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https://hackaday.com/2012/11/08/raspberry-pi-gets-risc-os-can-now-play-elite/ | Raspberry Pi Gets RISC OS, Can Now Play Elite | Brian Benchoff | [
"Featured",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Elite",
"raspberry pi",
"risc",
"RISC OS"
] | The processor in the Raspberry Pi – an ARM11 built by Broadcom – actually has a long and storied history. Much as how the Intel i7 in a top-of-the-line desktop can still run code written for the original IBM PC, the ARM chip in the Raspberry Pi is also based on decades-old technology.
The first ARM-based computer was the Acorn Archimedes, a mid-80s computer with 512kB of RAM and no hard drive. The Archimedes ran RISC OS, a very nice graphical operating system written explicitly for the ARM architecture.
RISC OS is now available for the Raspberry Pi
, finally bridging the gap between educational computers from 1987 and 2012.
Of course, a very much updated version of 25-year-old operating system running on a Raspberry Pi doesn’t mean much without a ‘killer app,’ does it? For the original Acorn Archimedes the killer app – and one of the best video games of the 80s – was
Elite
, a space trading and combat game that featured vector-style ships. [Pete Taylor] downloaded the Raspi RISC OS image
and got Elite running
using an
Archimedes emulator
and, of course, the
Archimedes port of Elite
.
It’s a pretty neat development if you’re in to alternative OSes and one of the best space-based games ever made. Well worth a download, at the very least. | 32 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "864019",
"author": "CaptainJistuce",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T14:40:57",
"content": "“mid-80s computer”“512MB of RAM”Parser error.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "864025",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T14:4... | 1,760,376,689.98936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/08/bust-a-move-physical-controller/ | Bust-a-Move Physical Controller | Mike Szczys | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bust-a-move",
"controller",
"crank",
"mouse",
"puzzle bobble"
] | This set of
PVC cranks make you work for your game of Puzzle Bobble
, also known as Bust-a-Move. It uses a little cannon centered at the bottom of the screen to pop bubbles based on like colors. There is a cartoon character that cranks as hard as it can to aim that cannon, and this hack brings that effort into the real world.
The controllers are made from PVC. A bit of creative use of joints and different pipe diameters make for a freely rotating rig. Rotation is monitored via the optical encoder wheel from an old mouse. Above you can also see the plastic container that hosts the ‘fire’ button. Since the mouse is already an input device, there’s no other electronic work to be done. Just plug the controllers in and map the wheel/buttons to the game you want to play. Make sure to check out the demo video embedded after the break.
If Angry Birds is more of what you’re playing these days you should consider
building your own slingshot controller
.
[Thanks DeadlyDad] | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "863798",
"author": "mental2k",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T12:55:14",
"content": "Haha, nice little hack that. Must go purchase some PVC pipe and kill an old mouse.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "864147",
"author": "M4CGYV3R"... | 1,760,376,689.810171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/arduino-mp3-jukebox/ | Arduino MP3 Jukebox | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"jukebox",
"mp3",
"sd",
"vs1002d"
] | Here’s
an inexpensive Arduino-based MP3 Jukebox
(
translated
) which [Jose Daniel Herrera] put together.
He spent some time making sure that it looked great sitting on a shelf with his other audio equipment. This started with a wooden box which is some reused packaging. We’re not familiar with the ‘iNFUSiONES’ product; perhaps it’s tea or tobacco? At any rate, to this he added a custom face plate to host the character LCD, rotary encoder, two buttons, and to act as a grill for the two speakers.
The speakers and their accompanying amplifier circuitry were pulled from a portable speaker set. He combined them with a VS1002d MP3 decoder module, SD card breakout board, and the Arduino itself. In addition to the overview post linked above, there is also
a collection of assembly photos
, and a post discussing
the way he arranged the code for the control systems
(
translated
). See and hear the unit in action in the clip after the break. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "862899",
"author": "caramono",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T02:23:17",
"content": "“Infusiones” means herbal teas :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "863101",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T05:19:09",
"con... | 1,760,376,689.916341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/more-crt-fun-with-the-scope-clock/ | More CRT Fun With The Scope Clock | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"oscilloscope",
"vector graphics"
] | That’s a sexy way to use parts from an old oscilloscope. [Aaron] took his inspiration from another project that was using CRTs from old oscilloscopes. Now he’s giving back with
a site dedicated to sharing information about the Scope Clock
. This project is along the same lines as
the one we saw a few days ago
.
The image above shows his first build in its new home in Hong Kong. The clock is housed in two clear acrylic containers, paired through a surprisingly beefy military grade connector. You can see the journey that it took to get to this polished finish by going to the Prototype tab at the top of the page linked above. One of the images shows some fast captures of the screen redraw. It lets you see the vectors which are being traced on the phosphor screen by the electron gun. This gives an image that we think is far more pleasing than the row scanning of a traditional CRT monitor.
Of course you don’t have a to start from scratch either. Here’s a clock project that just
augments a functional CRT scope
. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "862654",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T23:17:56",
"content": "New to me, great project! I agree with the author that peeking from behind the screen is one of the most fascinating things ever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,376,689.416666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/hands-free-hot-air-station/ | Hands Free Hot Air Station | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"aoyue",
"bga",
"hose clamp",
"hot air pencil",
"hot air station",
"lamp",
"reflow",
"rework"
] | In an effort to ease the process of soldering Ball Grid Array (BGA) chips at home [Roger] rigged up a hands-free solution for his hot air equipment.
The main component in the build is an Aoyue hot air rework station that he already had in his workshop. He wanted an adjustable mount that would hold it steady when reflowing parts so he hit Amazon and bought a $14 articulated lamp. After ditching the funnel-shaped shade he bolted a cable clamp to the socket housing. This can be tightened on the hot air wand, with the spring tension of the lamp making it easy and quick to reposition the nozzle. [Roger] sent this project directly to
our tips
line and we’ve embedded the rest of the project images after the break.
If you’re looking for a more DIY rework solution you should checkout
this hot air pencil hack
. It uses a desoldering iron, a fish pump, and some metal mesh as a heat sink to put out a stream of very hot air. | 13 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "862500",
"author": "Robot",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T21:25:50",
"content": "Oh my, I will have to borrow this idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "862510",
"author": "Kaj",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T21:37:16",
"conte... | 1,760,376,689.860596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/building-a-bipolar-supply-from-a-boost-converter/ | Building A Bipolar Supply From A Boost Converter | Mike Szczys | [
"Parts"
] | [
"boost converter",
"regulator",
"switch mode",
"tl3467"
] | This DC-DC Bipolar PSU
was developed for use with a guitar effects pedal. [Obsolete Technology] needed to source both positive and negative 15V. This is pretty easy to do if you’re converting from mains, but he wanted a solution that could work with a lower-voltage AC/DC wall wort or even from batteries.
The part that pulls it all together is the LT3467. It’s a switching power regulator which offers a range of features configured by the layout of a handful of external passive components. It can put out 80 mA on each line (positive and negative). Also extremely useful for this application is the chip’s high frequency operation. Depending on the version, it switches at 1.3 or 2.1 MHz. This is high enough that it will not introduce audible noise into the audio system.
We’ve got an exercise bike whose negative supply for the LCD is blown. We’re going to try build this circuit, trimming it for our voltage needs, and get the contrast working again.
[Thanks Olli] | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "863140",
"author": "Chris C.",
"timestamp": "2012-11-08T06:01:39",
"content": "This thing on? I thought for sure a switcher running at such an unusually high frequency would illicit some interesting comments.And if not that, then surely someone else has noticed that Mike’s been hit... | 1,760,376,689.624019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/measuring-smd-parts-with-a-home-brew-version-of-smart-tweezers/ | Measuring SMD Parts With A Home Brew Version Of Smart Tweezers | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"capacitance",
"inductance",
"LCR meter",
"resistance",
"Smart Tweezers"
] | SMD parts are great; they allow you to pack more parts on a board, do away with drilling dozens of PCBs, and when done correctly can produce a factory-quality board made in a home lab. There’s one problem with SMD parts; troubleshooting and measuring them. The ideal solution would be something akin to
the Smart Tweezers we’ve seen before
, but this fabulous tool costs three hundred bones. [Kai] came up with a much cheaper solution:
home brew smart tweezers
that can be built for a tenth of the cost as the professional model.
What [Kai] built is an LCR meter, basically a tool that measures inductance, capacitance, and resistance in a very, very small form factor. The technique of measuring a part’s properties involves feeding a set frequency into the device and measuring the phase, voltage and current coming out. It’s all wonderfully explained by
[Dave] over at EEVblog
in one of his earlier videos.
The hardware [Kai] is using includes an LCD display from a Nokia phone, an MSP430-based microcontroller, a very tiny opamp near the tip of one of the points of the tweezer, and a programmable gain amplifier used to measure the components. In testing, [Kai] can measure very low-value components with a +/- 2% accuracy, and larger, more realistic components with +/- 0.25% accuracy. An awesome accomplishment, and much better than the common Chinese meters that can’t measure in the nH/pF/mΩ range.
[Kai] hasn’t gotten his pair of smart tweezers working yet – he still needs to get the circuit up and running and write some software. We’ll keep our readers apprised of [Kai]’s progress, though, and gently convince him to work with Seeed Studio or someone similar to get his version of Smart Tweezers onto maker’s workbenches the world over. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "862250",
"author": "flink",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T19:12:19",
"content": "I wish him rapid success so I can get my hands on one!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "862262",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T19:16:... | 1,760,376,689.579126 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/nyan-cat-built-into-the-wall-of-a-house/ | Nyan Cat Built Into The Wall Of A House | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [] | You’re going to need your best negotiating skills if you want to convince your significant other to let you add your own Nyan Cat to the kids’ room. This goes a bit deeper than just mounting something on the wall. The
LEDs which light up this Nyan Cat installation
are actually in the wallboard itself.
Luckily, this is actually a ‘playground for grown-up kids’. [Schinken] and his fellow hackerspace members built it at their location in Bamberg, Germany. It started as a Nyan Cat scarf, which was easy enough to hang on the wall. To make it sparkle they added sixteen LEDs. But you won’t see the wires from either side. A hole was drilled at the location of each diode, with a trench chiseled between them. This makes room for the wires, and was covered with spackle before painting. It turned out to be a pretty simple way to add a focal point to the room, and it certainly has the appropriate level of geekiness for a hackerspace. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "862174",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T18:28:43",
"content": "Video here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBWjVZSPluQ",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6318703",
"author": "Julip",
"timestamp": "2021-02... | 1,760,376,689.362115 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/developing-with-ebay-sourced-arm-lcd-dev-boards/ | Developing With EBay-sourced ARM + LCD Dev Boards | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM"
] | [
"arm",
"dev board",
"lcd",
"stm32",
"tft",
"touch screen"
] | eBay isn’t only about counterfeit designer handbags and boxes of all-marshmallow Lucky Charms, sometimes there’s actually something
useful
for sale. [Matt] found a bunch of Chinese-made ARM development boards with integrated LCD displays on the ‘bay, but without a reliable toolchain, these boards – as cool as they are – are nearly useless. Thankfully,
he figured out how to do something with these boards
, and neatly packaged everything into a VirtualBox image.
The boards in question usually include a 2.4″ or 3.2″ touch panel LCD, an STM32F103 ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, a microSD card connector, and sometimes a few other goodies like 16MB of Flash memory and an RS-232 port. An amazing amount of computational capability packaged into an easy-to-use form factor made even more awesome by their $40 price point.
Because these boards offer so much more than a common Arduino, a proper OS is in order. [Matt] looked over
FreeRTOS
and included a few demo programs for his Ubuntu-based VirtualBox image
(available for download on [Matt]’s site, it’s a dropbox, email us if you need some hosting, [Matt])
Never mind, see below.
Programming these boards can be done over a serial interface, but a JTAG programmer such as a
Bus Blaster
makes things very, very easy.
You can check out a few demos [Matt] put together after the break. It’s a very cool development that is much more suited for being integrated into an electronics project than a Raspberry Pi or other such high-power ARM board, and something we hope to see more of in the future.
EDIT: You know what’s really good for hosting Linux distros?
Torrents.
That’s [Matt]’s distro and the HaD crew is seeding. Please seed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdvOsVIG_PQ&w=470] | 37 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "861697",
"author": "0xfred",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T14:14:41",
"content": "I’ve seen these on eBay and wondered about the quality. Nice to see that they’re OK.If you’re happy with a Windows toolchain then another way to program them might be to grab a very cheap STM32VL Discovery ... | 1,760,376,689.766003 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/do-not-look-into-12-watt-uv-lamp-with-remaining-eye/ | Do Not Look Into 12 Watt UV Lamp With Remaining Eye | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"star led",
"UV LED"
] | We’ve seen a couple of UV lamp builds for exposing photosensitive PCBs and erasing EPROMs, but [John] over at pcboard.ca decided
if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing
. They designed a UV exposure board using twelve 1 Watt UV LEDs, an impressive amount ultraviolet light that you probably shouldn’t look at for too long.
We’ve seen UV exposure boxes before,
usually made with a bunch of 5mm UV LEDs
soldered to a piece of protoboard. These projects do their job, but the exposure time is on the order of minutes. The PCboard.ca UV lamp can expose a PCB in just 20 seconds.
The build began
with four pieces of aluminum bar, 1 inch wide and 1/8″ thick. The 12 star LEDs were glued down to this bar with thermal adhesive and serve their purpose as a rather large heat sink.
[John]
performed a little test
to determine how long it would take this monstrous UV source to expose a PCB. By copying a PCB mask four times and placing it over an unexposed board, [John] made a PCB with exposure times of 60, 45, 30, and 15 seconds.
After developing and etching
, all but the 15-second exposure was fully etched, an amazing result that will probably lead to some very, very rapid prototyping.
All the more impressive is the fact that only four 1-watt LED drivers were used for this build. That’s right, this UV lamp is actually operating at about a quarter of its maximum rating, or about 285mA per LED. We’d hate to see this thing operate at full power, protective eyewear or not. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "861614",
"author": "ino",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T13:25:37",
"content": "If the led is rated at 1 watt, 285mA is not “a quarter” of it’s maximum continuous current. This kind of led usually have a forward voltage between 3 and 4V .. that gives, for 1W, something like 300mA of conti... | 1,760,376,689.693352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/07/atari-punk-stick-puts-a-synth-in-a-joystick/ | Atari Punk Stick Puts A Synth In A Joystick | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"atari punk console",
"Joystick",
"synthesizer"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngXrTd-8jf4&w=470]
The Atari Punk Console, a tiny synthesizer based on the ubiquitous 555 timer chip, is the first build de rigueur for any budding electronic wizard wanting to build musical devices. With just a handful of caps, resistors, and a pair of pots, the APC is a fabulously fun and easy build made even cooler by
[Pat]’s addition of a joystick
.
The circuit of the Atari Punk Console consists of a 556 chip – basically two 555s put into the same package – and a pair of potentiometers to control the frequency and output of this very basic synth. Since most joysticks are just two pots arranged on an X-Y mount, [Pat] thought it would be cool to control his APC without twiddling knobs, and instead sweeping a joystick around.
After acquiring an old Microsoft joystick from his local Goodwill, [Pat] wired up his Atari Punk Console to the joystick, using the ‘fire’ button to turn the output on and off. The result is everything between a low machine gun-like tone to a nasal square wave that will hopefully keep pace with your chip-based audiophile friends.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngXrTd-8jf4&w=470] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "861502",
"author": "EdgarVice",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T12:17:08",
"content": "ahaha this is so cool:-X———–",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "861507",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2012-11-07T12:18:30",
"content":... | 1,760,376,690.031179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/upverter-2-0-launches/ | Upverter 2.0 Launches | Eric Evenchick | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"eda",
"pcb",
"SPICE",
"upverter"
] | Disclosure: I currently work at Upverter
We’ve featured
Upverter
here in the
past
. At that time, the EDA tool was capable of collaborative schematic capture. Today, Upverter is launching version 2.0 of their tool which includes many new features allowing for end-to-end electronics design.
Upverter now has a PCB editor, allowing you to manufacture your designs. They are working with PCB manufacturers to make it easy to choose a fab and submit design files. Other new features include a Spice based simulation engine allowing in-browser simulation, and product lifecycle management features to help manage your project’s bill of materials.
When we last looked at Upverter, it was just a tool for creating and sharing schematics. With today’s launch, the tool can be used for designing electronics from start to finish. Since Upverter is free for open source projects, it will be interesting to see how hackers use it.
You can check out a
tour
of the new features. Any thoughts on using a cloud based EDA tool? Let us know in the comments. | 41 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "860283",
"author": "Necromant",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T20:04:27",
"content": "Is it already suitable for routing DDR2/DDR3 memories?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "860354",
"author": "tiagoangelo",
"timestamp": "2012-... | 1,760,376,690.716431 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/ikea-provides-a-great-uv-exposure-box/ | Ikea Provides A Great UV Exposure Box | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"photosensitive",
"uv",
"UV exposure box"
] | Making your own boards at home is among the heights of achievement for home tinkerers, and one fraught with frustration. The toner transfer process requires carefully peeling away layers of photo paper, and milling your own circuit boards is an exercise in complexity. One of the best options is using photosensitive copper boards, but this requires exposing the masked-off copper to fairly intense UV light. A UV exposure box is a wonderful project, then, and something [Carlo]
just about has wrapped up
.
The first portion of [Carlo]’s build involved
placing 135 UV LEDs
on a piece of protoboard. This UV source eats up a surprising amount of power; [Carlo] is using 12V for the supply, so an old industrial power supply is more than capable of dishing out the 1.5 Amps required for the build.
Next, [Carlo] needed a timer for
his exposure box
. He settled on a design based on an ATMega8 turning a high voltage transistor on and off with a character LCD for the user interface. A few buttons allow [Carlo] to set the countdown timer, after which the LEDs turn on for a set period of time.
All this was packaged into a small box [Carlo] picked up from Ikea. It’s a very useful build, and judging from the video after the break, extremely easy to use. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "860099",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T18:28:05",
"content": "Very nice build! I especially think that, down the road, the author will be happy that he chose a wooden box, as a plastic box would eventually get brittle from all the UV (not 100% sure about that, since I... | 1,760,376,690.491107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/reliving-1977s-cutting-edge-computer-with-the-pocket-mini-computer/ | Reliving 1977’s Cutting-edge Computer With The Pocket Mini Computer | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"cosmac",
"COSMAC VIP",
"Pocket Mini Computer"
] | Classic computers are just up [Jeff]’s alley, so when he looked for a new project for his Pocket Mini Computer, he looked at
one of the earliest microcomputers available
: the COSMAC VIP, a 1.76 MHz beast from 1977.
The
COSMAC VIP
was a single-board educational computer released by RCA in 1977. Priced at just a hair under $300, the COSMAC was much more affordable than infamous $1300 ‘fruit’ computer also released that year. To get young programmers up and running quickly, the COSMAC came bundled with the CHIP-8 programming language, making it very easy to generate graphics on-screen for all the eventual PONG and Breakout clones.
[Jeff]’s COSMAC VIP runs on a
Pocket Mini Computer
, a very cool Parallax Propeller-powered board we’ve seen before emulate other retro computers including the venerable
Commodore SID synthesizer
chip.
Because the COSMAC’s user interface was the very, very old-school 4×4 hexadecimal keypad, [Jeff] found it necessary to emulate this retro feature by soldering his own 4×4 keypad. After soldering 16 buttons into 8 columns and rows, [Jeff] connected this keyboard to a
PFC8574a
I2C I/O expander and connected this chip to the I2C bus on the Pocket Mini Computer.
The result is an emulated COSMAC VIP that’s just begging for an ‘introduction to microprocessors’ class or just a round of Tetris, Tic-tac-toe, Lunar Lander, or one of the several Breakout clones available for this very cool computer. A pretty awesome build, even if it is from the dawn of the computer age. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "859827",
"author": "Cyberteque",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T15:47:41",
"content": "This looks cool.I still have a 6800 based machine that runs CHIP-8.10 years after they published the original board ETI put out an expansion board, mainly because the original ended up in places they ha... | 1,760,376,690.548307 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/dumpster-diving-nets-100-arduino-powered-motor-controllers/ | Dumpster Diving Nets 100 Arduino-powered Motor Controllers | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Featured"
] | [
"arduino",
"dumpster diving",
"motor controller",
"stepper motors"
] | Never one to pass up the recycle pile at work, [Scott] usually doesn’t find much. A few old hard drives, maybe a ancient laptop every once in a while, but on very rare occasions he finds something actually useful. This latest haul is
a gaggle of stepper motor drivers
that, with a bit of work, can be reverse engineered and turned into an Arduino.
After prying into one of the plastic-enclosed boards, [Scott] found a LED, a quartet of transistors for powering the motor, and an ATMega168 microcontroller. Interestingly, most of the pins for the 168 were already broken out on the DA15 connector on each controller. The only thing needed was to build a programmer to dump the Arduino bootloader onto these little widgets.
After much trial and error (and building a new programming interface), [Scott] now has 100 Arduinos with a single stepper motor controller built in. He’s already made a toy light cycle rotate on a small stepper (after the break) and blink a LED, but with this many widgets, we’re wondering what crazy contraption [Scott] will come up with.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqDJ0wmGLCY&w=470] | 47 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "859627",
"author": "Trav",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T14:07:55",
"content": "some guys have all the luck…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "860174",
"author": "Mario",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T19:12:22",
"c... | 1,760,376,690.639276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/before-you-throw-out-that-pumpkin-make-a-dragon-o-lantern/ | Before You Throw Out That Pumpkin, Make A Dragon-o-lantern | Brian Benchoff | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"flamethrower",
"jack o lantern",
"jack-o-latern"
] | Yes, it’s a little late for Halloween, but before you throw out that rotting gourd sitting outside your front door, how about planning for next year’s festivities with a dragon-o-lantern?
The first dragon-o-lantern that made its way into our tip line is a
fire breathing dragon jack ‘o lantern
built by [Aaron] for a pumpkin carving contest. The idea is simple; just carve a dragon head out of a pumpkin, insert candle, and spray the open flame with a can of Aquanet. Sure, it’s crude, but with a little engineering it could turn out to be a very, very cool build.
For a slightly more complex build, [Chris]
built a fire-breathing jack ‘o lantern
triggered by anyone saying the words, “trick or treat.” The key part of this build is a Microsoft Kinect, used for its voice recognition capabilities instead of its capacity to form a 3D depth cloud.
The fire portion of [Chris]’ build is controlled by an Arduino triggering a solenoid to dispense a small amount of fuel into the pumpkin shell. [Chris] doesn’t go over the construction of his ‘poofer,’ but any member of your local hackerspace should be able to show you how it’s done.
Videos after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJfDWBXQtI&w=470] | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "860121",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T18:42:44",
"content": "Since no one else has posted this…“It’s dangerous, little children will be killed! Don’t try this at home! You’ll shoot your eye out!”BTW, viewing the tags, what is a jack-o-LATERN?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,690.436553 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/06/7400-frequency-counter/ | 7400 Frequency Counter | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"7400",
"frequency counter",
"logic"
] | This frequency counter
is [Miguel Pedroso’s] entry in the 7400 Logic contest. After looking at the design we think this is a perfect project for those who have not worked with logic ICs before. The concept is simple and [Miguel] does a great job of explaining his implementation.
At its heart the device simply counts the oscillations of an input signal for one second, then latches the total to the 7-segment displays before zeroing the counter block and starting over. Six 4029 decade counters give the device a range of 1MHz. A set of 4511 BCD to 7-segment decoders translate the count to the display. A 4521 frequency divider chip uses an on-board 4.194304 MHz crystal oscillator to time both the display latching and the counter clearing. [Miguel] mentions that tuning the load capacitors is a bit tricky. Since breadboards have their own capacitance issues it may be necessary to change the load capacitor values when moved to protoboard or the crystal won’t start oscillating. You can see those caps are not the same value, but the tests in the video after the break show that this is pretty much spot-on.
If you’d rather give this a try in HDL here’s
an FPGA-based frequency counter
from which you can draw some inspiration. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "859889",
"author": "COde",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T16:14:43",
"content": "Looks like a fun project for me to build in a weekend :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "859907",
"author": "johnkabat",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06... | 1,760,376,690.392634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/mr-808-is-a-mechanical-version-of-the-most-famous-drum-machine/ | MR-808 Is A Mechanical Version Of The Most Famous Drum Machine | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"drum machine",
"drum synth",
"TR-808"
] | Anyone who has listened to any music from the 80s has heard the percussive effects of the infamous TR-808 drum machine. To the modern ear, it sounds like an antique. Being the most popular drum machine of all time means it must have some redeeming qualities, right?
[Moritz Simon Geist] decided he wanted nothing to do with the wimpy computer-based emulations of a TR-808. Instead,
he chose a more mechanical version
that puts robots inside a gigantic 808 enclosure to play snares, high hats, cowbells, and drums in time with any MIDI drum track.
[Moritz] calls his build the MR-808 and puts a real-life bass drum, snares, hats, toms, claps, and a ride into a 3.3 x 1.7 meter ( 10.8 x 5.5 foot) case. The sound triggers are handled by Max/Msp communicating with a pair of Arduinos to handle the solenoids and light effects. You can read more about the hardware setup in [Moritz]’
behind the scenes look
.
After the break you can see the MR-808 in action, both alone and by providing the percussion for [Moritz]’ band. A very cool build that now cries out for an Arduinofied bassist placed into an overgrown TB-303 enclosure. | 27 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "857621",
"author": "Mojoe",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T17:30:05",
"content": "Really? A mechanical version of a machine? Imagine that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "857631",
"author": "Pilotgeek",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,690.966514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/skittles-sorting-machine-sorts-skittles-keeps-the-band-happy/ | Skittles Sorting Machine Sorts Skittles, Keeps The Band Happy | Brian Benchoff | [
"cooking hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"RGB sensor",
"skittles",
"sorting"
] | In 1982, Van Halen had the biggest stage show around. Their rider – a document going over the requirements for the show – reflects this. In the middle of the requirements for the lighting and sound rigs, Van Halen placed a rather odd request; one (1) bowl of M&M, (ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES). The theory being if the request for no brown M&Ms wasn’t followed, the lighting and sound rigs probably weren’t up to spec either.
It’s not M&Ms this time (they wouldn’t fit in the machine), but [egenriether] came up with
a seriously clever solution for sorting Skittles by color
. Why? We have no idea, other than, ‘just because.’
The build details are a little scant, but we know [egenriether] used a
BASIC Stamp 2
for the electronics portion of the build. To sort the Skittles by color, a TAOS RGB color sensor reads the red, green, and blue values for each Skittle and actuates a servo that guides each piece of candy into its respective bowl.
It’s a very, very cool, if completely useless build. Still, we’re thinking it could be put to use if [egenriether] is ever backstage setting up before the band arrives.
Videos after the break. Thanks [Andrew] for sending this one in.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL1Nv1j3bWQ&w=470]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvtLk4i6TmY&w=470] | 25 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "857447",
"author": "word clock",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T16:22:42",
"content": "Thank God, it really disturbs me when I buy Skittles and find them all mixed up :)Kidding aside, this is a GREAT GREAT build, looks factory made!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,376,691.073356 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/jeri-shows-off-a-delta-sigma-adc/ | [Jeri] Shows Off A Delta Sigma ADC | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"1-bit",
"adc",
"delta sigma",
"jeri ellsworth"
] | [Jeri] has had a bear of a time moving up to Valve Software, but electron microscope is safely in her garage (!) and her electronics lab is slowly taking shape. Since she can’t bring out the real-life gravity gun she’s working on, she decided to
show off a one-bit ADC
that uses just a flip-flop to sample an analog waveform into digital data.
By toggling the clock input of a 74xx74 (or any flip-flop, really) and feeding the complimentary output to back into the data input, [Jeri] can get an output that is a 50% duty cycle feeding into the input of the chip. Adding an audio input to this data input with 10k pot to this feedback loop will cause the duty cycle to change in relation to the analog input, making a one-bit ADC.
As with any electronic shortcut, there are a few drawbacks: the clock cycle feeding into the flip-flop has to be pretty fast; at least a few dozen kilohertz if you’re sampling audio. Still, if you don’t have a free ADC pin, or you’d just like to build a bitcrushing guitar pedal, it’s a very simple (and cheap) way to get analog into a digital micro.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTCtx9eNHXE&w=470] | 56 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "857134",
"author": "jc",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T14:05:20",
"content": "since when is a few dozen khz ‘pretty fast’ ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "857217",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T14:28:33... | 1,760,376,690.900217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/thinking-cap-is-also-party-hat/ | Thinking Cap Is Also Party Hat | Eric Evenchick | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"hat",
"leds",
"lpd8806",
"wearable"
] | The
Thinking Cap
is a piece of wearable signage that lets you display what’s on your mind. The hat uses a Teensy 2.0 connected to a Bluetooth radio to allow the wearer to update the message on the fly, letting the room know what their thinking at that instant.
This hack is based off of
LPD8806
controlled LED strips, which are becoming very popular for adding lots of LEDs to anything. There are five strips that need to be controlled over SPI, but the Teensy only has one SPI peripheral.
This lead to the use of multiplexer to allow for controlling each strip individually. The hat uses an interesting and low cost scheme to multiplex five channels using two 744052 dual 4 channel multiplexors and a 7400 inverter.
The Teensy can receive messages using the Bluetooth serial port protocol. The 5 x 7 pixel characters are stored in a framebuffer, and shifted around the hat to create the animation.
The result is a bright message circling around the user’s head, which can be updated with a smartphone over Bluetooth. Check out a video demo of the hat after the break. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "856934",
"author": "Julien",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T12:18:07",
"content": "Nice hat but i really don’t see the need of multiplexer here :-/Just put the strips as one long and do it in a simple function to adress the correct led.here you have more hardware and more software to mana... | 1,760,376,691.016416 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/04/hackaday-links-november-4-2012/ | Hackaday Links: November 4, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"LM317",
"metal brake",
"metal shear",
"nerf",
"parallel port",
"phone charger",
"PVC",
"resistors",
"sheet metal"
] | Wait, you’re using a Dremel to cut PCBs?
Cutting copper-clad board or – horrors – depanelizing PCBs is a pain if you don’t have the right tool. Over at Hub City Labs
they’re using a small, cheap metal shear & break
. Bonus: it can cut and bend sheet metal, so the Hub City folks can also make enclosures.
Color Codes? Yes, Color Codes.
[Joe] sent in a cool utility he whipped up called
resisto.rs
. Plug in a resistor value, and it’ll spit out the 4-band, 5-band, and surface mount labels for that resistor value. Pretty neat.
Parallel Ports
Parallel ports may be a dying breed, but that didn’t stop [Electroalek] from putting together
a VU meter that connects to his LPT port
. It’s an extremely simple design; just connect some LEDs and resistors to the pins of a parallel port, and you can easily control them via software on a computer. Playing around with an LPT port used to be common knowledge, so we’re glad to see [Electroalek]’s work here.
The power is out, but Radio Shack is still open
[Jason] is stuck in New Jersey without power and needed a way to charge his phone. He whipped up a cell phone charger using an RC car battery and an LM317 voltage regulator. It’s
an easy circuit to piece together
, and judging from
[Jason]’s picture
will hopefully keep his cell phone charged until the power comes back on.
Shooting 50 Nerf darts all at once
If [Rob]’s project log is to be believed, it looks like they’re having a lot of fun over in the Sparkfun warehouse. They decided to have a full-scale Nerf gun war for a summer intern’s last day. [Rob] came up with a
DIY Nerf shotgun
that shoots 50 darts across the room, just waiting to be found sometime in the next decade.
There’s a great video of [Rob] firing the single barrel (yeah, they made a trident-shaped one as well) gun
at well prepared but unsuspecting coworkers
. Be sure to check out the comments of this post to see Hackaday readers frothing at the mouth
because PVC pipe isn’t a pressure vessel guys. You’ll all surely die. | 43 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "855992",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2012-11-04T21:09:10",
"content": "A thing that bends metal is called a brake, not a break. Also, after you cut circuit boards with a shear, it’s no longer sharp enough to cut metal well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,691.153468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/04/turning-the-raspberry-pi-into-a-cocktail-mame-coffee-table/ | Turning The Raspberry Pi Into A Cocktail MAME Coffee Table | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cocktail cabinet",
"coffee table",
"mame",
"table"
] | Ah, the cocktail arcade cabinet. With the right design, its able to blend right in to any living room decor, much more than any traditional stand-up cabinet, at least. [graham] over on Instructables didn’t tear apart a 30-year-old arcade cabinet for his new coffee table. Instead,
he built one from scratch
, connected it to a Rasberry Pi, and brought hundreds of arcade classics right in front of his couch.
The build began by cutting up some wood to house the 24″ LCD screen, Raspi, and arcade controls. The LCD screen is supported with a rather clever system of cross braces screwed into the VESA mount, and of course a piece of perspex protects the screen from the inevitable spills and scratches.
The joystick two blue ‘player’ buttons and the player 1 and player two buttons are wired directly to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi. The Raspi boots up into a selection of MAME games, but there’s also an option for opening up the window manager and browsing the web.
It’s a very neat build that’s a lot smaller (and easier to build) than a traditional cocktail cabinet. As [graham] is using it for a coffee table, it might get more use than a regular MAME build, to boot. | 35 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "855884",
"author": "TheMog",
"timestamp": "2012-11-04T19:52:51",
"content": "As a MAME developer, seeing people cramming MAME onto underpowered devices like the Raspberry Pi is infuriating and wrong, because inevitably theydon’tuse an authentic build of MAME, they use MAME4all or so... | 1,760,376,691.33917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/04/hacked-farm-toy-plays-simon/ | Hacked Farm Toy Plays Simon | Caleb Kraft | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"simon"
] | My kids have a plastic farm toy. It moos, it oinks, it neighs, it
baas, and frankly, it grates. But since I tricked it out with an
attiny2313, at least it can play “Simon Says”.
This is what [Tom] said in his email to us. We love that when the toy annoyed [Tom], he improved it.
He started by inserting his own electronics. Using an ATTiny2313 for the brains, he proceeded to make it into an interesting game of “simon says”. Each stall is a button and has a nice bright LED in it to help you follow along. Interestingly, he preserved the original electronics as well and added a switch so he could change modes. Great job [Tom]!
Catch the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Cw1cQGUrFPM] | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "855739",
"author": "Rhalla",
"timestamp": "2012-11-04T17:08:41",
"content": "Holy crap. My girlfriend’s son has this toy… the cat plays with it more than he does, and it is annoying as all hell.I hate fake animal noises but now that there is a point to them they seem slightly less o... | 1,760,376,691.202725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/custom-circuit-drives-a-small-round-crt-display/ | Custom Circuit Drives A Small Round CRT Display | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"crt",
"eagle",
"freerouting",
"geda",
"specctra"
] | [Svofski’s] latest hack seeks to do no more than look cool on his desk. We’d say mission accomplished. He doesn’t even need anyone around to be proud of
the small round CRT display unit he put together
. Just having it hum away next to him will be more than enough to keep him going when regular work gets a bit tedious.
One of the biggest challenges when working with a cathode ray tube is the supply. He compares the requirements with that of Nixie tubes, and this is quite a bit more challenging since he wants to generate the 750V from a 12V DC source. To pull it off he hand wound his own transformer. There are two secondary coils, one for the cathode heater and the other as the supply. You can see a brief clip of the unit in action after the break.
Take note of the PCB section of his writeup. He took a meandering route through several different software packages before printing the board. It started with Eagle, moved to
freerouting.net
, which produced a Specctra file that he converted to gEDA using a Python script. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "858483",
"author": "HackJack",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06T00:25:51",
"content": "While I admit it looks cool, it looks extremely dangerous with all the high voltage wires exposed. Definitely does not belong to a work desk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,691.26874 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/two-player-tic-tac-toe-from-logic-chips/ | Two-player Tic-Tac-Toe From Logic Chips | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"7400",
"logic",
"tic-tac-toe"
] | Here’s another entry in the 7400 Logic contest. [Circuitchef] used gates and a few flip-flops to build
a two-player electronic Tic-Tac-Toe game
. The full details or shared in the PDF file he links to in his post. We’ve also linked to it after the break in case the Dropbox he is using becomes unavailable.
He provides a nice block diagram which helps to understand the game’s design. The board is arranged in a 3×3 matrix of momentary push buttons and bi-color LEDs. Each player takes turns pushing the button in the square they’d like to claim. The input circuitry uses flip-flops to establish which player’s turn it is, illuminating the appropriate color for that square. A set of 3-input AND gates monitor all possible combinations of winning patterns. The outputs of those gates are OR’d down to just one output which is used to light up the ‘Winner’ LED with the right color. If all boxes are lit up and none of those combinations is satisfied the game is declared a draw. This can all be seen in the demo embedded below the fold.
Project Design Details
(PDF) | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "858327",
"author": "iamthesoundman",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T23:22:09",
"content": "very cool. what happens if both players press the same button?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "858328",
"author": "iamthesoundman",
... | 1,760,376,691.581639 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/building-your-own-fusion-drive/ | Building Your Own Fusion Drive | Mike Szczys | [
"hardware",
"Linux Hacks",
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"cache",
"fusion drive",
"hard drive",
"ssd"
] | We missed the original announcement, but Apple unveiled more than just the iPad Mini at their last event. They’ve got a new storage system called Fusion Drive which is supposed to combine the access speeds of solid state with the storage density of platter drives. When you look just under the surface what you’re really seeing is a disc drive with grossly enlarged cache in the form of an SSD drive. How about moving from the 64 MB or so of cache seen on many large hard drives today to something like 64GB?
Well you don’t have to wait for Apple to do it. [Patrick Stein] gave it a shot
using command line tools to combine an SSD with a physical drive
. Sure, it’s not an all-in-one solution, but it is a pretty good proof. The linchpin that will really make it possible is a low-level driver that can handle the caching on the SDD, while ensuring that the data eventually makes it to the platter for long-term storage.
[via
Engadget
] | 46 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "858171",
"author": "Redion",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T22:03:51",
"content": "and if you don’t have the SSD drive you could use RAMDRIVE and then use it like SSD so then your ram is the cache for your hard drive! I would like to see someone do that!",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,376,691.729715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/collection-of-nixie-bar-graphs-bump-to-the-beat/ | Collection Of Nixie Bar Graphs Bump To The Beat | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"bar graph",
"filter",
"nixie tubes",
"VU meter"
] | This
VU meter uses Nixie tubes as the display
. There are a total of fourteen IN-13 bar graph tubes that map out the audio spectrum. The build uses purely hardware for the display; no microcontroller processing, or dedicated VU-meter chips were used.
Input begins with a dual Op-Amp along with a pair of potentiometers which allow the left and right channels to be balanced. Both channels are then each split into seven signals, which explains the layout of tubes seen above. Each signal is then fed through a voltage divider to envelope the output between 0V and 6V. There is also a low-pass filter to handle sudden volume spikes which don’t work well with the nixies. But as shown in the video after the break, all that work has paid off. Thr clip gives us a look at the green protoboards which host all of this filtering hardware. You’ll want to turn the volume down for the first couple of demonstrations which use a sweep to test the system. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "858082",
"author": "lurhmann",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T21:14:18",
"content": "Repost.Kidding, I’m glad this testament to the sloppy soldering and masochistic design of my past keeps cropping up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,376,691.531119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/lous-haircut-really-sucks/ | [Lou’s] Haircut Really Sucks | Mike Szczys | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"flowbee",
"hair cut",
"trimmer",
"vacuum"
] | Ah yes, at some point a brilliant inventor combined the electric trimmer with a vacuum cleaner and the art of cutting hair was never the same again. [Lou] is showing us
how to give a haircut that really sucks up the waste
. And he did it using rubbish he had lying around.
Most people will recognize this as a DIY version of
the Flowbee
. Not surprisingly, you can still buy one of those if you want, but [Lou] is looking for a vacuum cutter for trimming his dog’s hair so he’s not about to shell out cash for it. He already has the trimmer, and just needed a way to attach the vacuum hose to it. In the image above you can see the grey crevice attachment for his vacuum. He taped it onto the trimmers, then cut a plastic soda bottle to use as a hood near the business end of the trimmer. It’s all wrapped in packing tape to hold everything in place and seal around the joints. You can see it in action in the clip after the break. | 23 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "857907",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T20:04:22",
"content": "As seen on TV!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4Z5Kg08PY",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "857963",
"author": "kay",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T20:41... | 1,760,376,691.641563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/beginner-project-color-sensing-with-rgb-leds-and-a-photocell/ | Beginner Project: Color Sensing With RGB LEDs And A Photocell | Caleb Kraft | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"rgb"
] | I’ve seen the concept art for “real world eyedroppers” several times. I haven’t noticed any of the products come to market though. It isn’t the technology stoping them, color sampling can be done a million ways. I picked one of the easiest ways and tossed something together pretty quickly.
The method I chose is
outlined in fantastic detail by [Fjordcarver] on instructibles
. I took his project and used the Teensy2 instead of an arduino as well as seperate red, blue, and green LEDs since I had some lying around. He includes the schematic to do exactly that, so again, credit goes to him. [Fjordcarver] also made a processing sketch to display the colors. I wanted to actually use this, so I added a tiny feature where any keystroke will copy the hexidecimal color to the clipboard. This way I can just leave the “eyedropper” running and sample things whenever I want.
import processing.serial.*;
import java.awt.datatransfer.*;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
String buff = "";
int val = 0;
int wRed, wGreen, wBlue;
String col = "ffffff";
ClipHelper cp = new ClipHelper();
Serial port;
void setup(){
size(200,200);
port = new Serial(this, "COM3", 9600); //remember to replace COM20 with the appropriate serial port on your computer
}
void draw(){
background(wRed,wGreen,wBlue);
// check for serial, and process
while (port.available() > 0) {
serialEvent(port.read());
}
}
void keyPressed() { cp.copyString(""+col); }
void serialEvent(int serial) {
if(serial != '\n') {
buff += char(serial);
}
else {
int cRed = buff.indexOf("R");
int cGreen = buff.indexOf("G");
int cBlue = buff.indexOf("B");
if(cRed >=0){
String val = buff.substring(cRed+3);
wRed = Integer.parseInt(val.trim());
}
if(cGreen >=0){
String val = buff.substring(cGreen+3);
wGreen = Integer.parseInt(val.trim());
}
if(cBlue >=0){
String val = buff.substring(cBlue+3);
wBlue = Integer.parseInt(val.trim());
}
col = hex(color(wRed, wGreen, wBlue), 6);
buff = "";
}
}
// CLIPHELPER OBJECT CLASS:
class ClipHelper {
Clipboard clipboard;
ClipHelper() {
getClipboard();
}
void getClipboard () {
// this is our simple thread that grabs the clipboard
Thread clipThread = new Thread() {
public void run() {
clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
}
};
// start the thread as a daemon thread and wait for it to die
if (clipboard == null) {
try {
clipThread.setDaemon(true);
clipThread.start();
clipThread.join();
}
catch (Exception e) {}
}
}
void copyString (String data) {
copyTransferableObject(new StringSelection(data));
}
void copyTransferableObject (Transferable contents) {
getClipboard();
clipboard.setContents(contents, null);
}
String pasteString () {
String data = null;
try {
data = (String)pasteObject(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
}
catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println("Error getting String from clipboard: " + e);
}
return data;
}
Object pasteObject (DataFlavor flavor)
throws UnsupportedFlavorException, IOException
{
Object obj = null;
getClipboard();
Transferable content = clipboard.getContents(null);
if (content != null)
obj = content.getTransferData(flavor);
return obj;
}
} | 16 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "857813",
"author": "Ikari-pt",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T19:25:48",
"content": "thats the metode used by 99% of the teams in robocup junior rescue leage.Very efective for basic colors",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "857822",
... | 1,760,376,691.943861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/05/led-fun-and-light-painting-with-the-pymcu/ | LED Fun And Light Painting With The PyMCU | Jeremy Cook | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"led",
"light bar",
"light graffiti",
"light painting",
"pyMCU",
"python"
] | Recently [Richard] at
[pyMCU]
was nice enough to send me one of their units to try out. As
featured here before
, this little board allows you to control physical things using your computer and the Python programming language. After evaluating it and
making a LED blink
, there were a couple other LED projects I wanted to try.
The first idea was to
make a LED chaser
. This was quite simple, using a little code and plugging in a few LEDs. From this, since you can make the LEDs chase each other, then in the right sequence it should be able to be used to display images using long-exposure photography. Be sure to check out the video after the break of this 10 LED chaser/light bar being assembled.
The results of this
LED light bar experiment
were really cool, writing some simple text and image with 10 LEDs. Considering the low component count, this is one of the simplest light bar builds that we’ve seen. Programming was simple as well, since the computer using Python does all the processing of the drawing as well as physically turning the LEDs on and off. Of course this setup isn’t without its limitations, having to be connected to a computer being the most obvious.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwDdLGW580c%5D | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "857699",
"author": "rohit",
"timestamp": "2012-11-05T18:27:26",
"content": "The hardware ball in the Software court.. Great build..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "859403",
"author": "Sebastian",
"timestamp": "2012-11-06... | 1,760,376,691.770089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/04/capacitive-touch-business-card/ | Capacitive Touch Business Card | Caleb Kraft | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Multitouch Hacks"
] | [
"business card"
] | [Jay Kickliter] sent in his
latest electronic business card
. This time, his goal was to make it much cheaper so he could actually afford to give it away. He did pretty well considering the two week timeline he mentions. This card is using an MSP430 with the capsense library to light up some LEDs any time the card is handled. While he states that it is much cheaper than his last, it is still around $8 a card, so he won’t be tossing these into everyone’s hands. He does point out though that it is always helpful to have hardware to show off at a hardware interview, and an electronic business card does that job very well.
As usual, you can read more details and download the files at his blog. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "855673",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2012-11-04T16:01:28",
"content": "Beautifully done! Simple is better, We simply CNC most of our business cards with no LEDs, people love them and save them.Thanks for posting the info as well!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,376,692.00437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/03/on-not-proving-the-twin-prime-conjecture-with-autocad/ | On Not Proving The Twin Prime Conjecture With AutoCAD | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"AutoCAD",
"math",
"mathematics"
] | As an HVAC engineer by trade, [Carlos Paris] spends a lot of time in AutoCAD designing all those hidden pipes, tubes, and ducts hidden in a building’s rafters. One day, [Carlos] read of an open contest – the prize was over a million dollars – to generate a prime number with a billion digits. [Carlos] misheard this as, ‘a prime number greater than one billion’ and of course said this was a trivially easy task and opened up his favorite tool – AutoCAD – in an effort to discover the largest prime ever. [Carlos] never generated a remarkably large prime, but he did come up with
a very, very cool visualization of prime numbers on a number line
, as well as a great justification of
the twin prime conjecture
, a problem in mathematics that has remained unsolved for several generations.
[Carlos] started his investigations into the properties of prime numbers by drawing a series of circles on a number line in AutoCAD. These circles were of diameters of all the integers, and going down the number line, these circles started to have an interesting, chaotic pattern (see above picture). [Carlos] found that whenever two circles intersected, that position was a prime number. It’s really nothing more than a
Sieve of Eratosthenes
, but it’s a very cool-looking visualization nonetheless.
Looking deeper into his graph, [Carlos] discovered there were certain primes that had another prime number just two places down the number line. For example, the numbers 3 and 5, 29 and 31, and 41,and 43 are twin primes, as the difference between the primes is only 2. The idea there are infinitely many twin primes is a famous unsolved problem in mathematics – it’s obvious it must be true, but no mathematician has yet come up with a proof of this conjecture.
[Carlos] looked at his number line and simplified it to a
generic prime number
. By taking a generic number line and overlaying the multiples of other prime numbers on this graph, [Carlos] had a very, very clever way of understanding exactly
how
twin primes come into existence.
In the end, [Carlos] is no closer to proving the twin prime conjecture than anyone else. We’ve got to hand it to him, though, for nerding out with an engineer’s favorite tool – AutoCAD – and managing to derive some fairly obscure mathematics on his own.
After the break you can see [Carlos]’s videos describing the though process that went into his creation. Very, very cool work.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYkLz8BIS8k&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXksbyWyp-4&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-UcdY3lZRk&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K2vHiqQpV0&w=470] | 28 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "854740",
"author": "no",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T22:28:45",
"content": "HaD: uMaD?(Math a day)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "854797",
"author": "macegr",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T23:04:40",
"content"... | 1,760,376,692.202451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/03/the-smallest-nes-controller-ever/ | The Smallest NES Controller Ever | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"nes",
"nes controller",
"nintendo"
] | A few months ago, [Ben] saw a video of the world’s largest NES controller. “I bet I could make the smallest,” he thought in a strange game of one-upmanship. Now [Ben] has
the smallest fully functional NES compatible controller
, a feat of engineering that can only end in very, very sore thumbs.
The old NES controller is a very simple device: eight buttons are connected directly to a 4021 shift register. Every time the NES is looking for a change in input, it reads out the data in the shift register and gets the status of all the buttons.
After finding the smallest footprint 4021 shift register he thought he could solder, [Ben] found some very small SMD push buttons and a very tiny resistor network for the pull ups. The result is
tiny
, and thanks to the sacrifices of a few NES controller extension cables he found on Amazon, 100% compatible with his old NES.
You can grab all the schematics over
on [Ben]’s git
. Tip ‘o the hat to [Troy] for sending this one in. | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "854603",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T20:19:02",
"content": "The first controller that did away with the joystick and made everybody left handed. Cheap! I have played one of these less than 5 minutes and just put it down, never to look at one again.Hack up an ergo... | 1,760,376,692.134587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/03/prosthetic-foot-and-ankle-have-amazingly-natural-movement/ | Prosthetic Foot And Ankle Have Amazingly Natural Movement | Caleb Kraft | [
"Lifehacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"prosthetics"
] | The natural movement and functional power of the ankle and foot during a step , while appearing fairly simple, are amazingly difficult to replicate with a prosthetic. Usually it requires a fast and fairly powerful motor to provide the forward push and then whip that foot up as we pull our leg forward. However, recent projects have managed to do some amazing jobs at achieving this difficult task. Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel has released the video (below the break) of the “AMP-Foot 2.0” that pulls this off very well.
The main idea behind the AMP-Foot 2.0 is to have the actuator work longer with a lower power rating while the produced energy is stored in elastic elements and released when needed for propulsion. The device is designed to provide 100% of push-off for a 75 kg subject walking at normal cadence on ground level.
[via
Engadget
]
[youtube=http://youtu.be/UHEEP1lrga4] | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "854447",
"author": "staberas",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T18:08:12",
"content": "i never ask fo this…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "854671",
"author": "Vasili Sviridov",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T21:20:32",
... | 1,760,376,692.066915 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/03/chromium-on-the-nexus7/ | Chromium On The Nexus7 | Caleb Kraft | [
"Android Hacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"chromium",
"nexus 7"
] | [Hexxeh] is at it again, porting the chromium OS to whatever seems to appear in front of him. This time
he’s ported it to the Nexus 7
. Last time we saw him, he was r
aspberry chomping at the pi
. The details are very scarce, so we would like to issue this request.
[Hexxeh] we realize you don’t think your every-day-joe would be up to the task of putting chromium on their nexus 7. This is Hackaday however, and we know that at least a few of our readers would LOVE to join you in your efforts and could possibly contribute to your fun. Share some details with us… please.
You can see a video of it in action after the break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucnR1sYLY1I&feature=player_embedded | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "854528",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T19:25:03",
"content": "And Chromium on the iPad? Also very scarce on details…Very secretive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "854649",
"author": "six677",
"ti... | 1,760,376,692.248085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/03/hijinks-at-50000-amps/ | Hijinks At 50,000 Amps | Caleb Kraft | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"high voltage"
] | http://youtu.be/uXEPy6Za6cI
So you happen to have a really beefy transformer sitting around in your living room. What are you going to do with it? Short stuff across it to watch it glow of course!
This video is exactly that. While we flip flopped between “what is this guy doing?” and “ooooh, look at it glow!”, we thought you would surely enjoy this video. If you’re in a hurry, jump to around 5:30 to see a crowbar lit up completely.
[Alan] from HackedGadgets pointed out an interesting thought. Often the government pinpoints marijuana grow houses by their electricity usage. Though he’s not using this on a regular enough schedule to realistically get raided, the thought of that misunderstanding is quite humorous.
[via
HackedGadgets
] | 65 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "854201",
"author": "Rockzo",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T14:27:10",
"content": "embedded link is no good…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "854433",
"author": "n0lkk",
"timestamp": "2012-11-03T17:50:48",
"co... | 1,760,376,692.467624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/vodafone-usb-3g-modem-driver-from-mbed/ | Vodafone USB 3G Modem Driver From Mbed | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM",
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"internet",
"mbed",
"network",
"vodafone"
] | Wow, that’s a really simple hardware setup to supply your device with a 3G Internet connection. Better yet, the software side is just as simple thanks to
the Vodafone USB Modem library for mbed
. It will work for any of the cell data plans offered by Vodafone. The only problem you may have is not living in one of the 30 countries serviced by the telco.
The dongle seen at the right is sold by Vodafone and is meant to be used for Internet data, so you won’t be doing anything that might get your SIM banned. Connecting to the network is a one-liner thanks to the previously mentioned library. From there, gets and posts can be done with your favorite package. The Hello World example uses HTTPClient. And since the mbed is simply an ARM platform it shouldn’t be hard to use the library with the ARM chip of your choice. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "853107",
"author": "Coda",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T19:09:36",
"content": "If the modem is just a USB serial port then I suspect you could use this with V-USB albeit at a lower data rate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "853276... | 1,760,376,692.300596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/nixie-clock-that-doesnt-skimp-on-the-number-of-tubes/ | Nixie Clock That Doesn’t Skimp On The Number Of Tubes | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"atmega8",
"nixie"
] | [Nina Blum] figures that if you’re going to the trouble of driving Nixie tubes you might as well use a lot of them. The details about this clock, which were sent directly to our tips line, lists a total of thirteen tubes used. There are six Russian IN-8 tubes (large digits), four Z573M tubes (small digits), but the colon tubes and the sine wave tube part numbers were not specified.
An ATmega8 controls the segments via a set of transistors. To operate the display [Nina] included a user interface made from five buttons and a four line character LCD. There is a video showing off the menu system that includes a way to set the time, date, and toggle the various illuminated bits. We’re waiting for permission to post that clip on our YouTube channel as [Nina] only included
a Rapidshare link to the movie
. Right now you’ll find more images after the break and we’ll embed the video if we get to okay. | 21 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "853018",
"author": "Aaron Andrusko",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T18:05:50",
"content": "The colon tubes look like test tubes with neon bulbs inside.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "853148",
"author": "mjrippe",
"t... | 1,760,376,692.36516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/computers-not-candy-with-the-geek-group/ | Computers Not Candy With The Geek Group | Caleb Kraft | [
"cons"
] | [
"halloween",
"The Geek Group"
] | This year for Halloween, The Geek Group, decided to take a very different approach to outreach. Instead of making animatronics, or converting their giant (seriously HUGE) space into a haunted house, they held an event called “
Computers Not Candy
” where they teamed up with a large local company to bring 100 tablet computers to 100 youths.
If you’re not already familiar with the Geek Group, you should check them out. They’re a huge hackerspace that really seems to have their act together. They
put out really cool videos regularly
, our favorite being the
equipment autopsies
.
While we really do admire the work they did to introduce these kids to hackerspaces, we also love candy and silly spooky projects. Next year how about Computers AND Candy! | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "853031",
"author": "Th3BadWolf",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T18:17:13",
"content": "That is by far,the most amazing thing I’ve saw on HaD.Don’t get me wrong here,some crazy hacks came by and changed the world,but giving so much out of sheer kindness to encourage people to learn,that’s ... | 1,760,376,692.715677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/pull-string-most-useless-machine/ | Pull-string Most Useless Machine | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"7400",
"logic",
"most useless machine",
"servo"
] | The mechanical simplicity of
this pull-string controlled most useless machine
is delightful. You can see the metal gripper which is reaching up to tug on a light-fixture-style pull chain. This is how it turns itself off after you’ve pulled the string to power it up.
The device is [Alex555’s] entry in the 7400 Logic competition. We do hope that he ends up posting a schematic because we’d love to see the gritty details of how it works. After the break you can watch two doors open, allowing the arm to raise up and the gripper to grab the chain. This takes just four servo motors, which are controlled by the signal from a 555 timer and some accompanying hardware.
Apparently the chain is a fake, as the servos didn’t provide enough force to actuate that type of switch. It’s not a surprise as those pull chains do require quite a tug. An optical sensor was used to trigger the movement when your hand reaches for the chain.
[Thanks Brett] | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "852973",
"author": "jasper",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T17:12:51",
"content": "If it’s fake, it’s no fun…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "852981",
"author": "Trav",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T17:24:48",
"content": "My fi... | 1,760,376,692.520329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/atmega1284-as-an-8-voice-32-khz-synthesizer/ | ATmega1284 As An 8-voice 32 KHz Synthesizer | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"atmega1284",
"dac",
"r2r",
"synthesizer"
] | A couple of things strike us about
this 8-voice 32 kHz synthesizer
. First is the cleanliness of the prototype. As you can see, each part has plenty of room on its own board and all are interconnected by 10-pin IDC ribbon connectors. But you’ll have to see the video after the break to enjoy the impressive sound that this puts out. You’ll hear it play the Super Mario Bros. theme; it does it with passion!
To get audio from the digital microcontroller [Mike] built
his own R2R digital to analog converter
. The resistor ladder is built from sixteen resistors, which feed a rail-to-rail amplifier. The sound is mono but the playback is polyphonic thanks to the work done by the ATmega1284. It is reading MIDI commands coming in from an external controller (we assume it’s the computer on which the hardware is sitting). The chip’s 128 KB of Flash memory leave plenty of room to store samples, which are selected from a lookup table based on the MIDI data. If more than one sample is to be played the chip averages the data and sets the 8-bit output port accordingly. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "853017",
"author": "Yarr",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T18:05:37",
"content": "Not to be a negative nancy, but didn’t [lft] do this withThe Chipophonealready?It, too, uses MIDI, has 8 voices, and uses an R2R DAC, but it also uses the much lighter-weight ATmega88, too.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,376,692.851064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/building-a-100-mhz-frequency-counter/ | Building A 100 MHz Frequency Counter | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"fpga",
"frequency counter",
"papilio"
] | The great thing about building with gates is the crazy speeds you can achieve by using hardware directly (as opposed to working with simple microcontrollers).
This 100 MHz frequency counter
is a great example. [Michael] just finished building it using a Papilio board.
Of course we’re not talking about discreet chips here. The Papilio is an FPGA development board which means he is building with hardware gates, but that is still done by writing code. Above, the rig is measuring a 25 MHz being generated by a second FPGA board. Using the Papilio’s on board 32 MHz clock the device is capable of counting a frequency up to 100 MHz. You can see it measuring a 96.875 MHz signal in the video after the break. One interesting thing about that clip is that near the end he touches the crystal’s case with his finger and the Hertz really jump for a moment.
If the 8-digit display looks familiar that’s because [Michael] recently published
a library to use it with an FPG
A. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "852897",
"author": "JB",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T15:52:52",
"content": "Cool. I like doing stuff with hardware. Always more challenging and always faster :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "852926",
"author": "natsfr",
"... | 1,760,376,692.665016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/laptop-motherboard-reborn-as-a-low-wattage-server/ | Laptop Motherboard Reborn As A Low-wattage Server | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"laptop",
"psu",
"server"
] | [Darknezz] sent us a set of photos and some details about his damaged laptop motherboard turned into a server. A client brought him a Dell 1525 on which nothing was showing up on the LCD screen. The HDMI and VGA still worked, and he traced the problem to no signal coming out of the motherboard. He swapped the board out to get the laptop working again, but he client said he could keep the damaged one.
It has a dual-core CPU which meets his needs and since it’s meant to run off of a battery it’s as energy-efficient as possible. [Darknezz] dug through his parts bin and found a PSU that could supply the needed 19.5V at 3.5A. The connector didn’t match but it didn’t take him too long to patch into it using a spare Molex connector. He also needed a power button and ended up soldering a momentary push switch to a couple of pads which he traced out form the original connector. The only thing he actually ended up purchasing were the memory modules. Check out the photos he took of the alterations in the gallery after the break. | 52 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "852777",
"author": "jasonharmon",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T14:18:45",
"content": "This is notable? I’ve done this with so many spare laptop boards I’ve lost count. Heck I had a cloud array built out of them with Ubuntu at one point. In hindsight, I guess that’s why I feel an affinit... | 1,760,376,693.064679 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/02/turning-a-600-mil-chip-to-300-mil/ | Turning A 600 Mil Chip To 300 Mil | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"300 mil",
"600 mil",
"arm",
"dip",
"lpc1114"
] | We’ve seen a few builds featuring NXP’s LPC1114 microcontroller before. This chip – the
only
breadboard friendly ARM microcontroller available – comes in a ‘still a little too large for prototyping’ 600 mil, 28 pin package. We won’t hazard a guess why NXP chose this rather large package, but the good news is it’s possible to
shave this chip down to the more common 300 mil, 28-pin package
used by AVRs and PICs.
In the
video tutorial of this procedure
, the chip is first taped down to a desktop CNC mill. 150 mil on each side of the die are removed, exposing the very cool-looking pattern of leads coming out of the chip. This isn’t enough area to solder, so the chip had to be further milled to expose some of the internal wiring.
After soldering everything to a set of pins, the new 300 mil package is covered in epoxy putty, milled down again into a nice cube shape and painted. Yes, the modified chip does work, and no, we can’t figure out why NXP chose a 600 mil package for this microcontroller over the far more common 300 mil chip.
Video after the break. Tip ‘o the hat to [Ian] for sending this one in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5LEEoskiaM&w=470] | 75 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "852514",
"author": "niekblankers",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T11:05:18",
"content": "The end result is really awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "852521",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T11:07:04",
"c... | 1,760,376,693.175439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/how-computers-work-starting-with-transistor-gates/ | How Computers Work, Starting With Transistor Gates | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"logic gates",
"transistor",
"tutorial"
] | [Andrew Gibiansky] has just started
a tutorial series called Computing with Transistors
. It’s purpose is to pull back the many veiled layers between high level languages and the controlling of electrons. And fittingly this first post starts off by explaining voltage source, load, and current. Don’t be thrown by its simplicity though. [Andrew] quickly moves on to talk about switching transistors and how they are used to build gates like the
OR
NOR gate seen above.
If this is the least bit interesting you should also look back at
the post about Nand 2 Tetris
. It’s an online course that works its way through
The Elements of Computing Systems
text book. We’ve been following that journey ourselves, having made it through the hardware build in about a week. The assembler took about the same amount of time, and right now we’re in debugging hell trying to get the last function call and return parts of the VM translator to work right. We’ve used most of the skills needed in this journey before, but never all in one project. It really has shed a lot of light on the gaps in our knowledge, and we’re having a lot of fun at the same time!
[via
Reddit
] | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "850577",
"author": "Everett",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T20:09:53",
"content": "I’m probably mistaken but isn’t that a NOR gate in the illustration? When ever either transistor’s gate goes high the output goes low.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,692.800865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/beaglebone-powers-this-networked-led-marquee/ | BeagleBone Powers This Networked LED Marquee | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM"
] | [
"5x7",
"beaglebone",
"led",
"marquee",
"mbi5026"
] | [Mahmut] calls this project SmartBox. It’s
a BeagleBone controlled LED marquee
which can pull down information off of the Internet.
The project started with the display itself. [Mahmut] used six 5×7 LED modules to populate a circuit board he produced himself. The low side of the modules is controlled by some MBI5026 constant current drivers, with PNP transistors on the high side. The display connects to the BeagleBone ARM board using a couple of IDC ribbon cable connectors. With that up and running he started working on the enclosure. The display board was modeled in Google SketchUp to ensure that the case design would fit it properly. The laser cut acrylic case is in two parts, the base holds the driver electronics, with a hinged section for adjusting the angle of the marquee.
So far there are a few different connectivity features which are shown off in the clip after the break. The BeagleBone has the ability to pull down Twitter feeds, notify about incoming email, and scroll messages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TNj8_MtVdI | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "850747",
"author": "tehgringe",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T22:35:00",
"content": "I require ALL THE LINUX",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "850748",
"author": "tehgringe",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T22:35:00",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,692.896877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/controlling-google-tv-from-a-raspberry-pi-or-other-networked-devices/ | Controlling Google TV From A Raspberry Pi (or Other Networked Devices) | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"anymote",
"google tv",
"java",
"remote control",
"RPi"
] | Google TV is a network connected television. It does what you would think: plays television programs, streams media from the internet, and allows you to open URLs on your TV. But one nice feature is that it can also be controlled over the network rather than just via an IR remote. Google publishes apps which make this simple with a smartphone. But the communications protocols are open source, so [Leon Nicholls] wrote
a Google TV remote control library in Java
.
The video after the break shows him pairing a Raspberry Pi with his television. The image above is the pairing verification code you must enter on the remote hardware before control is authorized. Apparently this is a step that needs to happen every time if using
Google’s Anymote library
. [Leon] improved that, by saving the pairing data so that the first authorization is all that it takes.
He figures this could be used for home automation. We’re not sure what we’d use it for but we’d love to hear your ideas in the comments. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "850454",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T18:52:11",
"content": "Anyone know if googleTV is actually useful for anything? Last time I checked they were 100% useless and had a crap interface.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,376,693.2194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/one-button-audiobook-player-made-from-a-raspberry-pi/ | One-button Audiobook Player Made From A Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"audiobooks",
"RPi",
"visually impaired"
] | [Michael Clemens] was looking for gifts for his Grandmother’s 90th Birthday. She is visually impaired and loves to be able to listen to audiobooks. The problem is that she doesn’t really get the hang of using electronics. He made things easy by
building her a one-button audiobook player
.
The Raspberry Pi board is a perfect solution for this project. It’s cheap, it has an audio port, it has storage for the books on the system SD card, and it runs Linux. The last part is key as it made things very simple when [Michael] started pulling together the various components.
When the RPi is powered up it drops immediately into a Python script which loads the audio track and places the music player daemon in pause. The yellow button seen above works as a play/pause button when clicked. If the listener misses something she can hold the button for more than four seconds to go back one track. Loading new books is easy too. [Michael] copies the files onto a thumb drive with a special volume label. When plugged into the RPi USB port the script automatically copies the book and starts playing when the drive is removed. He included a video demo on his project page linked above. | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "850366",
"author": "sdfsf",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T18:08:44",
"content": "First it was Arduinos used to blink LEDs in place of 555’s.Now it’s crappy SBC’s with buggy hardware, used to do things that can be done with a $10 used mp3 player, a little bit of soldering, and a couple of... | 1,760,376,693.28571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/hacking-an-old-radar-gun-to-interface-with-a-laptop/ | Hacking An Old Radar Gun To Interface With A Laptop | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"audio",
"Doppler",
"radar"
] | [Gregory Charvat] decided to see what he could do with this old Police radar gun. It is an X-band device that broadcasts continuous waves and measures the Doppler shift as they echo back. He cracked it open
to see if he could interface the output with a computer
.
After a little poking around he’s able to get it connected to a 12V feed from his bench supply, and to monitor the output with an oscilloscope. He established that it draws about 0.5A in current he built a companion board which uses AA batteries for power, and provides an audio output which can be plugged into his laptop’s audio-in jack. This technique makes reading the device as easy as recording some audio. From there a bit of simple signal processing lets him graph the incoming measurement.
In the video after the break you’ll see his inspection of the hardware. After making his alterations he takes it into the field, measuring several cars, a few birds, and himself jogging. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "850188",
"author": "Jarek",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T16:44:01",
"content": "I would be careful; there have been some stories floating around about radar guns causing cancer. Maybe not true, but when running any type of RF device out of spec that emits wavelengths that can damage bio... | 1,760,376,693.347251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/playing-video-games-on-your-office-phone/ | Playing Video Games On Your Office Phone | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"acn",
"debian",
"video game",
"videophone"
] | So IT has your computer locked down, but if you’re lucky enough to have this model of telephone you can still play video games while at work. [AUTUIN] was at the thrift store and for just $8 he picked up
an ACN videophone on which he’s now playing video games
. We don’t know what magical second-hand stores sell functioning electronics of this caliber but you should never pass up an opportunity like this.
It turns out the phone is running Linux natively. After some searching [AUTUIN] found that it is possible to telnet to a root shell on the device. Doing so he was able to figure out that the phone uses standard packages like ALSA for the Audio and /dev/input/event0 for the keypad. It even includes an SD card slot so he loaded one with a Debian image and used pivot_root to switch over to that OS. At this point the phone is his to command and of course he loaded up a video game which you can see in the clip after the break. | 25 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "850057",
"author": "asmecher",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T15:39:53",
"content": "Thanks for the write-up!A couple of quick notes: I’m not just loading up a video game, I’m writing it. It’s very much a work in progress but the video shows where it’s heading.Also, I’m not the only one t... | 1,760,376,695.081956 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/hackadays-official-kickstarter-policy/ | Hackaday’s Official Kickstarter Policy | Caleb Kraft | [
"Ask Hackaday"
] | [
"Crowd Funding",
"crowdfunding",
"indiegogo"
] | we don’t have one… yet.
We’re getting inundated with campaigns on crowdfunding sites like kickstarter and indiegogo. Sometimes they’re really cool projects, sometimes they’re not. Unfortunately, they are all basically appeals for coverage on hackaday so they can get money. That immediately puts a negative taste in our mouths. Then again, if a hacker legitimately makes something really awesome, why wouldn’t we want to help spread the word?
We don’t want to stop a really cool project from being shared with you just because it is on kickstarter, but we also don’t want to serve as a crowdfunding advertising platform. It ends up being complicated, especially if the idea is really cool, but the details are sparse.
So, what do you think? Share your thoughts on how hackaday should handle crowdfunding in projects.
p.s. This started as a rant about how sick of the constant pleas for kickstarter coverage we’re getting. We’re trying to stay positive and constructive here, please do the same in the comments. | 217 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "849768",
"author": "Alwar",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T13:41:49",
"content": "When someone try to sell something, i think it isn’t hacking… moreover a lot of projects of kickstarter are simply arduino+cool enclosure (or a remake of a dev platform)I would show only a few ones, the cool... | 1,760,376,695.505197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/computer-tracking-of-billard-balls/ | Computer Tracking Of Billiard Balls | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"billards",
"object tracking",
"pool",
"webcam"
] | The folks at the London-based startup GoCardless have a pool table at their office. Being the techies they are, they decided to build a system that automatically scores games. The results, while not fully complete,
are still pretty impressive
for something whipped up during a 48 hour hackathon.
The automated score keeper uses a webcam duct taped to the ceiling right above the center of the pool table, The balls – red and yellow balls replace the rainbow of solids and stripes to make things easier – are found using
OpenCV
.
This build isn’t quite finished yet. The people at GoCardless are looking to improve the accuracy of their setup by using a camera with a higher frame rate and possibly moving on to physics simulation to predict where the balls should be. If these guys get the time, they could add something like
augmented reality pool table
to improve shot accuracy.
Vidia after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzYYlxj0bxc&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch&v=rzYYlxj0bxc&w=470] | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "847862",
"author": "Isaac",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T15:14:35",
"content": "Did something similar for a third year engineering course:http://goo.gl/l1SWd. OpenCV is a hell of a lot of fun. I also suspect they could have been able to get reasonable results with the rainbow balls, alt... | 1,760,376,694.929226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/pwm-on-the-stellaris-launchpad/ | PWM On The Stellaris Launchpad | Brian Benchoff | [
"ARM",
"hardware"
] | [
"pwm",
"stellaris",
"Stellaris Launchpad"
] | [Joonas] has been following TI’s ‘getting started’ tutorials for their new Stellaris Launchpad. Everything had been going swimmingly until [Joonas] reached the fourth tutorial on interrupts. To the ire of LEDs the world over, implementing PWM on the new Stellaris Launchpad is a somewhat difficult task. After banging his head against the documentation for hours, [Joonas]
finally cracked his PWM problem
and decided to share his discoveries with the world.
The Stellaris has a PWM mode for its six hardware timers, but unfortunately there are no PWM units on the chip. Solving this problem required making two 16-bit timers out of a single 32-bit one. This allowed [Joonas] to specify a ‘load’ and ‘match’ value.
After coding this up, [Joonas] discovered the PWM timer only works on two of the Launchpad’s pins. Hours of Googling later, he had real PWM on his Stellaris Launchpad.
Given the amount of time [Joonas] spent on this problem, we’re glad to help all the other frustrated Stellaris tinkerers out there by sharing this. | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "847775",
"author": "jokkebk",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T14:33:36",
"content": "Cool, this got featured! To clarify, each timer unit (and there are six of them) with PWM has two pins it can be connected to, and it needs to be configured before PWM starts working.",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,376,695.137428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/diy-spot-welder-makes-metalwork-easy/ | DIY Spot Welder Makes Metalwork Easy | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"sheet metal",
"spot welder",
"welder"
] | At Hackaday, we’ve seen enclosures built out of just about every material. From wood, glass, epoxy resin, plastic, and even paper, all these different types of enclosures provide some interesting properties. Sometimes, though, you need an enclosure made out of metal and welding together steel cases isn’t exactly easy or cheap. [manekinen] came up with a really great solution to the problem of welding together sheet metal. It’s a
very easy to build spot welder
perfect for fabbing steel cases.
The core of the build is a transformer pulled from a Technics stereo amplifier. [manekinen] removed the stock secondary winding and rewound the transformer four turns of 35mm ² wire (about 2 AWG). This made the transformer put out 2.6 Volts a 1 kA – more than enough to weld 22 ga sheet.
For the control mechanism, [manekinen] put a limit switch on the electrode arm and wired that to a timer. A knob on the front of the welder allows him to vary the time the welder is on from 0 seconds to 4 seconds.
The results are fantastic – trying to rip apart a weld only results in the metal itself tearing; exactly what you want to see in a welder. It’s a great build made even more fantastic by the welder building its own enclosure.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cgz1T8AcNY&w=470] | 62 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "847501",
"author": "jwrm22",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T12:16:07",
"content": "Nice build. Too bad he used yellow/green wire, this color code is reserved for earth and suppose to be safe. Now he’s running 1kA through it…Some people will just say: “copper is copper”, in that case its a... | 1,760,376,695.664326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/a-scary-pumpkin-pi/ | A Scary Pumpkin Pi | Jeremy Cook | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"Halloween props",
"jack-o-latern"
] | What do you get when you combine motion sensors , a Raspberry Pi, and a pumpkin? When it’s Haloween, a headless scarecrow with a
light-up carved pumpkin in its lap
! The execution of this hack is really great, and the resulting effect, as shown in the video after the break, should be extremely scary to any kids that come knocking.
One neat effect of this hack is that it uses X10 home automation modules to turn off the porch lights for an extra scary effect. After this, the jack-o-lantern lights up and says “help me!” If you’d like to duplicate, or build on this hack, instructions are provided as well as source code for everything on the page. While you’re there, be sure to poke around on
[Insentricity]
as there are quite a few other hacks available for your perusal! Don’t forget sure to send us any other Halloween hacks that you come up with.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtaxgfQZSm4%5D | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "847365",
"author": "lloyd3000",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T11:07:48",
"content": "Scary!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "851665",
"author": "Rhalla",
"timestamp": "2012-11-02T02:12:13",
"content": "awesome",
"paren... | 1,760,376,695.021616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/happy-halloween/ | Happy Halloween! | Caleb Kraft | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"explosion",
"halloween"
] | Enjoy your Halloween and be safe. Keep reading for a thermite project preview.
I was actually out testing out some stuff with thermite. I’m seeing how little you can use and still completely destroy a hard drive as part of an upcoming project. I just thought an exploding pumpkin might be a fun way to say happy Halloween.
Before someone points out that this reaction seems a little odd. I had just burnt this drive with thermite but didn’t record it. The drive is actually full of water here. However, 3 tablespoons of thermite did a perfect job of creating a tiny hole and destroying the platters. Keep an eye out for an upcoming project using this information!
Those two pieces that are alone in the picture were found on the ground after the explosion. | 42 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "847165",
"author": "garym53",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T08:53:48",
"content": "Halloween! Bah Humbug! It’s already cost me 2 Picnics, 2 Cherry Ripes, and a small bag of lollies – and we don’t even celebrate it here! (damn American television).When are we going to get back to normal??... | 1,760,376,695.270764 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/nyan-cat-hat-will-the-the-hit-of-the-party-for-about-one-minute/ | Nyan Cat Hat Will Be The Hit Of The Party…. For About One Minute | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"hat",
"nyan cat"
] | Seriously,
this Nyan Cat hat
is the only part needed for a fantastic Halloween costume. It looks pretty good in this still image, but we dare you to watch the clip of it in action (embedded after the break) without letting a beaming grin creep onto your face. Everyone’s going to just love this… until it starts to get really annoying.
When switched on, the iconic meme rotates around the headgear, bobbing its head and tail as she sings the song of her people. There are also stars made of white LEDs that twinkle very brightly in the process. The presentation is quite good, but even better is seeing the build process. Luckily [Ben Katz] posted
a series of detailed articles
during the adventure. The mechanism responsible for driving the cat around the hat was laser cut from acrylic. It includes a large gear with teeth on the inside, which is interface by a continuously rotating servo motor with a much smaller gear. The head and tail bobbing are purely mechanical, using the revolving motion to turn a spindle as the cat makes its way around the brim. | 26 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "846035",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T20:08:19",
"content": "Ohhhh blatantly obvious typos… I guess that I won’t click any HAD advertisements today!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "846324",
"author": "No... | 1,760,376,695.56732 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/dso-quad-contest-has-a-quartet-of-cash-prizes/ | DSO Quad Contest Has A Quartet Of Cash Prizes | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"dso quad",
"prize",
"seeed studios"
] | Seeed Studios has launched
a contest centered around the DSO Quad
. In case you’re unfamiliar with the hardware, the DSO Quad is
a low-cost standalone oscilloscope
. It’s got four channels, two of which are analog, and includes an ARM Cortex-M3 processor as well as an FPGA. Why are we recapping the hardware with the contest announcement? Because the contest rules state that you
are
allowed to alter the hardware despite the fact that this is more of a software-focused event.
But what you really should know about are the cash prizes going to the winners. Rank in the top four and you’ll claim $3000, $1500, $800, and $300 in cold hard cash. But even if you don’t take one of the top spots everyone still wins. That’s because all entries are open source and will be found in Seeed’s DSO Quad forums.
If judging people is more your thing Seeed needs some help with that too. They’re looking for qualified judges and application details are includes at the bottom of the contest page.
[Thanks Petteri] | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "846092",
"author": "FrankenPC",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T20:41:30",
"content": "This is GREAT news! The DSO quad is a great platform. I was beginning to worry it would be shelved due to disinterest.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,376,694.984241 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/11/01/discrete-fpga-will-probably-win-the-7400-logic-competition/ | Discrete FPGA Will Probably Win The 7400 Logic Competition | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"7400",
"fpga",
"logic chip"
] | For this year’s 7400 logic competition, [Nick] decided to build
an FPGA out of logic chips
(
Internet Archive cached version
).
Perhaps a short explanation is in order to fully appreciate [Nick]’s work. The basic component of an FPGA is a slice, or cell, that performs boolean operations on its input and sends the result on its output. The core of these slices is a lookup table – basically a truth table that stores the result of every possible input combination.
One very easy way to implement a lookup table is to use a RAM or EEPROM chip. By tying the address lines of an EEPROM to the input and the data lines to the output, it’s possible to create a single slice of an FPGA very easily.
Unfortunately for [Nick], 74-series memories have long been out of production. There is another option open, though: shift registers. A shift register is basically an 8-bit memory chip with parallel inputs, so combining a shift register with an 8-input multiplexer is a very simple way to implement a 3-input, 1-output FPGA slice.
After figuring out how to tie these slices to bus lines, [Nick] needed a way to program them. Verilog or VHDL would border on insanity, so he wrote his own hardware description language. It’s certainly not as powerful or capable as the mainstream solutions to programming an FPGA, but it’s more than enough.
In the video after the break, you can see [Nick]’s overview of his very large 8-slice FPGA while he runs a combination lock and PWM program. All the code, schematics, and board layout are
up on [Nick]’s git
if you’d like to build your own. | 19 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "849563",
"author": "jameswilddev",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T11:44:32",
"content": "Mother of god.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "849579",
"author": "word clock",
"timestamp": "2012-11-01T11:56:23",
"content": "you h... | 1,760,376,695.189493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/hackaday-links-october-31st-2012/ | Hackaday Links: October 31st, 2012 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"costumes",
"led",
"led marquee",
"pumpkin"
] | LED Marquee Pumpkin
Here’s
an LED marquee
as the mouth of a Jack-o’-lantern which [Mike Skoczen] made. This comes hot on the heels of
that playable Tetris Pumpkin
. [Thanks Jacob]
Arduino-powered robot costume
This is a sideways
view of the Arduino-powered costume
[Dan] and his wife made for their son. It has lights, buttons, a character display, and makes noise.
Cylon Centurion from a pumpkin
Stuck inside because of the hurricane, [Shawn] and his girlfriend carved this
Cylon Centurion pumpkin complete with lights and sound
.
8×8 LED costume ‘face’
[Matthew]
built this helmet
which features an 8×8 RGB LED matrix as the face. He calls it the digital reaper. You can see him
testing the electronics in this clip
.
Makerspace costume roundup
[Jeff] wrote in to tell us about
the Halloween preparations at the Port City Makerspac
e in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Here we have a Ghost Busters Proton Pack, weeping angel wings from Dr. Who, and an Arc Reactor from Ironman. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "848739",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T23:35:34",
"content": "He had Pong and Centipede on the 8X8 helmet but he forgot on thing Tetrisface!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "849766",
"author": "jamesbaker781... | 1,760,376,695.71101 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/olpc-tablet-distribution-proves-concepts-laid-out-in-the-diamond-age/ | OLPC Tablet Distribution Proves Concepts Laid Out In ‘The Diamond Age’ | Mike Szczys | [
"Lifehacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"neal stephenson",
"nell",
"olpc",
"tablet",
"the diamond age"
] | We don’t remember hearing about the One Laptop Per Child initiative distributing tablet computers but apparently
a couple of shipments were distributed to rural communities in Ethiopia
. The problem one might think of in this scenario is that the literacy rate in the two test villages was basically zero. But that’s exactly the population targeted with thr technology. The tablets were loaded with a software package called Nell. It was designed to guide a child in self learning by telling them engaging stories that include teachable moments. If you check out
the white paper
(PDF) you’ll find it’s pretty much the exact same teaching technique that [Neal Stephenson] wrote about in his book
The Diamond Age
. But keep reading that paper and you’ll see that this is because the researchers took their inspiration from that very novel.
Well the results are in and apparently [Neal] knows exactly what he is talking about. Not only did the children learn from the software, but within five months they were hacking the device (which runs Android) to get the disabled camera working.
[Thanks Alexander via
Dvice
] | 31 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "848448",
"author": "jburton2000",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T20:28:34",
"content": "Except that in diamond age, the only one that really worked was the one that had real humans behind the interactive stories…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,376,695.910713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/rock-em-sock-em-robot-costumes-make-party-conversation-awkward/ | Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot Costumes Make Party Conversation Awkward | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"costume",
"halloween",
"rock 'em sock 'em robots"
] | Don’t get us wrong,
we love these Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot costumes
. But as with that
Samus Helmet
it must make party conversation a bit weird. And how do you hold on to your beer? But you’ve got to commend [EyeHeartInk] and his friend for their commitment. Not only did they wear them to the party, but they spent two months building the things.
Pretty much everything was made from cardboard. All of it was hand cut with a box cutter and a hobby knife. Duct tape and glue were the adhesives of choice, and
according to this thread
a total of fifteen rolls of tape were used. The half spheres on the side of either helmet were molded from expanding spray foam inside a ping-pong ball which had been lopped in half. And of course there are a pair of LEDs for the eyes of each bot.
We usually try to link to other articles that are related, but it doesn’t look like we’ve seen this concept before So you’ll have to settle for this non-Halloween
wristwatch controlled robot boxing game. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "848442",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T20:24:51",
"content": "That’s really amazing work with just cardboard and duct tape (and spray glue and leds) but it does look like a pain in the ass to wear all night. Still one must suffer for art I suppose.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,376,695.842726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/cheap-electronic-dartboard-hacked-to-use-android-for-scoring/ | Cheap Electronic Dartboard Hacked To Use Android For Scoring | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"android",
"basic",
"cordium",
"dartboard",
"darts",
"scoreboard"
] | [Dan] took a $13 electronic dartboard and
made it work with an Android device
. The idea behind it is that these cheap electronic models feature a very sparse display. At this price that doesn’t surprise us. He wanted to add the features you’d find on a coin-op model like the ones found in bars. So he added some hardware that lets him use Android as the scoreboard.
To do this all he needs is the ability to detect when a dart has hit the board and what value was registered. The board is really nothing more than a 62-button input device organized as an 8×8 matrix. He soldered jumpers between the pins and a DIP socket. After the work was done he programmed his Cordium BASIC microcontroller, a 28-pin chip, and dropped it right in. It communicates with a serial Bluetooth module which provides the connectivity with an Android phone. You can see a very quick clip of the app embedded after the break.
This would be just perfect if you’re using an Android set-top-box on a TV near the dart board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9hRHOLr6AQ | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "848388",
"author": "Josh",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T19:53:02",
"content": "That’s really cool, makes me want to build one. I wonder if you couldn’t make it work with excel or something on an actual computer to keep track of your scores more long-term, then you’d be able to see impro... | 1,760,376,695.800489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/can-you-believe-this-portal-gun-was-built-from-scratch/ | Can You Believe This Portal Gun Was Built From Scratch? | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"costume",
"gun",
"halloween",
"portal"
] | This Portal gun will really make [aNoodleJMC’s] costume pop this year. She actually
built the video game weapon replica from scratch
. It even includes some electronics to light it up blue or orange depending on which portal she’s planning to fire at an available flat surface.
There’s a lot of parts that went into the project, but by far our favorite one on the list is an acrylic toilet plunger. Its handle serves as a light pipe for the colored LEDs and can be seen above as a cloudy rod at the center of the clear barrel. A 4″ and 3″ PVC pipe helped to form the rest of the barrel, along with a 3″ clear acrylic pipe for the transparent areas. The bulbous parts of the body were sculpted from florist’s foam. Once she had all of the parts roughed out it’s obvious that [aNoodleJMC] spent a ton of time filling problem areas with Bondo, sanding everything smooth, and giving it a paint job she can be proud of. We hope she didn’t forget to
include GLaDOS in the fun
.
We actually just bought our Portal gun. But that’s because we had the big plans of
adding the ability to levitate objects
.
[vai
reddit
] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "848114",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T17:15:05",
"content": "Yes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "848122",
"author": "dreadpirate15",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T17:19:07",
"content": "Not bad! I think I’l... | 1,760,376,695.76084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/31/fembot-costume-includes-smoking-nipples/ | Fembot Costume Includes Smoking Nipples | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"austin powers",
"costume",
"fembot",
"fog",
"halloween",
"smoke"
] | The greatest of Halloween costumes start with an idea, but they’ve also got to have strong execution to pull the whole thing off. This year [Johanna Jenkins] decided to put together a
Fembot Halloween costume
which is a wonderful example of this concept. Going as a Fembot from
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
sounds like a lot of fun right off the bat, but a bit of work at the sewing machine and access to a wig shop in Hollywood really brought it to the next level. But [Johanna] didn’t stop at that. The Fembots have machine guns in their bras. After they’ve torn through all of their ammo they’re left with smoking barrels as nipples, and that final touch even made it into the costume. In the video after the break you can see [Johanna] showing off the small battery operated fog system she piped into the costume bra.
[via
Reddit
] | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "848103",
"author": "Dr. James",
"timestamp": "2012-10-31T17:08:47",
"content": "Almost speechless at the “fun” in this project. Goood on her!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "848144",
"author": "Dr. Mike",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,696.094142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/27/homebrew-guitar-tuner-also-includes-midi-out/ | Homebrew Guitar Tuner Also Includes MIDI Out | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"guitar pedal",
"guitar tuner",
"midi",
"tuner"
] | A few years ago, [Frédéric]’s brother in law wanted a guitar tuner for Christmas. Instead of going out and buying one, [Frédéric]
broke out the soldering iron and built one from scratch
.
[Frédéric]’s tuner is built around an ATMega168 uC on a
Real Bare-Bones Board
with an LM386 amplifier. The display is a standard 20×2 LCD character display, and the interface is torn from the pages of stomp box schematics with a very hefty foot switch.
Detecting the frequency of a note played into [Frédéric]’s tuner involves a fair bit of math. To measure the frequency, the Arduino samples the waveform coming from the input jack. This signal is delayed for a fraction of a second and the area underneath the real and delayed waveforms is measured. This delay slides across the original waveform until the area between the real and delayed samples are minimized. At that point, delayed wave form will be exactly one cycle behind the real signal, and the cycles per second can be calculated. It’s called the YIN algorithm, and you can
read more about it here
.
Since [Frédéric] already knew the exact frequency being played into the tuner, he figured it would be trivial to add a small analog audio to MIDI converter. This feature (as shown in the video after the break) turns the sounds from a guitar into MIDI notes. It’s monophonic and probably a little superfluous, but still very cool. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "839374",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2012-10-27T13:43:03",
"content": "The design and built is very good and i kind of like the mess of wires.But today, in 2012 you can find apps for smart phones that do the same things and more…. and cost zero.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,696.040285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/draw-your-own-vinyl-beats/ | Draw Your Own Vinyl Beats | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"marker",
"paper",
"record",
"samples",
"turntable",
"vinyl"
] | The
Dyskograf lets you make music with a magic marker
. The musical installation looks much like a turntable for playing vinyl records. But instead of a spiraling groove containing the sounds, this uses marks on a paper disk to play sound samples.
You can see the light outline of several tracks on the paper disc shown above. By adding black marks the optical input of the Dyskograf knows when to start and end each sound. This is best illustrated in the video demonstration after the break.
The marker-based setup makes a lot of sense, and we think it would be perfect if the disc was a dry-erase board. It certainly makes it a lot easier to lay down new beats than
this other optical turntable
which required holes to be drilled in a vinyl record to play the sounds. While we’re on the topic you may also find
this coin-based turntable sequencer
of interest.
[Thanks Petrus] | 13 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "838156",
"author": "donnie darko",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T21:14:01",
"content": "it’s like a more labor intensive version of the monome, still cool thoughhttp://youtu.be/cJwxbTKwONc",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "838168",
... | 1,760,376,696.144735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/halloween-props-a-spooky-mirror/ | Halloween Props: A Spooky Mirror | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ioio",
"matrix",
"mirror",
"rgb",
"spooky"
] | This
mirror will spook your guests
with a variety of static and animated images. It includes a proximity sensor so the images will not appear until someone comes close enough to see themselves in the looking glass.
The electronic parts are quite easy to put together. There is a 32×32 RGB LED matrix mounted on the back of the mirror. It is driven by an IOIO board with some custom firmware written by [Ytai], the creator of that board who happens to live next door to [Alinke]. Where this starts to get interesting is when [Alinke] was working on the mirror to make the LEDs visible from the front. He used a razor knife to put hundreds of scratches in the varnish on the back. This lets just enough light through to see the LEDs, but keeps the mirrored surface reflective. See for yourself in the clip after the break.
The images are fed to the IOIO board by an Android device. We think this could have a lot of use after Halloween as a weather display or news ticker. Perhaps you could even feed it from your
diy Android thermostat
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "838255",
"author": "MorbiousStone",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T22:23:07",
"content": "that’s very cool, i saw one last night using a lcd / proximity sensor or a mat and the image was amazing! onhttp://www.hauntersdepot.com/2007NEWTEMPLATES/GhostBusts/MerchandiseFiles.htm",
"parent... | 1,760,376,696.308942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/am-chiptunes-played-by-a-modified-antenna-analyzer/ | AM Chiptunes Played By A Modified Antenna Analyzer | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"am",
"antenna analyzer",
"chiptunes",
"PICAXE",
"rickroll",
"vk5jst"
] | Believe it or not,
this VK5JST aerial analyzer kit is going to rickroll you
. [Erich] wanted to see if he could use the device in a different way. His adventure led him to use it to feed different tones to an AM radio, producing the all too familiar [Rick Astley] offering.
There’s a fair bit of math that goes into getting the correct signals to generate a given pitch. But it basically boils down to patching into the hardware early in the RF generation. This way an audio signal can be rolled into the carrier frequency. Since this kit uses a PicAXE microcontroller with available source code it is rather easy to add audio input to tweak what the chip is putting out. But there is also some hardware tinkering to be done. Read more about that at the article linked above, and don’t forget to check out the bottom of that page to hear the final results. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "838020",
"author": "ka1axy",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T19:36:00",
"content": "“This way an audio signal can be rolled into the carrier frequency.”The technical term for this “rolling” is “Amplitude Modulation” and it involves varying the amplitude of the RF with the audio signal. Us... | 1,760,376,696.186755 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/darpa-funded-robot-ninja-warrior/ | DARPA Funded Robot Ninja Warrior? | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"boston dynamics",
"darpa",
"humanoid",
"ninja warrior",
"spider climb"
] | Fans of the game show Ninja Warrior will immediately recognize the similarity of this test apparatus as the Spider Climb. Of course that’s not a human contestant, but
a humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics
. And it’s not actually clinging to the vertical walls as its only support. There are two narrow ledges to either side on which its feet gain purchase. Nonetheless this is some impressive work to keep itself upright and avoid slipping. Check out the video after the break to see how it does.
The sheer volume of amazing robot tech that this company spits out is remarkable. Just last month we saw
the robotic cheetah
which can run at almost 30 mph. We don’t expect to see either in the wild anytime soon, but especially this humanoid. you’ll notice the red rings positioned around the apparatus. We believe these are high-speed cameras set up to give the robot positional feedback and we’d wager it can’t perform without them. But that’s merely conjecture so judge for yourself.
[Thanks Pdadio via
Geekologie
] | 23 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "837911",
"author": "ginsublade",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T18:29:48",
"content": "thats just creepy….amazing work though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "837919",
"author": "Skitchin",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T18:34:43",
... | 1,760,376,696.26101 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/pca9517-i2c-translator-a-perfect-companion-for-raspberry-pi-hardware-add-ons/ | PCA9517 I2c Translator A Perfect Companion For Raspberry Pi Hardware Add-ons | Mike Szczys | [
"Parts",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"i2c",
"level converter",
"pca9517",
"RPi"
] | The rig pictured above works as an Internet connected temperature sensor which sends [Zaion] an email with a graph of the change over time. This in itself is interesting, but one part in particular caught our eye. He’s using an i2c temperature sensor , and we think
the PCA9517 Level-Translating I2C Bus Repeater that makes it possible
is a perfect match for the RPi.
This is a Texas Instruments part. You can
find more about it from the company’s product page
. The key words in the name of the chip are ‘Level-Translating’. This has two bus connections, each with variable voltage levels. On side A the bus can be 0.9V to 5.5V. On side B the bus range is 2.7V to 5.5V. Since the Raspberry Pi I/O pins operate at 3.3V this could connect to the B side, give you the ability to interface with i2c parts rated for lower or higher voltages. This is especially handy for folks who started with the Arduino and own mostly 5V compliant prototyping hardware.
The part comes in a SOIC package, which you can easily hand solder and will costs around $1 depending on the supplier. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "837795",
"author": "flink",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T17:24:59",
"content": "That’s an interesting bit of hardware. It could simplify connecting a RAMPS board to a ChipKit Uno32 or Max32 for use in a 3D printer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,696.498168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/find-a-way-to-stop-robocalls-to-grab-this-50k-prize/ | Find A Way To Stop Robocalls To Grab This $50k Prize | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"blocked",
"bounty",
"cellphone",
"FTC",
"robocalls",
"telephone"
] | Here’s a challenge tailored to our community if we’ve ever seen one. You know those delightful unsolicited prerecorded calls you get from time to time? They might be political, but they also come from companies trying to sell you vinyl siding, or promising improvements in your business. Well they’re against the law in many cases, and complaints to the Federal Trade Commission have been piling up. So now the FTC is offering
a $50,000 bounty to anyone who can find a way to block the calls
.
It’s called the Robocall Challenge and you’ve got until January 17th, 2013 to get your entry submitted. The great thing is, this doesn’t need to be a fully working solution. Your entry may be: “proposed technical solutions or functional solutions and proofs of concept “. Even better, you retain ownership of the solution even if you win. This type of recognition will surely have telco related companies beating a path to your door.
Of course if you do have a solution,
we’d love to hear about it
too!
[Thanks Filespace via
WCPO
] | 111 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "837605",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T16:10:15",
"content": "Dear telephone company: If a single line tries to call more than 10 numbers per hour, charge them $1 per call.Problem solved. Please split the $50K between me and Hackaday.(For the sarcasm-impared, the point... | 1,760,376,696.924838 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/halloween-props-monster-in-a-box/ | Halloween Props: Monster In A Box | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"Halloween props",
"monster",
"servo",
"shoe box"
] | This furry Halloween decoration proves to be a simple build, but it’s still quite popular with the little ones. [Chris] had a Halloween party for a group of 2-5 year olds and
this monster that peeks out of a box
was a huge hit. The trick really isn’t in the complexity of the build, but in the interactivity.
The enclosure is just a shoe box which has been covered in synthetic black fur. The lid was hinged on the back, and a hobby servo with a bit of an extension on the arm is used to lift the front which reveals the monster’s paper eyes. Inside you’ll find an Arduino, breadboard, and battery pack. It’s not visible above, but a distance sensor on the front of the box is monitored by the Arduino. When it detects something in front of it the servo fires up and pops open the lid. The firmware includes a timer so that the monster waits a bit before taking its next peek at the party. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "845952",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T19:18:43",
"content": "Nice!How about making a somewhat bigger version with spring-loaded device that spits out a wrapped candy every 3-5 times it’s activated?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,696.642205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/scrapped-dvd-player-turns-into-a-full-featured-clock/ | Scrapped DVD Player Turns Into A Full Featured Clock | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"Arduion",
"clock",
"dvd",
"freduino",
"vfd"
] | [Dmitry] really went the distance with this project. It started as a broken DVD player scrapped for parts, and turned into
this clock with way too many features
. That link is a pretty a dry technical collection of the work. You’ll definitely want to have a look at it, but we’d suggest first watching the demo video after the break which is initially much more exciting.
The donor DVD hardware included a Vacuum Fluorescent display which is the nugget which [Dmitry] was after. But that board came along with some other nice things, like an integrated IR receiver. He also chose to use the PSU from the device. An Arduino is used to drive the clock. We’re not sure where he found it, but the video shows the service manual for the DVD player which must have a been a real help in interfacing with the display. The white dome on the right is a PIR motion sensor. It brings the device out of sleep mode when someone is in the room.
The case is laser-cut and started as cardboard to ensure everything fit as designed. The enclosure makes it a showpiece, but the features of displaying day, date, time, and temperature make it functional as well. Since the VFD is alpha-numeric we think this could even see future upgrades to be used as a new-mail/tweet/IM alert as well. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "845723",
"author": "noouch",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T17:12:52",
"content": "Impressive use of the player’s innards, but damn that case is the opposite of sexy right there. Why not just keep the old player’s enclosure?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,696.690693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/optimus-prime-keeps-a-vigilant-watch-over-the-hen-house/ | Optimus Prime Keeps A Vigilant Watch Over The Hen-house | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"chicken",
"coop",
"optimus prime",
"transformers"
] | [shOOter—] and his family are just starting to keep chickens and need a coop in which the hens could roost. He wanted it to be mobile and protective and what is more mobile and protective and the leader of the Transformers? As you can see,
his chicken coop is modeled after Optimus Prime
.
The cab of the truck serves as the hen-house. It’s made of marine grade plywood held together with glue and galvanized nails. The exhaust stacks, which are made of PVC pipe, are not just decorative. They are chutes for the feed trays to either side of the blue ramp (you can’t really see the trays in this image). To give the chickens a way to stretch their legs he brought his welding skills to bear. The trailer portion of the build is a welded metal frame covered in mesh which provides a rather large exercise yard. Since the habitat is enclosed there’s really no need for
an intricate motorized door
.
[Thanks James] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "845625",
"author": "mouse",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T16:16:52",
"content": "I’m having a really hard time with the scale in that photo. Does he have really tiny chickens, or are his potted plants just enormous?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,696.974403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/bluetooth-control-for-your-dslr-or-just-about-any-other-ir-operated-device/ | Bluetooth Control For Your DSLR Or Just About Any Other IR Operated Device | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"iphone hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"dslr",
"iphone",
"ir",
"led",
"remote control",
"shutter"
] | Just the other day we were reading a Reddit thread asking about how to control a television with a smartphone. The conversation started by talking about adding an IR LED to the phone. Then it was suggested that there should be standalone Bluetooth devices that convert commands to IR, and came around to the ideas that TV’s should ship with native Bluetooth hardware. We couldn’t agree more but we’re also not about to replace our TV just for this option. That’s why we were delighted to find this project waiting on our tip line. It’s a method of
controlling a camera shutter from a smartphone using Bluetooth
. But the technique will work for any device which uses an infrared remote control.
The video after the break shows two different devices controlling the camera shutter. As you can see in the diagram above, the iPhone is the master controller, connecting to a Bluetooth headset mounted on the camera. That headset was altered to feed the speaker connections into an IR LED pointed at the camera’s receiver. The iPhone plays an encoded audio track matching the IR remote command, resulting in the properly formatted message flashing on the LED. The watch doesn’t have the ability to playback audio, but it can send a message to the phone, which then plays the proper audio track through the headset. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "845976",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T19:32:59",
"content": "Given that the most common IR remote carrier frequency is 38kHz, doesn’t this imply that the DAC in the headset needs to be able to faithfully handle frequencies far above the range of human hearing? Are t... | 1,760,376,697.08177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/extracting-data-with-keyboard-emulation/ | Extracting Data With Keyboard Emulation | Brian Benchoff | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"security",
"usb",
"usb hid"
] | A common challenge for computer security specialists is getting data out of a very locked-down system. Of course all network traffic on these test machines is monitored, and burning a CD or writing to a USB Flash drive is out of the question. Where there’s a will there’s a way, so [András] figured out how to extract data from a computer
by emulating a keyboard
.
Emulating a USB HID device is nothing new; the newest Arduino can do it, as can any AVR with the help of
V-USB
. [András]’s build emulates a USB keyboard that can download data from a computer by listening to the NUM, CAPS and SCROLL lock LEDs.
Of course, [András] first needs an app to transmit data through these keyboard status LEDs. To do this, his build carries with it a Windows executable file on the AVR’s Flash memory. After plugging his device into the computer, it writes this program to disk and is then able to send data out through keyboard status LEDs.
It’s not very fast – just over one byte per second – but [András] did manage to extract data from a computer, circumventing just about every anti-leaking solution. | 58 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "845406",
"author": "Josh C",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T14:19:37",
"content": "This must have been a fun project. and will proboly be obsolete in a matter of weeks because it was posted.an idea i had when reading it:what if the usb “keyboard” first emulated as a removable device to tr... | 1,760,376,696.787553 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/tablet-interacts-with-magnets-how-does-that-work/ | Tablet Interacts With Magnets, How Does That Work? | Brian Benchoff | [
"Android Hacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"hci",
"interaction",
"magnet",
"tablet"
] | Making computers interact with physical objects is a favorite of the HCI gurus out there, but these builds usually take the form of image recognition of barcodes or colors. Of course there are new near field communication builds coming down the pipe, but [Andrea Bianchi] has figured out an easier way to provide a physical bridge between computer and user.
He’s using magnets
to interact with a tablet, and his idea opens up a lot of ideas for future tangible interfaces.
Many tablets currently on the market have a very high-resolution, low latency magnetometer meant for geomagnetic field detection. Yes, it’s basically a compass but
Android allows for the detection of magnets
, and conveniently provides the orientation and magnitude of magnets around a tablet.
[Andrea] came up with a few different interfaces using magnets. The first is just a magnets of varying strengths embedded into some polymer clay. When these colorful magnetic cubes are placed on the tablet, [Andrea]’s app is able to differentiate between small, medium, and large magnets.
There are a few more things [Andrea]’s app can do; by placing two magnets on an ‘arrow’ token, the app can detect the direction in which the arrow is pointing. It’s a very cool project that borders on genius with its simplicity.
You can check out [Andrea]’s demo video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqOXpkDoQ4&w=470] | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "845297",
"author": "willaim",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T13:15:50",
"content": "wow!, that is pretty neat, didnt know android tabs could so that.. I can think of a few neat applications in games and even dock situations thanks HaD..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,697.035448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/30/myst-book-plays-myst-doesnt-transport-you-to-other-ages/ | Myst Book Plays Myst, Doesn’t Transport You To Other Ages | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"Cyan",
"Myst",
"Riven"
] | We shouldn’t have to remind you, but back in the early 90s one of the most popular computer games was
Myst
. Despite having the gameplay of a PowerPoint presentation,
Myst
went on to become one of the best-selling video games of all time and the killer app that made a CD-ROM drive a necessity rather than a luxury. [riumplus] loves
Myst
, and after 6 long years he’s finally completed his homage to his favorite game.
It’s a replica of the in-game
Myst
book that is able to play every game in the
Myst-
iverse
.
The build started off by searching for the same book used as a model for the book object in
Myst.
It’s a 135-year-old edition of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume LIV, Issue 312 from 1877. In keeping with the in-game assets, [riumplus] made dies for the spine and cover, embossed the word ‘MYST’ on the book, and filled these letters with 24-carat gold paint.
Inside the newly hollowed-out book [rium] added a very small x86 motherboard running Windows XP on a 32 Gig Compact Flash card. This tiny computer is able to run every
Myst
game ever made on a very nice touchscreen display.
It’s a work of art in our humble opinion, and a fitting tribute to the last great hurrah of the adventure game genre. After the break you can see [rium] interacting with his book, or just
check out the build pics
on [rium]’s Google+ page.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh4U9kan8uM&w=470] | 58 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "845136",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T11:27:35",
"content": "That is… amazing…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "845150",
"author": "Elias",
"timestamp": "2012-10-30T11:37:41",
"content": "Otherwise bri... | 1,760,376,697.25033 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/guide-to-developing-with-the-stellaris-launchpad-on-a-linux-box/ | Guide To Developing With The Stellaris Launchpad On A Linux Box | Mike Szczys | [
"ARM",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"lm4tools",
"Stellaris Launchpad",
"stellarisware",
"ti"
] | So you picked up your very own Stellaris Launchpad, a TI ARM dev board which can be in your hands for just five bones. They do distribute several free IDEs which are not size-limited but perhaps you’re more of a text editor and command line sort of person. Well you’re in luck. There’s now a guide to show you
how to code for and program the Stellaris Launchpad from a Linux box
with using one of the IDEs.
There are two main things that are needed to accomplish this. The first is a cross-compiling toolchain for the ARM architecture; something that has been readily available for quite some time. The second is a way to talk to the in-built Stellaris programmer from a Linux machine. The hardware uses the ICDI protocol, and
as we reported last week
the
lm4tools project
can be used for this purpose. The guide also covers building the StellarisWare package. It’s not a requirement, but it makes using the peripherals much easier and provides names for the I/O pins, etc.
Our favorite for debugging microcontroller projects is OpenOCD. From
this thread post
it looks like there is now ICDI support in the development branch of the software if you don’t mind compiling from source. | 42 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "844019",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T21:16:03",
"content": "Introductory price was introductory. Unless the conversion rate is $2.60 to one bone, this is misleading– current price $13.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,376,697.157829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/pumpkin-tetris-inspired-by-our-own-led-jack-o-lantern/ | Pumpkin Tetris Inspired By Our Own LED Jack-o-lantern | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"Halloween props",
"led matrix",
"pumkin",
"tetris"
] | The kids (or maybe their parents) are going to be lined up at [Nathan’s] front porch to get their turn at playing pumpkin Tetris. That’s right,
he built a game of Tetris into a real pumpkin
. We thought this looked quite familiar when we first saw it and indeed he was inspired by
our own LED Matrix Pumpkin
from two Halloweens ago. We love seeing derivative works and [Nathan] definitely make few great improvements to the process.
The matrix itself was wired in very much the same way we used, but he added an additional 58 LEDs to nearly double the size of the display. He used a paper grid and power drill to make room for the holes, but improved the visibility of the lights by sculpting square pixels in the skin of the fruit. But how does one control the game? The stem of the pumpkin is actually a joystick. One of the most innovative parts of the physical build was to use drywall anchors on the inside to mount the joystick hardware.
Don’t miss a demo video after the jump.
[via
Reddit
] | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "843909",
"author": "Ast",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T20:16:07",
"content": "This is great! :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "843922",
"author": "stevo",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T20:22:22",
"content": "OMG! and in a RE... | 1,760,376,697.300138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/halloween-props-ghoul-in-the-box-puts-on-a-pretty-good-show/ | Halloween Props: Ghoul In The Box Puts On A Pretty Good Show | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"ghoul",
"Halloween props",
"jack-in-the-box"
] | [Tim’s]
ghoul in the box project
has all the elements of a classic Halloween prop. He built it for last year’s display but we’re sure it will be a perennial favorite.
As the name implies, it’s modeled after a Jack-in-the-box toy. Fittingly, it’s decorated with bright, happy colors and includes a crank on the right side of the box. But you don’t need any man-power to make it work. Hidden in the red circle at the center of the front panel is a motion sensor. Walk in front of the box and one of two modes will be triggered. The crank may start up and a happy rendition of
Pop Goes the Weasel
plays. But as it nears the end of the song the tempo slows and the pitch drops as if running out of steam. It’s perfect foreshadowing for the vigorous bursting forth of the ghoul inside.
The demo after the break gives you a look at the operation, as well as the components used in the build. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "2665933",
"author": "halloweenfxprops",
"timestamp": "2015-08-01T20:15:36",
"content": "I do love a good Jack-in-the-Box prop! The second video is really interesting, it’s crazy how far things have come in just the past 3 years. The internals of this prop look a lot more technical t... | 1,760,376,697.342133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/how-not-to-make-ground-hugging-fog/ | How NOT To Make Ground-hugging Fog | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"dry ice",
"fail",
"fog",
"fog machine",
"ice"
] | Poor [Todd Harrison] spent all of Saturday and Sunday trying to make some ground-hugging fog for his Halloween decor.
His fog machine hack turned out to be an utter failure
. But he admits it and reports that he still had a lot of fun. Don’t feel bad [Todd], this happens to everyone from time to time. And anyone that has doubts about [Todd’s] skills
need not look very far
to find out that
he does know what he’s doing
.
The project started off with a theater-style fog machine. The problem is that this fills a room with a thin foggy-haze that doesn’t take shape outdoors. He wanted that ankle-deep graveyard effect and had seen several examples online that use a fog-machine with a bucked of dry ice. He though he’d just use his own bucket full of regular ice and salt water. Inside the bucket seen above there is a 15′ coil of copper tubing through which the fog machine’s output is passed. On the other side of the bucket there’s a plastic tube that goes to a sheet of plastic meant to distribute the cooled fog.
The problem here is that the fog machine puts out a hot mist. When it hits the ice bath the mist condenses into liquid form and that’s the end of the fog. As he attests in the video after the break, the dry-ice fog hack isn’t pumping out fog. It’s just using the heated steam to pump out carbon-dioxide vapor boiling off of the dry ice. | 35 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "843660",
"author": "Gdogg",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T18:10:35",
"content": "That’s a pretty funny substitute to try.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "843669",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T18:15:42",
... | 1,760,376,697.412838 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/semi-professional-board-assembly-for-your-workshop/ | Semi-professional Board Assembly For Your Workshop | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"fabrication",
"pcb",
"reflow",
"smt",
"surface mount",
"tooling fixture"
] | [Zach Hoeken] has
the answer to assembling multiple surface mount PCBs
in the home workshop. It’s certainly not for everyone. But if you’ve ever thought of marketing your own small runs he has the equipment and methodology you need.
He had tried using hacked together equipment, but after encountering a range of issues he finds the investment in a few key items saves time and money in the long run. The first is a precision tooling fixture block; that metal plate with a grid of holes that makes up the background of the image above. It comes with machined pegs which fit the holes perfectly, and as you can see, his panel of 16 boards include tooling holes that line up with the fixture. Once in place, a steel solder stencil is aligned with the board using its own tooling holes. The alignment of the stencil and its uniformed thickness ensure that the perfect amount of solder paste is easy to apply with a squeegee. [Zach] hand places his components but he did invest in a proper reflow oven to make the soldering a set and forget process. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "844104",
"author": "Bubba Gump",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T21:36:07",
"content": "We actually have that reflow oven, we bought it off Ebay new for $168. It was quicker and cheaper than hacking our own when you take into account the time that would be spent hacking a toaster oven. Bee... | 1,760,376,697.57044 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/a-collection-of-hands-to-inspire-your-halloween-animatronics/ | A Collection Of Hands To Inspire Your Halloween Animatronics | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Robots Hacks",
"Roundup"
] | [
"animatronic",
"glove",
"halloween",
"hand",
"polymorph",
"servo"
] | Jump scares are a lot of fun, but if you want to hold the attention of all those trick-or-treaters we’d suggest a creepy prop. One of the best choices in that category is a ghoulishly lifelike hand. You can draw some inspiration from
this roundup of robot hands which Adafruit put together
.
We’ve chosen four examples for the image above but there are more to be had than just these. In the upper left there is a laser-cut acrylic hand that actually features some force sensitive resistors on the fingertips to help implement some haptic feedback. This project was inspired by the hand seen in the lower right which uses flex sensors on a glove to control the bot’s movement. If you’re looking for something more realistic the 3D printed parts on the lower left are the best bet. But if you’re looking to put something together by Halloween night the offering in the upper right is the way to go. It’s hacked together using cardboard templates to cut out plastic parts and
using polymorph
to form joints and brackets. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "843535",
"author": "Squirrel",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T16:54:37",
"content": "Give these guys a hand:http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9xw9cYPmK1rbg79no1_500.gif",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "844826",
"author": "wolfgang... | 1,760,376,697.609845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/diy-pick-and-place-builds-boards-is-awesome/ | DIY Pick And Place Builds Boards, Is Awesome | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"pick and place",
"smd"
] | In what can probably be attributed to the pains of placing a lot of SMD components, [gravelrash] built his own
home-made pick and place machine
.
Instead of being frustrated with tweezers, stereo microscopes, and having an inordinate amount of concentration, [gravelrash] built a pick and place machine from a Chinese CNC router. The build doesn’t use automated feeders for its reels of parts. Instead,[gravelrash] picked up five manual feeders from eBay, allowing his pick and place to hold 25 different reels of components.
There is, of course, a vacuum pump for sucking up SMD parts and a two-axis gantry capable of moving components from reel to board. The software is Mach3, a program normally used with spinning cutters to mill away wood, metal and plastic. [gravelrash] replaced this motor with a few vacuum controlled needles to pick up, move, and drop components onto the board.
While the build may not be as fast as
some other pick and place machines we’ve seen
, it’s almost as fast as hand-placing components with the added bonus of not tearing your hair out over very tiny parts.
Tip ‘o the hat to [Alexander] for sending this one in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DFtt7RTR2k&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODySJj3vx10&w=470] | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "843338",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T15:02:49",
"content": "Wow. This is the work of one guy? Nevermind speed, that’s something to optimize once it’s completely debugged. Beyond awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,697.760821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/qr-clock-is-unreadable-by-humans-and-computers-alike/ | QR Clock Is Unreadable By Humans And Computers Alike | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"atmega328",
"clock",
"qr",
"qr code"
] | The clock is a perfect technology. For just a few dollars, you can buy a digital wristwatch and chronometer able to keep extremely accurate time for years without winding a spring or replacing a battery. Anything ‘improvement’ on the design of a clock only makes it harder to read, a feature exploited by the very 1337 binary clocks we see from time to time. [Ch00f] decided it was time to give way to the march of progress and build a completely unreadable clock. He came up with a
QR code clock
that is unreadable by humans and cellphones alike.
The hardware is built around nine 8×8 LED matrix panels resulting in a 24 x 24 pixel display, perfect for displaying a 21 pixel square QR code. The LED drivers are a standard multiplexed affair, but this project really shines in the firmware department.
The microcontroller [Ch00f] used – an ATMega328 – is far too small to store the 1440 QR codes for every minute of the day. No, this project would have to dynamically generate QR codes on the fly, not exactly an easy problem.
After looking over the official QR code standard, [Ch00f] wrote
a rather large program
that turns alphanumeric sequences into QR code. This runs on the microcontroller every minute, generating a new QR code for every minute of the day.
It’s nigh impossible for a human to read a QR code, but [Ch00f] figured he could make his project even less useful. By multiplexing the LEDs at a very low duty cycle [Ch00f] made it impossible for a camera to capture the entire QR code, even though the pattern of pixels is still visible to the human eye. A fabulously useless build that really steps up the game for unreadable clocks.
Video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLVAhHYnrbo&w=470] | 44 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "843128",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T13:23:36",
"content": "The build is great and beautiful. Generating the code is clearely the hardest part of the software.But, since QRs are made to handle noise, couldn’t some sort of human readable display of time be included? ... | 1,760,376,697.839964 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/29/bora-board-teaches-binary-hardware/ | Bora Board Teaches Binary Hardware | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"CLPD",
"Crowd Funding",
"digital logic",
"fpga"
] | If you’re just starting out in your quest to build really cool electronic devices, you’ll find a ton of options ready for the beginner. The Arduino makes toggling pins dead simple, and the Raspi brings the wonders of blinking a LED from the command line down from the gods and into the hands of the common man. These are all software platforms, though, and if you want to learn digital logic with hardware the best option is still a drawer full of 7400-series logic chips.
[Colin O’Flynn] hopes to change this with a
beginners board for digital logic hardware design
. It’s called the BORA, or Binary explORer boArd, and brings digital logic to a convenient package that is far less frustrating than a breadboard full of logic chips.
The BORA is based around a CPLD – a cousin of the FPGA-powered devices we see from time to time – that allows any student of digital logic to program the device and fill macrocells with NANDs, NORs, and ANDs.
The Xilinx device
used in the BORA has about 1600 gates that can be programmed; more than enough to complete all the projects
in the online lectures
[Colin] has put together. You can check out the documentation for the BORA
over on the official site
, and the demo video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaXSF-y0KBs&w=470] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "843090",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2012-10-29T13:01:32",
"content": "While pretty cool, I think what SparkFun now sells would be pretty useful for learning TTL logic:https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11006They are little PCBs in the shape of the logic gate, with connectors fo... | 1,760,376,697.708616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/28/hackaday-retro-edition-the-macintosh-se30/ | Hackaday Retro Edition: The Macintosh SE/30 | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"retro",
"retro edition",
"SE/30"
] | In 1988, Apple introduced the Macintosh IIx, an upgrade of the Mac II that included a Motorola 68030 CPU. The IIcx – a compact version of the IIx, also with a 68030 – was introduced in 1989. That same year, product designers at Apple created a more powerful version of the all-in-one Macintosh SE using the same CPU found in the IIx and IIcx. Unfortunately, the naming convention didn’t hold but the Macintosh SE/30 is still the greatest computer Apple will ever build.
Earlier this month, [Greg]
sent in a submission for our retro edition successes
. A huge mac fan, [Greg] connected his Powerbook Duo to an Ethernet adapter and loaded up
our retro edition
. [Greg] is back again, this time with an SE/30.
In the three pictures [Greg] sent us (in the gallery after the break), you can see his extremely clean SE/30 booting into System 7 and loading up our retro site. In the third picture, you can see [Greg] playing
Bolo
, one of the first network-enabled games ever made, and still a very fun waste of time today.
If you’re wondering what makes the SE/30 so great, consider this: the SE/30 is able to address up to 128 MB of RAM. Keep in mind this computer is from an era when one or two Megabytes of RAM would be more than enough to get just about any job done. The SE/30 also made a fabulous server. Even today it would be a capable home media server if it weren’t for its relatively slow networking capabilities and 2 Gigabyte file size (not volume size) limit.
[Greg] has a very cool machine on his hands here, and we’re pleased as punch his SE/30 could make its way over to our retro site. | 45 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "841414",
"author": "scruss",
"timestamp": "2012-10-28T15:28:41",
"content": "SE/30s made *too* great a server; if you could find a used one without almost unusable screen burn after running the same network display for years, you were doing well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,376,697.920261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/28/makibox-turns-plastic-pellets-into-3d-objects/ | MakiBox Turns Plastic Pellets Into 3D Objects | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"abs",
"filament",
"filament extruder"
] | The holy grail of desktop 3D printers – aside from manufacturing full color objects in any shape imaginable – is turning tiny plastic pellets into a plastic filament. Many projects have attempted this with moderate levels of success but turning pellets into filament still an open problem.
MakiBot hopes to solve this problem
by manufacturing plastic filament just in time to be squirted out a nozzle onto the print bed.
MakiBox is seeing a lot of potential with
their pellet drive
. Instead of sending huge amounts of pellets into an auger extruder, the team realized the best option would be to send pellets into the hot end one at a time. This makes for better thermal characteristics and produces a very consistent filament.
Turning plastic pellets into 3D objects is an enticing idea but producing a filament on the fly is an interesting concept. While the MakiBox team is making custom color filament right now, in the future it might be possible to mix colors for full-color prints.
Videos demonstrating the extruder after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAOFzZPbPnk&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbAvFufDP-0&w=470] | 32 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "841218",
"author": "sdhjga",
"timestamp": "2012-10-28T12:40:46",
"content": "It looks very promising, but I wonder if it will be hard to get consistent results due to the plastic becoming brittle or otherwise compromised if things aren’t just right.Also, I’d argue the holy grail is ... | 1,760,376,698.05535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/27/rc-airplane-made-from-political-signs/ | RC Airplane Made From Political Signs | Jeremy Cook | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"airplane",
"political sign",
"RC airplane"
] | Whatever candidate (if any) you’re in favor of, we could bet that you’re probably tired of seeing advertisements and political signs everywhere. [Mark] wrote in with a hack that allows you to actually
use these signs for something fun
, making a RC airplane!
[Mark] gives a full bill of materials in his article, but the featured component is campaign sign. This isn’t LawyerADay, so we’re not sure of the legality of taking them. After election day at least, it’s doubtful anyone will care. Of course you’ll also need a motor, prop, and RC controls, as well as some dowels to attach the tail section to the main body, so don’t buy the “campaign promise” that this is a free airplane.
CAD diagrams are available of the cutouts, as well as how to cut the signs to form hinges without any other parts. This is quite clever, and a video of the plane in action on a table is available on the site. According to [Mark], no video was rolling on its test flight, but it did fly before some interference grounded the plane. Hopefully he’ll be able to get some footage of it in action soon! | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "839995",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2012-10-27T18:19:22",
"content": "Oh look. It has a left wing and a right wing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "840050",
"author": "Brian Benchoff",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,697.986424 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/27/making-a-phono-preamp-for-a-first-electronics-project/ | Making A Phono Preamp For A First Electronics Project | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"phono",
"phono preamp",
"preamp"
] | Nearly everyone’s first electronic project is something that blinks a LED. There are a million ways to go about this ‘Hello World’ project of electronic design; 555 timers, microcontrollers, or maybe even discrete components if you’re really cool. When [miceuz] was asked by a friend to help with his first electronic project he eschewed the usual blinking LED project and taught him how to build something he actually needed:
a phono preamp for an old turntable
.
Back in the day when vinyl was king, albums needed to be mastered to play on a record player. The mastering process cuts some of the bass and increases the treble. When the record is played, this process needs to be reversed. It’s a preamp that does this job by attenuating the high frequency sounds and boosting the thumping bass.
[miceuz] found a nice
DIY RIAA preamp
project and found
a nice little op amp
somewhere in his parts bin. After laying out the circuit, [miceuz] etched a few boards and taught his friend how to solder SMD components.
Of course the project didn’t work the first time around, but after poking around with a meter and checking out the old turntable, the preamp came to life with the clang of chords from an old record. If you’d like to build your own, you can get the files
from [miceuz]’s git
. | 34 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "839864",
"author": "Tom Brusehaver",
"timestamp": "2012-10-27T17:02:01",
"content": "The cool thing about this circuit, with a simple RC circuit on the inputs, and a couple LEDs on the output, it’ll make a cool blinking LED circuit too.(just kidding).",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,698.205704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/27/openplc-for-industrial-automation-to-halloween-displays/ | OpenPLC, For Industrial Automation To Halloween Displays | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"atmega",
"plc",
"programmable logic controller"
] | Stepping out onto just about any factory floor you’ll find complex automatons building anything and everything imaginable. These machines need to be controlled somehow and before the age of computers these manufacturing robots were controlled with relays wired together to produce a multitude of actions. Relays, no matter how reliable and bulletproof the are, can’t be programmed without rewiring the entire machine. Now, factories have programmable logic controllers to take care of their automation tasks.
[Thiago]
built his own programmable logic controller
and released it as open hardware.Included in the OpenPLC are four 24V inputs, four 24V outputs (two with PWM), 0-10V analog inputs, and USB, SPI, and I2C for programming and expansion.
If you’re building anything from an industrial machine in your garage, or simply want really awesome Halloween (or Christmas) decorations, the OpenPLC can take care of driving all the solenoids, motors, and actuators needed. With the extendable I2C and SPI busses, it’s possible to add a plethora of sensors to bring a project to life.
The OpenPLC is based on an ATMega328 and is compatible with Arduino code. There are a few extension boards for digital and analog IO, as well as Ethernet. | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "839641",
"author": "Dr. Craig Hollabaugh",
"timestamp": "2012-10-27T15:15:46",
"content": "Design looks good. Here’s a comment on the low-power +12 generator (a 10K voltage divider) won’t hold that voltage when Q1 and Q2 are on. its going to drop to ~5.5V, shouldn’t be a problem. yo... | 1,760,376,698.118407 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/tell-us-what-development-board-you-love/ | Tell Us What Development Board You Love | Caleb Kraft | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"development boards"
] | Back in 2011 we did a
short roundup of some popular development boards
. We promised a follow up at some point, and that time is near. We would really like to make this a fairly comprehensive list and there are always suggestions sent in after the article that we overlooked.
This time, we’re asking that you tell us what dev boards you prefer and why. Either reply in the comments or email us directly at boards@hackaday.com. We’ll round up all of your suggestions and bring you the “development board brakedown for 4th quarter 2012”.
Please keep in mind that we can’t possibly know everything about every single board out there, so if there’s some special feature of a board that you love, be sure to let us know! | 194 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "837408",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T15:02:14",
"content": "Forebrain LPC1343!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "837417",
"author": "rbwilliams207",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T15:06:15",
"content": "TI Lau... | 1,760,376,698.39359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/small-server-for-model-trains/ | Small Server For Model Trains | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"model trains",
"Rocrail"
] | For reasons we can’t comprehend, model train layouts are incredibly popular in Germany. [Gerhard] is one of those model train aficionados that has moved far beyond a layout with a transformer controlling the speed of the train; he sent in a tip for
a very tiny Rocrail server he built
to control the locomotives moving across his layout.
[Gerhard] uses
Rocrail
– a control system for train layouts large or small. Rocrail comes in both client and server configurations. The client is able to run on iDevices or Android. [Gerhard]’s server runs on a very tiny Linux computer tucked away under the layout.
Instead of a Raspberry Pi ([Gehard] couldn’t get one in time for this build), he used a
Carambola board
. The Rocrail server is installed on this single board computer and connects to a CAN bus controller. It’s a step up from [Gehard]’s previous
CAN/Ethernet gateway
built around OpenWRT, and makes the entire device much smaller.
[Gehard] doesn’t have a video of his layout in action, but after the break you can see how much the German people love their model trains at
Miniatur Wunderland
in Hamburg.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s&w=470] | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "837373",
"author": "Bill Gander",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T14:43:13",
"content": "Yeah, HaD. Lest we forget where we come from, the Model Train club at MIT taught many of the early programmers about switched networking and I dare say laid the way for modern routers. Read about the... | 1,760,376,698.257363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/26/gyrocam-keeps-the-horizon-level-even-when-the-camera-isnt/ | Gyrocam Keeps The Horizon Level Even When The Camera Isn’t | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"gyrocam",
"motorcycle"
] | [Derek] likes to get a little bit of drivers-eye footage when racing his motorcycle, but there’s an inherent problem with mounting a camera to a moving and tilting platform. When he leans into turns, the camera can’t keep the horizon level.
Cinematography and electronics go well together
. so [Derek] built a horizon-stabilized camera mount for motorcycle videography.
The build was inspired by footage shot from [Valentino Rossi’s bike in 2010. Of course the professional model costs a small fortune, but [Derek] managed to make his own out of 3D printed parts and a hobby servo.
Based on the
Contour Roam camera
, [Derek] had a pair of gears printed at Shapeways to fit over the camera and attach to a servo. The electronics are an ATMega32 with a L3G4200D gyroscope. When the ‘micro detects a change in the gyroscope it rotates the servo in the opposite direction, keeping the horizon in the video level.
It’s a very cool build, and judging from the action videos after the break, makes for awesome track footage.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNmy6J1q4D4&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuBxU7WnrL4&w=470] | 44 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "837125",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T12:14:42",
"content": "Not bad but I would have just put the camera in a liquid.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "837143",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,698.582599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/25/leds-fade-to-the-music-using-a-python-filter/ | LEDs Fade To The Music Using A Python Filter | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"pulseaudio",
"pyaudio",
"python"
] | This little LED rig fades in time to music. The hardware itself is quite simple, some LEDs connected to the PWM pins of an Arduino. But the
signal processing is happening on a computer using a Python script
.
Many of the projects we see which pulse lights to music
use the MSGEQ7 chip to perform hardware processing
on the audio signal. But since [Zolmeister] is using a computer to play his tunes he took a different route. His Linux box uses PulseAudio to handle sound. This allows him to record from the audio playback which provides an internal source for the pyAudio package. His Python script saves snippets of the streaming audio to .wav files. I then normalizes the volume level and uses the amplitude to set a PWM value before deleting the sample and moving onto the next. These values are pushed to the Arduino at 115200 baud to achieve the results seen in the video after the break. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "836439",
"author": "misomosi",
"timestamp": "2012-10-25T23:43:38",
"content": "Why write a .wav to disk? Couldn’t the sample processing be done entirely in memory and save you some disk thrashing?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,376,698.734113 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/25/a-pic-powered-pair-of-electronic-dice/ | A PIC Powered Pair Of Electronic Dice | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"12f629",
"christmas lights",
"dice",
"die",
"led",
"pic"
] | [Timothy] is honing his microcontroller skills with
this electronic dice project
. In addition to giving him an opportunity to work on some code, the use of an 8-pin chip provides a design challenge for driving the twelve pips and providing a user input.
The project started off with some $4 strings of LED Christmas lights. He promptly disassembled the strands, each yielding 100 LEDs. The microcontroller he chose to work with is a PIC 12F629. It’s DIP8 package provides six I/O pins to work with. When examined closely you will find that the pips on a die are always present in pairs with the exception of the center pip. This means that only four pins are needed to drive one die. You can see a pair of transistors above; one is a PNP, the other an NPN. These are both driven from the same uC line, which toggles between the pair of die. This accounts for 5 of the available pins, with the sixth monitoring the push button. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "836234",
"author": "Dmitry Grinberg",
"timestamp": "2012-10-25T21:09:36",
"content": "I like projects that use 8-pin chips. They always look so neat.Few suggestions:1. RA3 has internal pullup option and does not need an external pullup2. 7 + 7 = 14 LEDs, drivable via charliplexing u... | 1,760,376,698.642936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/10/25/laptop-lcd-resurrection-gets-some-clean-packaging/ | Laptop LCD Resurrection Gets Some Clean Packaging | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"fpga",
"hdmi",
"laptop",
"lcd",
"papilio",
"screen"
] | We love to see derivative works that take a great hack and make it even better. This
LCD Laptop resurrection project
is an excellent example. [Alex] took the work seen on
this other FPGA LCD driver
and delivered a leap forward on the final hardware packaging.
The link at the top drops you into the second page of [Alex’s] project thread. But if you go back to the beginning you’ll see the protoboard and spaghetti wiring which started off the process. Obviously if he plans to use this for a length of time it needs to be fortified or he’ll be cracking it open and grabbing a soldering iron again before long. But rather than just tidying up he ended up spinning his own circuit boards that make the screen look like it was manufactured to be used in this way.
He was able to mount the add-on board inside the LCD bezel, cutting out a space for the HDMI connector, barrel jack, trimpot, and the head of the inductor which was just a bit too large to fit inside. The trimpot allows him to adjust the LCD brightness. As far as we can tell the HDMI connector is just an easy way for him to deliver the drive signals from the Papilio board (FPGA) to the screen. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "836205",
"author": "The Moogle",
"timestamp": "2012-10-25T20:43:13",
"content": "and the website is down from the load :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "836522",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "2012-10-26T01:25:31",
... | 1,760,376,698.681219 |
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