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https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/a-suitcase-full-of-tunes/ | A Suitcase Full Of Tunes | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"amp",
"amplifier",
"speakers",
"suitcase"
] | Take the party with you by building your own boomcase. It’s
an amplifier and set of speakers built into luggage
. It uses an audio jack to connect to your favorite music player, and with a bit of added protection — like grills for those speakers — it could still be gently used to transport your wardrobe.
A 1960’s suitcase was mutilated for this build. [Jay] must have already had it on hand because combined with some used parts he claims to have only spent $50 total. After trying out a few different speaker orientations on a piece of cardboard he covered the outside of the case in blue painter’s tape and started cutting holes. The amp he chose has a nice face plate which happens to fit nicely on the top side of the case. For now he’s powering it with a 10,000 mAh (ie: 10 Ah) portable device recharging battery. But as you can hear in the demo after the break this seems to have no problem supplying the system with enough power. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "889249",
"author": "Cold_Turkey",
"timestamp": "2012-11-23T00:46:13",
"content": "7 seconds of that video was enough to make me want to stick a solder iron in my ears!I like the build tho! Speaker grilles – agreed :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,678.340871 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/bilbio-mat-is-an-awesome-yet-simple-used-book-vending-machine/ | Bilbio-mat Is An Awesome Yet Simple Used Book Vending Machine | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"book",
"books",
"used books",
"vending machine"
] | You’ll find this used book vending machine at The Monkey’s Paw in Toronto, Canada.
For two Loonies you can buy a random book
from the machine’s hopper. Silly? Absolutely. But as you can see from the video after the break, the act of buying a book this way is a lot of fun, and we always like to see the insides of a machine like this.
[Craig Small’s] creation looks vintage, and the chugga-chugga and mechanical bell that accompany each sale go along well with that appearance. Of course the machine is new. A trio of hoppers behind the façade hold stacks of books at a forty-five degree angle. Each stack is raised one at a time by a winch and pulley. Once the top book on the stack is high enough to slide into the dispenser chute the winch stops and the bell rings. A simple solution to dispensing something that is not a standard size.
Because the Biblio-Mat is meant to clear out the discount books, slight damage caused by falling down the chute won’t even be noticed. And if you end up really loving the book you can
digitize it by running it through one of these
.
[Thanks Petri] | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "889202",
"author": "JimBob",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T23:30:53",
"content": "I think you meant “Biblio”, not “Bilbio” in the title. You must be dylsexic. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "889239",
"author": "ChalkBo... | 1,760,376,678.109025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/beefing-up-a-smoke-alarm-system-with-video-temperature-and-connectivity/ | Beefing Up A Smoke Alarm System With Video, Temperature, And Connectivity | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"fire",
"infrared",
"ir",
"smoke alarm"
] | Here’s a little smoke detector hack which [Ivan] has been working on. He wanted to extend the functionality of a standard detector and we’re happy to see that he’s doing it with as little alteration to the original equipment as possible (this is a life-saving device after all). He sent all the build images for the project to our tips line. You’ll find the assembly photos and schematic in the gallery after the break.
As you can see his entry point is the piezo element which generates the shrill sound when smoke as been detected. He connected this to his own hardware using an optoisolator. This allows him to monitor the state of the smoke alarm on his server. It then takes over, providing a webpage that display’s the board’s temperature sensor value and streams video from an infrared camera.
Of course this is of limited value. We’ve always made sure that our home was equipped with smoke detectors but the only time they’ve ever gone off was from normal cooking smoke or after an extremely steamy shower. But still, it’s a fun project to learn from and we’ve actually got several of the older 9V battery type of detectors sitting in our junk bin. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "889189",
"author": "Addidis",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T23:01:19",
"content": "I actually see value in the idea. Smoke detectors primary objective is to wake you from sleep if there is a fire. Lets say your house is empty you are at work. A fire starts. This device could SMS your pho... | 1,760,376,678.163348 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/mechbass-a-robotic-bass-guitar-that-sounds-fantastic/ | MechBass: A Robotic Bass Guitar That Sounds Fantastic | Caleb Kraft | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bass"
] | [James] wrote in to show us his honors project for his fourth year at Victoria University of Wellington. He designed and built this robotic bass guitar. You can hear it performing “mass hysteria” by the band Muse after the break. It sounds great, but we’d love to hear it without the full accompaniment.
[James] doesn’t have a site up for the MechBass, so we’ve included details below.
Everything I designed in Solidworks, and lasercut/3D printed and assembled my self. Most components went through 3 or more design iterations.
The pitch shifter is open loop, with a NEMA23 stepper driving it to the desired position, and limit switches allowing alignment upon startup. Carriage is a custom design, riding on 80/20 using their low friction bearing pads. An igus cable carrier manages the wires for the solenoids during movement.
The control board is a completely custom design, based upon the ATMega328 (for Arduino compatibility), and as such is programmed with that IDE. Stepper motor drivers are dropped in that interface between the Microcontroller and stepper motors, while a MOSFET drives the solenoids. MIDI interface follows the MMA standard for connecting the devices on a bus. Each string only responds to MIDI messages on their designated MIDI channel. Decoupling capacitors and TVS’s in close proximity to the drivers are present to minimize transients during braking of the stepper motors (particularly the one for the pitch shifter).
A servo beneath the pickwheel stepper motor enables the motor to be pivoted, bringing the picks closer to or further away from the string, allowing the volume of the picks to be altered.
Felt covered arm attached to a servo allows for damping (muting) of the string on demand (noteOff).
An optical pickup is employed instead of the traditional magnetic pickup, due to the large amount of electromagnetic noise associated with all the actuators of the system.
Traditional bass machine heads are used for tensioning the string, integrated into the top of the main pitch shifter assembly.
Power supply box at back houses 3 power supply units (5V and 2x 24V, 750 watts total), attached to modular connectors for connection to each of the boards. 5 V supplies logic and servos, as well as the pickups (through a 3.3V LDO regulator on a board close to the pickups), while one 24 V supplies the solenoids, and the other for the stepper motors.
A large amount of attention to detail was paid in this project, for example all the servo cables were manually extended, while every cable is neatly sleeved and heatshrunk, with molex connectors for all actuators. Over 800 bolts in total in the project… Among many other things.
If you want some detail shots and tons of information about the design and operation, there is a short PDF that [James] supplied, available here (whoops, he wasn’t supposed to publish that. Website coming soon) | 43 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "889137",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T21:15:25",
"content": "Awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "889138",
"author": "bufalo1973",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T21:22:55",
"content": "What about an “Anes... | 1,760,376,678.725686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/button-automatically-tells-people-to-bugger-off-in-gmail/ | Button Automatically Tells People To Bugger Off In Gmail | Brian Benchoff | [
"google hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [] | [Kevin]’s friend is a remarkably helpful engineer, and when his friend gets requests to help out on a few projects he always has a hard time saying no. Really, [Kevin]’s friends’ time is much too valuable to take up many more projects, but saying no to someone will drag you down. To alieve his friend of the torment of saying no, [Kevin] built a
n automated Gmail assistant
that will automatically replay to an annoying email with the words, “Go F*** Yourself!”.
The automated Gmail assistant is built around a Teensy 2.0 microcontroller equipped with a key that serves as a safety, lest an accidental “F*** you” be sent to friends, family, or employers.
If [Kevin]’s friend feels bad for telling so many people off there’s also a handy feature to make sure the engineer friend doesn’t seem too unhelpful: there’s a one percent chance of the Gmail assistant of replying with, “That’s a Great idea, I’ll get right on it!”. | 14 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "889116",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T20:06:26",
"content": "What a jackass.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "889120",
"author": "Paul Potter",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T20:18:36",
"content": "That is bri... | 1,760,376,677.968858 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/8x8x8-led-cube-and-the-board-that-drives-it/ | 8x8x8 LED Cube And The Board That Drives It | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"8x8x8",
"java",
"LED cube",
"shift register",
"VU meter"
] | Check out t
he LED cube which [Thomas], [Max], and [Felix] put together
. But don’t forget to look at that beautiful PCB which drives it… nice! But hardware is only part of what goes into a project like this one. After the soldering iron had cooled they kept going and wrote their own software to generate patterns for the three-dimensional display.
Looking at a clean build like this one doesn’t drive home the amount of connections one has to make to get everything running. To appreciate it you should take a look at
this other 512 LED cube
which has its wires showing. You can see from the schematic (available in
the project repository
) that all of these lines are managed by a series of shift registers. The board itself connects to a computer from which it gets the visualization commands. A Java program they call CubeControl can push letters or turn the cube into a VU meter.
The team built at least two of these. This smaller version uses red LEDs, while the larger one shown in the video after the break has blue ones. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "889099",
"author": "fomori0rg",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T19:29:01",
"content": "This is great. But I don’t get why they create an awesome low-res 3d display, just to display 2D data on it? where are the rotating cubes? or a super low res teapot? 3d game of life anyone?",
"parent... | 1,760,376,678.219569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/hackaday-links-november-22nd-2012/ | Hackaday Links November 22nd 2012 | Jeremy Cook | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [] | HDD Grinder
As [unicorn] described it, “this is no big thing.” We would agree, but a
grinder made from a hard disk drive
at least deserves to be in a [HAD] links post. Here’s the original source.
The No-Video Game
What do you get when take [Sub Hunt] and take away the ability to see what you’re playing with? The
No-Video Game
is what [Sean] at [Hive76] came up with. Thanks [Kyle] for writing in to tell us about it!
SD Card Hack ‘N Slash
[Paul] wrote in to tell us about his friend [Ahmad’s] discovery that you can cut a standard SD card in two and still have it function. Sure, some people know this, but we’d be willing to bet most don’t. In the
pictures provided
, it makes for a nice upgrade to the Raspberry Pi’s form factor.
FM Transmitter for FPGA
[Hamster] wrote in to tell us about how he added an FM tranmitter to his field programmable gate array project. Check out the
wiki for the code
to do this with, or
this Youtube video
to see it in action!
Brute Force Hack a Garmin GPS
Although there’s only a
Youtube video to describe this hack
, it’s really worth seeing. Some people might go with a pure electrical method to open up their Garmin GPS, but why do that when you can “just” create an array of fingers to do it for you! Thanks [David] for the tip! | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "889032",
"author": "CraigBurden",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T17:15:46",
"content": "Hmmmm, I want to try the SD card trick but I don’t really want to risk it! Maybe if I can find a small one",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "88904... | 1,760,376,678.28135 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/adding-a-scart-input-to-a-console-vga-converter/ | Adding A SCART Input To A Console VGA Converter | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"cga",
"ega",
"lm1881",
"rgb",
"scart",
"vga",
"video converter"
] | If you’re working with a CGA, EGA, or RGB gaming system this inexpensive board does a great job of converting the signal to VGA so that you can play using a modern display. But what if you have a SCART connector as an output? That’s the situation in which [EverestX] found himself so
he hacked in SCART support
.
The first step is to source a female SCART connector. He grabbed a coupler off of eBay and cracked it open, yielding two connectors. Now comes the wiring and you may have already noticed that there’s a lot more going on here than the color channels, sync signal, and ground. Technically that’s all you really need to make this happen, but the results will not be good. First off, the sync signal for SCART tends to be rather awful. That’s where the blue breakout board comes into play. [EverestX] used an LM1881 to grab the composite sync (yes, composite sync, not component sync) signal as a feed for the VGA converter. He also added in an audio jack for the sound that is coming through the connector. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "888988",
"author": "Slurm McKenzie",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T15:53:49",
"content": "maybe i don’t get it, but why ? there are plenty of scart to component (yuv) adapters on ebay for 3-4 €, hell, there are even scart to vga cables in that price range. instead of buying a coupler off... | 1,760,376,678.060287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/22/dead-nes-controller-used-as-a-makey-makey-shield/ | Dead NES Controller Used As A Makey Makey Shield | Mike Szczys | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"MaKey MaKey",
"nes"
] | [Guillermo Amaral’s] NES controller was in great shape. Well, except for the fact that it didn’t work. Upon closer inspection it seems the shift register — which is the only IC on these ancient peripherals — had given up the ghost. But he made it usable again by
making the NES controller into a MaKey MaKey shield
.
You should remember the MaKey MaKey. It’s a little board that lets you create controllers out of just about anything —
bananas being one of the more popular examples
. All he needed to do is wire up the controller’s buttons to the board. For the task he chose to use extra long pin headers. To find the location for holes in the case he applied red ink to the top of each pin, then held the PCB up to the outside of the controller. After drilling at each red mark he glued the pin headers in place and started in on the controller’s original circuit board. Once all the point-to-point wiring was done he had a working controller. See for yourself in the clip after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esLfn5qHh38 | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "888983",
"author": "QW",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T15:46:29",
"content": "Why didn’t he just fix it the shift register is just a 4021 which is still a common and cheap part.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "889010",
"aut... | 1,760,376,678.488588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/kitchen-island-monitors-and-distributes-home-brew-beer/ | Kitchen Island Monitors And Distributes Home Brew Beer | Mike Szczys | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"cornelius",
"keg",
"kegerator",
"tap",
"weight sensor"
] | This piece of furniture actually resides in [Matt Pratt’s] livingroom but we think it would make a perfect kitchen island. The base is a chest freezer modified to keep the beer inside at just the right temperature. But this doesn’t just dispense the beer,
the system is designed to tell you how many pints are left in each keg
.
The freezer offers enough room for four five-gallon Cornelius kegs. [Matt] salvaged the weight sensors from some cheap bathroom scales and rigged them up with some plywood discs to serve as the base for each keg. After working out the electronics to reliably read from the sensors (which was no small job) he hooked them up to a microcontroller and a touch screen. As you can see in the video after the break, the system calculates the number of pints left in each keg based on its weight. This can be easily calibrated using the touch screen.
He didn’t talk all that much about the control hardware, but having see
his post about ARM LCD dev boards
we’d bet that’s what he’s using here. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "904289",
"author": "Chris - Find a Brewery",
"timestamp": "2012-12-15T16:09:36",
"content": "Interesting – would it be a useful invention for bars to know when they might have to change kegs?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "1019... | 1,760,376,678.009613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/boiling-acid-used-to-see-chip-die/ | Boiling Acid Used To See Chip Die | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"acid",
"boiling",
"decap",
"die",
"ic",
"sulfuric acid"
] | When a project starts off by heating acid to its boiling point we say no thanks. But then again we’re more for the projects that use ones and zeros or a hot soldering iron. If you’re comfortable with the chemistry like [Michail] this might be right up your alley. He used
boiling acid to expose and photograph the die from several integrated circuits
.
The title of our feature is a play on words. In this case,
die refers to the silicone on which the IC has been etched
. To protect it the hardware manufacturer first attaches the metal pins to the die, then encapsulates it in plastic. [Michail] removes that plastic case by heating sulfuric acid to about 300 degrees Celsius (that’s 572 Fahrenheit) then submerges the chips in the acid inside of a sealed container for about forty minutes. Some of the larger packages require multiple trips through the acid bath. After this he takes detailed pictures of the die and uses post processing to color enhance them.
This isn’t the only way to get to the guts of a chip. We’ve seen
nitric acid
and even
tree sap (in the form of bow rosin)
do the trick. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "888556",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T21:23:25",
"content": "“Do you expect me to talk?”“No Mr. Bondwire, I expect you to die!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "888558",
"author": "Gizmos",
"ti... | 1,760,376,678.609157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/update-on-james-bipedal-robot/ | Update On [James’] Bipedal Robot | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"balancing",
"bipedal",
"walking"
] | From the looks of the latest update [James] has made
quite a bit of progress on his bipedal robot
. He added to the top of the post just a few days ago, but didn’t include the video link which you’ll find embedded after the break. There’s about ten minutes of explanation before he gets down to demonstrating the static and dynamic balance which can be chosen using the buttons on a TV remote.
We
looked in on the project about one year ago
. The most notable change is the control electronics anchored in the torso of the robot. At first it makes us a bit nervous that he hasn’t built a protective cage around the components. But after seeing the latest stability demonstration we guess it’s because this thing is fantastic at staying upright. The torso is connected at the hips in such a way that no matter where each leg is it will always remain upright. All together the thing stands twenty-six inches tall, but that will grow when he gets around to building a head for it. | 13 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "888583",
"author": "Kaaaaaang",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T22:04:46",
"content": "I like that rowbot, because that rowbot is the coolest rowbot I’ve ever seen.P.S.: Rowbot! Rowbot!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "888632",
"aut... | 1,760,376,679.128768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/giving-siri-control-of-some-smart-bulbs/ | Giving Siri Control Of Some Smart Bulbs | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"iphone hacks"
] | [
"home automation",
"hue",
"philips",
"siri",
"smart light bulb",
"stm32"
] | After getting his hands on the Philips Hue smart lightbulb [Brandon Evans] cracked open some of the hardware to see what is inside. He also spent time working out the software tricks necessary to
use Siri to control light bulbs from iOS
.
If you haven’t heard of the Hue product before it’s an LED bulb that fits in a standard medium base whose color and intensity can be controlled wirelessly. Included in each unit is Zigbee compatible hardware that lets the bulbs form their own mesh network. [Brandon] didn’t crack open the bulb since these things cost a pretty penny and disassembly requires cutting. But he did point us to this post where [Michael Herf]
shows what the bulb’s case is hiding
. We do get to see the other piece of the puzzle as [Brandon] exposes the internals on the base unit that bridges the mesh network to your home network via Ethernet. An STM32 chip is responsible for controlling the base unit.
Aside from a look at the guts [Brandon] hacked Siri (Apple’s voice activated virtual assistant) to control the system. You can see a demonstration of that in the clip after the break. The details are found in the second half of his post which is linked at the top. The code is found in
his siriproxy-hue repository
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "888435",
"author": "Arran",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T19:15:54",
"content": "This is awesome! Has there been any similar work with s-voice or google now?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "888481",
"author": "plamoni",
"time... | 1,760,376,679.184144 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/automated-resistor-sorter-puts-them-into-small-plastic-tubes/ | Automated Resistor Sorter Puts Them Into Small Plastic Tubes | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"resistor",
"Resistor sorter",
"resistors",
"tools"
] | This one might be an oldie, but it’s certainly a goodie.
Way back in 2005, [David] and [Charles] needed a project for one of their engineering courses. With so many loose resistors scattered over the lab, they decided to build
an automated resistor sorter
(PDF warning) to separate these resistors and put resistors of the same value together in the same bin.
The electrical and programming portion of this build is relatively simple – just a PIC microcontroller reading the value of a resistor. The mechanical portion of this build is where it really shines. Resistors are sorted when they pass through small plastic tubes mounted to a wooden frame.
There are several levels of these tubes in [David] and [Charles]’ sorter that move back and forth. The process of actually sorting these resistors is a lot like going down a binary tree; at each level, the tube can go right or left with the help of a solenoid moving that level of the frame back or forth.
[David] and [Charles]’ project wasn’t entirely complete by the end of the class; to do so would require 8 levels and 128 different tubes on the bottom layer. Still, it worked as a proof of concept. We just wish there was a video of this machine in action.
Tip ‘o the hat to [Alexander] for finding this one and sending it in. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "888386",
"author": "Edward",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T18:20:29",
"content": "To sort more values simply have the first 7 values go in the correct tube and everything higher in the 8th tube. Then run the sort process again on the resistors that go into the 8th tube.I am impressed tha... | 1,760,376,679.070397 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/21/let-the-3d-printing-patent-wars-begin/ | Let The 3d Printing Patent Wars Begin! | Caleb Kraft | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing"
] | If you and your friends were gathering a pool of bets together as to when the first patent case would happen in 3d printing, someone just won the pot. 3D systems has filed suit against formlabs for possible patent infringement.
In
a press release by 3D systems
, they state that not only are they going after form labs, but also Kickstarter for selling the device.
Although Formlabs has publicly stated that certain patents have expired, 3D Systems believes the Form 1 3D printer infringes at least one of our patents, and we intend to enforce our patent rights
It is worth noting that the “cube” printer that
Make magazine recently named the most reliable and easiest to use
, happens to be made by 3D systems. Note that this one appears to be a typical rep-rap derivative.
[via
Adafruit
] | 62 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "888273",
"author": "mattgilbert",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T15:54:49",
"content": "absolute garbage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "888776",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2012-11-22T06:54:22",
"conten... | 1,760,376,679.305614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/a-better-way-to-hack-iclass-rfid-readers/ | A Better Way To Hack IClass RFID Readers | Mike Szczys | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"dump",
"exploit",
"iclass",
"reader",
"rfid",
"vulnerability"
] | iClass is an RFID standard that is aimed at better security through encryption and authentication. While it is more secure than some other RFID implementations, it is still possible to hack the system. But initial iClass exploits were quite invasive. [Brad Antoniewicz] published a post which talks about early attacks on the system, and then
demonstrates a better way to exploit iClass readers
.
We remember seeing
the talk on iClass from 27C3
about a year and a half ago. While the technique was interesting, it was incredibly invasive. An attacker needed multiple iClass readers at his disposal as the method involved overwriting part of the firmware in order to get a partial dump, then patching those image pieces back together. [Brad] makes the point that this is fine with an off-the-shelf system, but high-security installations will be using custom images. This means you would need to get multiple readers off the wall of the building you’re trying to sneak into.
But his method is different. He managed to get a dump of the EEPROM from a reader using an FTDI cable and external power source. If you wan to see how he’s circumventing the PIC read protection you’ll have to dig into the source code linked in his article. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "887925",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2012-11-21T03:12:41",
"content": "Nice to see someone else showing that another so-called “high-security” product isn’t as high-security as the manufacturer claims.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,679.017461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/worlds-oldest-functioning-digital-computer-reminds-us-of-a-telephone-exchange/ | World’s Oldest Functioning Digital Computer Reminds Us Of A Telephone Exchange | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"computer",
"decatron",
"museum",
"old",
"retrotechtacular",
"witch"
] | This is the WHICH, the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell. It is the oldest functioning digital computer and
thanks to a lengthy restoration process you can go and see it in person
at The National Museum of Computing in Milton Keynes (Northwest of London in the UK).
The system was first put into operation in 1951. It’s function is both familiar and foreign. First off, it uses decimal rather than binary for its calculations. And instead of transistors it uses electromechanical switches like are found in older automatic telephone exchanges. This makes for very noisy and slow operation. User input is taken from strips of paper with holes punched in them. As data is accumulated it is shown in the registers using decatrons (which have since
become popular in hobby projects
). Luckily we can get a look at this in
the BBC story about the WITCH
.
According to
the eLinux page on the device
, it was disassembled and put into storage from 1997 until 2009. At that point it was loaned to the museum and has been undergoing cleaning, reassembly, and repair ever since.
[Thanks David] | 28 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "887745",
"author": "Burzmali",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T21:06:39",
"content": "But can it run Linux?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "887794",
"author": "wretch",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T22:14:56",
"con... | 1,760,376,679.544819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/net-micro-framework-used-for-a-prompt-based-computer/ | .NET Micro Framework Used For A Prompt-based Computer | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
".net micro",
"fez cobra",
"prompt"
] | [Tom] is doing a little show and tell with his latest .NET Micro framework based project. He managed to get
a prompt-based computer running on a FEZ Cobra board
.
A USB keyboard serves as the input device. To give himself a familiar way to navigate and execute programs [Tom] mimicked the functionality of DOS. Above you can see the familiar format of the directory listings as he navigates the data on an SD card. But this goes deeper than changing directories and listing files. He also has access to commands which control peripherals, showing manipulation of the WiFi connection and demonstrating some simple code to show images on the screen. Since the hardware centers around the .NET MF, any compiled binary for that environment can be executed from the prompt as well.
See a complete demonstration of the project embedded after the break.
[Thanks Major] | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "887776",
"author": "G. Andrew Duthie",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T21:42:31",
"content": "Tom has some very cool projects for .NET Micro Framework. He’s always got something cool cooking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "887786",
... | 1,760,376,679.994996 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/dimming-the-living-room-lights-using-your-tv-remote/ | Dimming The Living Room Lights Using Your TV Remote | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"infrared",
"ir",
"light switch",
"mains",
"relay"
] | As part of a complete home theater setup [Andy] wanted to be able to control the lights from his couch. He started thinking about the best way to do this when he realized that his TV remote has buttons on it which he never uses. Those controls are meant for other components made by the same manufacturer as the TV. Since he doesn’t have that equipment on hand,
he built his own IR receiver to switch the lights with those unused buttons
.
He monitors and IR receiver using an AVR microcontroller. It is powered from mains via the guts from a wall wart included in the build. Also rolled into the project is a solid state relay capable of switching the mains feed to the light circuit. [Andy] mentions that going with a solid state part mean you don’t get that clicking associated with a mechanical relay. An electrical box extension was used to give him more room for mounting the IR receiver and housing his DIY circuit board. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "887680",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T19:27:15",
"content": "Be careful with which solid state relays you chose. Some of them work in series with the circuit you are trying to relay – meaning that even when the relay is off, there is a small current leaking through the ... | 1,760,376,679.374216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/msp430-launchpad-game-of-life-shield/ | MSP430 Launchpad Game Of Life Shield | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"conways game of life",
"launchpad",
"led matrix",
"msp430",
"pcb",
"shield"
] | [100uf]
built an LED matrix shield for the MSP430 launchpad
. His goal with this design was to have it play Conway’s Game of Life. It does just that, as you can see in the clip after the break. But it’s just waiting to learn some more tricks. After he tires of watching the cellular automaton he can try his hand at making some
LED pendant animations
.
As you can tell, the board was made in his home workshop. It’s not etched, but milled using the CNC machine
shown in this image gallery
. This is a single-sided PCB, which works well enough for the surface mount components and the downward facing pin sockets. But we wonder how difficult it was to solder the legs of that 8×8 LED matrix. It does have plastic feet at each corner that serve as standoffs to separate the body from the copper layer. But it still looks like a tight space into which he needed to get his iron and some solder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpaEVw45fBY
[via
Reddit
] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "887135",
"author": "Pall.e",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T02:24:29",
"content": "Pretty neat, he should sell some in the 43oh shop. I’d buy one assembled. I dressed up as “when life hands you lemons” for Halloween and I told my wife I could do something like this with leds and wear it t... | 1,760,376,679.417222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/tearing-down-the-wii-u/ | Tearing Down The Wii U | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"nintendo",
"teardown",
"Wii U",
"Wii U game pad"
] | With the release of the Wii U last weekend we knew it wouldn’t be long before we saw those glorious gut shots on the Internet. The folks at
iFixit have torn down a Wii U
, and the insides look somewhat promising for a potential hack to take control of the Wii U Game Pad.
The components
in the Wii U console
aren’t terribly surprising; a few wireless controllers, HDMI adapters, Flash memory chips, and the IBM Power CPU make up most of the interesting components. The insides of the GamePad, though,
look pretty interesting
. It appears the Wii U GamePad is powered by an ARM Cortex microcontroller built by STMicroelectronics, but the part numbers for the major ICs on the GamePad board are impervious to Googling.
Of course there’s still the question of how video is transmitted wirelessly from the Wii U console to the GamePad. iFixit found a Broadcom BCM4319XKUBG Wireless module that operates on normal WiFi frequencies. This module has been used in a few other pieces of video gear, most notably the Boxee Box, so there is some possibility of intercepting the video signal transmitted to the GamePad and figuring out the protocol.
The long and short of iFixit’s teardown, at least from the hacker perspective, is that all the interesting parts use hardware similar to what you’d find on any other eminently hackable device. Here’s to hoping we get an open Wii U GamePad before the year is out. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "886975",
"author": "PCBdude",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T21:18:27",
"content": "Someone over athttp://www.wiiuhacks.comhas the Wii U running homebrew.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "887026",
"author": "six677",
... | 1,760,376,679.473346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/optimizing-your-electronics-projects-with-a-camera/ | Optimizing Your Electronics Projects With A Camera | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"led",
"optimization"
] | What do you do when you have a microcontroller you’re trying to optimize? One method is using a debugger, but for AVRs and such that’s not a very common technique. For lower-level electronics projects, it’s nearly impossible, even. [Cnlohr] built a small Minecraft server that listens to in-game redstone circuits, but the performance of his real-world to block-world bridge wasn’t what he hoped. He came up with a pretty clever way of figuring out
what was slowing his server down
without any special gear at all.
[cnlohr]’s Minecraft server
is just a simple AVR microcontroller, Ethernet adapter, and SD card affixed to a beautiful glass PCB. The performance of his server wasn’t what he expected; downloading a largish file from the server resulted in a download rate of about 55kbps, much slower than he expected. He wasn’t quite sure what the hangup was, so he took a camera and with a long exposure time took a very blurry picture.
The Minecraft server has a blue LED to show when the SD card was being accessed. In the picture above, [cnlohr] saw that SD card access was taking far too long, and if he wanted to optimize the code this would be the place to start.
Not bad for a dead-simple method of seeing where the code on your microcontroller project is slowing down.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHbeFnSWSxI&w=470] | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "886913",
"author": "andres",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T20:11:14",
"content": "that’s super clever, i like it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "886937",
"author": "Hans vdr Woude",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T20:38:02",
"c... | 1,760,376,679.607365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/how-to-build-openocd-with-stellaris-launchpad-support/ | How To Build OpenOCD With Stellaris Launchpad Support | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"debugging",
"openocd",
"Stellaris Launchpad",
"stellarisware"
] | The stable version of OpenOCD (an open source On-Chip Debugging software package) doesn’t have support for the ICDI protocol used by the Stellaris Launchpad board. But it is pretty easy to
build your own OpenOCD from source after patching it to use the protocol
.
We’ve already seen
an open source tool used to flash binary images to the TI ARM board
. But that can’t be used with GDB. With the recent inclusion of USB-based ICDI in the OpenOCD development branches we gain all the features that come with the package. We’re quite happy hear about this as we use OpenOCD for many hardware architectures and this makes development for this board feel more like normal.
Our Stellaris Launchpad hasn’t just been sitting in the closet since we got it. We’ve learned a lot by using the lm4tools to program the chip
as we work our way through the online workshop
. We’re really beginning to like the Stellarisware peripheral library that has been provided. For us it works in a much more intuitive way than the one that STM uses with their ARM Discovery boards. We’d recommend taking a look at the workbook PDF (which is basically a verbose listing of what’s in the video series) and the library reference (called SW-DRL-UG-9453.pdf) which is in the docs folder of the Stellarisware package.
[via
Dangerous Protoypes
] | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "886878",
"author": "Sean",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T19:25:01",
"content": "For my fellow slow kids in the audience: On-Chip Debugger.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "886909",
"author": "techknowledgist",
"times... | 1,760,376,679.656256 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/launch-day-wii-u-homebrew-is-very-encouraging/ | Launch Day Wii U Homebrew Is Very Encouraging | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"homebrew",
"wii",
"Wii U"
] | [youtube=http://hackaday.com/?v=5RBQG8As7Rs&w=580]
With the launch of the Wii U yesterday, we were wondering exactly how long it would take for this new console to be broken wide open allowing for the execution of homebrew code. Technically, it only took a day,
as [wraggster] shows us
, but the results aren’t what you would expect. Right now, he’s using methods meant for the classic Wii to open his system up; probably not the best way to open up the Wii U, but a start nonetheless.
This hack revolves around the Super Smash Bros. Brawl exploit that allows for the execution of unsigned code. It’s called
Smash Stack
and is one of the more popular ways of getting homebrew code running on the old, last-gen Wii.
Of course [wraggster]’s hack is dependent on the fact the classic Wii has been open for homebrew development for
years
now, and only works because of the Wii U’s ability to play classic Wii games. This probably isn’t the direction Wii U hackers want to go into, but it does provide a way for anyone to get into the Wii U system without using any new tricks. | 28 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "886741",
"author": "Ashaman99",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T16:52:27",
"content": "Can we take up a collection to get him a tripod, or even a helmet cam? Maybe pay a small child to hold the camera for him?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,376,680.169956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/18/jeri-uses-light-bulbs-in-an-oscillator/ | [Jeri] Uses Light Bulbs In An Oscillator | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"jeri ellsworth",
"oscillator",
"wien bridge"
] | Way back when [Ms Ellsworth] was a kid, she kept seeing the same circuit over and over again in her various op-amp books. It was a Wien bridge oscillator, a small circuit that outputs a sine wave with the help of a light bulb. Now that [Jeri] is much wiser, she decided to
play around with this strange oscillator
and found it’s actually pretty impressive for, you know, a light bulb.
The interesting portion of the Wien bridge is the gain portion of the circuit. It’s just a simple resistor divider, with a light bulb thrown in on one of its legs. When the current increases, this causes the light bulb to warm up (not enough to glow, though). When the temperature increases, the resistance in the light bulb increases, making the oscillator reach an equilibrium.
It’s a clever setup, but what about swapping out a resistor in place of the light bulb? In the video, [Jeri] tries just that, and it’s a mess. Where the light bulb circuit is amazingly stable with very, very low distortion, the resistor circuit looks like a disaster on the scope with harmonics
everywhere
.
A very cool build that would be perfect for an audio synth, but as [Jeri] says in her YouTube comments, “This doesn’t have enough distortion for indie bands.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBsSASge7ls&w=470] | 37 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "886129",
"author": "Wilfred",
"timestamp": "2012-11-18T18:15:00",
"content": "Wien Bridgehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Wien",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "886140",
"author": "Standard Mischief",
"timestamp": "2012-11... | 1,760,376,679.924156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/18/one-dimensional-pong-take-two/ | One Dimensional PONG, Take Two | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"led strip",
"pong"
] | Needing a Christmas present for his 4- and 5-year-old nieces, [John]
built a one-dimensional PONG game
, sure to be the delight of rosy-cheeked children on a Christmas morn.
The new and improved 1D PONG game is built around
a digital RGB LED strip
with an LPD8806 LED controller. The speed of the ‘ball’ is controlled by a pot on one side of the game. With each player pressing their button at the right time, the ball bounces back to the other player. Missing the ball awards a point to the other team and most likely an increase in the player’s frustration, greatly increasing the risk of this game being thrown across the room.
While it’s not an obscenely long 1D PONG game like
[Jason]’s previous 5 meter version
, it’s more than enough to keep a pair of kids occupied for more than a few minutes, a remarkable achievement for just a microcontroller, buttons, and a piece of LED strip.
You can get [John]’s AVR code
in this pastebin
or just check out the video after the break. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "886022",
"author": "Dustin Evans",
"timestamp": "2012-11-18T14:12:36",
"content": "I’m also making a Christmas present this year. Wonder how many other people are making rather than buying this year. Maybe you could have a thread of home-made Christmas presents?",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,376,680.057432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/discrete-6502-processor-sucked-into-linux-by-a-beaglebone/ | Discrete 6502 Processor Sucked Into Linux By A BeagleBone | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"beaglebone",
"embedded",
"linux",
"remote processor"
] | Often when we see projects using embedded Linux we think of them as not being hardware hacks. But this is a horse of an entirely different color. [Matt Porter] is leveraging a little known feature to directly
access a 6502 processor from inside a Linux environment
. In other words, this hack lets you write code for a 6502 processor, then load and execute it all from the same Linux shell.
The project leverages the best parts of the BeagleBone, which is an ARM development board running embedded Linux. It’s got a lot of GPIO pins that are easy to get via the boards pin sockets. And the design of the processor makes it fast enough to work well as a host for the 6502 chip. Which brings us back to how this is done. The Linux kernel has support for Remote Processors and that’s the route [Matt] traveled. With everything wired up and a fair amount of kernel tweaking he’s able to map the chip to the /dev/bvuart directory. If you want all the details the best resource is
this set of slides
(PDF) from his talk at Embedded Linux Conference – Europe.
This is one way to get out of all that hardware work [Quinn Dunki] has been doing to
build her own computer around a 6502 chip
.
[Thanks Andrew via
Dangerous Prototypes
] | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "887799",
"author": "mikemac",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T22:20:40",
"content": "Very interesting! I imagine the Beaglebone could emulate the 6502 faster than the 14MHz the chip is running at. But of course that’s not the point! I may have to pull out one of my Z80s and see what can be... | 1,760,376,680.102252 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/outlet-charging-station-retrofitted-with-the-guts-of-a-wifi-router/ | Outlet Charging Station Retrofitted With The Guts Of A WiFi Router | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"charging station",
"pwn plug",
"router",
"TL-WR703N",
"tp-link",
"usb",
"wifi"
] | While wandering around the aisles of his local electronics store this Westinghouse USB charging station caught [James’] eye. He sized it up and realized it would make the perfect enclosure for a small WiFi router. And so began his project to
turn a TP-Link TL-WR703N into a DIY Pwn Plug
.
The basic idea is to include hidden capabilities in an otherwise normal-looking device. For instance, take a look at
this ridiculously overpriced power strip
that also happens to spy on your activities. It doesn’t sound like [James] has any black hat activities planned, but just wanted an interesting application for the router.
He removed the original circuit board from the charging station to make room for his own internals. He inserted a cellphone charger to power the router, then desoldered the USB ports and RJ-45 connector for the circuit board to be positioned in the openings of the case. He even included a headphone jack that breaks out the serial port. There’s a lot of new stuff packed into there, but all of the original features of the charging station remain intact. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "892753",
"author": "cisco",
"timestamp": "2012-11-27T13:13:50",
"content": "Ever since the basic structure of the local area network was established, there has been an exponential rise in the complexity of the basic local area network. With the improvements in bandwidth utilization,... | 1,760,376,680.212514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/pick-and-place-that-cant-pick-or-place-but-it-looks-very-promising/ | Pick And Place That Can’t Pick Or Place… But It Looks Very Promising | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"computer vision",
"pick and place"
] | This sexy piece of CNC can really fly. It’s
a pick and place machine
which [Danh Trinh] has been working on. The thing is, so far it lacks the ability to move components at all. But the good news is the rest of the system seems to be there.
He posted a demo video of his progress so far which you can see embedded after the break. He starts of by showing off his computer vision software which he wrote in C#. The demonstration includes the view from the gantry-mounted camera, as well as the computer filtering which seems to accurately locate the solder pads and silk screen on the PCB. The second half of the video looks at the hardware seen above. It’s just executing some static code but the whine of those stepper motors is music to our ears. [Danh] reports that the movements of the needle that will eventually serve as the tip of the vacuum tweezer seem to be very accurate.
These home-built pick and place projects are quite a challenge, but
we’ve seen a lot of really awesome work on them lately
. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "887641",
"author": "bearmos",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T18:19:18",
"content": "you didn’t mention that this is the same guy that did the storage bot:http://hackaday.com/2012/03/18/storagebot-finds-all-your-components-makes-your-storage-drawers-feel-inadequate/",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,680.259163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/more-continuous-wave-radar-fun/ | More Continuous Wave Radar Fun | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware"
] | [
"labview",
"radar"
] | [Gregory Charvat] continues to have a great time testing out radar systems. He and a friend have pointed the radar out the garage door and are
using it to see who can reach a high running velocity
.
The last time we looked in on [Greg’s] work he had
acquired an old police radar unit and wired it up to use with a laptop
. The hardware he’s working with now is a lot more bulky and we don’t think it will be hitting the road with him anytime soon (although it is on wheels). The video after the break starts off which an overview of the test system which is mounted in a waist-high rack. He illustrates how Labview is monitoring the radar inputs and then moves on to show off the hardware which is actually harvesting the data. The box is quite versatile, able to run five different systems and includes a slew of different connector types. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "887469",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T14:37:22",
"content": "Another party trashed by Nyquist and Shannon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "887571",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T16:... | 1,760,376,680.307565 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/20/cutting-styrofoam-with-a-cnc-machine-and-turning-it-into-aluminum/ | Cutting Styrofoam With A CNC Machine And Turning It Into Aluminum | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"aluminum",
"aluminum casting",
"hot wire cutter",
"styrofoam",
"styrofoam cutter"
] | One of the most popular ways of turning an object trapped inside the world of a computer into a real, metal object is the art of lost wax, or lost foam casting. In this process, a full-scale model of the object to be made in metal is crafted in either foam or wax, placed in a pile of sand, and burned away by molten metal.
[ptflea] over at the Bamberg, Germany hackerspace Backspace came up with a very clever build that automatically cuts foam into the desired shape, ready to be taken out to the backyard foundry.
The build
is based around an old flatbed scanner and a hot wire cutter. The old scanner conveniently had an equal number of steps per axis, so attaching an Adafruit motor shield and replacing the old control electronics was just an issue of finding the correct resistors.
Software control is provided by
a Processing app [ptflea] whipped up
and is able to carefully cut very delicate shapes that even the steadiest hand would have trouble with.
Making stuff out of styrofoam is cool and all, but the real goal for this project was
setting things on fire and melting old heatsinks
. The styrofoam molds were placed in a bucket full of sand, and the furnace – a few ytong bricks, a crucible, and a propane burner – started to melt some aluminum. The molten aluminum was poured onto the mold and after cooling, the makers of Backspace had a few very cool aluminum trinkets.
A nice build that is able to produce some very nice metal objects. We suspect, though, that a higher-density foam (something along the lines of blue or green insulation sheets, if they have those in Germany) could produce an even higher level of detail if you’d like to build your own.
Videos after the break. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "887427",
"author": "ColdTurkey",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T13:31:57",
"content": "Forgive me if this sounds dumb but I’ve not rly come across this before. How do you get from cutting foam or wax to having something that can contain molten metal?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,376,680.369638 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/bathroom-fan-that-switches-itself-on-when-it-gets-steamy-or-smelly/ | Bathroom Fan That Switches Itself On When It Gets Steamy Or Smelly | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"atmega328",
"bathroom",
"fan",
"gas sensor",
"home automation",
"humidity sensor",
"methane"
] | At first we thought that [Brandon Dunson] was writing in to tell us he’s too lazy to fix his bathroom fan. What he really meant is that simply replacing the unit isn’t nearly enough fun. Instead, he developed his own bathroom fan trigger based on stinky or humid air conditions. He didn’t publish a post about the project but we’ve got his entire gallery of build images after the break.
The initial inspiration for the project came from
a twitter-connected fart sensing office chair
. Hiding behind the character display you can see the MQ-4 methane gas sensor which he picked up for the project. But since there’s also a shower in the bathroom he included a humidity sensor with the project. Both are monitored by an ATmega328 which averages 10 readings from each sensor before comparing the data with a set threshold. If the sensors read above this level a relay turns on the bathroom fan.
Don’t be confused by the small DC fans seen above; [Brandon] is still using a proper exhaust fan. These are just used to help circulate the air around the sensors so that low-hanging smells will still trigger the system. This has got to be the perfect thing for a heavily used restroom. | 31 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "887076",
"author": "just me...",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T00:23:06",
"content": "He jacked my idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "887085",
"author": "omegacs",
"timestamp": "2012-11-20T00:29:39",
"content": "I’ve a... | 1,760,376,680.447672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/19/raspberry-pi-reaches-critical-mass-as-xbmc-hardware/ | Raspberry Pi Reaches Critical Mass As XBMC Hardware | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"RPi",
"set top box",
"streaming",
"xbmc"
] | For years I’ve been dreaming of a streaming media device that could just be stuck to the back of a television. Since XBMC has been far and away my favorite set-top box software, I’ve closely monitored hardware developments that can run that package. Now I think it’s time to declare that the Raspberry Pi has achieved the base specifications to be branded the XBMC device that rules them all.
There are a huge range of opinions on this topic, but please hear me out after the break to see what has brought me to this conclusion.
Media playback and high-definition
When I first tried out XBMC on the Raspberry Pi, I was
floored to learn that the board ships without MPEG-2 hardware decoding
. That is a huge deal breaker as everything I record over the air (using ATSC tuners and MythTV) uses that codec. Well, that issue has been remedied. For a few bucks (I think it cost me $3.30) you can now
buy a license that is extremely easy to install
. I paid with Paypal, then copied and pasted the code that was sent back to me into a text file to the SD card.
Now the RPi can playback the 1080i mpeg recordings with ease. I’m running OpenElec and there’s even support on the way to use XBMC as a PVR frontend (the MythTV add-on isn’t quite ready for beta testing yet but soon).
Control options
There are several control options for the board, but in my mind the best is Consumer Electronic Control (
CEC
). This lets you use your TV to control XBMC via the HDMI cable. Not all TVs have this, but mine does. The remote control seen here has direction buttons, OK, menu, return, those four colored buttons, the number pad, and the DVR controls at the bottom (play, pause, stop, etc.). This is automatically enabled in the recent builds of OpenElec for some zero configuration goodness.
As with all modern builds of XBMC it is possible to control them through your home network. You can use XBMC remote apps for Android and iPhone, or even write your own.
The fact that this is a Linux distro means it can even use lirc. This is the package that has long been used to add IR remote control to home theater PCs. I remember building my own USB IR receiver using the V-USB stack and an ATtiny2313. But this type of work isn’t required to get an IR receiver connected to the RPi. Thanks to the GPIO header you can be up and running quite easily. I had a TSOP4838 on hand. This runs on 5V which can be supplied by the header. But the I/O pins on the RPi are not 5V tolerant so I included a voltage divider on the signal pin. I found this
post of the utmost help in getting the receiver and Lirc working
.
Cost
The final aspect I like to consider is the cost of the device. With the Raspberry Pi board, a power supply, and the license for the decoder all coming in quite a bit under $100 how can you go wrong? I’d bet you can purchase a nice little case and still not surpass the one Benjamin threshold.
Conclusion
The software that I’m using for testing is all in the development stages, and yet things seem to work great. Like I said, high-definition video plays without a hitch. Add-ons for XBMC work a bit slowly in the menus, but playback is perfect.
As you can see here I’m going to be doing some long-term testing. Instead of attaching the board to the back of my television with some Velcro I’ve zip-tied it to the underside of my entertainment center. I haven’t figured out how much power this thing consumes when not being used, but there isn’t really an option to hibernate (the problem lies in waking from a power-down state). I’m not sure if this will be solved in the future, but for now I’m just unplugging the device when I’m done using it. In my mind this is a small hiccup that can be solved with a smart power strip that switches when the TV is turned off. I’m going to wait to see if there’s a more eloquent solution that pops up in the near future.
I feel it necessary to mention that I would love to have Netflix streaming on this device. But that is a shortfall of Netflix, not of XBMC or Raspberry Pi. It should be able to play Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime via unofficial Add-ons. | 96 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "887037",
"author": "Ross",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T23:08:31",
"content": "http://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/usb-killswitch-turns-off-your-home-entertainment-bling-automatically/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "887039",
"author... | 1,760,376,680.676341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/python-script-lets-you-monitor-multiple-serial-devices-at-once/ | Python Script Lets You Monitor Multiple Serial Devices At Once | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"monitor",
"python",
"serial"
] | Not knowing what’s going on inside of your electronics projects can make it quite difficult to get the bugs out. [John] was bumping up against this problem when working on wireless communications between several devices. At just about the same time his friend came up with
a script with lets you monitor multiple serial devices in one terminal window
.
We’re used to using minicom, a Linux package that does the job when working with serial connections of all kinds. But [John] is right, we’re pretty sure you can only connect to one device per minicom instance. But [Jim’s] Python serial terminal (
available in this git repository
) allows you to specify multiple devices as command line arguments. You can even use wildcards to monitor every USB connection. The script then automatically chooses a different color for each device.
The image above is from [John’s] wireless project. Even without any other background this shows how easy it is to debug this way rather than tab back and forth between windows which gets confusing very quickly. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "884367",
"author": "cevat candar",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T21:48:28",
"content": "very useful. does it any standalone windows program exist for this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "884440",
"author": "John",
... | 1,760,376,680.787303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/pov-wheels-for-a-longboard/ | POV Wheels For A Longboard | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ATtiny24",
"longboard",
"POV",
"skateboard"
] | If you don’t mind working with really small components
this POV wheel project for a longboard
will certainly attract some attention.
The name of the game here is small and cheap. Small because the wheels are only 72mm in diameter (about 2.8 inches). Cheap because [Ch00f] wants to produce and sell them locally. He went with an ATtiny24 microcontroller driving fifteen LEDs. Obviously this will present a problem as the uC uses a 14-pin SOIC package and that’s just not enough I/O to drive the LEDs individually. Add to that the issue of storing patterns to be displayed and you start to run out of program memory very quickly.
But obvious he pulled it off. The image above shows the wheel displaying the CT logo (for ch00ftech.com) and there are several other patterns shown off in the clip after the break. The LEDs are multiplexed, but the wheel spins fast enough that this turns out to be okay. The rotation is measured by an IR reflectance sensor aimed at the stationary axle. A CR2032 powers the device, with some counterweights added to keep the wheel balanced.
Our only concern is the fragility of the exposed electronics. But if you hit the right BOM price we guess you can just replace the board as needed.
[via
Reddit
] | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "884286",
"author": "Robot",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T21:10:25",
"content": "Heh. Nice. You’ll have a real market opportunity here in Berkeley.– Robot",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "884312",
"author": "Thank You",
"times... | 1,760,376,680.729818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/raspberry-pi-driven-polargraph-exhibits-high-precision-drawing-ability/ | Raspberry Pi Driven Polargraph Exhibits High Precision Drawing Ability | Mike Szczys | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arduino",
"Go",
"plotter",
"Polargraph",
"RPi",
"stepper motor"
] | This
polar graph draws some amazing shapes
on a dry erase board. Part of that is due to the mounting brackets used for the two stepper motors and the stylus. But credit is also due for the code which takes velocity into account in order to plan for the next set of movements.
The Go language
is used to translate data into step commands for the two motors. This stream of commands is fed over a serial connection between the RPi board and an Arduino. The Arduino simply pushes the steps to the motor controllers. The inclusion of the RPi provides the horsepower needed to make such smooth designs. This is explained in the second half of [Brandon Green’s] post. The technique uses constant acceleration, speed, and deceleration for most cases which prevents any kind of oscillation in the hanging stylus. But there are also contingencies used when there is not enough room to accelerate or decelerate smoothly.
You can catch a very short clip of the hardware drawing a tight spiral in the video embedded after the break. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "884258",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T20:53:50",
"content": "Nice project and great execution. How did you do the conversion from pictures (raspberry pi logo and face) to vector line art/gcode?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,376,680.931163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/avr-minecraft-server-lets-you-toggle-pins-from-the-virtual-world/ | AVR Minecraft Server Lets You Toggle Pins From The Virtual World | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega328",
"enc424j600",
"Glass PCB",
"minecraft",
"network",
"server"
] | Wanting to test his skills by building a webserver [Cnlohr] decided to also code
a Minecraft server which allows him to toggle pins
from inside the game. The rows of switches seen above give him direct access to the direction register and I/O pins of one port of the ATmega328.
The server hardware is shown in the image above. It’s hard to tell just from that image, but it’s actually
a glass substrate which is [Cnlohr’s]
specialty. He uses an ENC424J600 to handle the networking side of things. This chip costs almost twice as much as the microcontroller next to it. But even in single quantities the BOM came in at under $20 for the entire build.
In the video after the break [Cnlohr] and a friend demonstrate the ability for multiple users to log into the Minecraft world. The simulation is fairly bare-bones, but the ability to affect hardware from the game world is more exciting than just pushing 1s and 0s through some twisted pairs.
[via
Reddit
] | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "883832",
"author": "anon.coward",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T17:42:09",
"content": "Sweeeeet! ;)Great stuff, really fun to watch…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "883881",
"author": "Brady",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T17:57:1... | 1,760,376,680.982794 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/emulating-a-student-clicker-with-an-arduino/ | Emulating A Student Clicker With An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"clicker",
"i>clicker",
"nRF24L01+",
"turning point clicker"
] | When schools and universities have hundreds of students in a lecture course, they need a way to tell alumni and other potential benefactors that faculty/student relations are just as good as they were in the 1960s, when enrollment was just a fraction of current levels. Technology solves all problems, apparently, so administrators of these universities turn to ‘clickers’ – radio frequency remotes used to take attendance and administer quizzes.These clickers have absolutely no security, so it’s no surprise [Taylor Killian] was able to
emulate one of these clickers
with an Arduino allowing anyone with a laptop to cheat on a quiz, or have an entire class show up with only one student in the room.
Previously [Travis Goodspeed] (thanks for sending this in, [Travis]) tore apart one of these clickers – a TurningPoint ResponseCard RF – and discovered it uses a Nordic nRF24L01 wireless transceiver, commonly available on eBay for about two dollars.
[Taylor] connected this wireless module to an Arduino and whipped up a bit of code that allows him to listen to the audience responses, respond to a question as either a single clicker or all clickers, automatically respond with the most popular answer, and even block all audience responses to each question.
Perhaps technology doesn’t solve every problem, but at least [Taylor] learned
something
from a glorified remote control sold at the bookstore at an insane markup. | 20 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "883394",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T14:50:09",
"content": "Link to previous story:http://hackaday.com/2010/07/05/reverse-engineering-an-rf-clicker/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "883473",
"author": "Necroman... | 1,760,376,681.050786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/porsche-911-made-electric/ | Porsche 911 Made Electric | Brian Benchoff | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric car",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"porsche"
] | [Kurt] wanted an electric car, and always wanted to drive a Porsche. Killing two birds with one stone, he decided to combine these wishes and
convert a 2002 Porsche 911 into an electric vehicle
.
After removing the engine, fuel tank, exhaust, radiator, and all the other things that make an internal combustion engine work, [Kurt] installed a
high power motor, controller
and 72 lithium phosphate batteries weighing in at over 500 pounds. He’s put over 300 miles on the car in the last few months while working out the kinks, but now he’s finally gotten the bugs out of the system allowing him to take it up to some relatively high speeds.
Already [Kurt] has
taken his new ride to 100 mph
and done a little bit of
range testing
that told him he should expect around 40 miles per charge in his new ride. It’s not exactly what he hoped, but more than enough for a few trips around town while riding in style.
After the break is a video [Kurt]’s first test drive of his electric Porsche. | 63 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "883157",
"author": "pod",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T13:06:25",
"content": "Are all these EV prototypes actually street legal in the states?I know for sure that in Italy (and the in the rest of Europe) you’d have to get it inspected, authorized and registered as single model prototype... | 1,760,376,681.328414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/google-books-team-open-sources-their-book-scanner/ | Google Books Team Open Sources Their Book Scanner | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"book",
"book scanner",
"google books"
] | It’s no secret that Google has been scanning hundreds of thousands of books in the hope of recreating the Library of Alexandria. Publishers and authors really didn’t like that idea, so the Google books team is doing the next best thing: they’re
releasing the plans for a very clever book scanner
in the hope others will pick up the torch of creating a digital library of every book ever written.
Unlike some
other book scanners
we’ve seen that rely on an operator manually flipping pages, this linear book scanner turns the pages automatically with the help of a vacuum cleaner and a cleverly designed sheet metal structure after passing them over two image sensors taken from a desktop scanner.
The bill of materials comes in at around $1500, but according to the official design documents this includes a very expensive scanner, something that could be replaced in true hacker style with a few salvaged flatbed scanners.
After the break you can check out a Google Tech Talk presented by [Dany Qumsiyeh] going over the design and function of his DIY book scanner. There’s also a
relatively thorough design document
over on a Google code page.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw&w=470] | 39 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "883063",
"author": "word clock",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T12:22:33",
"content": "this is great, a proven design that really works.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "883100",
"author": "henry",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T12:3... | 1,760,376,681.129314 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/turning-3d-shutter-glasses-into-automatic-sunglasses/ | Turning 3D Shutter Glasses Into Automatic Sunglasses | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d",
"automatic",
"lcd",
"ldr",
"shutter glasses",
"sunglasses"
] | [Dino’s] hack this week seeks to create
sunglasses that dim based on the intensity of ambient light
. The thought is that this should give you the best light level even with changing brightness like when the sun goes behind a cloud or walking from inside to outside. He started with a pair of 3D shutter glasses. These have lenses that are each a liquid crystal pane. The glasses monitor an IR signal coming from a 3D TV, then alternately black out the lenses so that each eye is seeing a different frame of video to create the stereoscopic effect. In the video after the break he tears down the hardware and builds it back up with his own ambient light sensor circuit.
It only takes 6V to immediately darken one of the LCD panes. The interesting thing is that it takes a few seconds for them to become clear again. It turns out you need to bleed off the voltage in the pane using a resistor in order to have a fast response in both directions. Above you can see the light dependent resistor in the bridge of the frame that is used to trigger the panes. [Dino] shows at the end of his video that they work. But the main protective feature of sunglasses is that they filter out UV rays and he’s not sure if these have any ability to do that or not. | 62 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "878411",
"author": "mad_max",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T23:30:55",
"content": "Weren’t there some sunglasses in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series that blacked out the wearer’s vision when they sensed danger? It would be fantastic if somebody made a pair of these that blacked out whenever... | 1,760,376,681.22869 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/demystifying-camcorder-crt-viewfinders/ | Demystifying Camcorder CRT Viewfinders | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"camcorder",
"composite video",
"crt",
"display"
] | Every smartphone (and most dumb phones) has a video camera built into it these days. Some of them are even capable of recording respectable HD video. So we’d bet that the decades old camcorder you’ve got kicking around isn’t getting any use at all anymore. [John] wants to encourage you to hack that hardware. He published a post showing just
how easy it is to salvage and use a camcorder CRT
.
The gist is that you simply need to hook up power and feed it video. The board that is attached to the CRT has its own voltage hardware to drive the tube. He demonstrates a 9V battery as a power supply, but also mentions that it should be pretty easy to power the thing from a USB port. As for video, all it takes is a composite signal. Of course you’ve got to determine the pinout for your particular CRT module. The method he chose was to use a continuity tester to find the path from a capacitor’s negative leg to the appropriate pin header. Next he used a bench supply to inject a current-limited low voltage until he saw response when probing the pins. Finding the composite-in is a similar trial and error process.
So what can you use this for? Why not
make it the display for a simple video game
? | 58 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "878298",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T22:19:24",
"content": "I had one I was going to use with one of the gameduino boards, but I accidentally fried the crt board when I shorted something . Oops!Sometimes you can find the pinouts for the viewfinder connectors online... | 1,760,376,681.420686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/a-wearable-pipboy-3000/ | A Wearable Pipboy 3000 | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"digital picture frame",
"Fallout",
"pipboy 3000",
"prop",
"rotary encoder"
] | [Zachariah Perry] builds a lot of replica props, and judging from the first few offerings on his blog he’s quite good at it. We enjoyed looking in on the Captain America shield and Zelda treasure chest (complete with music, lights, and floating heart container). But his most recent offering is
the wearable and (kind of) working Pipboy 3000 from the Fallout series
.
From his description in the video after the break it sounds like the case itself came as a promotional item that was part of a special edition of the game. He’s done a lot to make it functional though. The first thing to notice is the screen. It’s domed like the surface of a CRT, but there’s obviously not enough room for that kind of thing. The dome is made from the lens taken out of a slide viewer. It sits atop the screen of a digital picture frame. [Zachariah] loaded still images from the game into the frame’s memory, routing its buttons to those on the Pipboy. He also added a 12 position rotary switch which toggles between the lights at the bottom of the screen.
A little over a year ago we saw
a more or less fully functional Pipboy
. But that included so many added parts it was no longer wearable. | 20 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "878213",
"author": "lloyd3000",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T21:23:13",
"content": "Awsome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "878222",
"author": "biozz",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T21:27:15",
"content": "as a fallout junky …... | 1,760,376,681.476327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/mesh-networking-with-multiple-raspberry-pi-boards/ | Mesh Networking With Multiple Raspberry Pi Boards | Mike Szczys | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"babel",
"linux",
"mesh network",
"networking",
"RPi"
] | Since he’s got several Raspberry Pi boards on hand [Eric Erfanian] decided to see what he could pull off using the robust networking tools present in every Linux installation. His four-part series takes you from loading an image on the SD cards to
building a mesh network from RPi boards and WiFi dongles
. He didn’t include a list of links to each article in his post. If you’re interested in all four parts we’ve listed them after the break.
He says that getting the mesh network up and running is easiest if none of the boards are using an Ethernet connection. He used
the Babel package
to handle the adhoc routing since no device is really in charge of the network. Each of the boards has a unique IP manually assigned to it before joining. All of this work is done in part 3 of the guide. The link above takes you to part 4 in which [Eric] adds an Internet bridge using one of the RPi boards which shares the connection with the rest of the mesh network.
If the power of this type of networking is of interest you should check out
this home automation system that takes advantage of it
.
[Eric’s] RPI Mesh Networking Articles:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "878225",
"author": "cvmagic123",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T21:28:26",
"content": "Lol, Grammer-guy…The subject in that sentence they are referring to is plural as there are multiple boards involved so the correct verb to use is ‘are’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,376,681.533519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/put-your-dev-board-to-work-as-a-demoscene-display/ | Put Your Dev Board To Work As A Demoscene Display | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"chipkit",
"demoscene"
] | If you’re looking for a way to push your comfort zone with that slick new microcontroller you’ve been working with we think [Morgan Gangwere] has the answer. He took
his chipKit development board and used it as a demoscene platform
.
Demoscene refers to audio and visual demos written to squeeze as much entertainment out of a given platform as possible. We’ve seen demos for a lot of different platforms; for instance, here’s
a Propeller chip demo
. But this use of the onboard OLED screen brings a smile to our faces. With well under 100 lines of code [Morgan] implemented several different video effects (the music heard in the clip after the break is not being produced by the board). There is a star field which serves as the background. Over the top of it a scrolling message is displayed following a sine wave shape. The speed at which it scrolls is set by the trimpot, which you can see adjusted about 50 seconds into the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0ZXfAmWjE | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "878027",
"author": "manis404",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T19:38:02",
"content": "“..push your comfort zone..” is that from David Deangelo?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "878086",
"author": "jmptable",
"timestamp": "2012-1... | 1,760,376,681.638178 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/wristband-rfid-unlocks-car-door-and-starts-engine/ | Wristband RFID Unlocks Car Door And Starts Engine | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bracelet",
"rfid",
"tag",
"trf7960",
"wristband"
] | [João Ribeiro] is an electronics engineer by day, but in his free time he likes to ply his trade on everyday items. Recently he’s been integrating his own microcontroller network to
unlock and start his car via RFID
. In addition to the joy of pulling apart the car’s interior, he spent time designing his own uC breakout board and developing an RFID reader from a single chip.
He’s working with a 1988 Mercedes that has very little in the way of electronics. It sounds like the stock vehicle didn’t even include a CAN bus so the prelude to the RFID hack had him installing a CAN bus network made up of two microcontrollers. One reads the velocity and RPM while the other displays it on the tachometer. When he began the tag-based entry system he used an RFID reader module for prototyping, but eventually built his own reader around the TRF7960 chip. This included etching his own receiver coil which was mounted in the side-view mirror bracket. To unlock the doors he holds the bracelet up to the mirror and the vehicle lets him in. The video after the break starts with a demonstration of the completed project and moves on to some build videos.
We certainly like the idea of using a bracelet rather than
implanting the tag in the meaty part of your hand
. | 19 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "877879",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T18:07:01",
"content": "That was cut like a guy ritchie movie. I was expecting him to casually pull out a gun and rob a liqueur store.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "878062",
... | 1,760,376,681.593989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/14/playing-led-zeppelin-on-a-c64/ | Playing Led Zeppelin On A C64 | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"Led Zeppelin"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iikj5EfL770&w=470]
In the C64 demoscene there are a ton of awesome software hacks that push the Commodore 64, the 1MHz 6510-based computer from 1982, to its limits. Most of these C64 demos are very much limited by the hardware inside the C64, but the demoscene is always coming up with new ways of pushing the envelope. [No Quarter] just sent in one of these software hacks that propel the capabilities of the C64 into the realm of absurdity by
playing full length songs directly from the floppy drive
.
Playing a song on the C64 begins with an Amiga and a Perfect Sound digitizer to convert the digital audio file into a 4-bit sample. Once this sample is transferred over to the C64 where it was manually timed so streaming it off a 1581 disk drive would result in the song playing at the correct pitch. It’s an amazing work of optimization; the audio data is streamed off the disk just as fast as it’s played from memory, an amazing data throughput rate for the ‘ol C64
After the break you can see [No Quarter] playing Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Shania Twain, and Extreme. A very, very cool project and with the addition of a C64 hard drive makes it possible to have a media player for the C64.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyVdgnPF7zA&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63IfHLMZsHM&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zqmmusnNc&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iikj5EfL770&w=470] | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "877718",
"author": "nesfreak",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T16:35:17",
"content": "Its playing of a 1581 drive, not 1571 =)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "878043",
"author": "Spacedog",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T19... | 1,760,376,682.018957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/hackaday-links-november-15-2012/ | Hackaday Links: November 15, 2012 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"breakout",
"gameboy",
"hot plate",
"slideshow",
"VU meter"
] | Another way to break out dual pin headers
[Uwe] wrote in to share
his technique for breaking out dual pin headers
. He uses two single pin headers, a piece of protoboard, and a dual row pin socket to make an adapter. This is removable where
the other method we saw this week
was not.
Web-based slide show hack
Wanting to use an old Android tablet as a digital picture frame, [Gordon] coded up a simple way to
use an HTML page to scan your picture directories to feed a rotating background image
.
The simplest hot plate
For his chemistry experiments [Charlie] is using
a plain old clothes iron for a hot plate
. he simply clamps it upside down to the bench. It doesn’t have any stirring abilities, but we already have an old iron in the shop which we use for toner transfer so we’ll have to keep this in mind if we ever need to heat chemicals (might be a good way to warm etchant).
A charging VU meter
This Cambrionix series8 universal charger has columns of LEDs that are animated when a device is charging. [Steve Tyson] works for the company and has had some fun messing with the firmware. He’s
showing off the display as a VU meter
.
Game Boy knockoff teardown
This wide-form-factor Game Boy is a knockoff from way back when the original system hit the market. You won’t want to miss
this lengthy post that takes a look at what’s inside
. [Thanks Neil] | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "881143",
"author": "esben",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T23:40:10",
"content": "five for fiveThis is a fine list of hacks. From small to large they all are both good and useful.Congrats all around",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "881... | 1,760,376,681.864564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/in-depth-comparison-at-stm32-f3-and-f4-discovery-boards/ | In-depth Comparison At STM32 F3 And F4 Discovery Boards | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"dev board",
"discovery",
"f3",
"f4",
"stm32"
] | The STM32 F3 and F4 Discovery boards have been around for a while now. We’ve looked at both separately and they’re impressive dev boards for the price. Now can get a closer look at each from this
in-depth comparison of the two Cortex-M4 development tools
.
To start off, both of the boards have the same size and footprint (there are two dual-row pin headers which break out the connections to the ARM chip). Fundamentally the F3 and F4 chips have a different level of features, but the boards themselves are aimed at different applications as well. The F3 series of microcontrollers looks to be more affordable than the F4, containing less program memory, no Ethernet capability, and only one USB port. But both have hardware floating-point abilities and they’re blazing fast. The boards offer a MEMS accelerometer for prototyping. But the Discovery-F3 also contains a gyroscope while the Discovery-F4 provides audio hardware like a microphone, and DAC.
If you want to use a Linux box to develop with these tools
you might find this guide helpful
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "880952",
"author": "0xfred",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T22:09:43",
"content": "Around for a while? The F3 may have been announced a few months ago, but is only just starting to be available to buy – and still isn’t available in the UK. A nice comparison though.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,681.766858 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/roomba-and-virtual-walls-make-up-this-theme-family-halloween-costume/ | Roomba And Virtual Walls Make Up This Theme Family Halloween Costume | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"costume",
"halloween",
"ir",
"led",
"pattern",
"roomba",
"string",
"sync"
] | It figures. You spend a ton of time making a cool set of costumes and then you can’t get your kid to pose for a picture. It’s okay though, we still get the point. This themed set of costumes dresses
the little one as a Roomba vacuuming robot while mom and dad are suited up as virtual walls
(modules that are used to keep the bot from falling down stairs, etc.). It’s fun and unique, but had it not been for some additional electronics this would have been relegated to a links post. For safety sake each costume was outfitted with a ring of LEDs. As a challenge,
the lights were given the ability to sync up patterns
with each other.
Each costume has a circular frame at the top with a set of RGB LED strings attached. To get them to display synchronized patterns an IR transmitter/receiver board was designed and ordered from OSHPark. Each costume has four of these modules so no matter where the wearers are facing it should not break communications. A demo of the synchronized light rings can be seen after the break | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "880949",
"author": "messmaker",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T22:08:32",
"content": "Awesome :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "881070",
"author": "c0derage",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T23:14:17",
"content": "I sooo feel th... | 1,760,376,681.810516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/an-umbrella-stand-that-tells-you-the-weather-forecast/ | An Umbrella Stand That Tells You The Weather Forecast | Mike Szczys | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"flyport",
"forecast",
"motion sensor",
"pir",
"umbrella",
"weather",
"wifi"
] | This project takes an umbrella stand and gives it the ability to
let you know if you need to take an umbrella
when you leave the house. The image above is a concept drawing, but a first prototype was built and seems to work quite well. See for yourself in the video after the break.
The project was put together by openPicus. They sell a prototyping module called the Flyport which provides a WiFi connection to your projects. This board connects to a set of LEDs which are used to illuminate the translucent plastic umbrella stand. But you might not notice the color change if the LEDs were always on. Also designed into the system is a PIR motion sensor. When you walk toward the door to leave for the day it switches on the appropriate color — green for clear, blue for raining, and red for storming — catching your attention in time to grab an umbrella as you pass by.
You don’t need to spend a bundle to pull off a hack like this. You can
scavenge for a PIR sensor
, use one color of LEDs just to tell you when rain or storms are forecast, and an ENC28J60 is
a cheap and easy Ethernet alternative
to using WiFi. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "880485",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T18:39:25",
"content": "another solution is to keep an umbrella in your car… Works quite well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "880604",
"author": "Julien",
... | 1,760,376,683.748202 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/variometer-build-for-gliding-aircraft/ | Variometer Build For Gliding Aircraft | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"24fj64",
"bariometric sensor",
"ms5611",
"pic",
"variometer"
] | If you’re flying through the air in a non-powered vehicle your rate of descent is something that you want to keep any eye one. With that in mind, [Adrian] decided to
design his own Variometer
(
translated
) what will have a place in the cockpit next to the other instrumentation. It emits a pitch whose frequency is dictated by the rate at which altitude is being lost or gained.
He went with a PIC 24FJ64 microcontroller to drive the device. It’s reading data from an MS5611 barometric pressure sensor. This measures changes in air pressure associated with a change in altitude. As a user interface he chose one of SparkFun’s Nokia 5110 LCD screen breakout boards. He also went with one of their boost converts which lets him power the device from just one battery cell. The case itself is cut from several layers of plastic using a CNC mill.
In the video after the break you can see how sensitive the device is. Moving it just a few feet up or down has an immediate effect on the sound and the displayed data. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "880319",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T17:16:11",
"content": "Uhhhh just how weather resistant is that case?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "880325",
"author": "Julien",
"timestamp": "2012-11-1... | 1,760,376,684.182116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/squarewear-sewable-microcontroller-board/ | SquareWear Sewable Microcontroller Board | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"18f14k50",
"pic",
"sew",
"sewable",
"squarewear"
] | If you’re into adding electronics to your wearable items this little board will be of interest. The 1.6″x1.6″ board is called
SquareWear and comes in several different flavors
.
It may be a bit of a surprise that this is not an Arduino compatible board. [Ray] tried a few projects with PIC microcontrollers and ended up really liking them. He chose to go with the PIC 18F14K50 for this project. The chip has USB functionality and is running a bootloader. He thinks this makes it easier to work with over a wide range of computers than the Lilypad (a sewable Arduino compatible board which sometimes runs into FTDI driver issues the first time you try to program it).
We like the fact that it is open source. As we mentioned earlier, it comes in a few different flavors. There is a red or white version that uses a LiPo battery, and one that is driven from a CR2032 coin cell. If you’re working on a small project to which you would like to add a rechargeable battery this will serve as
a cheap and easy reference design
.
[via
Adafruit
] | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "880212",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T16:18:24",
"content": "Oh yes, wear your heart on your sleeve.Or when a heart lights up, your cow-orkers can say,“I just saw so and so with a heart on!” B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,376,684.122503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/15/an-extemely-unique-weather-display/ | An Extemely Unique Weather Display | Jeremy Cook | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Featured",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Tempescope",
"weather",
"weather station"
] | Most home weather displays use an LED screen or other moderately interesting methods of showing you what’s going on outside.
The [Tempescope]
, however, takes an entirely different route, actually recreating a tiny weather environment on your bookshelf!
This active weather device is controlled via an Arduino as well as a pump, ultrasound diffuser, and other assorted components connected to a computer. It was originally meant to display, or more accurately recreate (precreate?) tomorrow’s weather. What is even more interesting is that using [World Weather] software, it’s able to simulate the weather on any place on earth.
Early in this article [Ken] lists the art of [bonsai] as one of his inspirations. He’s open to suggestions as to how to expand this device, which can be seen after the break. We (I at least) would think it was awesome if there was actually a bonsai tree in the environment in keeping with its influences. Certainly our readers can give him some feedback as well!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddMyIsxZ-g&w=470&h=315%5D | 69 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "879652",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-11-15T13:33:15",
"content": "If you owned a non-native plant, (e.g. bonsai) you could use this system in a “bio-dome” to recreate the weather of its native environment. i.e. water it whenever it rains in the original locale whether rain ... | 1,760,376,683.848651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/18/controlling-a-quadcopter-with-a-leap-motion/ | Controlling A Quadcopter With A Leap Motion | Brian Benchoff | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"leap",
"Leap motion"
] | A few folks over at National Instruments going under the name LabVIEW Hacker have gotten their hands on a Leap Motion dev kit. The Leap is an interesting little input device designed to track fingertips in 3D space, much like a Kinect but at much higher resolution. Needing something to show off their LabVIEW prowess, these guys
controlled their office AR Drone with the Leap
, making a quadcopter controller that is completely touchless.
Building on
their previous AR Drone hack
, the LabVIEW team spent the better part of a day adding wrappers around the Leap SDK and adding in control for their RC quadcopter. Now, simply by moving their fingertips over the Leap sensor, they can control their office quadrotor using a very high-resolution 3D scanner.
Video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoiwL0SK3jA&w=470] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "886003",
"author": "jdschuitemaker",
"timestamp": "2012-11-18T13:02:22",
"content": "People who are interested in this might also likehttp://nodecopter.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "886038",
"author": "Isaac",
"ti... | 1,760,376,683.967353 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/17/making-an-overhead-camera-gantry-take-2/ | Making An Overhead Camera Gantry, Take 2 | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"camera gantry",
"overhead gantry"
] | Last week we saw [Todd]’s solution to getting a tripod out-of-the-way when filming a few DIY videos. It’s an overhead camera gantry that allows him to move a camera around his garage workshop without a tripod getting in the way. This weekend,
he’s back with a new and improved version
. It’s a vast improvement over his Mk 1 gantry system, and it much simpler to build, to boot.
[Todd]’s new and improved overhead camera gantry builds is a vast improvement
on his previous build
. In the original build, [Todd] used only one cross piece between the overhead garage door tracks, and the carriage suspending the tripod overhead was extremely clunky.
Version 2 of [Todd]’s camera gantry again makes use of unused garage door tracks to suspend a tripod above his workshop. This time, though, he’s using two rails between these garage door tracks making pushing the tripod around his workshop much easier – even when not pushing it from the middle.
To move the camera across the workspace, [Todd] did away with the square tube between the garage door tracks and used another set of garage door tracks. It’s a beautiful system that moves very, very smoothly between his workbench and welding station, perfect for making a few high-quality DIY videos.
You can check out [Todd]’s build video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZtF92BqP3s&w=580] | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "885583",
"author": "simulascrum",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T19:35:49",
"content": "Too bad my workshop got no garage door :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "885632",
"author": "Trav",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T20... | 1,760,376,684.221653 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/17/eve-radio-breakout-board-for-the-raspberry-pi/ | EVE Radio Breakout Board For The Raspberry Pi | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ISM",
"radio module",
"raspberry pi",
"xbee"
] | The Raspberry Pi is an excellent tool to build the ‘Internet of things’ we’ve been hearing about, but there’s still the issue of connecting the Raspi to other devices.
The EVE Alpha
– a breakout board for several wireless radio modules for the Raspberry Pi – hopes to change that with their Kickstarter campaign.
The idea behind the EVE is to provide a link between low-power radio modules found in a few of the microcontroller projects we’ve seen and the Raspberry Pi. It does this by simply serving as a breakout board, taking the GPIO pins on the Raspi and connecting them to solder pads for a few of the many radio modules currently available.
Already the EVE supports the
RFM12B wireless tranciever
, a
Z-Wave module
, 868-915Mhz SRF modules, and has a breakout for an XBee module, allowing the EVE to communicate using one of
the many different XBee boards
. There’s also a battery-backed real-time clock and temperature sensor thrown in for good measure making this board the perfect building block for an outdoor weather station or solar array.
It’s an awesome idea, and if you already have a few radio modules, incredibly cheap; just the PCB is only £6, and a board with all the SMD components is only £20. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "885467",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T17:14:05",
"content": "So…the policy on Kickstarter projects has changed?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "885478",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,376,684.022568 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/17/wii-u-to-be-released-this-weekend-wii-u-gamepad-to-be-torn-apart-on-workbenches-across-the-land/ | Wii U To Be Released This Weekend, Wii U GamePad To Be Torn Apart On Workbenches Across The Land | Brian Benchoff | [
"News",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"Wii U",
"Wii U GamePad",
"WiiU"
] | In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, Nintendo will be releasing their next-gen console this weekend. It’s called the Wii U, and one of the most interesting features is
the Wii U GamePad
– the first controller to feature a full-color video screen right between the analog sticks.
Needless to say, we’re not terribly interested in the Wii U. The GamePad, though, looks
perfect
for robot controllers, FPV aerial vehicles, and a whole slew of projects that require some remote control.
The hardware for the GamePad is fairly impressive; apart from D pads and analog sticks, the new Wii Controller features a front-facing camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, 6.2 inch 854×480 touchscreen display, and an extension port housing an I2C bus for all your old Wii peripherals.
Other than a stock feature list, we have no idea how the Wii U will be able to transmit video to the GamePad. It
might
be WiFi, allowing you to connect all your projects to a wireless network and control them without a whole lot of hardware.
We’ll keep you posted on the developments of hacking the Wii U GamePad. Hopefully we’ll all have an awesome remote control by next year. | 35 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "885427",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T16:29:43",
"content": "Not that interesting considering the price (same or more than Android tabled)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "885683",
"author": "parkerlreed",... | 1,760,376,683.917971 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/17/forever-fm-infinite-beat-matched-music/ | Forever.fm: Infinite Beat-matched Music | Eric Evenchick | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"python",
"socket.io",
"soundcloud",
"tornado"
] | Forever.fm
is [
Peter
]’s combination of
SoundCloud
and
The Echo Nest
that plays a continuous stream of beat-matched music. The result is a web radio station that just keeps playing.
[Peter] provided a great
write up
on how he built the app. The server side is Python, using the
Tornado
web server and
Tornadio2
+
Socket.IO
for handling live updates in the client. To deal with the challenge of streaming audio, he wrote a LAME interface for Python that handles encoding the raw, beat-matched audio into MP3 blocks. These blocks are queued up and sent out to the client by the web server.
Another challenge was choosing songs. Forever.fm takes the “hottest” songs from SoundCloud and creates a graph. Then it finds the shortest path to traverse the entire graph: a
Travelling Salesman Problem
. The solution used by Forever.fm finds an iterative approximation, then uses that to make a list of tracks. Of course, the resulting music is going to be whatever’s hot on SoundCloud. This may, or may not, match your personal tastes.
There’s a lot of neat stuff here, and [Peter] has open-sourced the code on
his github
if you’re interested in checking out the details. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "885295",
"author": "Kris Lee",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T14:43:49",
"content": "I’m not sure that it falls into the hack* category but it is a great writeup and nice implementation nonetheless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "885... | 1,760,376,684.0738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/the-new-template-has-arrived/ | The New Template Has Arrived! | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"template"
] | When we decided that our template needed a remake several years ago, we knew it was going to be a long and difficult process.
We offered you a chance to give us some input in a recent post and now we are releasing the first iteration of the new template
.
For those that saw the mockups and gave us your opinion, you will be happy to see we actually listened to many thoughts and incorporated them in our final design. We worked with some people at Google to determine what features should be tossed and what to keep, and what we have ended up with, is what you see. We also acknowledge that not everyone will love the change, but we feel it is a move in the right direction. We’re really happy how it has ended up.
I want to offer a special thanks to [Stephanie Froehner] who put tons of time into making this template pretty, even if it has been hacked and slashed a bit since then.
Join me after the break for an explanation of some of the new features and upcoming features.
New features that are active right now:
Related hacks:
After each story there are links to 5 hacks from the same category.
Staff picks:
In the right column is a section for “staff picks” each week the staff agrees on a select few posts to add to the “staff picks”.
Social media stuff:
You can now connect to social networks easier. We’re not forcing that on you. Don’t worry.
Features we plan on implementing soon:
Popular categories list
in the right column: Displays a list of the categories that have posts with the most comment activity.
turn on the lights:
a button to switch to a light colored theme for those that find the black and green to be too high contrast.
Possibly a new commenting system:
There are several other systems available to us. We need to do more research before making any decisions.
Fixes slated to happen in the immediate future: (we will be fixing things. We won’t be doing everything anyone asks).
double spacing: needs to be a little tighter
fixed
post titles shouldn’t change size when you click on a post
fixed
favicon needs uploaded
fixed
related post formatting is not there for some reason.
speed improvements (changing the social buttons at the end of posts just helped a bunch) — ongoing | 277 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "884628",
"author": "rhqq",
"timestamp": "2012-11-17T00:50:48",
"content": "generally looks much better, however tittle font is slightly to tall",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "884651",
"author": "Evan",
"timest... | 1,760,376,684.369515 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/large-area-x-ray-detector/ | Large Area X-ray Detector | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"backscatter",
"collector",
"phosphor",
"photomultiplier",
"x-ray"
] | This is an x-ray detector built by [Ben Krasnow]. It’s an interesting combination of parts working with an oscilloscope. The result is an audible clicking much the same as you would hear from a Geiger counter
He’s measuring backscatter, which is the reflection of x-rays on other objects. Because the signal will be quite weak compared to waves emitted directly from an x-ray source he needed a large collector to measure them. He started by gutting an x-ray image intensifying cassette. This has a phosphor layer that glows when excited by x-rays. The idea is that the glowing phosphors do a better job of exposing film than direct x-rays can. But [Ben’s] not using film. He built that pyramid-shaped collector with the phosphor material as the base. At the apex of the pyramid he mounted a photomultiplier tube (repurposed from
his scanning electron microscope
) which can detect the excited points on its surface. His oscilloscope monitors the PMT, then issues a voltage spike on the calibration connector which is being fed to an audio amplifier. Don’t miss his presentation embedded after the break.
[Ben] mentions that this build is in preparation for a future project. We’d love to hear what you think he’s working on. Leave your guess in the comments section. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "884554",
"author": "Adrianos Toutountzis",
"timestamp": "2012-11-16T23:33:19",
"content": "I wanted to do EXACTLY the same thing with glass reflectors and a RCA teacup photomultiplier, in order to detect X rays created from CRT displays.I have used similar setups though……I hope you ... | 1,760,376,684.424564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/make-dual-pin-header-footprints-into-breadboard-friendly-dip/ | Make Dual Pin Header Footprints Into Breadboard Friendly DIP | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"breadboard",
"breakout",
"dip",
"dual",
"ez430-rf2500",
"pin header"
] | [John] wrote in with a solution to a prototyping issue that has vexed us for quite some time. Above you can see
the DIP friendly solution for dual-row pin headers
which he came up with. With just a bit of easy soldering he now has a breadboard friendly device for prototyping.
He starts by soldering a dual row pin header on the board, then clips off all of the legs on the outside row. The row of legs that remain are then inserted into one side of the trench on his breadboard. The other side of the trench has a single row pin header, and he solders them to the outer row on the breakout board using another single pin header aligned horizontally. This isn’t a 100% convenient solution, as it’s still pretty hard to get your jumper wires in the breadboard on the side covered by the breakout board. But if you plan in advance you can place your wires first, then plug in the development board.
Here [John] is working with TI’s eZ430-RF2500 board. We’d like to go back and remove the dual pin socket we soldered on
our eZ430-F2013
, replacing it with this style of pins. | 28 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "875809",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2012-11-14T00:18:26",
"content": "Hah, simple, but it works. I like how he uses the breadboard itself to hold things in place while soldering – guarantees it will fit nicely when you’re done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,376,685.257679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/a-nostalgic-look-at-what-a-13-year-old-can-do-with-a-c64/ | A Nostalgic Look At What A 13 Year Old Can Do With A C64 | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"tape",
"tape drive"
] | [Armin] recently pulled out his Commodore 64 and looked back on the projects he did as a kid. The surprising thing is that we’re not talking quite as far in the past as you might image. He was 13 in 2002 and the family didn’t have a PC. But more than a decade before his father had purchased a C64 and [Armin] dug into the manual to teach himself how to code. This week he connected the old hardware to his video capture card to give us
a demonstration on what he accomplished
.
He had seen Windows 95 at the local computer club and figured why not program a clone of the software for the machine at hand? He called it Windows 105 (because that number is higher than 95) and worked out ways to mimic programs like DOS, Corel Draw, Notepad, and some of the programs from Microsoft Office. They didn’t include all the functionality of the real thing, but the look was there.
The story does have a happy ending. [Armin’s] parents saw what he was doing and managed to pick up a PC for him to play with. Now he’s a professional programmer looking back on the formative years that got him there. We’ve embedded one of his demo videos after the break for your enjoyment. | 41 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "875431",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T22:13:24",
"content": "Damn! This reminded me at times you have nothing and make really use of what you have on hand.Reminds me moments back in 2000 when i was 7 and wanting a Windows 98 computer and i had modified the case of... | 1,760,376,685.438791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/7400-logic-competition-winners-announced/ | 7400 Logic Competition Winners Announced | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"7400",
"calculator",
"logic competition",
"winners"
] | The 7400 Logic Competition has drawn to a close.
The winners were announced
and there are quite a few of them. There were fifteen first place winners named, nine second place, and nineteen third place projects. The bounty of quality entries is a testament to the popularity of the contest. It helps to have a wide range of prizes and the post linked above lists all of the sponsors who donated goodies as an incentive.
The board seen above was awarded the reader’s choice, to which the grand prize was awarded. It is
a 7400 series calculator
. [Umair Mukati] and [Naveed Ahmed] — both are students at the Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering in Karachi, Pakistan — developed the device as part of a class project. It is capable of adding or subtracting two digit numbers. This includes support for negative numbers as results. We’ve embedded a video demo of the calculator in action after the break.
[Thanks Nick] | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "875110",
"author": "Justinius",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T20:23:35",
"content": "So, its been awhile since I was in school, but in my digital logic course we built an 8bit calculator. The difference here are the push buttons and there they just used a chip that did the conversion wit... | 1,760,376,684.97058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/wireless-water-heater-monitor-uses-whatever-was-lying-around/ | Wireless Water Heater Monitor Uses Whatever Was Lying Around | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"inductor",
"led",
"water heater",
"wireless"
] | [Chris] set out to build a monitoring system for his water heater. It doesn’t Tweet or send SMS messages. It simply
lights up an LED when the water heater is active
. The one thing that complicates the setup is that he didn’t want to pull any wire from the garage into the house. What you see above is the wireless setup he used to accomplish this goal.
This is an electric water heater, so [Chris] patched into the 230V heating element feed. When the water heater is idle this connection is cut off. He used a transformer to step the voltage down to 17V and rectified it before feeding a 7805 power regulator. The rest of the transmitter circuit consists of a 555 timer driving the coil seen on the left. It is made out of telephone wire, with each of the four conductors inside connected together to multiply the number of windings. The box of breakfast sausages hosts the receiver coil. His hardware takes the induced current from that coil and amplifies it, feeding the signal to the base of a transistor responsible for switching the status LED. This works through the 6″ thick garage wall, although he did have to use a battery on the receiving end as his wall wart was injecting way too much noise into the system to work. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "874800",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T18:12:20",
"content": "Too much noise from the wall wart? I’d think that a simple LDO regulator plus a couple of caps would fix that (for under $1 worth of parts).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,685.194046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/the-wedding-band-milling-titanium-and-wrapping-it-in-palladium/ | The Wedding Band: Milling Titanium And Wrapping It In Palladium | Mike Szczys | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"machine shop",
"machining",
"palladium",
"ring",
"titanium",
"wedding ring"
] | You’ve got to admit that custom milling your own wedding band is pretty hard-core. In this case [Jeremy Swerdlow] is making it for his friend, but that doesn’t diminish the fun of the project. After the break you can
watch him mill a titanium ring and wrap it with a palladium inlay
.
To solder palladium to titanium [Jeremy] would need special equipment, so he found another way to mate the dissimilar metals. He milled a dovetail groove in the center of the titanium band. To do that, he had to make a special cutting tool that was just the right size. Once had milled the ring’s rough dimensions, he had to fabricate a custom mandrel to hold the ring for the rest of the job. The dovetail was then filled with a palladium strip using a combination of heat and hammering. The two ends are soldered together using palladium solder. The ring in the middle shows this solder joint. To the right is a ring after the inlay is milled flush but before the final polishing which will bring out the best qualities of both metals.
If you don’t have the machine shop skills to pull this off you could always
try your hand at 3d printed rings
.
[Thanks Luke] | 31 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "874731",
"author": "andar_b",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T17:31:56",
"content": "“This ring is titanium, not… adamantium.” lolI was hoping for a better look at the polished ring, it would have been nice to see how the palladium stood out from the Ti a little better.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,376,685.073708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/hand-soldering-bga-parts-should-be-a-circus-act/ | Hand Soldering BGA Parts Should Be A Circus Act | Mike Szczys | [
"Parts"
] | [
"ball grid array",
"bga",
"breakout board",
"dead bug",
"stripboard",
"tmp006"
] | Okay, we think it’s questionable when people say they have no problem soldering QFN packages, but BGA? Granted this chip has far fewer balls on it than many, but it’s still quite impressive that [Xevel] was able to
solder this BGA breakout by hand
.
The chip you see above is a TMP006 infrared temperature sensor from TI. [Xevel] picked up the part but didn’t want to break the bank when prototyping by buying a proper PCB to host it. There are only eight conductors on it, arranged in a grid with 0.5mm pitch. That didn’t seem to scare him off, as the video after the break shows him connecting each to a conductor on a hunk of stripboard.
[Xevel] mentions that this is a dead-bug style project. Usually you glue the part upside down when using that technique, but it needs line of sight to get an accurate temperature reading so he first cut a hole in the substrate. We’d bet he’s using wire-wrapping wire to make the connections. It’s a very fine solid core wire which is perfect for this kind of work. | 46 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "874596",
"author": "mew",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T16:26:30",
"content": "“Unfortunately, this EMI-music-content is not available in Germany because GEMA has not granted the respective music publishing rights.” :-(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,685.340454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/cornell-ece-4760-lecture-videos-now-online/ | Cornell ECE 4760 Lecture Videos Now Online | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"cornell",
"course",
"ece 4760",
"lecture"
] | Whenever we hear about ECE 4760 we take notice. That’s because a ton of fantastic hacked together projects have resulted from the class. It’s offered at Cornell University and focuses on designing projects based on microcontrollers. We look at it as a ‘how to connect everything to your microcontroller’ guide. The good news for you is that
34 lecture videos from the Spring 2012 ECE 4760 class are now available
to watch for free online. When coupled with
the course webpage itself
(which outlines the reading, labs, and homework) this turns into an opportunity to work through the entire course on your own schedule.
If you need a brief preview, here’s a couple random things we’ve seen as final projects from the course:
a digital saxophone
,
a handwriting decoder
, and
a haptic feedback unit for building your biceps
.
We’re still working our way through
the Nand2Tetris project
, but we’re putting these lectures on our watch list for later.
[via
Reddit
] | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "874472",
"author": "Pablo",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T15:41:35",
"content": "Wasn’t this posted two or three months ago??.(http://hackaday.com/2012/09/02/lazy-labor-day-educational-time-watch-cornells-microcontroller-courses/)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,376,685.012311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/13/how-to-setup-a-hackerspace-from-someone-whos-done-it-before/ | How To Setup A Hackerspace From Someone Who’s Done It Before | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [] | We just got a tip from [PT] that
a seven part series on how to start a Hackerspace
will be posted this week. The blog over at Adafruit will be publishing one installment a day. Right now the introduction (linked above) and volume 1 are available. This covers what a Hackerspace is and who you might attract to help you get started. Tomorrow’s installment covers requirements you have to meet, which we assume delves into tax status (what you have to do to get 501c3 non-profit status) and financial reporting. But we’ll have to wait and see to know for sure.
The series is written by [Eric Michaud]. He founded
HacDC
in Washington, D.C. and
Pumping Station: One
in Chicago. He also helps others by consulting on startup spaces and embodies a wealth of knowledge on the topic.
If you’re area doesn’t yet have its own Hackerspace read this along with your buddies and see if you’ve got what it takes to get one going.
interesting fact: The hackaday logo is one of the watermarks in the lining of the hackerspace passport. | 34 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "874320",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2012-11-13T14:05:25",
"content": "Presumably once again assuming everyone is in the US and alienating the rest of the world audience?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "874329",
"au... | 1,760,376,685.143099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/building-a-mechanical-counter-out-of-scrap-wood/ | Building A Mechanical Counter Out Of Scrap Wood | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bandsaw",
"counter",
"gear",
"gears",
"mechanical counter",
"wood"
] | Watching [Matthias Wandel]
fabricate this mechanical counter from scrap wood
is just fascinating. He likens the mechanism to the counters you would find on decades-old cassette tape players.
You may recognize the quality of [Matthias’] work. We’ve seen several pieces, but
his binary adder
is still one of our favorites. This project gives us a very clear view of the development and fabrication process. He even posted a detailed guide if you want to build your own.
He started by prototyping a mechanism to increment and decrement the counter. With that proven design he started laying out the rest of the gears. These were cut from plywood scraps he had from other projects. Notice the small gears seen above which are missing parts of some teeth. Those sections were removed using a drill press with a Forstner bit. The missing teeth cause the next digit over to increment more slowly, resulting in a 1/10 ratio. This part of the design is demonstrated about three minutes into the video after the break. | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "872516",
"author": "Crazy Person",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T23:40:32",
"content": "The gears that have some teeth cut down aren’t a 1:10 reducer but a 1:2 reducer. From what I remember it’s because the wheel that causes the 1:10 reduction has two teeth on it but you only want to fl... | 1,760,376,685.501573 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/birthday-badges-teach-kids-how-to-solder/ | Birthday Badges Teach Kids How To Solder | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"badge",
"birthday",
"led",
"multivibrator",
"party"
] | [Ian Lee, Sr] wanted to have an educational activity at his younger son’s birthday party. These were uncharted waters for him as he doesn’t remember education taking place at his own early birthday parties. But he came up with a great idea, with was to
teach soldering using interactive badges
which each guest could assemble themselves. He needed about twenty, so he tried to keep the BOM as small as possible. But that didn’t mean skimping on features.
You can see the black LED-type package on the left of the assembled badge above. This is an IR receiver whose counterpart transmitter is on the right side of the board. When two of these get within 6-8″ of each other the start talking back and forth. There is no microcontroller involved, instead the system relies on a multivibrator design. One of the red LEDs at the corner of the ‘smile’ is always blinking. When it is off, the IR transmitter is powered. This is picked up by another badge’s receiver, which lights the second ‘smile’ LED. You can see this happen in the short clip after the break.
Although there are relatively few components that went into this, it would take the kids a long time to put them together as they’re just learning. [Ian] and his eldest son soldered on all of the components except for the resistors beforehand. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "872380",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T22:14:30",
"content": "Neat idea… I personally waited until my son and his friends were 8yo, and even then I had a crazy (IMHO) mother who didn’t want her kid playing with a soldering iron.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,376,685.555905 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/robot-stroller-lets-baby-steer-without-mowing-down-other-toddlers/ | Robot Stroller Lets Baby Steer Without Mowing Down Other Toddlers | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Kinect hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Kinect",
"stroller",
"table",
"wheel",
"wii"
] | We’ve seen strollers and car seats that have a steering wheel for the baby to play with (like in the opening of
The Simpsons
). But what we hadn’t seen is
a stroller that allows baby to actually steer
. You might think that a putting a motorized vehicle in the hands of someone so young is an accident waiting to happen. But [Xandon Frogget] thought of that and used familiar hardware to add some safety features.
The stroller seen above is a tricycle setup, making it quite easy to add motors to the two rear wheels. These are controlled by a tablet which you can see nestled on the canopy of the stroller (look for the light reflected on the glass). This interfaces with two Kinect sensors, one pointing forward and the other pointing back. They continually scan the environment, looking for obstacles in the stroller’s path. You can see [Xandon’s] little girl holding a Wii Wheel, which connects with the tablet to facilitate steering. A test run at the playground is embedded after the break. | 44 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "872271",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T21:13:30",
"content": "Best. Dad. Ever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "886511",
"author": "Faruq Sandi",
"timestamp": "2012-11-19T12:02:57",
"content"... | 1,760,376,685.673356 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/developing-a-thermostat-for-a-heat-pump-that-only-has-a-timer/ | Developing A Thermostat For A Heat Pump That Only Has A Timer | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Heat pump",
"home automation",
"ir toy",
"RPi"
] | The heat pump which cools [Chris LeBlanc’s] home lacks the sort of control he was looking for. It’s just got a timer, which switches it off automatically. He wanted to the ability to schedule the cooling cycle like you would with a thermostat-driven arrangement. He ended up
build his own controller to automate the cooling process
.
The heat pump came with an IR remote control which provides the access point for the project. [Chris] set out to emulate the remote protocol which saved him the trouble of having to crack open the unit and wire in a controller. He went with the IR Toy from Dangerous Prototypes as this device is able to record and transmit IR signals — it’s basically a universal remote for your USB port. His Raspberry Pi, seen to the left, controls the system. It’s connected to the red IR Toy board via a USB hub which is used to interface a WiFi dongle as well. The system works alongside Google Calendar to allow [Chris] to schedule his home’s cooling just by adding an appointment. A Python script queries the calendar, then selects and sends the appropriate IR command. He shows off the build in the clip after the break. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "872195",
"author": "sean",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T20:31:25",
"content": "At first I was thinking that this was grossly overpowered, then I got to the google calender part. Alright, this is pretty cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,685.73877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/building-a-thermal-imaging-sensor-from-scratch/ | Building A Thermal Imaging Sensor From Scratch | Brian Benchoff | [
"green hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"heat sensor",
"IR imaging",
"MLX90620",
"thermal imaging camera",
"thermopile"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIb1scnD67o&w=470]
[Rob] lives in a 100-year-old house, and with these antique lath and plaster walls and old window frames comes a terrible amount of drafts. The usual way to combat this energy inefficiency is with a thermal imaging camera, a device that overlays the temperature of an object with a video image. These cameras are hideously expensive so [Rob] did what any of us would do
and built his own
.
The build centers around a Melexis MLX90620 far infrared thermopile that can be had for about $80. Basically, this sensor is a very, very low resolution camera (16×4 pixels) that senses heat instead of light. By sticking this sensor on a breadboard with an Arduino Mini and WiFly network adapter, [Rob] is able to pull the data down from the IR sensor to his iPhone and overlay it on the feed from the camera.
The result, as seen in the video above, is a low-resolution but still very useful thermal imaging camera, perfect for looking for cold drafts in an old house or tracking down [Arnie] just like a Predator.
Tip ‘o the hat to [Ronald] for sending this one in. | 45 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "872065",
"author": "Kaj",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T19:08:55",
"content": "Open source, tidy, well executed, and practical. Sweeeet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "872076",
"author": "bunedoggle",
"timestamp": "2012-11-1... | 1,760,376,685.928599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/giving-an-apartment-keyless-entry/ | Giving An Apartment Keyless Entry | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"deadbolt",
"keyless entry",
"lock"
] | The key for [rybitski]’s apartment is a copy of a copy of a copy, and the landlord lost the original key years ago. The lock itself still works, but opening it with [rybiski]’s key is a chore. He wanted to make it easier to get into his apartment, and with Arduinos and such he figured he could make
a keyless entry device for his front door
.
After figuring out how to open his deadbolt with an Arduino and a rather powerful servo, [rybiski] looked into wireless control options. He found
a keyless entry remote
, complete with receiver, that integrated perfectly to just about any microcontroller project.
After mounting the Arduino, receiver, and servo on a piece of plastic, he attached his contraption to the deadbolt. In the video after the break, you can see his key fob remote locking and unlocking the deadbolt, all without jamming an ill-fitting key into the lock.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHlz93s54dw&w=470] | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "872092",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T19:25:53",
"content": "The keyless entry is cool, but shouldn’t the landlord call a locksmith and re-key the door as soon as the original (or any copies) are lost?Properly working locks are a pretty important requirement, in my opin... | 1,760,376,685.789327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/turning-the-hexbug-spider-into-a-line-following-robot/ | Turning The Hexbug Spider Into A Line-following Robot | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"hexbug",
"hexbug spider",
"msp430"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quDHhuEsxEg&w=470]
You may be familiar with the Hexbug Spider, a small electronic robot toy sold at Target and Walmart for $20. While they’re able to be commanded to move forward, backward, and spin around on a dime, there aren’t any external sensors to make it really exciting. [Eric] sought to remedy this and came up with
a line-following board replacement
for the Hexbug Spider.
The stock Spider has a small circuit board that allows for the control of two motors with a remote. [Eric] removed this control board and replaced it with his own, powered by a TI MSP430 microcontroller. On this board, [Eric] included a pair of IR LEDs, able to detect the path of a white line drawn on the ground. With just a little bit of code, [Eric] made his $20 Hexbug Spider into a very cool looking robot.
[Eric] figured out how to improve his robot toy, but the power of the MSP430 microcontroller he used doesn’t limit him to only following lines. By using an MSP430 Launchpad, anyone can upload new code to the improved Spider, and even add new sensors to this creepy walking robotic toy. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "871823",
"author": "TheBuilder",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T16:44:07",
"content": "How does the mechanics of the legs work? I can’t buy this cool toy robot where I live, so I would just love to make one myself!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,686.070931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/4-volt-meter-from-a-dollar-store-pedometer/ | $4 Volt Meter From A Dollar Store Pedometer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Solar Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"pedometer",
"solar power",
"voltmeter"
] | [Paulo]’s got a few solar panels on his shed, and while he does have a fairly nice setup with a battery charge controller, he found himself looking around for a panel voltmeter. Of course you can buy a panel voltmeter for under $20, but [Paulo] wanted something that fit his 4-4-4 plan; his voltmeter should cost under $4, draw less than 4mA, and last for 4 years. The jury is still out on the 4 year qualifier, but he did manage to meet his other goals by
repurposing a dollar store pedometer as a voltmeter
.
The pedometer in question is a very simple device. After inspecting the PCB, [Paulo] found it operates by looking at a trigger pin and incrementing the number on the display each time the circuit closed. [Paul] designed a very small PIC12F-powered circuit that reads the voltage of his batteries and triggers the pedometer’s LCD for every 10th of a volt. To display 12.6 Volts, [Paulo]’s code triggers the LCD 126 times, for example.
After wiring up the reset button so the display will go back down to zero for each new reading, [Paulo] encased his new volt meter in a plastic box. It’s not exactly a fast way of measuring voltage, but seeing as how that won’t change very fast, it’s the perfect solution for [Paulo]’s solar charger setup. | 37 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "871635",
"author": "Destate9",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T15:04:03",
"content": "Nice hack! Hacks like this are what keep me coming to HaD",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "871650",
"author": "joesugar",
"timestamp": "2012-... | 1,760,376,686.515766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/steam-powered-pickup-winder/ | Steam-powered Pickup Winder | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"guitar",
"guitar pickup",
"pickup",
"pickup winder",
"steam engine"
] | [Valve Child] has been building a few three-string cigar box guitars. Of course he’ll need a few pickups, but three-string guitar pickups aren’t exactly easy to come by. To solve this problem, he’s built
a guitar pickup winder powered by a steam engine
.
The pickup winder is powered by a Wilesco D20 model steam engine, connected to the actual winding mechanism via a rubber belt. To the right of the bobbin bracket is a mechanism built out of Meccano – Erector sets for us americans – that provides a mechanical counter for the number of wire turns and a wire traverse to keep each layer of wire somewhat even across the width of the bobbin.
Previously, we’ve seen [Valve Child]’s really sweet sounding
lap steel build from a log
using a hand-wound pickup and a preamp tube as the bridge. It’s questionable if the guitar signal came from this lap steel via the pickup or the microphonic tube, but now [Valve Child] has a really, really good method of improving his pickup production abilities.
Video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPEGghJC5zQ&w=470] | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "871548",
"author": "David Findlay",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T14:16:09",
"content": "Oh look another project where someone has put in a huge amount of effort, then spent time documenting it….FOR ME TO POOP ON!!!!Seems we’re back to nickpickaday….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,376,686.258378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/12/linux-on-a-nspire-cas-cx-calculator/ | Linux On A Nspire CAS CX Calculator | Eric Evenchick | [
"Featured",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"graphing calculator",
"linux",
"ti-nspire"
] | It’s great to see Linux running on a device in a way that was never intended. [tangrs] has successfully run a
Linux kernel on the ARM based Nspire CAS CX
graphing calculator. He’s developed an in-place bootloader that allows a kernel to be loaded from within the stock Nspire OS. It also allows for peeking and poking at memory for debugging.
[tangrs] also managed to get USB host mode working on the calculator. This allows for a USB keyboard and Wifi dongle to be connected. At this point, the calculator can
connect to the internet
and browse using a text-based browser: Links. The calculator runs a SSH server for remote access, and graphical browsing is in the works.
It looks like this calculator is on the way to being a handheld Linux device. All of the source for the kernel and bootloader are available on [tangrs]’s
Github
and updates on his
blog
. After the break, check out a video of text-based browsing using a full keyboard. | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "871414",
"author": "Tactical Ninja",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T12:40:16",
"content": "Really, wow…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "871605",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-11-12T14:45:08",
"content": "Now, is TI g... | 1,760,376,686.154526 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/11/lucky-cat-hit-counter/ | Lucky Cat Hit Counter | Eric Evenchick | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino ethernet",
"hit counter",
"lucky cat"
] | [Jan] was looking for a way to monitor web site hits while sitting on the couch. This lead to the
Lucky Cat Hit Counter
. The hack gives a stock Lucky Cat some new hardware: a servo, a RGB led, a light sensor, and a 7 segment display. The added components are controlled by an
Arduino Ethernet
.
The Arduino Ethernet is set up as a web server. When a visitor fetches [Jan]’s site, a GIF is requested from the Arduino. This trigger changes the RGB LED color, increments the seven segment display, and of course, makes the cat wave by actuating the servo. The light sensor is used to make the cat silent at night. When the light value is below a threshold, night mode is engaged and the cat doesn’t wave.
After the break is a video walk through of the Lucky Cat receiving some HTTP requests. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "870316",
"author": "FillerB",
"timestamp": "2012-11-11T19:18:05",
"content": "That counter is going to overflow really fast…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "870318",
"author": "agtrier",
"timestamp": "2012-11-11T19:18:45... | 1,760,376,686.316934 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/11/wav-music-player-uses-an-attiny/ | WAV Music Player Uses An ATtiny | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny2313",
"audio player"
] | We’re very accustomed to seeing small media player builds, but [txyz]’s
ATtiny-powered audio player
is one of the smallest and most feature-packed we’ve seen.
The audio player is powered by the very small and very inexpensive ATtiny2313. The music is stored on an SD card – a maximum of 2GB of WAV files recorded in mono at 32kBps at an 8-bit depth. On boot, the ATtiny loads the first audio file from the card and outputs it through a speaker connection.
To make things interesting, [txyz] made the audio player controllable via a serial connection. Once a small FTDI adapter is connected to the player, [txyz] can connect to it through a terminal and run through his playlist.
Even though the player is controllable through a serial port, there are a few pins left over that [txyz] could attach to buttons, if so desired. With a battery pack, this would turn his music player into the homebrew equivalent of an iPod shuffle. With the low component count, it might actually be cheaper than the shuffle, if [txyz]’s time is free, that is.
Video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydJdBmdGjUY&w=470] | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "870320",
"author": "dattaway2",
"timestamp": "2012-11-11T19:19:56",
"content": "I love the use of enamel wire. Cheap and plentiful. Awesome hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "870514",
"author": "Cyril",
"t... | 1,760,376,686.211521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/11/blending-real-objects-with-3d-prints/ | Blending Real Objects With 3D Prints | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d modeling",
"3d printer",
"point cloud"
] | It’s very subtle, but if you saw [Greg]’s
3D printed stone to Lego adapter
while walking down the street, it might just cause you to stop mid-stride.
This modification to real objects begin with [Greg] taking dozens of pictures of the target object at many different angles. These pictures are then imported into
Agisoft PhotoScan
which takes all these photos and converts it into a very high-resolution, full-color point cloud.
After precisely measuring the real-world dimensions of the object to be modeled, [Greg] imported his point cloud into Blender and got started on the actual 3D modeling task. By reconstructing the original sandstone block in Blender, [Greg] was also able to model Lego parts.After subtracting the part of the model above the Lego parts, [Greg] had a bizarre-looking adapter that adapts Lego pieces to a real-life stone block.
It’s a very, very cool projet that demonstrates how good [Greg] is at making 3D models of real objects and modeling them inside a computer. After the break you can see a walkthrough of his work process, an impressive amount of expertise wrapped up in making the world just a little more strange. | 31 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "870070",
"author": "Isaac",
"timestamp": "2012-11-11T16:04:10",
"content": "That is really, really, really cool. It doesn’t really come across in the image at the top… but the video is insanely eye opening.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,376,686.38304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/11/nasa-is-3d-printing-rocket-engine-parts/ | NASA Is 3D Printing Rocket Engine Parts | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d prining",
"nasa",
"selective laser melting",
"selective laser sintering"
] | In case you haven’t heard, NASA is building a new rocket – a replacement for the shuttle – that will eventually take crews again outside low Earth orbit. It’s called the Space Launch System and looks surprisingly similar to the Saturn V that took men to the moon. Manufacturing technology is light years ahead of what it was in the mid-60s, and this time around NASA is
printing some rocket parts with selective laser melting
.
Teams at the Marshall Space Flight center are melting metal powder together with lasers to produce parts for
the new J-2X engine
intended for use in the earth departure stage of the Space Launch System. While the 3d-printed parts haven’t seen a use in any live fire tests of the J-2X, the goal is to test these parts out later in the year and eventually have them man-rated, to carry astronauts to the moon, asteroids, or even Mars.
This isn’t the first time 3d printing has been used to make rocket engines. Earlier this year we saw [Rocket Moonlighting]
build
an entire rocket engine
, powered by propane and NO2, using the same technology that NASA is using. [Moonlighting]’s engine is quite small, too small to lift itself off the ground, even. Still, it’s awesome to see 3D printing that will eventually take people into solar orbit. | 26 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "869932",
"author": "lwatcdr",
"timestamp": "2012-11-11T14:15:31",
"content": "I don’t know how new this is? A friend of mine worked on the Centuar and mentioned that they had and used an SLM machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,376,686.445438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/10/upgrading-a-voice-recorder-with-a-hex-editor/ | Upgrading A Voice Recorder With A Hex Editor | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"firmware",
"handheld audio recorder",
"voice recorder"
] | [Alex] just bought a really nice TEAC VR-20 audio recorder, a very capable recorder perfect for recording your thoughts or just making concert bootlegs. This model was recently replaced by the Tascam DR-08 audio recorder. It’s essentially the same thing, but the Tascam unit can record at 96kHz, whereas the TEAC can only record at 48kHz. [Alex] figured out a way to upgrade his less capable but cheaper VR-20 to record at a higher bit rate
with just a simple firmware hack
.
The mod began by downloading the firmware for both the
TEAC VR-20
and the
Tascam DR-08
. Both of these sets of firmware were
exactly
the same size, and after downloading a hex editor, [Alex] found a huge difference in the first 20 bytes of the firmware – the portion that tells the microcontrollers what it actually is.
The solution to improving the bitrate for the TEAC VR-20 was as simple as copying the first 20 bytes from the TEAC firmware over to the first 20 bytes of the Tascam firmware. After that, it’s a simple matter of upgrading his TEAC and getting the ability to record at 96kHz.
A very, very simple hack that’s really just flipping a few bits. Not bad for a two-fold improvement in the recording capability of a handheld audio recorder. | 62 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "869121",
"author": "semicolo",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T21:00:53",
"content": "Hmmm, what about the ~24KHz low pass filter that’s supposed to sit before the ADC? Won’t higher frequencies be filtered out rendering this hack useless?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,686.610833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/10/the-ultimate-low-cost-dev-board/ | The Ultimate Low-cost Dev Board | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega",
"AVR",
"Shrimp"
] | We see a lot of microcontroller dev boards here at Hackaday, so much that we’re jokingly considering changing our name to Board a Day. These devices – from Arduinos to Arduino-compatible boards, very, very small boards, to extremely powerful ARM devices – are a great way to learn about the wonders of controlling electricity with code. There’s a problem, though: if you’re teaching a class on programming microcontrollers, giving each student a $20 board is nearly out of the question.
This is where
the shrimp
comes in. It’s a very, very minimal Arduino-compatible circuit meant to control all the pins on an ATMega328. The components only cost about £1.40 ($2.25 USD) when bought in volume, making it perfect for teaching a class or workshop on the Arduino and giving each student a circuit to take home.
The basic circuit is just an ATMega328 – the same microcontroller used in the Arduino Uno – with a few caps, resistors, and a 16 MHz crystal. It’s a very bare-bones system, but once built and programmed provides all the functionality of a $25 Arduino.
Like all microcontroller platforms, there’s the chicken-and-egg problem of actually
programming
the device. The Shrimp team is using a CP2102 USB to UART bridge to program each shrimp. Not an inexpensive part, but it is of course possible to only have one serial bridge for each workshop. | 58 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "868962",
"author": "matt",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T18:14:29",
"content": "Why not spend $3 For a launchpad? Includes a serial bridge on the board.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "868984",
"author": "valent",
... | 1,760,376,686.753939 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/10/heat-seeking-firebot-drowns-out-the-flames/ | Heat-seeking Firebot Drowns Out The Flames | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"fire",
"fire extinguisher",
"rangefinder",
"spray",
"thermopile",
"tpa81"
] | This
robot can find and extinguish fires
automatically. It is the culmination of an Embedded Design class project from last school year. [Dan] and his classmates developed a turret that holds both a spray nozzle and heat sensor which would be a fantastic building block for a real-life tower defense game.
The jewel of the sensor array is a TPA81 thermopile array. Note the use of the term ‘array’ in the name. This is more like eight temperature sensors aligned with each other. By monitoring them all, the direction from which the most heat is coming can be determined. Once it’s zeroed in on the fire getting water to the right place can be a difficult task. That’s where the other sensors come into play. An accelerometer allows the bot to determine the angle of the spray nozzle (a weed sprayer was used in this case). An ultrasonic range finder and few algorithms let the Arduino which drives it all make sure that the arc of the water lands on the hot spot. This is all shown quite clearly in the clip below the jump. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "868870",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T16:32:30",
"content": "This can kill you when you are using hairdryer or something :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "868957",
"author": "Jay",
"timestamp": "2012... | 1,760,376,686.661271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/10/nikon-wu-1a-wifi-dongle-hacking/ | Nikon WU-1a WiFi Dongle Hacking | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"nikon",
"reverse engineering",
"ut-1",
"wifi",
"wu-1a"
] | Here’s a pretty tricky piece of consumer electronics reverse engineering. [Joe Fitz] came across the Nikon WU-1a. It’s a dongle that plugs into a Nikon D3200 camera, producing a WiFi connection which can be picked up and controlled from a smart phone. The app shows you the current image from the viewfinder, allows you to snap the picture, then pulls down the picture afterwards. The problem is that the same functionality for his D800 camera will cost him $1200, when this dongle can be had for $60. That’s a powerful incentive to find a way to use the WU-1a with his camera model. This is more than just rerouting some wires. It involves sniffing the USB traffic and drilling down in the datasheets for the chips used in the hardware. We’re not certain, but he may have even rolled new firmware for the dongle.
Details are a bit scarce right now. Your best bet is to watch the video embedded after the break. There is also
a set of slides
which [Joe] put together for a talk at this weekend’s
BsidesPDX
. It will give you a general overview of the process he went through. But he also
started a forum thread
and we hope to learn much more from that as the conversation gets going. | 23 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "868696",
"author": "cevat candar",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T13:49:36",
"content": "real hack",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "868817",
"author": "Bill Gander",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T15:19:27",
"content": "MOAR real... | 1,760,376,686.997111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/scripting-to-automate-your-mindless-android-games/ | Scripting To Automate Your Mindless Android Games | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"emulate",
"game",
"monkeyrunner",
"scripting"
] | There’s a silly little Android game making some noise on the Interwebs. It’s called Curiosity which is a 3D cube with something inside. The thing is, every single pixel on the cube must be clicked in order to get through a layer. There are of course multiple layers, and… well, you get the point. [Stephen] figures this is a perfect thing for a bit of scripting and set out to
find a way to automatically play the Android game
.
As you can see above he’s got a pretty good start. To use the script in its current form he finds a part of the cube that is mostly solid green. The Android device is plugged into a computer using the USB cable, and the Android Debug Bridge runs the script. It’s amazingly simple, as it uses
the monkeyrunner package
which comes with the SDK. The proof is there, and it’s just a matter of whether or not he wants to spend his time to fully automate the playing of
the game
. You can see a demo of the script embedded after the break.
[Stephen’s] not new to automating things that he doesn’t want to do himself. Here’s an example of
his code beating the PlayThru CAPTCHA
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GFgSlgxCNw | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "867317",
"author": "Xeracy",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T20:31:28",
"content": "how is this a game?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "867342",
"author": "cvmagic123",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T20:40:25",
"content": "It’s a... | 1,760,376,686.817653 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/adding-charging-back-to-old-apple-accessories/ | Adding Charging Back To Old Apple Accessories | Mike Szczys | [
"iphone hacks",
"ipod hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"charging",
"dock connector",
"hi-fi",
"ipod",
"voltage divider"
] | From time-to-time we’ve been frustrated by the lack of backwards compatibility for Apple accessories. We have a great Monster FM transmitter that used the screen of the original iPod to select a channel. That was a feature we just loved which it never worked with any future hardware. We may not be able to get that back, but perhaps this hack can help us
implement the ability to charge newer Apple devices using older accessories
.
Seen above is the mounting dock from the iPod Hi-Fi speakers released back in 2006. Apparently the sound out of this set of speakers is just great, but you won’t be able to charge your modern device while it’s playing music. That is unless you’re not afraid to solder on a few simple components and roll in a switching regulator which can source at least one Amp of current. As we’ve seen in the past,
Apple uses a couple of voltage dividers to identify modern chargers
. These are installed on the D+ and D- lines of the USB connector and are pretty easy to recreate if you know the voltage levels the device is looking for. In this case a 39K, two 51k, and one 75k surface mount resistors are free-formed right next to the connector on the Hi-Fi’s dock PCB. The regulator on the right supplies the juice for charging. It’ll charge modern devices now, and even work with the iPhone five if you use a simple dock connector adapter. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "867228",
"author": "Gdogg",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T19:24:12",
"content": "Another reason why apple is overpriced shit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "867801",
"author": "lol",
"timestamp": "2012-11-10T01:11:... | 1,760,376,687.0384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/laser-charged-glowing-display/ | Laser Charged Glowing Display | Mike Szczys | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"diode",
"display",
"glow in the dark",
"laser",
"phosphorescent",
"uv"
] | Here’s
one of the best takes on a glowing display
that we’ve ever seen. Currently [H] is using his creation as a fuzzy clock, but it is certainly capable of displaying just about any messages.
The project uses a wheel of luminous paper as the display surface. This has a glow-in-the-dark quality to it which can be charged up using a bright light source. In this case a UV laser diode was used. This is perhaps the best possible source as its intensity will allow for very quick charging. The innovation here is the use of a second disk as a stencil. Look closely in the image above and you will see that the laser diode is mounted perpendicular to the display surface itself. A mirror reflects — and we believe slightly spreads — the laser dot. It then passes through a cut-out on the black wheel which is shaped as the desired character. As you can see in the video after the break, this results in a crisp and clear glowing letter.
Compare this project to the
one that moves the diode itself like a plotter
and we think you’ll agree this is a simpler implementation which still looks great! | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "867128",
"author": "truebassb",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T18:35:47",
"content": "This is fact amazing,you (in general) can also “print” horizontially in a square piece and instead of a roller with letters use something like an LCD behind the glow element and reduce the size of the wh... | 1,760,376,687.13416 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/camera-gantry-rides-on-garage-door-tracks/ | Camera Gantry Rides On Garage Door Tracks | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"camera gantry",
"gantry",
"what exactly is a 'grip'"
] | For as many garage and workshop videos we feature here on Hackaday, we’re surprised we haven’t seen this sooner.
[Todd] makes a bunch of videos in his garage shop, but using a tripod is a pain; he’s always tripping over his camera setup and it is just generally in the way all the time. His solution was to
mount his camera to an overhead gantry
, using the unused tracks for his garage door to move the camera around his workshop.
The build started with [Todd] taking his tripod and fabbing a mounting plate for it to be suspended in mid-air. This would leave the camera upside-down, so [Todd] also made a 90 degree bracket with a 1/4-20 bolt to hold the camera in position.
The actual gantry part of the build is fairly clever. First, [Todd] got a piece of square tubing the same length as the distance between his two garage door tracks. He made a truck that rides on six casters for this tube, then mounted this tube on garage door wheels.
The result allow [Todd] to move his camera anywhere within the footprint of his garage door tracks, including over his workbench and welding area. An ingeniously useful build that’s sure to provide a stable platform for his vlog-type thingies.
Vidia after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjmQLHVCoKE&w=470] | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "867141",
"author": "William",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T18:39:38",
"content": "Very cool hack. Your garage makes great use of space. I especially like the welding, burning table.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "868000",
"auth... | 1,760,376,687.082958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/adafruits-got-a-new-board-an-official-arduino/ | Adafruit’s Got A New Board, An Official Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"adafruit",
"arduino",
"Arduino micro"
] | There’s a new Arduino in town, this time designed in conjunction with Adafruit. It’s the
Arduino Micro
, a very neat little board designed for breadboard use.
Ostensibly an upgrade of the long in the tooth
Arduino Nano
, the new Micro takes all the best features of the new Arduino Leonardo and shrinks them down to a convenient stick of gum-sized package. It’s powered by the ATmega32u4 microcontroller, and with a MicroUSB port is able to emulate keyboards, mice and other USB input devices.
Of course with any microcontroller dev board, comparisons must be drawn between the Arduino Micro and the very popular
Teensy USB dev board
. Like the Teensy boards (and the new Arduino Leonardo), the Micro is able to function as a USB keyboard or mouse. The Teensys, though, is loaded with
LUFA
making it able to emulate just about anything from mice, USB audio devices, and MIDI synths. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "866960",
"author": "simoninns",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T17:05:05",
"content": "This board looks really nice especially for breadboarding. As a side note it is very easy to support LUFA on the Leonardo – In fact the github dev release of LUFA already has native support for the boar... | 1,760,376,687.192371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/hackaday-links-november-9-2012/ | Hackaday Links: November 9, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"cellular",
"potato gun",
"sms",
"sms messages",
"stellaris",
"thingiverse"
] | Yeah, it’s like Twitter but actually
cool
Thingiverse – still the best place on the Internet to find cool 3D models to print out –
has gone all Web 3.0
with their new Dashboard feature. Basically, you can think of this as Thingiverse’s version of Twitter. The dashboard allows you to see the latest updates from people you like, follow people, categories, and tags, and check out your all-important ‘who’s following me’ stats. Yes, to the Hackaday crowd it may sound a little lame, but it’s a great way to winnow the (awesome) wheat from the (slightly less awesome) chaff.
Hey, we goofed. And not by using the same image twice
Remember when
we jumped on the Occupy Thingiverse bandwagon
? Well, there were questions about the Thingiverse Terms of Service and confusion that Makerbot actually owns everything uploaded to Thingiverse.
That’s completely wrong
according to Makerbot’s lawyer [Rich McCarthy]. The whole issue dealt with “Moral Rights or attribution” – a French legal doctrine that isn’t part of US law (or the law of any English-derived legal system as far as we can tell). Yeah, we goofed.
Now u cn snd SMS msgs wit n ‘ino & cell sheld
[Meir] sent in
a cellular library
for microcontroller projects that allows for simple sending and receiving of SMS messages. Yes, it’s been done before, but [Meir] hid all the hardware interaction with the cellular shield – a good design practice – to make the code nice and tidy.
And you thought PVC was bad…
Just in time for Thanksgiving, [Lou] shows us the fastest way to make mashed potatoes:
an oxygen and propane powered potato gun
. The build uses oxy and propane tanks you can pick up for a few bucks at any hardware store, steel pipe for the barrel, a grill igniter, and a few pipe fittings. It’s awesome, and we’ve got to hand it to [Lou] for this one. Now to build one and test it out on
our indestructible test dummy
.
It’s just like the Raspberry Pi! They’re
that
backordered!
Remember the
Stellaris Launchpad
, the very cool (and very inexpensive) ARM dev board put out by TI? Yeah, they’re shipping now. News of this comes from [Ryan Holtz] at Autodesk after the FedEx guy came knocking a few days ago. The good news is they’re shipping, the bad news is the price increased slightly to $13. | 30 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "866695",
"author": "Ozan",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T15:09:15",
"content": "My stellaris order arrived 2 days ago in a giant box(to Turkey), I bet the shipping costed more than I paid for two boards. Thank you Ti.I loved the “Happy Coding” message that came on the board. It was a nic... | 1,760,376,687.261762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/double-kettle-boiling-rig-for-and-easier-brew-day/ | Double-kettle Boiling Rig For And Easier Brew Day | Mike Szczys | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"electric",
"kettle",
"msp430",
"solid state relay"
] | [Dave] built a controller that lets him
boil two kettles at once when brewing beer
. The setup uses electric heating elements in each of the kettles. We prefer to use gas as it’s a bit easier to control temperature. But an electric system like this can be used inside during the winter months while propane is relegated to the outdoors. The other thing that immediately comes to mind is partial mash recipes that require steeping in one kettle, then sparging (rinsing off the grains) with water of a different temperature. That kind of thing is a snap since the two are controlled individually by the trimpots on the front of the control box.
Inside you’ll find two 220V solid state relays. The box itself plugs into the 220V outlet in his basement which is normally occupied by his clothes dryer cord. So as not to blow a fuse, the MSP430 chip driving the relays switches back and forth between them rather than turning both on at once. The system uses entirely manual control, but it should be an easy modification to add a thermocouple and PID algorithms if so desired.
After the break [Dave] shows off the system in a video clip. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "867566",
"author": "bemis",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T22:39:54",
"content": "I don’t understand the desire to brew your own beer… since it ends up bottled, is that much better than what you get from a commercial or micro brewer? Is the cost difference really sufficient for all this ... | 1,760,376,687.308489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/storing-32-bytes-of-data-in-a-piece-of-glass/ | Storing 32 Bits Of Data In A Piece Of Glass | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"delay line",
"delay line memory",
"mercury delay line",
"piezoelectric"
] | After finding an old piezoelectric delay line in an old TV, [Mike] decided to
figure out how it works
and in the process stored his name in sound waves reflecting inside a piece of glass
[Mike] was intrigued by these old-fashioned delay lines after watching [Dave] from EEVblog’s
teardown of an circa 1985 camcorder
. [Dave] found a piezoelectric delay line in his camcorder – a device that is able to store digital data by sending a sound wave into a glass plate, letting the sound wave bounce through the plate. and picking up the sound on the other end. It’s actually not too dissimilar to a
mercury delay line
used in the earliest computers.
After sending a pulse through his piezoelectric delay line, [Mike] picked up an echo almost exactly 64 microseconds later. After hooking up a simple circuit constructed out of a 74-series chip, [Mike] found he could ‘loop’ the delay line and keep a pulse going for up to 3 milliseconds.
Three milliseconds isn’t much, but by injecting serial data into the delay line, [Mike] was able to spell out his name in binary, as seen above. It’s just 32 bits stored for a fraction of a second, making it a very volatile, low-capacity memory, but functionally equivalent to the old mercury delay lines of yore.
It’s certainly not what [Mike] or [Dave]’s delay line was designed to do; these video delay lines were used to hold the previous line of video for a form of error correction. Outside [Mike]’s workbench and a few museums, though, you won’t see a delay line used as a form of computer memory. A very cool build and an awesome history lesson, and we thank [Mike] for that. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "866585",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T14:12:51",
"content": "As I understand he’s using the glass as a transfer medium, not as storage. That makes the title a tad misleading.The project is cool though!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,376,687.383412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/netduino-gets-a-huge-upgrade/ | Netduino Gets A Huge Upgrade | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"arm",
"netduino"
] | The Netduino, a dev board built around the .NET Micro framework with the goal of being compatible with Arduino shields
just got a huge upgrade
.
The new Netduino Plus 2 features an upgraded STM32 ARM Cortex-M4 uC running at 168 MHz, improving on the original Netduino’s ARM7 running at 47 MHz. In addition to some more processing power, the STM32-based microcontroller has twice the RAM and six times as much Flash memory. Also, Ethernet (10Mbps), a MicroSD card port, and of course compatibility with all Arduino shields – including the new Arduino ‘Revision C’ boards for the Leonardo – remains intact.
In keeping with the design goals of the Netduino, the new board uses the .NET Micro Framework running under Windows. It looks like OS X and Linux users won’t be left out in the cold for long, though; there’s a project to port the .NET Micro stuff
over to Mono
.
Tip ‘o the hat to [Jason] for sending this one in. | 12 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "866486",
"author": "baobrien",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T13:22:56",
"content": "It might be worth getting one of these things just for the STM32 and using it with libmaple or something.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "866721",
... | 1,760,376,687.43084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/09/hardsync-ddr-reimagined-for-the-c64/ | Hardsync – DDR Reimagined For The C64 | Jeremy Cook | [
"computer hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"dance",
"ddr",
"Hardsync"
] | For those of you that like to play dance games, but [DDR] for the [PS2] uses too modern hardware for your tastes,
[Hardsync]
may be for you. Although the chiptune-style music coming out of the [C64] may not appeal to everyone, one would have to imagine that a game like this could have been a huge hit 30 years ago.
As for the hardware itself, it does indeed use one PS2 element, the dance mat. It’s hooked into one of the C64 joystick ports. In this case, the cable was cut, but it would also be possible to make a non-destructive adapter for it so as not to interfere with any future PS2 fun.
The program is made so that fellow retro-dancers can make their own songs. Each song is a discreet file, and can be reconfigured to your own personal mix. Be sure to check out the video after the break of this old-school dance machine in use after the break!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kadozgMgHlM%5D | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "866233",
"author": "thehypnotist",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T12:07:36",
"content": "awesome",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "866469",
"author": "mrasmus",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T13:10:52",
"content": "Ironically, a l... | 1,760,376,687.481083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/08/kegdroid-makes-drinking-beer-more-fun/ | KegDroid Makes Drinking Beer More Fun | Ryan Fitzpatrick | [
"Android Hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"arduino",
"beer",
"kegdroid"
] | Are you bored with just
drinking
beer? Are your friends constantly sneaking into your house and stealing your sacred beverages? If so, perhaps you need
KegDroid
– the Android controlled beer tap created by [
Paul Carff
].
Looking for a way to add more excitement to drinking his beer, [Paul] spiced up his tap with a little extra technology. He added an Android tablet for touchscreen navigation of the menus, an Arduino to control the flow sensors and solenoid valves, and an NFC reader to act as security for restricted access. Users must be authenticated before they are allowed to pour any alcohol.
Your name and photo are pulled from your Google+ account as you’re logged in, then you simply select your beverage of choice, and if you’d like a one, eight, or twelve ounce pour. Flow sensors automatically shut off when you have the desired quantity.
Seems like you get more foam than beer, but all in all it’s a cool bar top app.
Check out the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2pj8FHxzFvI] | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "865199",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2012-11-09T00:26:02",
"content": "I love Android, but I hate how the Android robot has become the new Tux. It just gets slapped all over everything so Android users can feel special and show everyone that they feel they’re superior.",
... | 1,760,376,687.639992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/08/zelda-is-the-princess-now-link-is-too/ | Zelda Is The Princess, Now Link Is Too | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"game cube",
"ROM hack",
"wind waker",
"zelda"
] | [Mike] is a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and now that he has a daughter it’s a great time to pass this epic quest down to the next generation. There’s a problem with explaining the plot to her daughter, though: even though the player can name the character after themselves, there’s no way to change the gendered pronouns. Yes, it’s a problem that could have been solved by a cameo by Professor Oak asking, “Are you a boy or a girl?’ but [Mike] came up with a better solution:
changing all the pronouns with a ROM hack
.
There are a few ‘problems’ with altering the dialogue with a ROM hack. Most importantly, all the new pronouns need to be the same length as the words they replace. [Mike] is using the word ‘milady’ to replace ‘my lad’ and ‘master,’ but also had to take a page from critiques of modern epics and replace ‘swordsman’ with ‘swordmain.’
So far, everything is working as planned and the [Mike]’s daughter [Maya] is enjoying seeing herself sail her dragon ship and battle foes. It’s a great effort to bring some semblance of gender neutrality to a classic game, and an awesome project for a really great dad.
Thanks to [Guillaume] for sending this one in. | 43 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "864428",
"author": "pff",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T18:06:48",
"content": "lesbians?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "864488",
"author": "IceBrain",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T18:34:07",
"content": "Link an... | 1,760,376,687.71863 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/08/the-bands-name-in-lights-rgb-leds-to-be-exact/ | The Band’s Name In Lights, RGB LEDs To Be Exact. | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"pixelinvaders",
"RGB pixel",
"spi"
] | A few of [michu]’s friends formed a band named Kalikut Now and needed an awesome stage show. The band made a few 80cm-high letters of their band name, cut a few pieces of acrylic, and wired them up with a few LED modules. The work of connecting these letters to a computer and programming them fell on [michu], and we’ve got to say
he did a pretty good job
.
You may remember [michu] from his
StripInvaders
and
PixelInvaders
projects, basically a few RGB LED modules that can communicate with an Arduino over an SPI interface. With these huge letters, [michu] ran into a problem: he had 11 meters of cabling between the clock and data lines, far beyond the maximum recommended length for any datasheet.
[michu] looked around the Internet for
common problems with SPI interfaces
and found a lot of good advice from a lot of very smart people. The issue with the SPI bus
was eventually solved
by
correctly
wiring the grounds of his LED modules, building a few dead-simple SPI buffers, and reducing the clock speed of the SPI bus.
After countless hours, the band’s name is in lights, and RGB LEDs to boot. Everything can be controlled with Abelton Live, and looks absolutely fantastic as seen in the video after the break. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "864253",
"author": "SavannahLion",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T16:44:55",
"content": "In his ground routing example. The first image shows the ground being daisy chained. In the second he shows a loop. Wouldn’t his “correct” solution have the potential to create a noisy ground loop? Wo... | 1,760,376,687.778815 |
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