 8-pin microcontroller
recreate every part of the first video game
.
[Tim] started his PIC12F1840-based Pong build with just a few buttons for controls and a video output. This in itself is somewhat of an achievement, as [Tim] used all the data memory and every GPIO pin on this small microcontroller.
He had time to optimize his build and ended up adding the bleeps and bloops of the original Pong to his build. He’s got an interesting design on his hands, and also what is probably the smallest Pong clone in existence. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "906307",
"author": "AnotherHowie (@AnotherHowie)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T13:31:35",
"content": "Cool project! Video output on low-power hardware is interesting stuff.But Pong isn’t the first video game by pretty much any standard. It’s not even Atari’s first.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,376,655.808664 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/19/manuel-the-scottish-moose-speaks-your-tweets/ | Manuel The Scottish Moose Speaks Your Tweets | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"animatronic",
"raspberry pi",
"text to speech",
"twitter"
] | The folks over at Torchbox needed a Christmas card this year. Previously, the most poplar holiday card was a web page that gave their visitors a chance to activate a ‘snow machine’ and spray confetti on a random employee, all while being streamed online. They wanted to replicate this bridge between virtual and real life interactions this year, and
Manuel the talking moose was born
.
Manuel needed a personality and interaction from random people on the Internet so the Torchbox team decided to make the fake moose head speak tweets in real-time with the help of a Raspberry Pi. The code running on the Raspi gets tweets with a #tbxmoose hashtag, sends that through a node.js script, and finally sent to the
Festival speech synthesis system
.
A few modifications needed to be done to Manuel before he was presented to the Internet. His jaw was chopped in half and a servo and animatronic controller were added for a proper presentation on Torchbox’s stream of Manuel’s random musings. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "906299",
"author": "d",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T13:04:13",
"content": "Fun thing, if only it did not require a Twitter account…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "906324",
"author": "Daren Page",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,655.585783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/heavy-metal-computer-case-desk/ | Heavy Metal Computer Case Desk | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"case",
"desk",
"fabrication",
"machining",
"stainless steel"
] | This desk is also a computer case
. From this view it may not seem like much, but the build log has hundreds of images which could be called metal fabrication porn. The desk surface is made of wood, but all of the other parts were crafted from stainless steel.
The three components that weren’t fabricated by [Paslis] are the pair of legs and the column supporting the screens. These pieces are actually lifting columns that allow you to adjust desk and screen height at the touch of a button. The build starts off with a sub-surface to house the computer guts. After careful cutting, bending, welding, and polishing this comes out looking like the work surface in a commercial kitchen. After attaching the lifting legs to that assembly a foot for the desk takes shape from square pipe which is then skinned with stainless steel to match the finished look of the sub-surface. After spending countless hours on brackets, trim pieces, grills, and wood accents he sent everything off for painting before the final assembly.
Certainly this is in a different realm than
the case desk from yesterday
. But a mere mortal can pull that off while this is surely the work of an experienced tradesman.
[Thanks Andreas] | 40 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "906098",
"author": "Gert",
"timestamp": "2012-12-19T00:13:16",
"content": "That is glorious work.My one question is whether having that big glass/plastic window is going to result in annoying reflections of the screen… It might not… I just know that if I have my iPod Touch sitting f... | 1,760,376,656.130696 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/hacked-together-nas-in-a-box/ | Hacked Together NAS In A Box | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"hard drive",
"laptop",
"nas",
"ns-k330",
"openwrt",
"server"
] | [David] is serving up files on his home network thanks to
this Frankenstein’s monster of a Network Attached Storage device
. It looks like he raided all the good bits from his parts bin to bring it all together.
The case is a tin box which may have been for a card/board game or some holiday treats. The hardware started with an NS-K330 server which he picked up from Deal Extreme. It has a NIC and a couple of USB ports but it tends to run really hot so he added a heat sinks to the board’s main chips. The hard drives are both 2.5″ form factor from old laptops. He uses some 2.5″ to 3.5″ mounting adapters to attach them to the tin box. A pair of USB to IDE adapters shed their cases and were solder directly to the wires which make a connection with the server’s USB ports.
There is a Linux distro specifically for this hardware but [David] wasn’t impressed with it. He ended up compiling OpenWRT for it and is satisfied with the functionality that provides. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "906075",
"author": "irregularshed",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T23:17:02",
"content": "I did something similar to this a few years ago, mounting a Linksys NSLU-2 and a pair of hard drives inside the case of a junked DVD player. It worked nicely, repurposing various parts of the DVD pla... | 1,760,376,655.964218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/using-newlib-with-stellaris-launchpad/ | Using Newlib With Stellaris Launchpad | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"gcc",
"glibc",
"malloc",
"newlib",
"printf",
"Stellaris Launchpad"
] | [Brandon] is taking us further down the rabbit hole by demonstrating
how to use newlib with the TI Stellaris Launchpad
. This is a nice continuation of the framework he built with his post about
using GCC with ARM hardware
. But it is most certainly one level of complexity deeper than that initial article.
Using newlib instead of glibc offers the option of compiling C code that includes system calls common when coding for computers but which are rare in embedded systems. Using something like printf is generally avoided because of the overhead associated with it. But these processors are getting so fast and have so much RAM that it may be useful in certain cases. We briefly thought about implementing malloc for creating a linked list when working on
our STM32 snake game
. [Brandon’s] work here makes the use of that command possible.
The process starts by adding labels for the beginning and end of the stack/heap. This makes it possible for functions to allocate memory. After taking care of the linker script changes you must implement a few system call functions like _sbrk. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "906025",
"author": "Spacedog",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T21:16:09",
"content": "H.A.D. has some hard-on for the Stellaris Launchpad, so many articles about it… ok, I’ll bite… how does this board fair against other prototyping solution and why should I buy one over an arduino, raspber... | 1,760,376,655.759785 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/organ-pedals-fill-in-when-youre-bass-player-is-missing/ | Organ Pedals Fill In When Your Bass Player Is Missing | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"dev board",
"foot pedal",
"freescale",
"organ"
] | Since his string bass player isn’t always around [Antoine]
built his own electric bass stand-in using the pedals from an old organ
. The project — which he calls the Organ Donor — was inspired by
a similar standalone organ pedal bass project
. That instrument was built using a 555 timer to generate the sound. But [Antoine] has a little more room for growth as he’s using an old microcontroller development board to generate sound.
The octaves worth of pedals were pulled from an old broken Yamaha A55 Electone organ. After extracting the assembly from the instrument he built a nice wooden case around it. This doubles as a stand for the amplifier which broadcasts the sound. An old Freescale development board is wired up to twelve of the keys (the top C is unused). It generates a square wave at the appropriate frequency for each key. This signal is fed through a low-pass filter before being routed to the audio jack on the back of the case.
Future improvements include building an amplifier into the pedal assembly. We would also love to see different signal processing to expand the range of sounds the pedals can generate. We’re not sure of the capabilities of that microcontroller, but it would be neat to hear
tone generation using stored samples
. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "906011",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T20:52:06",
"content": "Like!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "906043",
"author": "Bill Gander",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T21:54:48",
"content": "Same here Ren! Simple... | 1,760,376,655.856157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/electric-clothes-drier-repair-heats-things-up/ | Electric Clothes Drier Repair Heats Things Up | Mike Szczys | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"appliance",
"clothes dryer",
"multimeter"
] | [How To Lou] sure has shown us how to do quite a few things. This time he’s dealing with
an electric clothes dryer that won’t heat
. We’ve been elbow deep in our own appliances and we think [Lou’s] matter-of-fact demonstration will help you gain the confidence to investigate problems before deciding if it’s a job to be relegated to the repair man.
This picture shows the back side of a clothes dryer after having a protective panel removed. Just out of frame is a functional schematic which lists each part and it’s resistance measurement. Lou has labelled those parts in this image to help us understand what we’re looking at. In the video after the break he begins doing the same troubleshooting that a repair would use. He grabbed his multimeter and used it to test the resistance of each component after removing the wires from it. All of them should read zero Ohms except for the heater coil which the schematic rates at 7.8-11.8 Ohms. The high limit thermostat is loose and measures an infinite resistance. This, coupled with the charred wire on one side is the culprit. As with that
ice maker repair
from yesterday, [Lou] searches for the numbers on the part to find the replacement he needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj85TtUIVPM | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "905971",
"author": "wretch",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T19:19:02",
"content": "Useful!BTW, is everybody else’s laundry closet as clean as his? Mine certainly isn’t.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "906009",
"author": "Re... | 1,760,376,656.199938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/welding-with-over-a-hundred-a123-lithium-cells/ | Welding With Over A Hundred A123 Lithium Cells | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"a123",
"battery",
"cell",
"lithium",
"welding"
] | [Doctor Bass] needed to do some welding on his electric bicycle. The problem is that he’s never welded before and doesn’t have any tools for it. As you can see, that didn’t stop him. He used a bicycle battery made from
reclaimed DeWalt A123 cells to power his diy welding rig
.
He has a huge adjustable resistor which is responsible for limiting the current. 80 Amps seems to work the best with the welding rods he’s chosen. It is worth noting that when he shows off each part of the welder (see the clip after the break) the color of the wire used for positive and negative leads is opposite of convention. His positive wiring is black while his ground connection is red.
To get the welding under way he connects a jumper-cable-like clamp to his work piece which serves as the positive electrode. To hold the welding rod he drilled a hole in a pair of vice grip pliers and bolted on the negative lead. This way the end of the welding rod can be clamped in the vice grips while his other hand guides the tip. So far he’s still practicing, but it looks like he’s nearly ready to take on the job at hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsD-xU4gtHM
[Thanks Ryoku] | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "905947",
"author": "jaqen",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T18:05:46",
"content": "now combine this with the 9v-battery hack earlier, and we have a hack worthy of McGyver (the tv charater, not the one commenting on this site:-P )",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,656.272571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/build-a-360-synthetic-aperture-radar-with-mits-opencourseware/ | Build A $360 Synthetic Aperture Radar With MIT’s OpenCourseware | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"cantenna",
"radar",
"Synthetic aperture radar"
] | A few profs from MIT’s Lincoln Lab are giving those poor MIT undergrads something to do over winter break: they’re teaching a three-week course on building a laptop-powered radar system capable of radar ranging, doppler, and synthetic aperture imaging. Interestingly, the radar system that teams will build for the class has a BOM totaling $360, and they’re also
putting the entire class online
if you’d like to follow along and build your own.
From the
lecture notes from the course
, the radio system is made out of an off-the-shelf LNA, oscillator, and splitter. By connecting two coffee can ‘cantennas’, it’s possible to record a .WAV file from the signal coming from the radar and use MATLAB to turn that audio signal into a doppler radar.
It’s a very ambitious project that goes deep down the rabbit hole of RF and analog design. One of the lecturers made a YouTube demo of the radar in ranging mode; you can check that out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x040ltNKDFo&w=470] | 38 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "905902",
"author": "Smeeg",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T16:13:48",
"content": "Well, there goes my winter vacation; looks like all my Christmas money will be going to MiniCircuits and Digikey.Again.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,656.657648 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/the-hexapod-hexacopter/ | The Hexapod Hexacopter | Eric Evenchick | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"hexacopter",
"hexapod",
"phantomx",
"quadcopter"
] | Over at Mad Lab Industries, they had the idea of building a quadcopter that could walk and fly. By combining a
hexapod with a hexacopter
, they ended up with this creation.
The hexapod part started off with
PhantomX Hexapod Kit
, but it was far too heavy to fly. To reduce weight, they manufactured carbon fibre parts for the frame and legs. Even with the weight reductions, they still needed to six rotors to keep it stable.
The hexacopter part of the build uses more custom carbon fibre parts to mount the motors. The booms and mounts are also custom built out of aluminium. They used six E-Flite motors, propellers, and ESCs to provide lift.
A variety of controllers are used to run the robot. Two Arbotix devices handle the hexapod control, and a Hoverfly flight controller keeps it in the air. It’s controlled remotely using a Spektrum controller.
They have some ambitious next steps, including a mechanism that disconnects and reconnects the hexacopter and the base. After the break, check out a video of this impressive build in action. | 34 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "905841",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T14:08:27",
"content": "That is the creepyest flying thing I have ever seen! Awesome",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "905843",
"author": "d",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T14... | 1,760,376,656.831961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/tindie-gets-fundraisers-for-kickstarting-and-group-buys/ | Tindie Gets Fundraisers For Kickstarting And Group Buys | Brian Benchoff | [
"News"
] | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Tindie"
] | The etsy of electronics project, Tindie, has a brand new feature: It’s a
Kickstarter-esque endeavor called a Fundraiser
that allows you to sell your projects to other electron enthusiasts.
Of course the new Tindie Fundraisers may soon be just another Kickstarter clone for “exciting,” “new,” and “innovative” Arduino dev boards,
something we’ve lamented before
. We’re really interested in seeing Tindie used as a platform for group buys; a solution to a maker’s special hell where buying one component costs $100, but ten cost $200.
Already there are a few really cool projects up on the Tindie Fundraisers including a
breadboardable Parallax Propeller dev board
. Yes, someone
finally
made one that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
In addition to the new Fundraisers, [emile] also
closed on $500k of seed funding
for Tindie. It’s wonderful news for something that is sorely needed by the maker community. Tindie is also hiring, so if you’re a Django/Python wizard go drop everyone’s second favorite robotic dog a line. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "905833",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T13:44:29",
"content": "So will the venture capitalists funding these “Fundraisers” be assured they are not funding vaporware?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "905834",
"autho... | 1,760,376,656.530988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/18/244-9-volt-batteries-in-series-arcing-ensues/ | 244 9 Volt Batteries In Series – Arcing Ensues! | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"9 volt battery",
"high voltage",
"hipot"
] | Here’s another hack that we would definitely
discourage you from trying at home,
244 9 volt batteries wired in series
. There’s really not much more to it than that, but [jersagfast] takes this setup through its paces arcing through air first, a LED light second, and then a CD. The air arc is probably the most impressive, but a CD doesn’t look happy after this kind of abuse either. Around 4:38, a capacitor is abused for yet more arcing.
In theory, 244 9 volt batteries in series should be nearly 2200 volts, but as measured (in sections), it “only” came out to a “measly” 2000 volts. Still plenty of voltage to be harmful or even deadly depending on the current emitted. Passing on this hack at home is strongly encouraged. On the other hand, you should watch the video after the break to see what happens. Much safer. Arcing starts around 1:44!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hwLHdBTQ7s?rel=0%5D
Thanks to
[@DIYourFaceoff]
for noticing this sweet
“DC hipot” hack via twitter! | 49 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "905799",
"author": "ino",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T12:14:49",
"content": "He could, at least, put some protection gloves …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905803",
"author": "DarwinSurvivor",
"timestamp": "2012... | 1,760,376,657.031292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/15/adventures-in-moldmaking-and-making-your-own-enclosures/ | Adventures In Mold Making And Making Your Own Enclosures | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"casting resin",
"enclosure",
"mold making",
"silicone mold"
] | The folks at SC-3000 survivors have been working on a cartridge capable of storing dozens of games for the ancient Sega SC-3000 computer. The PCB works beautifully, but making a case for their cartridge left them with few options. They could use a 3D printer or simply collect a whole bunch of used cartridge cases, but
making their own mold for a cartridge case
was the best solution.
To create the mold for their multicart enclosure, the SC-3000 survivors first took an old, used case and made a silicone mold. While the first attempt at mold making was encouraging, several problems began to crop up due to the lack of vent holes and wiggling the mold before the resin had set. Before long, a proper technique to make resin casts was developed: use lots of resin, and don’t apply pressure or rubber bands to a curing mold.
We’re always impressed by what can be done with a few sheets of plastic, some Bondo, and the inordinate amounts of patience and sandpaper we see with other case mods and enclosure builds. the SC-3000 survivors put together an enclosure that rivals any Bondo build, and we’re happy they put out this tutorial. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "904424",
"author": "yetihehe",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T20:37:38",
"content": "How do you actually make a mold with such “sand” pattern on some parts?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "904458",
"author": "Brooks Moses",
... | 1,760,376,656.886112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/15/a-thermal-imaging-camera-for-your-phone/ | A Thermal Imaging Camera For Your Phone | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"Crowd Funding",
"IR-Blue",
"thermal imaging camera"
] | When last we heard of
a cheap thermal imaging camera accessory
for any smart phone, we were blown away at how easily a very expensive electronic device could be replicated with an Arduino and enough know how. Now, that thermal imaging camera
is a kickstarter project
and provides a cheap way to put a thermal imaging camera in the tool chest of makers the world over.
It’s called the IR-Blue, and simply by connecting your phone to the IR-Blue with Bluetooth, you can overlay the output of a thermal imaging camera on the output of your camera’s phone.
The thermal imaging sensor is basically a low-resolution camera (16 x 4 pixels) for infrared radiation. This sensor is factory calibrated to detect heat in a range between -20 and 300 ˚C. This range allows anyone to easily see where drafts in a house are coming from, where heat in a computer is being generated, or figuring out how to cook a steak.
It’s an awesome and well designed product, so we’ve got to hand it to [Andy] and the IR-Blue team for putting very expensive tools in everyone’s hands. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "904404",
"author": "fuji",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T20:04:37",
"content": "This is a great project and all, but I have to admit it irks me when these thermal camera projects are described as ‘we replaced an expensive thermal camera with an arduino/iphone/etc’ when the breakthrough w... | 1,760,376,656.585591 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/leveraging-the-gpu-to-accelerate-the-linux-kernel/ | Leveraging The GPU To Accelerate The Linux Kernel | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"CUDA",
"kgpu",
"NVIDIA",
"parallel computing"
] | Powerful graphics cards are pretty affordable these days. Even though we rarely do high-end gaming on our daily machine we still have a GeForce 9800 GT. That goes to waste on a machine used mainly to publish posts and write code for microcontrollers. But perhaps we can put the GPU to good use when it comes compile time.
The KGPU package
enlists your graphics card to help the kernel do some heavy lifting.
This won’t work for just any GPU. The technique uses
CUDA
, which is a parallel computing package for NVIDIA hardware. But don’t let lack of hardware keep you from checking it out. [Weibin Sun] is one of the researchers behind the technique. He posted
a whitepaper
(PDF) on the topic over at
his website
.
Add this to the growing list of
non-graphic applications
for today graphics hardware.
UPDATE:
Looks like we won’t be trying this out after all. Your GPU must support CUDA 2.0 or higher. We found ours on
this list
and it’s only capable of CUDA 1.0.
[Thanks John] | 58 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "903976",
"author": "wowme@wtf.com",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T01:09:00",
"content": "I don’t have nvidia",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "903982",
"author": "Gdogg",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T01:37:42",
"c... | 1,760,376,656.759502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/self-balancing-unicycle-using-arduino-and-sparkfun-imu/ | Self-balancing Unicycle Using Arduino And Sparkfun IMU | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"IMU",
"self balancing",
"sparkfun",
"unicycle"
] | Here’s proof that you can build cool stuff with simple tools.
This self-balancing unicycle
uses an Arduino and a five degree of freedom IMU from Sparkfun to keep the rider upright. Well, it’ll keep you upright as long as you have good side-to-side balance. But that’s true of any unicycle, right?
The Raptor was built by [Nick Thatcker] who is no stranger to self-balancing transportation.
A few years back he built a Segway clone
and the same type of geared motor used in that project also went into this one. I connects to the wheel with a chain, allowing him to keep the motor hidden in the saddle. He gets between 90 and 120 minutes of used on one charge with a top speed of 10 MPH. The motor could move you along faster but he has limited this in firmware to ensure it has enough power to ‘catch up’ if you lean too far forward.
Don’t miss the demo after the break. If you like this unicycle
there are several
others
worth looking at
. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "903974",
"author": "boob_skillit",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T00:54:44",
"content": "imo it seems like it should be designed to ride more like a motorcycle… use gyros & self balancing to maintain a maximum forward/backward lean angle, but give it a throttle & brake so you don’t only h... | 1,760,376,656.946475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/raspberry-pi-used-to-automate-a-dimmable-light-bulb/ | Raspberry Pi Used To Automate A Dimmable Light Bulb | Mike Szczys | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dimmer",
"home automation",
"light bulb",
"RPi",
"sunrise",
"web interface"
] | [Stephen] took the safe route when
getting his Raspberry Pi to dim an AC light bulb
. He didn’t roll his own outlet box with a mains-rated relay inside, going with a mechanical connection instead of electrical. By attaching a servo motor to the dimmer knob the RPi can adjust the light level without risk of electric shock.
He is using
the ServoBlaster package
to drive the servo motor with the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins. That’s all fine and good by itself, but he went the extra mile and designed a few different levels of functionality around the pairing. The motivation behind the hack was to build a sunrise clock that had a lot of power when it comes to luminosity. But he also plied the RPi’s networking features to serve up a web-based control. It has a slider to set the light level, as well as breath (like a slow fade) and flash features.
The servo is a bit noisy when moving quickly, but the sunrise alarm takes 30 minutes so the gears don’t really make any noise at all. Check it out in the clip after the break. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "903912",
"author": "Sobachatina",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T23:12:15",
"content": "This is a cool project. I like the software options.The hardware is a cool hack- especially if you had those parts lying around. Another alternative to this approach if you were going to make it from s... | 1,760,376,657.077938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/webmote-control-anything-with-web-based-remote/ | Webmote: Control Anything With Web-based Remote | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"home automation",
"universal remote",
"web",
"x10",
"xbee"
] | We’ve seen a lot of projects that let you control all of your devices from a smartphone. But this
universal web-based remote control system
looks like the most versatile we’ve seen yet. The project is called Webmote as the controls are served up as a web interface so that you’re not limited to say an Android device. The UI can be customized by choosing what buttons you will use and where to place them on the display. You can get a good feel for this by viewing
this G+ album
. Setup is made a bit easier thanks to an add-on system that has predefined layouts for common things like controlling XBMC.
The hardware seen above is the business end of Webmote. It’s an Arduino with an IR receiver, IR LED, and an XBee module. For your common home entertainment devices you can teach the system your codes using the IR receiver. The IR LED is used to transmit those codes back, and the Xbee gives you the ability to control X10 (home automation) devices. Right now the setup requires the hardware be connected to a server via USB, but it shouldn’t be hard to set up some type of wireless alternative. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "903973",
"author": "a3",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T00:53:16",
"content": "Cool, but I think I rather build my own and customize it my way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "904109",
"author": "dandroid88",
"timest... | 1,760,376,657.120984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/a-hexapod-robot-made-from-scrap/ | A Hexapod Robot Made From Scrap | Jeremy Cook | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"gait",
"hexapod",
"robot"
] | Many if not most good hacks come from scrap or unused parts, but this hexapod robot takes it to a new level. [Helmut] wrote in to
tell us about his ‘bot
built from discarded electronics. As with most of the little walkers that we’ve featured here, this robot features some basic obstacle avoidance with a sensor array on the head unit.
The way the head controls this robot is really the interesting thing about this setup.Rather than send a signal to tell servo motors to walk in a certain gait, the head physically tilts in the direction that it should go. Although it’s somewhat hard to tell, it appears that a driving motor in the head assembly pushes a sort of camshaft down into the body. This is then mechanically coupled to the legs causing it to walk in the correct direction.
Be sure to check out the videos after the break, featuring narration by a computer in English, or by a human in German if you happen to sprechen sie Deutsch.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNZohu0-QhY?rel=0&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yOy7mXl3r8?rel=0&w=470&h=315%5D | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "903782",
"author": "gezepi",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T18:52:03",
"content": "Heh, it’s like Jamie Mantzel’s Giant Robot Project, even down to using scrap to build it.http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL13A11662BDE6EB83",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,657.284324 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/watermelon-air-boat/ | Watermelon Air Boat | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Toy Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"plane",
"propeller",
"rc",
"watermelon"
] | We think you’ll turn a few heads in Central Park if you’re driving a water melon around when everyone else is piloting sailboats. This
watermelon is both sea worthy and radio controlled
thanks to the work which [Starting Electronics] put into it.
We used this image because it shows you what’s inside of the hull, but you don’t want to miss the thing motoring around an above-ground swimming pool in the clip after the break. The hollowed out shell is quite buoyant and has no problem staying afloat and upright with the addition of a propeller. The parts from a remote control airplane kit have been mounted on a wooden scaffold. This provides plenty of thrust with a servo motor moving turning the prop for directional control. There is no dagger board so the craft is a bit slow to respond to turns. But how responsive do you expect a floating melon to be?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X5wdwlVpK0 | 35 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "905582",
"author": "Ryoku",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T00:11:17",
"content": "*nods* bigger motor and hydrofoils….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905596",
"author": "Relic",
"timestamp": "2012-12-18T00:29:42",
... | 1,760,376,657.544855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/more-details-about-laser-cut-gingerbread-houses/ | More Details About Laser Cut Gingerbread Houses | Mike Szczys | [
"cooking hacks",
"Holiday Hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"coreldraw",
"gingerbread house",
"inkscape"
] | Members of
Sector67 tried their hands at laser cut gingerbread houses
. The Madison, Wisconsin based hackerspace is using the tabbed box method of assembly for the corners of the structure. They’ve also put up a bunch of information about laser settings and published the recipe used to mix up a sheet of gingerbread. This quite a bit more info than was provided with
the project we saw a couple of weeks back
.
The initial designs were made in Inkscape and then transferred to Corel Draw before heading to the cutter. They’ve got a 150W machine and found that a speed of 15 worked well when the speed was set to 100, with a corner speed of 60. The raw dough was rolled out to 1/8″ thickness. Possibly the best tip coming out of Sector67 is to lay 1/8″ dowels on either side of the dough. This way the rolling pin will stop when it hits the dowels resulting in the best possible uniform thickness. As reported in the previous project the odor generated while cutting is not the most pleasant. But we love the fusion of lasers with the age old process of building with cookies and decorating with candy. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "905574",
"author": "b",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T23:55:53",
"content": "Does someone want to translate this into english for me?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905590",
"author": "macegr",
"timestamp": "2012-1... | 1,760,376,657.472374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/silent-htpc-build-is-an-art-piece-for-the-livingroom/ | Silent HTPC Build Is An Art Piece For The Livingroom | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"acrylic",
"case",
"heat sink",
"htpc",
"spoke"
] | This sexy beast is [DeFex’s] new
silent home theater PC
. To give you an idea of scale, that motherboard is a Mini ITX form factor. Mounted below it is the solid state drive which is an SLC version chosen because they tend to last longer than the MLC variety. This distinction comes with a price tag that is $100 more expensive.
But we digress. It’s the custom case that really caught our eye with this build. The frame is made of a huge aluminum heat sink. It measures about 7″ by 10″ and sets the final foot print for the computer. An aluminum puck was added to transmit heat from the processor to the heat sink. Holes were drilled and tapped into the heat sink to accept the brass stand offs which hold the motherboard in place.
The near side of the case is a sheet of acrylic. It connects to the rest of the case using 3D printed brackets at each corner. There is an additional bracket on the bottom to hold the hard drive in place. The sides of the case are filled in with bicycle spokes which also find a home in the corner brackets. Now the hard part will be figuring out which orientation looks the best for displaying his fine craftsmanship.
[via
Reddit
] | 29 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "905550",
"author": "Brian Shafer",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T22:34:42",
"content": "Nice work! I would love to have this in my house. Looks amazing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "905552",
"author": "Jordan",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,657.610791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/repair-your-ice-maker-motor-without-buying-a-whole-new-assembly/ | Repair Your Ice Maker Motor Without Buying A Whole New Assembly | Mike Szczys | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"ice maker",
"motor",
"refigerator"
] | There are a number of things that can go wrong with an automatic ice maker. But one of the more common problems is that the motor which scoops the ice out of the integrated trays can burn out after years of use. [Dave]
recently repaired a common ice maker motor
and shows us how cheap and easy it can be. See how he did it in the video after the break.
Pictured above is the motor and gear box from the ice maker. Before disassembly he verified that the problem is with the motor by placing a piece of paper in the path of the fingers that move the newly formed ice. After removing the sensor arm and three screws he was able to pull this front portion from the unit. The two wires are clipped as near to the motor as possible and the motor itself comes out with just a twist. After verifying that the gears are not broken he sourced a $2.50 motor replacement by Googling the part number (M004 3W in this case). Once the new unit arrived the motor wires are connect in much the same way that a punch down Ethernet jack makes a connecting with insulated wires.
This is something worth looking into if your ice maker is not working. The manufacturer may suggest replacing the entire unit which can be well north of a hundred bucks… this is a worthwhile gambit to save some cash. Well, we guess you could always build your own
non-electrical ice maker
. | 28 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "905516",
"author": "Everett",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T20:45:51",
"content": "This still isn’t “repairing” the motor. He purchased a new motor assembly and simply replaced a sub-component of the “ice maker” assembly. Lame.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,657.424131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/tea-bagging-an-arduino/ | Tea-bagging An Arduino | Mike Szczys | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"servo",
"steep",
"tea",
"tea bag"
] | [Dmitry Narkevich] likes a strong cup of tea and his method of getting there is to oscillate the tea bag as it steeps. But why take the time to do this when you can
make an Arduino brew your tea for you
. As you can see, he rigged up a system to move the tea bag as it steeps in his metal bottle.
The motion is provided by a hobby servo connected to an Arduino. This makes timing the process very simple and we’d imaging it’s only a matter of time before he adds an alarm so he’ll know when it’s ready. But the real hack comes in the apparatus that connects the servo to the bottle. Since he’ll be drinking out of it the assembly needs to be easy to remove and should be able to stand up to the abuse of being clamped on and taken off a few times each day.
The base of the device is a guitar capo. This is meant to gently clamp to the finger board of a guitar using spring tension so it is already covered in rubber which gives it a firm grip on the bottle’s opening. The servo is connected to a metal part from a stapler, and the string drapes over the body of a disposable pen. Don’t miss this in action in the clip after the break.
If you don’t have a servo on hand you could try
using the sled from an optical drive
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEC_PDcNLxs
[via
Reddit
] | 35 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "905453",
"author": "polossatik",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T18:32:13",
"content": "Or a NE555 or 2 instead of an arduino :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905454",
"author": "Phrewfuf",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T... | 1,760,376,657.688207 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/automated-pcb-panelization/ | Automated PCB Panelization | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"panelize",
"pcb"
] | Some PCB production houses – Seeed Studio and itead studio, especially – allow you to upload a gerber file and receive a printed circuit board very inexpensively. The pricing structure for these board houses is based on predesignated board sizes – 5cm square or 5×10 cm – and sometimes a project is just too small to justify buying a full 25 square centimeters of board. This is where panelizing comes in: by putting multiple copies of a circuit board on one of the available sizes you can get more boards for the same amount of money. But how to panelize your boards without the (sometimes) hassle of cutting and pasting?
[Martin] came up with a way of
panelizing PCBs with just a Python script
. By creating one copy of a circuit board in KiCAD, he can fire up his script and tell the computer exactly how to duplicate his circuit to fit any size board.
By his own admission, [Martin]’s script is still a little clunky, but it does allow him to edit the panelized board in KiCAD and also copies the nets so the ratsnest doesn’t go between boards. | 13 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "905426",
"author": "Mats Engstrom (@matseng)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T17:13:42",
"content": "I just sent for a 5×5 cm board with 24 copies of the same design on it. It will be fun to see if Seeedstudio accepts it since they claim to only allow a maximum of 5 copies….",
"paren... | 1,760,376,657.793816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/custom-desk-is-a-custom-computer-case/ | Custom Desk Is A Custom Computer Case | Brian Benchoff | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"computer case",
"desk"
] | [Paul] had been kicking around his idea of a perfect computer desk for some time, and when given the opportunity to remodel his office decided
it was time to build his dream computer case
.
The desk itself is made of hickory with a formica top to match the other workbenches in [Paul]’s workspace, The two largest drawers house an ATX motherboard, power supply, disk drives, and a pair of CD drives. On top of the desk are two 24″ monitors – one for each computer – and a built-in powered USB hub that allows [Paul] to charge his phone or use an external drive.
As a computer tech, [Paul] needed a way to connect customer’s drives. He did this by putting two Startech UniDock2U USB to SATA and IDE converters in the top right drawer. It’s one of his most used features and very handy for duplicating bare drives.
Also included in [Paul]’s desk is a large UPC, and a pair of 120mm case fans venting to the front of the desk. It’s a wonderful piece of workmanship, and the removable computer cases make cleaning and upgrading a breeze. | 37 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "905385",
"author": "harleydk",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T15:12:34",
"content": "That’s very nice.Whenever I hear of pc’s in a desk I always think about what this guyhttp://www.dont-panic.co.uk/stunning-custom-built-computer-desk-mod/accomplished.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,376,657.870363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/arm-powered-rack-mount-usb-test-equipment/ | ARM Powered Rack Mount USB Test Equipment | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"arm",
"at91sam3u",
"cdc",
"mass storage",
"msd",
"open source",
"rack mount",
"usb"
] | This is a device which [Limpkin] has been developing at his day job. It’s a high-speed testing interface for use with Physics experiments. We find it interesting because
it uses an ARM microcontroller to implement CDC and MSD over USB
.
The design is in two parts to make it work in a rack-mount situation. That big white connector allows cards to be swapped out. You can see the board on the right has a USB-A connector. When plugged in this enumerates as a control device (CDC) and a mass storage device (MSD) using fat32 as a file system.
The platform is being developed with open hardware and open source software in mind. If you’re working on a project that uses either of these USB functionalities this makes a swell reference. The ARM Cortex-M3 chip that he’s using is an AT91SAM3U but it should not be too hard to port the code for other similarly-capable ARM processors. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "903264",
"author": "iomnge",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T19:52:13",
"content": "using 32 bit ARM cpu where an 8 bit Atmega would be perfect is a waste of time, money and computing power.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "903323",
... | 1,760,376,657.739642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/python-can-be-your-best-friend-when-it-comes-to-binary-math/ | Python Can Be Your Best Friend When It Comes To Binary Math | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"binary",
"bitwise",
"python"
] | If you’re into microcontrollers you know the ability to think and perform math in binary is a must. [Joe Ptiz] has been looking for a way to keep from being distract by the math when coding while still keeping the binary strings in the forefront of his mind. The solution he came up with is to
use the Python interpreter as a binary math aide
.
We knew that you could use Python to convert between decimal, hexadecimal, and binary. But we failed to make the leap to using it for troubleshooting bit-wise operations. We can see this being especially useful when working with sixteen-bit I/O ports like those found on STM32 chips. For us it’s easy to do 8-bit math in our head, but doubling that is another story.
The image above is one screenshot from [Joe’s] tutorial. This illustrates a few different bit-wise operators given decimal inputs but displaying binary as output. He also illustrates how you can use python to test out equations from C code by first setting the variables, pasting the equation, then printing the result to see if the output is what was expected. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "903226",
"author": "Joejoedancer",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T18:49:52",
"content": "Sweet! Love python. I use windows calculator at the moment.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "903245",
"author": "draeath",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,657.928827 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/rooting-your-att-u-verse-modem/ | Rooting Your AT&T U-verse Modem | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"att",
"modem",
"motorola",
"reverse engineering",
"root",
"serial port",
"terminal",
"u-verse",
"uart"
] | Unhappy with the performance of his U-verse modem [Jordan] decided to dig in and see if a bit of hacking could improve the situation. Motorola makes this exclusively for AT&T and there are no other modems on the market which can used instead. Luckily he was able to fix almost everything that was causing him grief. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is
a hardware hack that gains access to a shell though the UART
. The second is
a method of rooting the device from its stock web interface
.
We think the biggest improvement gained by hacking this router is true bridge mode. The hardware is more than capable of behaving this way but AT&T has disabled the feature with no option for an unmodified device to use it. By enabling it the modem does what a modem is supposed to do: translate between WAN and LAN. This allows routing to be handled by a router (novel idea huh?). | 26 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "903203",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T17:41:35",
"content": "I would argue your wording is poor for that last part . . . “translating” between WAN and LAN in network speak is reminiscent of NAT [Network Address Translation] which is something a router [or modem-acting-a... | 1,760,376,658.039903 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/a-pair-of-n64-portables/ | A Pair Of N64 Portables | Brian Benchoff | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"Case mod",
"n64",
"portable"
] | Casemodding has moved far beyond the old portabalized Ataris and NESes of only a few years ago. Now, the new hotness is more modern consoles including the GameCube, Dreamcast, and the venerable N64. Two N64 case mods rolled into our tip line over the past few days, and we can’t think of a better display of case fabrication and console modification than these two.
First up is
[Travis]’s N64 handheld.
The case was constructed out of a sheet of ABS plastic with Bondo used to make everything sleek and smooth. There’s a 7″ display in this handheld as well as two LiIon batteries able to provide up to three hours of play time. The fit and finish on this build is spectacular, a testament to [Travis]’ patience and Bondo skills.
Next up is
a very very tiny build
claiming to be the smallest N64 portable. It’s the work of [bud] and is barely larger than an N64 cartridge. Inside is a 3.5 inch screen and enough LiPos to provide about 2 hours of gaming time. Unlike other (larger) builds, [bud] put the cartridge slot on the outside of the case allowing the cartridge to stick out at a 90 degree angle.
Both very awesome builds that really show off what can be done with a lot of sanding and body filler. You can check out the videos for each casemod after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PntgEooCZmk&w=580]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8tbI9XzP30&&w=580] | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "903178",
"author": "TheMog",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T16:27:22",
"content": "Since when is an ugly, flat-white plastic case that looks like it was shat out of a budget mold in Shenzhen “moving far beyond” the portable Ataris that Ben Heck made, which as far back as the early 00’s ap... | 1,760,376,657.978263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/converting-a-chinese-laser-cutter-to-work-with-mach3/ | Converting A Chinese Laser Cutter To Work With Mach3 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"laser cutter",
"mach3"
] | Like most of us, [Chris] has pined over the very, very inexpensive Chinese laser cutters available on eBay for a while now. When most of us disregarded these machines due to their inability to work with the file formats commonly used with laser cutters, [Chris] took the plunge. He was a might disappointed the included software didn’t allow him to use his machine with Mach3 CNC software, so
he replaced the included electronics board with one of his own design
, giving him all the features of a more expensive laser cutter at a low, low Chinese eBay auction price.
The laser cutter [Chris] bought came with the moshidraw software and controller board that according to one auction can only use BMP, JPEG, WMF, EMF, and PLT files.Wanting a board that can use more common file formats such as PDF and DWG, [Chris]
built his own board
to communicate with his Mach3 software.
From what we can tell, the new board works with off-the-shelf Pololu stepper drivers and is a complete drop in replacement for the moshidraw board. He’s still finalizing the design, but when the layout, BOM, and schematic are finalized, [Chris] will be putting the files up for everyone to copy. Wonderful piece of work, [Chris].
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHvsTBXyxXg&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsgVQlvGLME&w=470] | 38 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "903122",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T14:08:16",
"content": "Great retrofit, but come on, the Parallel port died 15 years ago, building a new design that requires a Parallel port is not the way to go….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,658.114106 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/macro-assembly-for-avr-chips/ | Macro Assembly For AVR Chips | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"assembler",
"assembly",
"AVR",
"gnu",
"m4",
"macro",
"quinn dunki",
"veronica"
] | Here’s an interesting tip that can help improve your ability to write assembly code. In an effort to remove the complexity of assembly code for an AVR project [Quinn Dunki] figured out
how to use macros when writing AVR code with the GNU toolchain
. Anyone using AVR-GCC should keep this in mind if they ever want or need to pound out a project in assembly language.
If you look at the code snippet above you’ll see two commands that are obviously not assembly; PulseVRAMWrite and DisableVRAMWrite. These are macros that direct the assembler to roll in a hunk of code. But avr-as, the assembler used with this toolchain, lacks the ability to handle macros. That’s too bad because we agree with [Quinn] that these macros make the code easier to read and greatly reduce the probability of error from a typo since the code in the macro will be used repeatedly.
The answer is to alter the makefile to use
GNU M4
. We hadn’t heard of it, but sure enough it’s already installed on our Linux Mint system (“man m4” for more info). It’s a robust macro processor that swaps out all of her macros based on a separate file which defines them. The result is an assembly file that will play nicely with avr-as.
Her implementation is to help in development of
the GPU for her Veronica computer project
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "902878",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T23:56:59",
"content": "If you’re mostly a C programmer, it’s easier to misuse CPP for your assembly language macros than to learn the quirks of m4.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,376,658.317558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/twitter-radio/ | Twitter Radio | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arduino",
"itp",
"nyu",
"OsX",
"RPi",
"text to speech",
"tweet",
"twitter"
] | This anthropomorphized
wood bowl will read Tweets out loud
. It was built by [William Lindmeier] as part of his graduate work in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. View the clip after the break to see and hear a list from his Twitter feed read in rather pleasant text-to-speech voices.
The electronics involved are rather convoluted. Inside the upturned bowl you’ll find both an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi. But that’s not the only thing that goes into this. The best sounding text-to-speech program [William] could find was for OSX, so there is a remote computer involved as well. But we think what makes this special is the concept and execution, not the level of hardware inefficiency.
The knob to the left sets the volume and is also responsible for powering down the device. The knob of the right lets you select from various Twitter lists. Each turn of the knob is responded to with a different LED color in the nose and a spoken menu label. You can get a quick overview of the project from
this summary post
. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "902886",
"author": "AnonymousCoward",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T00:07:30",
"content": "There are plenty of good free TTS voices for use with Festival the default aren’t so great but not terrible either; there are mbrola voices that can be used with it and if you don’t care for Freene... | 1,760,376,658.162566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/deck-the-cubes/ | Deck The Cubes | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"christmas",
"cubicle",
"decorations",
"office"
] | [MrBuildIt] has lived up to his name when it comes to this year’s Christmas decorations. He built a rig that
spreads Christmas cheer from one end of the cubicles to the other
.
In the demo video after the break you’ll see that the system is controlled by a nicely polished Android app. It lets you choose from three different Christmas songs (or no music at all) as Santa Claus makes his rounds. The app includes buttons for switching all of the lights on or off but we think it’s more
corny
fun to see then turn on as Santa flies overhead.
The sleigh and three tiny reindeer are suspended from a pulley system. When they make it to one end of the office a hall effect sensor serves as a limiting switch. From the look of it you’d think Santa will be flying backwards on the return trip but there is a servo that flips the thing around so that he’s going the right way.
This is quite a gaunlet to have thrown down when it comes to office decor. We’d like to see what geeky thing’s you’ve been doing with your own decorations. Get some details up on the web and
send a link our way
!
[via
Reddit
] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "903763",
"author": "ka1axy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T18:16:41",
"content": "“…EIGHT tiny reindeer.” It’s in the poem. Extra points for Rudolph with an LED nose.So sad to see such a clever hack marked down for lack of attention to detail.(Nicely done, though)",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,658.362867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/dslr-trick-lets-you-change-focus-after-taking-the-picture/ | DSLR Trick Lets You Change Focus After Taking The Picture | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"depth of focus",
"dslr",
"html5",
"lytro",
"video"
] | Here’s two photographic takes on the same subject, each with a different depth of focus. [Chaos Collective] came up with a way to make interactive
still images that allow a user to adjust the depth of focus
by clicking on different objects in the image.
This was inspired by
the Lytro camera
which uses an array of lenses to take multiple pictures at once. Each of those images has a slightly different depth of focus. The technique used here doesn’t require that you buy one of those $400+ cameras. But it’s not a cheap hack unless you already own a camera that can shoot video and has manual focus.
The technique used by the [Chaos Collective] is to move the camera’s manual focus setting from the nearest to the furthest target while capturing a video. That file can then be processed using their browser-based tool which turns it into an embedded HTML5 image. | 35 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "903723",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T16:48:53",
"content": "Nice. I can see the video quality being the one and only problem,as one still of a video at a photoish resolution will have a lot of noise,plus not the same light and color performance.Otherwise it’s a n... | 1,760,376,658.426783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/iff-system-keeps-you-from-shooting-your-friends/ | IFF System Keeps You From Shooting Your Friends | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega1284",
"identification friend or foe",
"IFF"
] | An IFF system – Identification of Friend or Foe – are used by military aircraft in battle situations to determine if another aircraft is being piloted by a fellow aviator or an enemy. For the boots on the ground, friendly fire is generally regarded as a very bad thing, so a few students in [Bruce Land]’s ECE 4760 class at Cornell
decided to make a wearable version of an IFF for their final project.
[Wen Hao Lui] and [Aadeetya Shreedhar] broke their project down into two parts: an initiator unit and a receiver unit. The initiator unit sends an encryption key to the receiver unit which, in turn, replies back to say, ‘don’t shoot.’ [Wen] and [Aadeetya] needed to choose between using RF or laser-based communications for the initiator, but the difficulty in acquiring or building a radio antenna with the requisite directionality made a laser the obvious choice.
The receiver unit has eight phototransistors attached to a vest and will reply to the initiator unit via a Wi.232 radio module when the laser illuminates the phototransistors. In the event of an enemy acquiring one of these vests, the project includes a pulse detection circuit that will erase the encryption keys when the wearer’s pulse drops to zero. A bit morbid, but the video after the break sure makes it look cool.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wydz_zS5D50&w=470] | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "903687",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T15:09:51",
"content": "Cool, sounds like a great way to say “I’m a friend, don’t shoot. Hey everyone else, Look where I am!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "903700",
... | 1,760,376,658.480504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/14/almost-building-an-engine-from-hardware-store-parts/ | Almost Building An Engine From Hardware Store Parts | Brian Benchoff | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"DIY engine",
"engine",
"propane"
] | You can build a surprising amount of stuff from parts you can pick up at a hardware store. Sometimes, though, getting a project built from sections of pipe is very, very difficult. That’s the case with
[Lou]’s hardware store engine
: despite an inordinate amount of cleverness, he just can’t seem to get an engine made from pipe fitting to work and is now asking for some ideas from other ingenious makers.
The engine uses regular oxygen and propane tanks you can pick up at Home Depot with torch heads soldered onto half inch pipe. The fuel and oxygen are mixed in a T fitting until a grill igniter sets the gas mixture ablaze pushing a cylinder down the length of a copper pipe. The cylinder is attached to an aluminum flywheel that also controls the opening and closing of the oxygen and propane valves as well as switching the grill igniter on and off.
Right now, [Lou] can get the engine running, but only for one stroke of the cylinder. He’s having a bit of a problem turning this into a working motor. If you’ve got any idea on how to make [Lou]’s engine work, drop a line in the comments. We’ll throw our two cents in and say he needs a valve on the exhaust, but other suggestions are always welcome. | 82 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "903646",
"author": "cooperised",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T13:40:22",
"content": "s/cylinder/piston/g",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "903648",
"author": "aliveoneee",
"timestamp": "2012-12-14T13:40:48",
"content": "Fi... | 1,760,376,658.5993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/hackaday-links-december-13th-2012/ | Hackaday Links: December 13th, 2012 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"cardboard",
"garbage",
"instrument",
"puzzle",
"usb",
"weather station"
] | Cardboard box compute
r
[Alistair] chapman had a Laptop with a broken screen sitting in his parts bin. He knew he had an LCD panel on hand that would probably work with it, but it wouldn’t fit in the case. His solution was to
transplant all the computer parts into a cardboard box from a motherboard
.
This violin is garbage
The kids in this orchestra live in a villiage built on top of a landfill. But they make the most out of what they have. This orchestra is composed of
instruments built from garbage
and they seem to work pretty well. [Thanks Bruce]
More LED mystery puzzles
[Henryk] is at it again. He puts together some very impressive circuits that play tricks on your engineering mind.
His latest
is three LEDs in series. Look closely and you’ll see they’re not performing as expected. Watching
the solution to one of his previous puzzles
will help you figure out how he’s doing it. His work is simply amazing.
Netbook framed as a dedicated weather station
Not wanting to get rid of old but still working hardware, [Retro Toaster]
built a dedicated weather station
by mounting the screen, keyboard, and track pad in a picture frame.
Current and voltage testing your USB projects
This dev board is a pass-through for USB devices. It
makes voltage and current testing your device quite simple
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "903356",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T22:40:51",
"content": "I was really impressed with the LED one…until I saw the solution to the other and saw he did with an MCU…then I watched more of the video and became even more impressed than I originally was.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,376,658.657932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/how-to-used-an-android-device-with-a-shattered-screen/ | How To Used An Android Device With A Shattered Screen | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"adb",
"broken",
"cracked",
"screencast",
"shattered"
] | This screen is not just cracked, it’s devastated. We can all agree that you’re not going to be carrying this around with you anymore, but it might still be useful in other endeavors. [Mr Westie] wanted to use it for the camera which is undamaged. The issue is
how do you control an Android device with a broken screen
?
He knew there are apps out there that let you control your device remotely. But these still depend on you being able to install and launch the program. He found he could get the image from the screen on his computer using
a package called Screencast
. It runs on your computer and doesn’t need to be installed on the phone, but it will require a rooted phone and the user must click to authorize root access. He got around that hangup by
pushing keypress commands to the phone via ADB
. The only problem left is if debugging mode is not enable. | 31 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "903318",
"author": "Florin Fecioru",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T21:44:54",
"content": "Pst… correct the title of the article.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "903335",
"author": "iaino",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T2... | 1,760,376,658.717367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/13/using-two-chargers-with-one-laptop/ | Using Two Chargers With One Laptop | Mike Szczys | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"charger",
"power jack"
] | This one’s a riot! [Nico] got a new computer and didn’t want to change the six power supply cords he had strategically placed around his home and at work. So he just
added a second charging jack that accepts a different style connector
.
First off the laptop is used — but it’s new to him. So cracking it open and soldering in a new jack doesn’t affect the already expired warranty. He had an unlimited supply of Dell laptop chargers available from work. They are rated 19.5V and the charger for this computer is rated 20V so he figured this should be no problem. Instead of just swapping out the old charging port he added a second where the RJ-11 connector (for a telephone modem) was located. Now he doesn’t need to waste money buying more chargers for the new-old machine.
This isn’t the first time
we’ve seen someone replace a power jack
. But it is the first computer we’ve seen that takes two different chargers. | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "903294",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2012-12-13T20:42:02",
"content": "Cool hack. And yeah, when I read that it had an RJ-11 port, I figured it was a “new to him” and not “new” laptop, haha.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,376,658.791975 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/lipo-internal-resistance-measurement-tool/ | LiPo Internal Resistance Measurement Tool | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"battery",
"cell",
"lipo",
"lithium polymer",
"resistance"
] | This is a scratch-build
meter for measuring the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer cells
. [Bleuer Csaba] uses the LiPo cells for RC vehicles and thet take quite a beating from the motors they’re supplying. This means that he only gets about 100-200 cycles out of each cell. To figure out where one is in its life cycle you can measure the internal resistance where a rising resistance indicates greater age. [Bleuer] mentions that you can buy a meter to do this for you, but what fun is that?
Since he’s rolling his own tool he defined his own parameters for the readings. After experimenting with different loads driven for different test periods he was able to extrapolate an equation that estimates the resistance measurement. As you can see in the clip after the break, this happens very fast. All he has to do is connect the cell and press one button. The measurements are made and various data points are displayed on the quartet of 7-segment displays. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "902840",
"author": "Dax",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T22:40:28",
"content": "http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_measure_internal_resistance“There is a notion that internal resistance is related to capacity, and this is false. The resistance of many batteries stays flat t... | 1,760,376,658.852157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/super-slim-wristwatch-build/ | Super Slim Wristwatch Build | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"efm32",
"lcd",
"thin",
"wristwatch"
] | This
slmwtch lives up to its name
. When the LCD screen is folded back onto the PCB the entire thing comes in at just 2.35mm. That’s including a coin-cell battery not shown above. Wow!
Part of what makes this possible is the specialized PCB design. [Anders] didn’t want to add more thickness than the screen and battery so he make a cutout in the PCB design to accept each component. In this image it’s easiest to see on the two SMD resistor in the upper left. They’re held in a void by the two solder connections. Admittedly this is not going to be a mass-production friendly design. And we have concerts about the long-term stability of suspending components by their leads. But as a one-off it’s fantastic! See for yourself in the video after the break.
The control for the watch uses two touch sensitive pads on the back of the PCB. There is no backlight for the display which can be a problem when trying to read the time while outdoors. We wonder if an ePaper display with similar dimensions is available? | 33 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "902779",
"author": "Jay Sebastian",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T20:33:52",
"content": "I think filling the voids around the resistors (and other SMDs) with clear epoxy would keep it sturdy and looking cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,376,658.979146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/unlocking-verizon-galaxy-note-ii-and-galaxy-s3/ | Unlocking Verizon Galaxy Note II And Galaxy S3 | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"adam outler",
"galaxy note II",
"galaxy s3",
"unlock",
"verizon",
"xda"
] | [Adam Outler] and friends have been hard at work unlocking the bootloader of some Verizon Android devices. His most recent adventure involves
unlocking the Verizon branded Samsung Galaxy Note II
.
You can’t run Cyanogenmod on a device that has a locked bootloader. This is presumably why it took no time at all for the XDA forum users with Verizon phones to raise enough money to put one of these puppies in [Adam’s] hands. He walks through the process he used to find the exploit in the video after the break. We’re not experts on the process, but apparently the .pit file used when flashing Odin is the entry point for the exploit. A bit of code has been injected into it which provides an opening to flash a replacement bootloader.
We mentioned the Galaxy S3 in the title. Apparently
that has been unlocked as well
but with one big hang-up. An over-the-air update could possibly brick the S3. To avoid this issue with the Galaxy Note II the original bootloader is patched and reflashed as part of the exploit. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "902808",
"author": "Maximum (@Hoboaticus)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T21:47:48",
"content": "These people never cease to amaze me — the amount of patience and technical know-how needed to reverse engineer and exploit hardware at such a low level is truly impressive.Kudos to these guy... | 1,760,376,658.905855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/observe-a-satellites-morse-code-message-today/ | Observe A Satellite’s Morse Code Message Today! | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"international space station",
"iss",
"morse code",
"satellite",
"space"
] | If you live in the Eastern portion of the United States and the skies are clear you can see a student built satellite flashing LEDs in Morse Code today. But don’t worry. If you it’s cloudy or if you live elsewhere there are several other opportunities to see it in the coming days.
This is
the Niwaka Fitsat-1
. It was developed by students at the [Fukuoka Institute of Technology] and deployed from the International Space Station on October 4th. Included in the payload is an array of LEDs seen in the image above. On a set schedule these are used to flash a Morse Code message for two minutes at a time. That is what’s shown in the image on the upper right.
You can look up information on seeing Fitsat-1 in your own area
using this webpage
. All of the observation windows in our area require a pair of binoculars or better. We’re not sure if there is any case in which this can be seen by the naked eye.
[Thanks SWHarden and KomradBob] | 58 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "902717",
"author": "Mohammad",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T18:42:55",
"content": "What a hipocrysy, United States denies Korean people their right to explore the space while at the same time it clutters Space with LED blinkers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,659.071099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/tablet-rig-takes-sheet-music-digital/ | Tablet Rig Takes Sheet Music Digital | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"music stand",
"PVC",
"sheet music",
"tablet stand"
] | [Bill Dudley’s] wife wanted to use a couple of different tablets for displaying sheet music. Sure, a proper music stand will have no trouble supporting the weight of the device, but if it’s not secured it place you may soon have a broken device. [Bill’s] solution was to
build this tablet stand out of PVC
.
The image above doesn’t tell the entire story of how he did this. But if you look really closely you’ll notice that the pipe is actually acting as a frame rather than a cradle. After measuring, cutting, and gluing all of the components together he cut a channel around the inside of the u-shaped PVC frame. The channel is the exact thickness of the tablet and holds the device securely. A base from a music stand makes up the rest of the rig.
Pages can be turned using a USB foot pedal. This is fantastic for gigging musician who use digital music collections like
the Real Book
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "902696",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T17:31:20",
"content": "I’ve always thought it would be cool to have an app that would listen to what you play and automatically turn the pages at the right time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,376,659.120876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/raspberry-pi-hacking-commando-style/ | Raspberry Pi Hacking, Commando Style | Jeremy Cook | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"ethernet",
"micro-USB",
"raspberry pi"
] | If you’re lacking useful equipment for your Raspberry Pi hacking adventure, such as an HDMI monitor or power supply,
this handy write-up
will show you how to continue your hacking. All you’ll need is a laptop, the Raspberry Pi itself, an SD card, and an Ethernet and micro-USB cable. As noted in the article, it’s not really recommended to power the ‘Pi off of USB only, so this could potentially be a source of problems.
This hack begins by installing Linux on an SD card
per this setup page
, then using a Virtual Network Computing [VNC] setup to work with your Raspberry Pi. There are a few steps in between being able to do this, like setting up network sharing, and sleuthing out the IP address of the new processor, but everything is explained in detail for Mac and Linux. Windows users will have to do a bit of “sleuthing” of their own, but if you have some more information on this process, we’d love to hear about it in the comments! | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "902629",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T15:20:22",
"content": "Huh? Nowhere does it say that the network cable is a crossover cable ? How can it work without using a crossover cable. Does the Pi auto reconfigure it’s NIC’s hardware to support a straight through cat-5/ca... | 1,760,376,659.297851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/digital-ir-theremin/ | Digital IR Theremin | Eric Evenchick | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"digital",
"ir",
"theremin"
] | This
Digital IR Theremin
creates tones based on the distance of an object from its IR sensor. There’s no microcontroller here, since the project is part of an
Introduction to Digital Electronics course
. Instead, it uses a handful of comparators, transistors, AND gates, and a 555 timer to make noise.
The comparators are connected to create window comparators. This configuration will output a digital 1 if the input is between two reference voltages, and 0 if it is not. Using this, the analog output of the IR range sensor can be converted to digital values.
The 555 timer takes care of creating the output waveform. A specific resistor is switched in to the timer’s RC circuit depending on which window comparator is active. This allows for a different tone to be played depending on the distance from the IR sensor.
The result is a square wave, which has a frequency dependant on how close an object is to the IR sensor. By selecting the right resistances for each distance, the theremin can be tuned to play a specific scale.
This is a neat project for people looking to learn digital electronics, and the write up does a great job of explaining the theory. After the break, check out a video of the theremin generating some tones. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "902646",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T15:34:44",
"content": "I question if this is really a “Theremin” it has only one sensor, unlike the two antennas of a Theremin, so it only responds to one variable and not two.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,376,660.957133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/garage-door-opener-using-siri-and-raspberry-pi/ | Garage Door Opener Using Siri And Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"garage door opener",
"RPi",
"siri",
"siriproxy"
] | [DarkTherapy] wrote in to tell us about
his garage door opener that works with Siri and a Raspberry Pi
. It’s pretty hard to find a picture that tells the story of the hack, but here you can see the PCB inside the housing of the garage door opener. He patched the grey wires into the terminal block. On the other end they connect to a relay which makes the connection.
On the control side of that mechanical relay is a Raspberry Pi board. This seems like overkill but remember the low cost of the RPi and the ability to communicate over a network thanks to the WiFi dongle it uses. We think it’s less outrageous than
strapping an Android phone to the opener
. To make the RPi work with Siri he chose the SiriProxy package.
We’ve seen this software before
but don’t remember it being used with the Raspberry Pi.
There is certainly room to extend the functionality of a system like this one. It would be trivial to add a combination lock like
this one we build using an AVR chip
. It would also be nice to see a sensor used to confirm the door is closed. Even if you don’t need to control your garage this is a great reference project to get the RPi to take commands from your iOS devices. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "902319",
"author": "icanhazadd",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T00:10:47",
"content": "Title should read:“Finally, yelling ‘OPEN THE $%^!@!% DOOR!’ into your phone actually does something”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "902497",
... | 1,760,376,661.218823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/virtual-chess-uses-glove-controllers/ | Virtual Chess Uses Glove Controllers | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega1284",
"chess",
"cornell",
"glove",
"matlab"
] | Check out the game of chess
going on above. It’s a virtual game where each player uses a glove as the controller. Or course the game board and pieces are missing from this image. They’re displayed on a computer monitor which both players can see.
The hardware rather simple, and we think it would be a great project to challenge your microcontroller skills. Each glove has an accelerometer attached to it, as well as a ring of copper foil on the pointer finger and thumb. One ATmega1284 monitors both gloves. The accelerometer data is used to move the mouse cursor on the screen, while the contacts are used to grip or release a playing piece. The game board and pieces are displayed using MATLAB with controller commands fed to it via a USB connection.
If you’re more into building a mechanized game
check out this pair of telepresence chess boards
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "902300",
"author": "Js",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T23:36:54",
"content": "Is the “Hardware rather simple” missing “is” or am I reading it wrong?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "902395",
"author": "Barking Pumpkin",
"times... | 1,760,376,660.905415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/table-golf/ | Table Golf | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"golf",
"hard drive",
"slider"
] | This could be the dawning of a new hackerspace sport. [Antoni Kaniowski] and [Rohit Sharma] came up with
a delightful game of desktop golf
. But the control scheme has a decidedly geeky flair. They’re using salvaged parts from an audio device and a hard drive to control the swing of the mechanical golfer just out of focus in the background of this image.
The game was built for a class project at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Originally they wanted to have haptic feedback which would help you learn to tailor each shot for a perfect game. This proved to be impossible with the hardware they had on hand, but as you can see from the clip after the break the system still turned out just great. The audio slide which is taped to the underside of the table adjust the swing velocity. The hunk of hardware from an old hard drive acts the trigger for the swing.
The ‘hole’ is a laser cut ring of plywood. We’d love to see complicated courses designed in CAD and meticulously assembled for competition… but maybe we’re just getting carried away. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "902266",
"author": "Bakamoichigei",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T22:38:20",
"content": "Wow, I’ve taken apart enough HDDs lately that I immediately recognized that as a head assembly… I’ve gotta see this! :3",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,661.049471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/open-compute-project-hosts-hackathon/ | Open Compute Project Hosts Hackathon | Eric Evenchick | [
"News"
] | [
"data centers",
"hackathon",
"open compute project"
] | The folks at Open Compute Project are running their annual summit in January, but this year they’ll be adding a
hardware hackathon
to the program. The hackathon’s goal is to build open source hardware that can be applied to data centers to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
The
Open Compute Project
(OCP) is a foundation that develops open hardware for data centers. This includes power supplies, motherboards, and storage disk arrays. The project started up at Facebook, but it’s now an independent foundation.
The hackathon will take place over the two day summit on January 16th and 17th, 2013 in Santa Clara. The registration is now open, and it’s free but limited to the first 100 people.
The hackathon is being put on with collaboration from
Upverter
,
Github
, and
GrabCAD
, who will be providing tools for the event. If you’re in the Santa Clara area and looking to do some hacking early in the new year, you might want to check this out. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "902255",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T22:08:49",
"content": "there is nothing open about Open Compute. they dont release schematics, layouts or anything. also they claim efficiency but they use x86_64 processors when ARM chips would be muuuuch more efficient. why?... | 1,760,376,661.091337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/retrotechtacular-a-1983-walking-robot-called-odex-1/ | Retrotechtacular: A 1983 Walking Robot Called ODEX-1 | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"hexapod",
"odex-1",
"retrotechtacular"
] | ODEX-1 is called the first commercial walking robot
in this video from 1983. Of course you will quickly recognize this as a hexapod. It’s hard to get over the fact that what was so advanced at the time
can now be built at home
relatively inexpensively.
As with most of these retrotectacular posts the presentation is a big part of the fun. The audio track right at the beginning of the video expresses the shock at seeing such an advanced robot walking through the building (it’s coming right for us?!). The trends in engineer garb are also on display. ODEX-1 is being heralded as the solution to mechanized travel in an environment full of ladders and stairways. Apparently it can get traverse the stairs, but you’d better be ready to wait a while for it to get anywhere. See for yourself in the video after the break. | 23 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "902149",
"author": "Remko Janse",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T20:04:03",
"content": "Lets build a copy of it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "902164",
"author": "Leif",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T20:14:21",
"... | 1,760,376,661.409195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/arduino-esplora-makes-a-great-controller/ | Arduino Esplora Makes A Great Controller | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Esplora"
] | The folks at Arduino seem to be stepping up their game. With the new Arduino Leonardo board able to emulate USB keyboards and mice right out of the box, it seems the perfect time for Arduino designers
to come up with a proper video game controller
. This new board is called the Arduino Esplora and packs enough buttons and sensors inside to capture just about any user input you can imagine.
On board the Esplora is the same ATMega 32U4 microcontroller found in the newest Arduino boards. For input, the designers included an analog joystick, four tact switches, a linear pot, a microphone, and light sensor. The Esplora also includes a three-axis accelerometer, RGB LED, buzzer, and a breakout for an SPI-controlled TFT LCD display, lest you would want to recreate something like the new Wii U controller on your own.
You can check out everything the Esplora can do over on the official
Arduino site for the Esplora library
. | 39 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "902115",
"author": "Remko Janse",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T19:18:03",
"content": "Awesomness right here !, gamepad design + LOTS",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "902117",
"author": "Remko Janse",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,661.291894 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/rolling-your-own-furnace-controller/ | Rolling Your Own Furnace Controller | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"furnace",
"home automation",
"pic",
"pic18f4550",
"relay",
"thermostat"
] | [Viktor’s] found an opportunity to put his embedded design skills to use when the furnace controller in his building went out. He admits it would have been much easier to just purchase a replacement, but not nearly as fun. Instead
he built this furnace controller based on a PIC 18F4550
.
First off, you may find it strange that we’re calling this a furnace controller and not a thermostat. But a study of the hardware schematic reveals that the device doesn’t have the ability to sense temperature. It merely switches the furnace on and off based on a time schedule. We guess this is for an apartment building where measuring the temperature at one central point doesn’t suffice?
At any rate, the build is clean and the UI looks quite easy to use. Inside there’s a board-mounted 12V relay which controls the furnace. The schedule is saved to the EEPROM of the microcontroller and time is kept by a battery-backed DS1307.
We’d love to see this extended in the future. Some possibilities would be adding internet connectivity and implementing a mesh network of temperature sensors which would give feedback to the main unit. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "902066",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T18:19:28",
"content": "This is kind of dumb. Wouldn’t the largest reason to do this be to implement a configurable PID loop with temperature feedback? Maybe some loop adjustment/prediction based on outside temperature? Some other r... | 1,760,376,661.154934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/building-a-tiny-arcade-cabinet-from-a-game-boy-advance/ | Building A Tiny Arcade Cabinet From A Game Boy Advance | Mike Szczys | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"arcade cabinet",
"coin-on",
"game boy advance",
"mini",
"miniature"
] | [Jani ‘Japala’ Pönkkö] found a way to make his old Game Boy Advance exciting again. He poured a ton of time and craftsmanship into
building a miniature arcade cabinet
. He did such a good job it’s easy to think this is a commercial product. But when you open the back of the case to switch games one look at what’s crammed inside let’s you know this is custom work.
What’s most surprising to us is that he didn’t draw out a full set of plans before beginning. He simply measured the circuit board and LCD screen from the Game Boy and went with his gut for everything else. The case itself is crafted from baltic birch plywood, which was primed and painted before applying the decals. There is also a screen bezel made of acrylic with its own decal like you’d find on coin-op machines. These were made using printable sticker paper. The electronic part of the build involves no more than extending contacts from the circuit board to buttons mounted on the case. But he did also replace the stock speaker for one that produces better audio. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "902038",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T17:47:05",
"content": "All he needs now is a way output the roms from his Cartridges and load it with a lotta roms because changing cartridges isn’t really nice to the eye!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,661.004284 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/an-interview-with-the-creator-of-slic3r/ | An Interview With The Creator Of Slic3r | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Interviews"
] | [
"3d printer",
"slic3r"
] | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA6jmg_zcQo&w=580]
When in Rome, most people visit great works of art, see masterpieces of architecture, or simply try to convince random tourists that a modern recreation of naval battles in the Colosseum would be
really cool
and somebody should really get on that. [Andrew] had a different idea, though. He thought meeting up with Slic3r developer [Alessandro Ranellucci] would be just as educational and entertaining as visiting a basilica and thoughtfully
decided to film his interview
for all to see.
Whenever a file of a 3D object is sent to a 3D printer, the object must first be converted into GCode – the language of lines, circles, and computer aided design that all 3D printers speak. To convert 3D objects to GCode, every piece of 3D printer software from Pronterface, ReplicatorG, and Repetier must first ‘slice’ the file up so the object can be printed one layer at a time.
As the lead dev for Slic3r, [Alessandro], a.k.a. [Sound] goes over the current happenings of his STL to GCode converter – he’s even getting a little support from the very cool people at
LulzBot
– and the future of Slic3r. There’s still a lot of work to be done optimizing the current software, improving the user interface, and getting rid of all those nasty edge-case bugs.
For as much as we at Hackaday focus on the hardware half of 3D printers, it must be said the current state of the art in desktop manufacturing wouldn’t be where it is without [Alessandro] and other software devs. There’s still a lot of room for improvement – try printing a single wall thickness cylinder without a seam, for example – but without software projects like Slic3r, 3D printing wouldn’t be where it is today. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "901998",
"author": "MonkeyBoy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T16:32:59",
"content": "I’ve had the pleasure to meet Alessandro and visit his cave and meet his friends. He’s really a clever guy with a very important project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,661.335532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/breadboard-friendly-fpgas/ | Breadboard Friendly FPGAs | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"breadboard",
"fpga",
"hardware"
] | Regular Hackaday readers will be familiar with all the cool things you can do with FPGAs; emulating old video game consoles, cracking encryption protocols, and DIY logic analyzers become relatively simple projects with even a modest FPGA dev board on your workbench. Many FPGA boards aren’t geared towards prototyping, though, and breadboard friendly devices are hard to come by. Here’s a pair of breadboardable FPGAs we’ve found while searching for some related hardware over the past few days
First up is the
Mercury FPGA Module
. Packaged in a DIP-64 format, the Mercury features a Spartan-3A FPGA with the equivalent of 200k logic gates. Elsewhere on the board is 512kB of RAM and 128kB of Flash storage. There are enough GPIO pins for nearly any project, but sadly only a 10-bit ADC – the same resolution you’d find in an AVR or PIC ‘micro.
Of course the Mercury isn’t the only breadboard-friendly FPGA dev board out there. There’s also the slightly more capable
XuLA2 board
powered by a Spartan-6 with 32 MB of RAM, 1MB of Flash. Unlike the Mercury, the XuLA2 can also fit in one of those ‘half-sized’ solderless breadboards.
Yes, it’s a different form factor than the commonly recommended
Papilio One
or the
DE0
. If you can suggest any other ‘beginners’ (i.e. doesn’t cost an arm and a leg) FPGA boards, leave a note in the comments and we’ll summarize them in another post. | 57 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "901964",
"author": "Kris Lee",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T15:23:39",
"content": "I have question. How many logic gates it will take to emulate a simple AVR on the FPGA (or anything alike that can be programmid with C or such)?Or the quesitons is more alike how many such cores I can fi... | 1,760,376,661.669673 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/beautiful-table-made-from-a-bowling-alley/ | Beautiful Table Made From A Bowling Alley | Brian Benchoff | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"bowling alley",
"butcher block",
"carpentry",
"table"
] | For a workbench, desk, or even a dining room table, there’s nothing quite like a massive piece of laminated maple put to use as the surface of a table. Whether in the form of butcher block, a shop class table,
or in [Dillon]’s case, a reclaimed bowling lane
, laminated maple provides one of the best possible table surfaces.
A while back, [Dillon] found someone on Craigslist willing to part with an eight foot section of a bowling alley for about $300. After trucking this two and a half inch thick, 250 pound monstrosity home, work began on converting it to a dining room table.
Bowling alleys are constructed by workers laying down maple strips and nailing them together one row at a time. This provides a stable surface when mounted on a concrete platform, but is completely insufficient for a table. To keep his bowling alley table from sagging, [Dillon] routed out three slots for aluminum bars going across the width of the lane. These bars were then screwed into each individual maple strip in the lane, resulting in a very sturdy surface.
The strengthened lane was then resurfaced with the help of a huge industrial belt sander and finished with a satin polyurethane. The legs of the table are made out of CNC’d 18mm Baltic birch plywood held together with metal fasteners.
The end result is a beautiful table ready to last 100 years. Considering [Dillon] spent less than $1000 on this table – and the price of eight feet of 2.5″ butcher block – we’re going to call this a win for [Dillon], his kids, and grandkids. | 29 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "901927",
"author": "willy",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T14:12:45",
"content": "niice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "901928",
"author": "Isaac",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T14:14:13",
"content": "I would love something li... | 1,760,376,661.782834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/level-converters-to-make-all-your-hardware-5-5v-and-under-play-with-each-other/ | Level Converters To Make All Your Hardware (5.5V And Under) Play With Each Other | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"etch",
"glcd",
"ks0108",
"level converter",
"pcb",
"Stellaris Launchpad",
"ti"
] | I finally set aside some time for one of my own projects. I have been playing around with ARM microcontrollers a lot lately and wanted to try out my GLCD display that uses the KS0108 protocol. It’s 5V but I had heard that some of these displays will work with 3.3V TTL. But the datasheet tells me otherwise. I tried using a pull-up resistor to 5V and configuring the Stellaris Launchpad pins to open drain, but the low voltage wasn’t getting below the 0.3V threshold needed by my display. My only choice was to use some type of level conversion. I actually ended up
driving the KS0108 using a pair of TXB0108 level converters
.
I figured this had to have been done before so I check over at Sparkfun. Their offerings are either one-way or have a direction pin that you must drive yourself. I figured there had to be a bi-directional solution and a search over at Mouser led me to the TXB0108. It is exactly what I was looking for and as you can see I etched my own circuit boards to make the TSSOP chips breadboard compatible. I’ve documented the process you can find the code and board files at my post linked above.
Update:
one of the
Reddit comments
mentions this chip is available on
a breakout board from Adafruit
if you’re interested. | 18 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "901889",
"author": "thegraynomad",
"timestamp": "2012-12-11T13:04:54",
"content": "For my money the TXB series are only way to fly when it comes to level conversion.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "901904",
"author": "raer",... | 1,760,376,662.062229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/11/standalone-air-quality-monitor-based-around-raspberry-pi/ | Standalone Air Quality Monitor Based Around Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"adc",
"air quality",
"battery",
"pollution",
"RPi"
] | You can have a lot of fun tinkering with the Raspberry Pi. But in addition to the low-cost hobby potential it is actually a great choice for serious data harvesting.
This air quality monitor
is a great example of that. The standalone package can be taped, screwed, bolted, or bungeed at the target location with a minimum of effort and will immediately start generating sample data.
The enclosure is a weather proof electrical box. The RPi board is easy to spot mounted to the base of the case. On the lid there is an 8 Ah battery meant to top off an iPhone. It works perfectly as it provides a USB port and enough current to operate the Pi. On top of that battery is a 3G modem used to access the data remotely — although it can log to the SD card for collection at a later time if you’d rather not mess with a cell network.
Look closely at the GPIO header and you’ll notice that an ADC add-on board has been plugged in. This is used to take the readings from the gas sensor which is monitoring for air pollutants in Paris. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "902830",
"author": "atiti",
"timestamp": "2012-12-12T22:27:05",
"content": "I wonder what kind of battery life they can get from it.. 8Ah doesnt sound like a lot for the Pi which eats max 700mAh and probably around 150-200mAh on average…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,661.713401 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/homemade-tank-joins-the-battle-in-syria/ | Homemade Tank Joins The Battle In Syria | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"armor",
"armored vehicle",
"syria",
"tank",
"war"
] | What does a hacker do when going into battle for the freedom of their country? He
builds a tank from scratch
, of course. It’s a little bit of a stretch calling it a tank as it lacks treads. But it’s got a high-caliber gun mounted on top and has been heavily armored.
There is room enough inside for two people. What may look low tech in this picture is a different story from the cockpit. A pair of LCD monitors display images from five different cameras. You can see the shrouds that protect three of them on the front of the vehicle with a fourth acting as the rear view. A fifth camera mounted on the gun gives the passenger a look at where he’s aiming. A PS1 controller can rotate it and we assume has a fire feature as well. Check out the demonstration video embedded after the break.
[via
Reddit
] | 107 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "901376",
"author": "Michael Chen",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T23:06:07",
"content": "I gotta admit it, I’m impressed. I guess necessity is the mother of invention after all.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901396",
"auth... | 1,760,376,662.002495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/web-scraping-tutorial/ | Web Scraping Tutorial | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"beautifulsoup",
"css",
"dom",
"python",
"web scraping"
] | Web scraping is the act of programmatically harvesting data from a webpage. It consists of finding a way to format the URLs to pages containing useful information, and then parsing the DOM tree to get at the data. It’s a bit finicky, but our experience is that this is easier than it sounds. That’s especially true if you
take some of the tips from this web scraping tutorial
.
It is more of an intermediate tutorial as it doesn’t feature any code. But if you can bring yourself up to speed on using BeautifulSoup and Python the rest is not hard to implement by trial and error. [Hartley Brody] discusses investigating how the GET requests are formed on your webpage of choice. Once that URL syntax has been figured out just look through the source code for tags (css or otherwise) that can be used as hooks to get at your target data.
So what can this be used for? A lot of things. We’d suggest reading the Reddit comments as there are several real world uses discussed there. But one that immediately pops to mind is the picture harvesting [Mark Zuckerburg] used
when he created Facemash
. | 36 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "901343",
"author": "joshuac",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T22:05:41",
"content": "Amusingly “any content that can be viewed as a webpage” is embedded as a graphic, which is difficult/computationally very expensive to scrape.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,376,662.406567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/oled-name-badge-with-rechargeable-lipo-cell/ | OLED Name Badge With Rechargeable LiPo Cell | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"badge",
"breakout",
"lipo",
"oled"
] | Here’s a project that let [Rick Pannen] try his hand with
an OLED display and a rechargeable power source
. He calls it OLEDuino which is a mashup of the display type and the Arduino compatible chip running the whole thing. He figures it will serve nicely as a geeky name badge but also ported a Breakout type game to play when he’s bored.
The project is an inexpensive way to attempt a more permanent trinket than simply using Arduino and a breadboard. [Rick] sourced the OLED display and USB LiPo charging cable on eBay. The ATmega328 hiding below the display is being driven from the 3.7V LiPo cell without any power regulation. The four buttons at the bottom provide the only user input but it should be more than enough for a few simple tricks.
Head over to
his code repo
for a bit more information. The schematic and board are both Eagle files. We generated an image of the schematic and embedded it after the break if you want to take a quick look at how simple the hardware really is. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "901348",
"author": "E-ink",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T22:11:54",
"content": "This would be better if it were e-ink",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901383",
"author": "Rick (@r1ckp)",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T23:... | 1,760,376,662.291618 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/simulating-crt-or-vector-displays-for-more-realistic-emulation/ | Simulating CRT Or Vector Displays For More Realistic Emulation | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"emulation",
"filter",
"hlsl",
"vector"
] | Scaled down it’s not as obvious that this image isn’t a crystal clear rendering of Mortal Kombat gameplay. But we’ve linked it to the full size version (just click on the image) so that you can get a better look. Notice the scan lines? This is the result of an effort to more accurately mimic the original hardware displays used in classic games. [Jason Scott] takes a look at the initiative by describing
what he thinks is missing with the picture perfect quality of modern emulators
.
One such effort is being mounted for MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). There is a series of filters available — each with their own collection of settings — that will make your modern LCD display look like it’s a run-of-the-mill CRT. This is a novelty if you’re a casual gamer who dusts off the coin-op favorites twice a year. But if you’re building a standalone game cabinet this may be a suitable alternative to sourcing a working display that’s already decades old. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "901286",
"author": "newspapercrane",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T20:17:51",
"content": "But, does it play Duck hunt?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901340",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T21:57:28... | 1,760,376,662.241845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/transmit-fm-using-raspberry-pi-and-no-additional-hardware/ | Transmit FM Using Raspberry Pi And No Additional Hardware | Mike Szczys | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dma",
"fm transmitter",
"RPi"
] | Now here’s a project that actually hacks the Rapsberry Pi rather than just using it as an embedded computer. [Londons Explorer] figured out
how to turn the RPi into an FM transmitter
. For now it’s done entirely in the user space, but we’re sure it could be improved if someone wanted to drill down further into the hardware. For those wanting to give it a try he’s rolled everything into a simple python package.
The technique requires nothing additional except a 20cm wire to serve as an antenna. The trick is to map GPIO pin number 4 to a position in memory. The clock generator is then used to toggle this pin at 100 MHz, which is the frequency to which your radio should be tuned. A fractional divider adjusts the frequency based on the sound file being transmitted.
The proof of concept for this was able to reliably transmit at a distance of about fifty meters through several walls. The problem is that this technique is limited in the amount of data which can be sent. Right now it’s only about 6-bit audio. But descending deeper through the abstraction layers to put DMA (Direct Memory Access) to use may be able to improve upon this.
[Thanks Owen via
Reddit
] | 75 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "901242",
"author": "Brad",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T18:47:26",
"content": "Amazing! Simply amazing!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901250",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T19:00:40",
"co... | 1,760,376,662.170047 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/morse-code-transceiver-based-on-gameboy-color-camera/ | Morse Code Transceiver Based On Gameboy Color Camera | Eric Evenchick | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"atmega1284",
"gameboy camera",
"m64282fp",
"morse code"
] | For their final project in a microcontrollers course, [Trudy] and [Josh] designed a pair of
morse code transceivers
. To send the message, they used an array of IR LEDs. The message is received using a Gameboy Color Camera, which takes care of basic image processing. This allows a 8-bit ATMega1284p microcontroller to handle transmitting and receiving messages.
The transmission LEDs form a square pattern with one LED in the center. The four outside LEDs are used to help the receiver locate the center LED, and the center LED is used for transmitting the message.
The Gameboy Color Camera is based on a M64282FP image sensor. This sensor uses an SPI-like protocol, which they implemented on the ATMega. It allows them to grab frames from the camera, and get the value of specific pixels. From this data they find the center LED and process the message.
The result can transmit messages of 200 letters at a time, but the speed is limited by the frame rate of the camera. If you have a Gameboy Color Camera lying around, their detailed write up might provide some inspiration and information on how to use it in a hack. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "901203",
"author": "snx",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T17:48:19",
"content": "Eh, it’s Gameboy Camera, without color :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901262",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T19:20... | 1,760,376,662.337344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/an-automat-of-wireless-3d-printers/ | An Automat Of Wireless 3D Printers | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"automat",
"ultimaker"
] | There’s a lot of really cool 3D printer stuff happening in the fashion district of NYC this month. It’s called 3DEA, and shows off the awesomeness of Shapeways, Ultimaker, and the Up! 3D printer to all the fashionistas, trend setters, and the caliphate of coolness that is midtown Manhattan. The folks at Ultimaker wanted to bring something awesome to this exposition and
came up with the Vendingwall
: a wall of 3D printers connected into a vending machine able to print multiple objects at once.
Ultimaker has made a name for themselves as the top open source 3D printer manufacturer with
absolutely impressive build quality
and even a
20-foot-high printer able to manufacture entire rooms
. The Vendingwall is their next step in the commercialization of 3D printers; all you need to do to create your own 3D printed object is walk up to the Vendingwall, order a print, and later retrieve from one of the many Ultimakers.
To control these ranks of Ultimakers, a piece of software runs on a wireless router loaded up with OpenWRT. From there, the router serves up a website powered by JQuery-mobile for all the Android and iDevices at the 3DEA open house, turning a wall of 3D printers into a vending machine reminiscent of the automats of yore. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "901061",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T13:19:46",
"content": "“Ultimaker has made a name for themselves as the top open source 3D printer manufacturer”*grabs popcorn* Should make for interesting comments.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,662.460859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/10/10-ways-to-etch-pcbs-at-home/ | 10 Ways To Etch PCBs At Home | Brian Benchoff | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"etching",
"PCB etching"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4tWEse2rDI&w=580]
There are a ton of benefits for etching your own circuit boards at home, chief among them the ability to design a circuit in the morning and have a prototype in your hand by lunch. There’s always the question of how to etch the board, but [NurdRage] over on Youtube
has all the chemistry covered
on ten different etchant solutions for DIY PCB manufacturing.
The peroxide-based methods use simple over-the-counter Hydrogen Peroxide to remove all the copper on a PCB. By combining H2O2 with either Hydrochloric (muriatic) acid or Sulfuric acid, you’ll get a relatively easy to acquire and somewhat safe etching solution.
Historically, the favorite etchant for the home PCB manufacturer has been Ferric Chloride and is still surprisingly available at a few Radio Shacks around the US. Another chloride etchant – Copper Chloride – is one of the most reusable etchants available, able to be regenerated by simply bubbling air through the solution. You can actually make Copper Chloride etchant by reducing down the products of an H2O2 + HCl etchant, making this a very good etchant for PCB pros.
In the ‘miscellaneous’ category, [NurdRage] goes over some alternative etchants such as Bleach and HCl, Nitric acid, and potassium nitrate and HCl; the potassium nitrate etchant is fairly similar to
aqua regia
, so if you’ve ever wanted a gold PCB, this is the way to go.
Balancing the ease of production and safety of all these etchants, we’ll stick with our Hydrogen Peroxide and HCl etchant for now, at least until we move up to CuCl for
the best etching machine we’ve ever seen
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4tWEse2rDI&w=580] | 46 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "901030",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-12-10T12:13:57",
"content": "Ferric Chloride has worked well for me. However all the methods of transferring toner has been a total bust. Even followed a guide that guaranteed results, but failed because the type of paper used in the U... | 1,760,376,662.609088 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/fubar-labs-builds-a-rocket-engine/ | FUBAR Labs Builds A Rocket Engine | Brian Benchoff | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"liquid fuel",
"rocket",
"rocket engine"
] | [Graham] over at FUBAR labs took it upon himself to build a rocket engine. This isn’t a simple solid-fuel motor, though: [Graham]
went all out and built a liquid-fueled engine
that is ignited with a spark plug.
The build started off
with a very small ‘igniter’ engine
meant to shoot sparks into a larger engine. This engine is fueled with ethanol and air – not the best fuel for a rocket engine by a long shot but save and cheap enough to do a few serious experiments with.
To test out this small engine, [Graham] made a test platform out of aluminum extrusion to remotely control the fuel and oxidizer valves. The valves are controlled by an Arduino and XBee for remote operation and a telemetry downlink for measuring the fluid flow into the engine.
After he had some experience with pressure, plumbing, valves, and engines, [Graham] upgraded his fuel and oxidizer to
gaseous oxygen and ethanol
. With proper safety protocol in place, [Graham] was able to a series of three 3-second burns less than a minute apart as well as a single burn lasting nearly 5 seconds.
Even though [Graham] eschewed the usual stainless steel construction of rocket engines (his engine is milled out of aluminum), he demonstrated it is possible to build a real liquid-fueled rocket engine at home. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "900458",
"author": "Wayne Gramlich",
"timestamp": "2012-12-09T20:42:24",
"content": "There is a relatively old book entitled “How to Design, Build and Test Small Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engines” by Leroy J. Krzycki. The book has been out of print and hard to find for decades. We tracke... | 1,760,376,662.525116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/the-burrito-bomber/ | The Burrito Bomber | Eric Evenchick | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"ardupilot",
"burrito",
"drone"
] | The
Burrito Bomber
, created by the folks at
Darwin Aerospace
, claims to be “the world’s first Mexican food delivery system.” The delivery process starts with the customer placing an order through the
Flask
based Burrito Bomber webapp. The customer’s location is grabbed from their smartphone using the
HTML5 Geolocation API
and used to generate a waypoint file for the drone. Next, the order is placed into a delivery tube, loaded onto the drone, and the waypoint file is uploaded to the drone. Finally, the drone flies to your location and drops the delivery tube. A parachute deploys to safely deliver the tasty payload.
The drone is based on a Skywalker X-8 airframe and the Quantum RTR Bomb System. The bomb system provides the basic mechanism to hold and drop a payload, but Darwin Airspace designed their own 3D printed parts for the delivery tube. These parts are available on
Thingiverse
. The drone is controlled autonomously by
ArduPilot
, which uses the webapp’s waypoint output to guide the drone to the target and release the payload.
Unfortunately, this can’t be a commercial product yet due to FAA regulations, but the FAA is required to figure out commercial drone regulations by 2015. Hopefully in 2015 we’ll all be able to order burritos by air.
For all the source and models, check out the group’s
Github
. There’s also a video of the bomber in action after the break. | 40 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "900410",
"author": "Hugh",
"timestamp": "2012-12-09T19:17:03",
"content": "Words cannot express how awesome that is.Maybe I’ll ask Chuck Norris to write a little something on the subject.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "900416",... | 1,760,376,662.683537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/usb-next-keyboard/ | USB NeXT Keyboard | Eric Evenchick | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"Arduino micro",
"hid",
"keyboard",
"NeXT"
] | [Ladyada] and [pt] had an old keyboard from NeXT, but since it used a custom protocol it wasn’t usable with modern hardware. So they built a custom device to convert the
NeXT protocol to USB
.
The device uses a Arduino Micro to read data from the keyboard and communicate as a HID device over USB. It connects to the keyboard using the original mini-DIN connector, and is housed in the classic Altoids tin enclosure.
Since the protocol used by NeXT isn’t standard, they had to figure it out and write some code to interpret it. The keyboard communicates bidirectionally with the computer, so they needed to send the correct frames to key data back.
Fortunately, they hit on a
Japanese keyboard enthusiast’s site
, which had protocol specifications. They implemented this protocol on the Micro, and used the
Keyboard library
to create a HID device.
The final product is an adapter for NeXT to USB, which allows for the old keyboards to be used on any computer with USB. It’s a good way to bring back life to some otherwise unusable antique hardware. | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "900312",
"author": "Wretch",
"timestamp": "2012-12-09T17:07:26",
"content": "Well, that confirms it: I’m a moron. I had 2 of these keyboards and gave them away.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "901333",
"author": "Kil... | 1,760,376,662.863493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/09/160-mac-minis-one-rack/ | 160 Mac Minis, One Rack | Eric Evenchick | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [] | [Steve] needed an alternative to the Xserve, since Apple stopped making it. His solution was to stick
160 Mac Minis into a rack
. That’s 640 real cores, or 1280 if you count HyperThreading.
First, Steve had to tackle the shelving. Nobody made a 1U shelf to hold four Minis, so [Steve] worked with a vendor to design his own. Once challenge of this was managing the exaust air of each Mini. Plastic inserts were designed to ensure that exaust wasn’t sucked into the intake of an adjancent Mini.
An array of 160 computers is going to throw a lot of heat. To provide sufficient airflow, [Steve] built a custom cooling door out of four car radiators fans, connected to a 40A DC motor controller. This was all integrated into the door of the rack.
Another challenge was getting power to all of the Minis. Since this deisgn was for a data center, the Minis would have to draw power from a Power Distribution Unit (PDU). This would have required a lot of PDUs, and a lot of cables. The solution: a one to four Y cable for the Minis. This allows each shelf of four to plug into a single outlet.
The final result is a professional looking rack that can replace a rack of Xserves, and has capacity to be upgraded in the future. | 128 | 48 | [
{
"comment_id": "900215",
"author": "Geebles",
"timestamp": "2012-12-09T15:07:26",
"content": "Looks amazing! Some real professionalism there! However replacing a hard drive is going to be a pain! Wonder if there is a way to modify the mac mini to allow a more accessible hard drive access?",
"pa... | 1,760,376,663.148767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/08/more-fun-with-syma-107-reverse-engineering/ | More Fun With Syma 107 Reverse Engineering | Eric Evenchick | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"107g",
"ir",
"reverse engineering",
"saleae logic",
"Syma"
] | [Jim] used a logic analyzer to do some in depth
analysis of the Syma 107G helicopter’s IR protocol
. We’ve seen work to reverse engineer this protocol
in the past
, but [Jim] has improved upon it.
Instead of reading the IR output of the controller, [Jim] connected a
Saleae Logic
directly to the controller’s circuitry. This allowed him to get more accurate timing, which helped him find out some new things about the protocol. He used this to create a detailed explanation of the protocol.
One of the major findings is that the controller used a 3 byte control packet, which contradicts past reverse engineering of the device. There’s also a new explanation of how multiple channels work. This allows multiple helicopters to be flown without the controllers interfering.
The write up is quite detailed, and explains the reverse engineering process. It also provides great information for anyone wanting to hack one of these low cost helicopters. From the details [Jim] worked out, it would be fairly easy to implement the protocol on your own hardware. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "899944",
"author": "Smoketester",
"timestamp": "2012-12-09T02:18:57",
"content": "Thanks for the write-up. I have both the copter and the logic analyzer and have wanted to get under the hood and hack. Your contribution gives me a leg up. Again, Thank You for taking the trouble to do... | 1,760,376,662.909414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/08/staci-elaans-awesome-portable-tesla-coils/ | [Staci Elaan]’s Awesome Portable Tesla Coils. | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"coil",
"high voltage",
"tesla"
] | We stumbled onto
[Staci’s] videos a while ago
when we posted
this big tesla gun
. While it wasn’t the first portable coil we had seen, it was certainly an impressive implementation. In the comments we found [Staci] had already been making these for a while. Hers were big and small, had awesome modulation, and looked freaking cool too.
It also should be pointed out that [Staci]
donates her coils
to people when she’s done! Let me say that again,
she gives them away
to groups of people that could use them. That deserves some respect.
Unfortunately, [Staci] didn’t document her builds in great detail at the time. She has added some information recently though. You can read about her
first working prototype from 2006
, or a
slightly more modern one here
.
Of course, the real fun is in seeing them work.
Here’s one she donated to the Oatmeal in celebration of the Tesla museum.
How about a baby lightning gun?
[Staci] has also been brought on-board to help with a top secret promotional video for hackaday, in a similar vein to the
Portal Gun video we did earlier this year
. We promise, this one will be a bit more shocking. | 45 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "899728",
"author": "S",
"timestamp": "2012-12-08T19:26:55",
"content": "Wow! That is just awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "899740",
"author": "holden",
"timestamp": "2012-12-08T19:46:14",
"content": "would be... | 1,760,376,662.985567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/08/bird-buggy-soothes-a-screeching-parrot/ | Bird Buggy Soothes A Screeching Parrot | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bird buggy",
"parrot",
"remote control"
] | [Andrew] has enjoyed the company of [Pepper] the parrot for more than a decade, but the screeching of a bird in the next room is something you just don’t get used to. [Pepper] gets very lonely some times, and short of having someone carry him around on a shoulder, there’s not much that will calm this parrot down. [Andrew] had the idea of allowing [Pepper] to wander around the house with the help of a mobile platform.
Thus was born the Bird Buggy
, a parrot-controlled vehicle built just for [Pepper].
The buggy itself is a basic two-wheel drive platform driven with a small beak-compatible joystick mounted just forward of [Pepper]’s perch. With this system, it’s possible for [Pepper] to follow [Andrew] through the house. [Andrew] wanted to make sure [Pepper] couldn’t drive into walls or table legs, so a suite of sensors on the front stops the buggy whenever an object is detected.
One very cool feature of the bird buggy is its ability to drive itself to a recharging station. It does this
with the help of a webcam and OpenCV
and a pair of markers just behind the charging port. When the Beagleboard on the buggy sees the green and yellow markers for the charging port align, it knows its directly in front of the charging port.
You can see [Pepper] driving his new whip around after the break, along with a very cool demo of the bird buggy docking with its charging port.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO2TR_8jXPc&w=470]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51VtK8xuerY&w=470]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZ8k-hOnfY&w=470] | 67 | 44 | [
{
"comment_id": "899610",
"author": "SC",
"timestamp": "2012-12-08T16:34:36",
"content": "Go Gators! Especially SubjuGator!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "899615",
"author": "Thopter",
"timestamp": "2012-12-08T16:45:16",
"content":... | 1,760,376,663.430813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/using-arcade-monitors-with-the-raspberry-pi/ | Using Arcade Monitors With The Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arcade monitor",
"cga",
"mame",
"RGB monitor"
] | Along with the growing popularity of the Raspberry Pi, we’ve also seen a related uptick in MAME arcade cabinet builds. Putting this $35 computer in an arcade cabinet makes a lot of sense, but connecting it to one of the monitors found in old arcade cabinets is a bit of a pain. Luckily, [Celso] figured out how to
connect a Raspi to one of these 15kHz RGB monitors
, making for a much more accurate emulation of old arcade classics.
The Raspi only has two video outputs – an HDMI port and an RCA composite jack. The old arcade CRTs have an RGB input, so directly connecting a Raspi to one of these CRTs is a no-go.
The solution comes from two converters: one to convert the HDMI output to VGA, and another video downscaler that takes the 31kHz VGA signal and translates it into a 15kHz RGB signal. [Celso] settled on the
GBS-8100 video converter
, a rather uncommon piece of kit that can fortunately be found on a few Chinese eBay auctions.
After connecting the old arcade cabinet power supply to the Pi, hooking up an audio amp, and converting the controls to USB, [Celso] has a very accurate MAME machine. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "905394",
"author": "nesfreak",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T15:30:50",
"content": "Good way to get a shitty arcade experience, because it will be latency from the downscalers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905398",
"auth... | 1,760,376,663.215422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/electronically-controlled-nfc-tag/ | Electronically Controlled NFC Tag | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"NFC",
"NFC tag",
"tablet"
] | [Per] is replacing his car stereo with a Nexus 7 tablet. It’s a great modification to add GPS, navigation, and a good music player, but [Per] wanted to pause his tunes and tell the tablet to go to sleep with an NFC tag. This means
building a an NFC tag he can turn on and off
, an interesting problem to say the least.
The easiest way to do this is with a CMOS switch, but a chip like a 74HC4066 is overkill for a project this simple. What [Per] needed was a single CMOS switch, something he found and fabbed a board for.
Now, with a press of a button, [Per] can activate his NFC tag and pause the music in his new stereo. Check out the video of this electronically controllable tag after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URi3WvEV8Z4&w=470] | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "905347",
"author": "willaim",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T13:15:33",
"content": "A little background would help, let’s start with Hey GUYS whats a NFC tag?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905351",
"author": "Daniel",
... | 1,760,376,663.275788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/attannenbaum/ | ATTannenbaum | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"attiny13",
"christmas tree",
"led"
] | It’s that special time of year again where the smell of baking cookies fill the house and shopping mall parking lots are filled with idiots and very angry people. [Kevin] thought it would be a good idea to build an LED Christmas tree and
ended up building a great looking tree
that’s also very simple.
In the video,
the imgur album
, and
the github
, [Kevin] shows us the simplest way to make a color-changing LED Christmas tree. The circuit uses LEDs to drop the voltage and to provide a nice glow around the base of the tree. After that, it’s just an ATtiny13 and some LEDs in a very nice freeform circuit.
Of course, if LED Christmas trees aren’t your thing, [hb94] over on reddit
created an LED menorah
. Pretty nifty he used an 8-position DIP switch for the circuit. Let’s just hope someone gave him a soldering iron for the last night of Hanukkah. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "905349",
"author": "pfh666",
"timestamp": "2012-12-17T13:19:51",
"content": "Anyone else expecting info on Andy Tanenbaum, the creator of MINIX (the dissatisfaction with that platform being Linus Torvald’s inspiration (or catalyst) for creating LINUX)?",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,376,663.325878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/16/beautiful-tube-amp-uses-a-tv-tube/ | Beautiful Tube Amp Uses A TV Tube | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"13EM7",
"preamp",
"tube amp"
] | Most audio tube amps we see use common tubes – usually a 12AX7 for the preamp and one of the more common power tubes such as an EL34.[Daniel], on the other hand,
decided to build his own audio tube amp
with a 13EM7, a tube originally used for a television’s vertical oscillator. The resulting project is a wonderful stereo amp that sounds really good, to boot.
[Daniel] picked up the idea of using a 13EM7 tube from [Fred Nachbaur]’s
MiniBlok SET amplifier
. This very tiny 1-watt tube amplifier uses a single tube originally designed for use in old, old televisions. The secret behind this build is the fact this tube is actually two triodes in one package; one side of the 13ME7 has tons of gain but not much power, making it perfect for a preamp. The other side has a lot of power, useful for delivering two watts of power into a speaker.
After [Daniel] etched a few boards for his amp, he milled out a piece of wood for the chassis. When everything was mounted he had an awesome looking stereo amplifier that also sounds great. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "904991",
"author": "Ryoku",
"timestamp": "2012-12-16T21:58:01",
"content": "those coils on the left hand side, ever so slightly out of focus… made me wonder if it also made toast =P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "905073",
... | 1,760,376,663.55999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/16/displaying-text-on-random-strings-of-christmas-lights/ | Displaying Text On Random Strings Of Christmas Lights | Brian Benchoff | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"christmas lights",
"GE color effects"
] | With the help of a microcontroller, a few strings of GE Color Effect Christmas lights can be easily turned into a fully programmable LED strip, or if you are so inclined, a huge RGB LED display. [Hubbe] had a few strings of these Color Effect Christmas lights, but didn’t want to spend the time arranging his light strings in an array simply to get a programmable display. His solution to this problem –
the Chaos Display
– turns strings of Christmas lights randomly thrown on a tree into a fully programmable display capable of displaying text and images.
[Hubbe] was inspired by
QC Co-Lab’s light wall
powered by GE Color Effect lights. Having a huge RGB LED display is very cool, but requires building a frame for each of the Christmas light pixels. [Hubbe] had a different idea – just throw the lights on a tree and use a web cam to figure out where each Christmas light is on the display.
The actual build consists of six strings of Color Effect lights. After throwing them on the tree, [Hubbe] set his phone on a tripod to record an image for each individual light. With some computing power, he was able to create a virtual display made of tangled strings of Christmas lights.
You can see a video of [Hubbe]’s work after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bKNnXUMQ9k&w=470] | 27 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "904895",
"author": "SavannahLion",
"timestamp": "2012-12-16T19:24:59",
"content": "Holy smokes. I ran into the same problem about six months ago (not Christmas related) and painstakingly hand coded tables with every LED location and their mappings. It works, but every time one of th... | 1,760,376,663.500233 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/16/bunnie-builds-a-laptop-for-himself-hopefully-us/ | [Bunnie] Builds A Laptop For Himself, Hopefully Us | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"bunnie",
"laptop",
"open source"
] | [Bunnie Huang], creator of the Chumby and artisan of chips and electrons,
is building his own completely open source laptop
. It’s called the Novena, and is powered by a quad-core ARM CPU, it’s got enough bells and whistles to make any hacker happy including an on-board FPGA, dual Ethernet ports, and enough GPIO pins to do some crazy, crazy stuff.
[Bunnie]’s laptop is an attempt to create a completely open-source laptop capable of some light code development, and web browsing. Every single chip on [Bunnie]’s laptop has a datasheet available (without requiring an NDA, unlike the Raspberry Pi), meaning this laptop might be the beginning of a completely open source laptop.
Officially, this laptop is a one-off project made just for [Bunnie]. He’ll be spending the next few months validating all features on the board and making a proper case. [Bunnie] says a few people may be interested in their own Novena (smart one, that guy), so he might consider a Kickstarter campaign in a few months. Don’t expect it to be cheap, but if you’d like to try your hand at making your own, all the files are up
on the Novena wiki
. | 76 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "904834",
"author": "Spacedog",
"timestamp": "2012-12-16T17:42:01",
"content": "Sweet as a biscuit, can’t wait to see it working :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "904838",
"author": "blixem",
"timestamp": "2012-12-16T17:... | 1,760,376,663.662551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/15/solving-a-rubicks-cube-with-lego-and-popsicle-sticks/ | Solving A Rubick’s Cube With LEGO And Popsicle Sticks | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Rubick's Cube"
] | We’ve seen automated Rubick’s Cube solvers before, but never one that has garnered as many awards as [James]’
popsicle stick and LEGO Rubick’s Cube solver
.\
To keep the project complexity down, [James] opted not to use a webcam to detect the color pattern on each face of the cube. Instead, he wrote a little Python app to manually enter the pattern on each face before letting his algorithm loose on the cube and calculating how to solve it.
So far, [James] has seen a huge amount of success from his project. He entered it in the New Zealand
Brightsparks
competition netting him $1000. This competition led to a win in the
Realize the Dream science competition
where he won a major prize and an entry into the International Taiwan Science Fair held early next year. An awesome accomplishment from a budding hacker, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
You can check out a video of [James]’ cube solver after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdUdYy9foL0&w=560] | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "904502",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T22:17:26",
"content": "Now all you need is an array of three light sensors with colour filters for each of the nine squares on the side to be twisted coupled with a few white leds or a bulb to act as a source. then it could solve... | 1,760,376,663.966301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/simplifying-fabrication-of-soft-robots/ | Simplifying Fabrication Of Soft Robots | Mike Szczys | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"mold",
"soft robotics",
"tentacle"
] | Soft robots are a peculiar wing of technology. They don’t use frames and motors for locomotion, but as the name implies they are made of soft materials. They move by pumping fluid — it could be air or liquid — in and out of bladders that push or pull against the body itself. [Matthew] points out that fabricating soft robots has traditionally been a time-consuming and difficult task. He’s trying to make it easier by
3D printing molds into which soft robots can be cast
. This way the parts can be designed in CAD, converted to a mold design, and pushed to a 3D printer.
The object with which he’s been testing the technique functions like an octopus tentacle. The image at the bottom left illustrates the internal structure, with rings separated to allow the appendage to flex, and tubes running parallel to the appendage to provide the force needed to bend it. Above that image you can see one of the molds that was used, and the final product is on the right. The video after the break shows a demonstration of this bending left and right as air is pumped in using the bulb of a blood pressure cuff (or Sphygmomanometer for those paying attention). | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "897252",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T22:05:19",
"content": "Quite the breakthrough for teledildonics",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "897268",
"author": "cde",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T22:29:00",
"conte... | 1,760,376,663.849782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/dcf77-signal-filtering-and-decoding/ | DCF77 Signal Filtering And Decoding | Mike Szczys | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"atomic clock",
"dcf77",
"filtering",
"noise",
"smoothing"
] | [Udo] decided to build a clock using the DCF77 radio module seen above. This of course has been done before: the hardware draws a clock signal from the atomic clock in Braunschweig, Germany. So he grabbed a library for Arduino and got to work. But he was getting rather poor results and upon further investigation realized that the library had been written for 20 Hz modules and his operates at 300 Hz. This means better accuracy but the drawback is that the hardware is more susceptible to noise.
So began
his journey to filter, process, and decode the DCF77 protocol
. That link goes to the project overview. It will be in several parts all of which will be linked on that page. So far
he has applied a low-pass filter and coded some exponential smoothing
. He has yet to write the other four parts, but does mention that early testing shows that this technique will make the reception better than what is achieved with commercially available clocks. He was able to lock onto a signal that had more than 80% noise ratio. That’s impressive!
Just want to see a clock that uses a DCF77 module? Check out
this PIC-based atomic clock
. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "897235",
"author": "natsfr",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T21:32:36",
"content": "If I’m not wrong Elektor already published an article on this topic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "897340",
"author": "blinkenlightblog",
... | 1,760,376,663.91036 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/clock-display-taller-than-you-is-just-what-your-living-room-has-been-missing/ | Clock Display Taller Than You Is Just What Your Living Room Has Been Missing | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"7 segment",
"clock",
"countdown",
"led strip",
"seven segment",
"timer"
] | Sure, it’s time to get the countdown clocks ready to ring in the new year, but why limit it to just one night? If you end up
building a six-foot digital display
you can count down trivial events; like the remaining seconds of freedom before you have to pimp yourself out in that drab cubicle.
This seven-segment display is homemade and boasts six full-sized digits and two smaller digits with each pair separated by colons. You have probably already guessed that the construction was greatly simplified by using LED strips rather than individual components. This is part of the reason for the size of the display. The strips can be cut, but only down to a minimum of 3 LEDs per segment. That explains the small digits, with their larger siblings doubled in size. But there is a benefit to this constraint, it means that current limiting is already taken care of for you.
The main assembly is a wooden frame surrounding two polycarbonate sheets. The LED strips are sandwiched between those sheets, with segment and digit driver buses exiting a one point on the side. The build doesn’t detail a driver for the display but it shouldn’t be hard to find
a multiplexing example that will serve the purpose
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "897225",
"author": "joeisi",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T21:09:18",
"content": "I would like to disagree with the title. I am definitely taller than this module.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "897277",
"author": "Mike",
... | 1,760,376,664.015961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/a-study-of-gcc-and-the-ti-stellaris/ | A Study Of GCC And The TI Stellaris | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"gcc",
"Stellaris Launchpad"
] | There are several things that we really like about the TI Stellaris. We think the peripheral library — called Stellarisware — has a pretty intuitive API that makes it easy to get into. But we’re also quite impressed that the software comes with makefiles that build the libraries and examples using your own GCC cross compiling toolchain. We spent quite a bit of time pawing through those makefiles and the makedefs settings file to figure out how TI was doing things. Now if you don’t want to do that sleuthing yourself you can head on over to
the GCC with TI Stellaris Launchpad guide
which [Brandon] just published.
Shown above is the helpful chart of compiler flags which he pulled from the files with his added comments on what each does. He did the same for the linker flags, and then discusses the program calls made during compilation and linking. He then delves into how the driver library on the chip’s ROM can be accessed in code. This is just the first in a four-part series he plans to write. We can’t wait to see what he has to say about the hardware FPU as we haven’t had time to explore that for ourselves quite yet. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "897144",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T19:24:26",
"content": "There are several things that we really like about the TI Stellaris too. Like the extra anal.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "897562",
"aut... | 1,760,376,664.063174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/rs-485-node-control-for-arduino/ | RS-485 Node Control For Arduino | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"max1483",
"rs-485",
"rs485"
] | Wanting to control a split flap display that was not near a computer [Tom] looked to a common solution for communicating over distances not practical for I2C or SPI. He developed
his own hardware and packet format using the RS-485 protocol
.
This is part of a larger project he has been working on to feed data to a split flap display that he plans to hang on the wall.
RS-485
is designed to work over long distances and overcome noise issues. The core of the communications system is
the board seen on the left
. It uses a MAX1483 chip, a pair of RJ45 jacks for Ethernet cables, and two terminal blocks for power and communications. There are a few nice things about this. The board acts as a pass-through making it easy to chain nodes together, and the data structure is completely independent of the hardware itself. Because of this [Tom] developed his own packet format that will be a bit more resilient than the
Arduino networking scheme we looked at the other day
. | 55 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "897052",
"author": "Gizmos",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T17:31:00",
"content": "Any time I have a need for a simple protocol like this I use S.N.A.P.http://www.hth.com/snap/I’ve used it a lot and it has always served me well. I found it years ago.–S.N.A.P is an free and open network pr... | 1,760,376,664.154939 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/syncing-two-strands-of-g35-christmas-lights/ | Syncing Two Strands Of G35 Christmas Lights | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"christmas lights",
"G35"
] | For a few years now, the set of Christmas lights most wanted by hackers and makers the world over is the GE G35 color changing set. With 50 individual RGB LEDs controlled by a microcontroller, these light strings can display any pattern of lights with the help of something as simple as an Arduino. The stock light sequences are a little problematic, especially if you’re running more than one string.
[Todd] picked up two G35 strings, and even when they’re turned on at the same time the light sequences slowly go out of sync after a half hour or so. He came up with a great way to
make sure these lights stay in sync
that requires only a slight modification. To make two light strings stay in sync, it’s simply a matter of disconnecting the data line from one string’s controllers and bridging that connection with the other string.
It’s a very easy modification, but it won’t give you twice as many individually controllable LEDs – for that, you’ll have to use either multiple Arduinos or buy a longer RGB LED strip. Still, having
two identical 7×7 LED panels
is better than a single panel, so we’ll have to tip our hat to [Todd] for this one. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "897024",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T16:35:10",
"content": "Running two strings in parallel off the same bus? Not really a high level hack… Build an analog PLL based timing circuit to sync the clocks and I’ll be impressed.Also, the data bus is self clocked….why woul... | 1,760,376,664.200805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/cute-little-amplifier-has-a-tube-pre/ | Cute Little Amplifier Has A Tube Pre | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"ECC86",
"hybrid amplifier",
"tube",
"tube amp"
] | While you won’t catch us in an argument with an audiophile regarding the sound quality of tube vs. solid state amps, there is a general consensus that tube amplifiers sound much better than their transistorized brethren. Actually building an all-tube amplifier, though, is a bit harder than one built around common ICs – there are transformers to deal with and of course very high voltages. One solution to get the sound of tubes easily but still retaining the simplicity of integrated circuits is a hybrid amp, or a tube preamplifier combined with a solid state power section. They’re easy enough to build as [Danilo] shows us with
his hybrid tube amp design
(Italian,
translation
).
[Danilo]’s design uses two ECC86 for the left and right channels powered by a 12 Volt supply. Each channel is sent through a tube and then amplified by a TDA2005 20 Watt power amplifier. After plugging in a CD player, the result is a clear, warm sound that can put a whole lot of power through a speaker. | 64 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "896913",
"author": "justblairthompson",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T13:11:21",
"content": "“there is a general consensus that tube amplifiers sound much better than their transistorized brethren”Don’t think there is. Some people have a preference for tube driven equipment, but many ot... | 1,760,376,664.349383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/05/use-an-old-laptop-as-a-second-desktop-display/ | Use An Old Laptop As A Second Desktop Display | Mike Szczys | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"battlestation",
"monitor",
"tablet"
] | When we’re trying to get a relatively complex project to work we often end up with twenty windows open. When this happens we’re usually referencing multiple data sheets, webpages, and trying to write code that the same time. We’ve seen people with two or three monitors to alleviate the situation (often called a battlestation), but the we’re cheap and can’t justify buying more displays just for these occasions. Well [Oscar] may have the solution for us. His old laptop had been sitting in a box unused so he flipped the screen and built a stand to position it as an additional display on his desk.
The hack simply removed the screen for the hinged cover so that it could be flipped around. This turns the laptop into a tablet minus the touchscreen ability but that could always be added in later (
we’ve seen it done with netbooks
). He tells us that the only issue he ran into during this process was the length of the inverter cable. He simply cut it and spliced in a little bit of extra length.
[Oscar] didn’t write a post about his project, but you can see the build gallery after the break. | 47 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "897891",
"author": "jbgieu",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T20:09:59",
"content": "Is it really a second display ? I don’t think so. It’s just an other pc in your desk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "898907",
"author": "Joz... | 1,760,376,664.436059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/05/air-harp-using-the-leap-motion/ | Air Harp Using The Leap Motion | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"harp",
"leap",
"Leap motion"
] | He’s just pointing in this image, but
this Air Harp can be played using many fingers as once
. It’s a demonstration which [Adam Somers] threw together in one weekend when working with the Leap Motion developer board. We first
heard about this slick piece of hardware back in May
and from the looks of it this is every bit as amazing as first reported.
Part of what made the project come together so quickly is that [Adam] had already developed a package called muskit. It’s a C++ toolkit for making music applications. It puts the framework in place what we hear in the video after the break. The weekend of hacking makes use of the positional data from the Leap Motion and handles how your digits interact with the virtual strings. You can watch as [Adam] adds more and more strings to the virtual instrument for his finger to interact with. The distance from the screen is what decided is your finger will pluck or not. This is indicated with a red circle when your fingertip is close enough to interact with the phantom string.
Get your hands on the code from
his repositories
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "897875",
"author": "bty",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T19:49:13",
"content": "impresssive!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "897881",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T19:57:50",
"content": "Can anyone explain how ... | 1,760,376,664.247067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/05/common-linux-tools-on-android-without-root-by-installing-busybox/ | Common Linux Tools On Android Without Root By Installing BusyBox | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"adb",
"android",
"botbrew basil",
"busybox",
"linux"
] | [Adam Outler] shows us
how to expand the Linux tools available on Android without rooting the device
. He does this by installing BusyBox. The binary is copied to the device using the Android Developer Bridge. He then opens an ADB shell, adds execution permissions to the binary, and runs it. BusyBox calls itself
the Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
. It provides a set of very common tools which you’ll find useful in your tinkering. The one that [Adam] shows off in his video is the vi editor, but the basics that make a shell work are all there like: ls, mkdir, grep, dmesg, mount… you get the point.
So what are you going to do with your unrooted device now that you have these commands at your disposal? That’s really for you to figure out. [Adam] continues his demonstration by installing a package that does require root access. It’s
BotBrew Basil
, which adds apt-get and a few more complex packages. He then uses vi to write a C++ Hello World program, then compiles it and runs it. So if you’re looking to do some development on your phone this is one way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_bVC0x4l-g | 26 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "897822",
"author": "konkop",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T17:55:32",
"content": "That is really sweet :-).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "897837",
"author": "AndroidCat",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T18:12:32",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,664.5488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/05/rc-car-transforms-into-rc-robot/ | RC Car Transforms Into RC Robot | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bipedal",
"robot",
"transformer",
"walking robot"
] | After nearly 30 years since the first episode of Transformers aired, someone has finally done it. A company named Brave Robotics out of Japan
has created a true transformer robot
that is half remote control car and half remote control bipedal robot.
According to
the Brave Robotics’ site
, this creation is the result of more than 10 years. In 2002, the first version of the Transform Robot was completed – a relatively simple affair that transformed but couldn’t walk or drive. Over the last 10 years, the prototypes have seen incremental improvement that included a drive system for the wheels, a steering mechanism, and even the ability to move its’ arms and shoot plastic darts.
Surprisingly, you can actually buy one of Brave Robotics’ transforming robots for ¥1,980,000 JPY, or about $24,000 USD. A little pricy but we’re sure we’ll see a few more transforming robots in the future.
Check out a few more videos of the Brave Robotics transform robot after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvG0buqa2Q&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzYosHcyCrI&w=470] | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "897743",
"author": "TheCageybee",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T15:10:02",
"content": "Kick Ass!!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "897746",
"author": "Pall.e",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T15:13:55",
"content": "Any relatio... | 1,760,376,664.486781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/05/vector-thingy/ | An Introduction To Vector Displays | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"vector",
"vector display"
] | Unlike the CRTs found in big old televisions, vector displays are a bit of a historical oddity. Instead of sweeping an electron beam across the screen from left to right and top to bottom, a vector display draws lines between two points on a screen. Once used in arcade games such as
Asteroids
,
Tempest
, and old FAA displays, vector monitors have fallen out of favor due to either the complexity or difficulty in acquiring the needed CRT. The folks over at NYC Resistor
put up a great tutorial
for getting a vector display up and running, and even managed to put a clock on an oscilloscope.
The key component of getting a vector display to work is the digital to analog converter. This DAC takes voltages from eight pins on a Teensy 2.0 dev board and converts them to a voltage anywhere in between 0 and 5 Volts. After connecting the output of this DAC to an input on an oscilloscope, the microcontroller can draw a line between any two points on an axis.
In the video after the break, you can see two of these DACs connected to an oscilloscope displaying a clock. It’s a very cool piece of work, and something that finally gives a purpose to the ancient CRT oscilloscope you might have lying around.
[flickr video=7925036218] | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "897702",
"author": "progre",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T14:17:11",
"content": "I thought vector displays would give you smooth diagonal lines and smooth round shapes, not the aliased broken lines typical of CRT scanning. Am I missing something?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,376,664.612246 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/japanese-drumming-sensei/ | Japanese Drumming Sensei | Jeremy Cook | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"atmega1284",
"drum",
"taiko"
] | If you’re looking to learn the art of playing Japanese drums, or Taiko, this hack, done as a school project by [Cornell] students, could be a really helpful aid.
The project write-up
is very impressive and includes a detailed explanation of their work, the source code, and a bill of materials if you’d like to try to duplicate this device.
The tutor device is able to tell between soft hits, hard hits, and rimshots using a piezoelectric sensor hooked up to an ATmega1284P microcontroller. This data can then be transmitted to the “follower” drum using an infrared transmitter. These beats can be used in several modes including: follow the leader, metronome, repeat after me, and drum battle mode.
Ok, maybe there’s no drum battle mode, but be sure to check out the demonstration of the Taiko teaching aid after the break. There’s a lot of details about the build, but they start some calibration drumming around 4:00 if you’d just like to see it in action.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIfARNWDEE%5D | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "897637",
"author": "Jasper",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T12:03:40",
"content": "Great working project!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "897690",
"author": "cantido",
"timestamp": "2012-12-05T13:55:21",
"content": "/me ch... | 1,760,376,664.658525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/12/04/building-a-pirate-cannon-for-fun-and-plunder/ | Building A Pirate Cannon For Fun And Plunder | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"andoid",
"cannon",
"pirates",
"PVC",
"toy"
] | Our days by the pool are behind us for the year. But playing pirate ship with a 2-year-old does sound like quite a bit of fun. That’s why [The Stone Donkey]
built this pirate cannon prop complete with firing sounds
.
The simplicity of the design is pretty brilliant. Three segments of PVC and five fittings make for a realistic looking barrel that won’t throw your back out when you pull this one out for playtime. After some cutting and gluing the entire thing was sprayed with matte black paint. The bit of rope wrapped around the barrel is a nice touch. The base was made with some scrap pine, but it’s that little wooden box on top that makes it really special. It is the fuse box, and a tap of the finger gives a burning fuse sound and video followed by an earth-shattering kaboom. [The Stone Donkey] used his old Droid X Android phone and wrote an app for it that puts on the sound and light show. Take a look in the clip after the break.
[via
reddit
] | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "897299",
"author": "aztraph",
"timestamp": "2012-12-04T23:15:12",
"content": "why not turn it into something that actually fires, like a potato gun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "897314",
"author": "Brooks",
... | 1,760,376,664.914764 |
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