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https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/conductive-ink-circuit-experiments/ | Conductive Ink Circuit Experiments | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"circuit",
"conductive ink",
"copper",
"epoxy",
"powder"
] | This glowing LED is proof that the
experiments [Nvermeer] is doing with conductive ink are working
. We’re filing this one as a chemistry hack because you need to hit the lab ahead of time in order to get the conductivity necessary for success. He reports that this technique uses a copper powder suspended in an epoxy intended for spray painting. Before mixing the two he etched the powder in ammonium persulfate, then washed it in deionized water which made it a much better conductor.
We gather that the ink was applied with the brush seen in the photo. But since this uses that spray paint friendly solution to host the copper powder we wonder about stenciling with something like masking tape in order to spray the circuit paths onto the substrate.
There’s not too much info up yet, but [Nvermeer] does link to one of
our other favorite conductive ink projects
. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "653917",
"author": "Tyler Thomson",
"timestamp": "2012-05-19T00:15:57",
"content": "That is awesome, nice work. I could use something like this to paint a circuit inside my welding helmet.LED smiley face here I come :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,376,867.197161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/scavenging-from-consumer-electronics-to-make-a-flame-powered-phone-charger/ | Scavenging From Consumer Electronics To Make A Flame-powered Phone Charger | Mike Szczys | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"boost converter",
"charger",
"flame",
"peltier"
] | [Gigafide] just finished building
this flame-powered phone charger
. The concept is not new. He grabbed a Peltier cooler and used the temperature differential between a flame and a heat sink to produce electricity used by the charger. If you search around here enough you’ll find plenty of candle-powered devices, and a few hacks that use a Peltier device in
a bit more interesting way
. But we really like his high-production value video, straightforward explanation of the concepts, and ability to source the components in consumer devices. We don’t think you’ll be disappointed by his video found after the break.
The Peltier device comes out of a USB drink chiller. It is supported by a metal stand made from electrical box covers and threaded rod. Underneath he’s using a gel fuel can used by the food industry, and above he’s got CPU heat sink and fan. This setup puts out around 1.5V but he’ll need a boost converter to charge a phone with that. A single AA battery charger meant to power your phone in a pinch is perfect for this application. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "653908",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T23:55:56",
"content": "I wonder if I could build this thing on a stick so I could charge my cell over a campfire? (Roasting Marshmallows and charging your phone, now THAT’S multitasking!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,376,867.609895 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/adding-kilometers-to-a-radio-meant-only-for-meters/ | Adding Kilometers To A Radio Meant Only For Meters | Mike Szczys | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"24L01",
"antenna",
"nrf"
] | The NRF 24L01+ radio transceiver can be found in a lot of wireless project builds. But it’s only meant to work at a range of a few meters. [Achu Wilson] found that he could greatly extend the range by as much as 2 kilometers. All he needed to do was
build this high-gain antenna
.
He already had an idea of what he wanted to use the RF link for, so a directional antenna is no a problem. He chose a biquad setup with a back reflector, then used
NEC2
to model the design and tweak it for the best performance possible. It only took him about two hours to complete the build, and manages a 10 dB gain. Not bad for some wire and a scrap of sheet meta.
This is the same transceiver chip used in
the SNES wireless mod
. If only we had a really powerful set of binoculars we could play the extremely long-distance game of Mario Kart we’ve always dreamed about. | 25 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "653867",
"author": "dddanmar",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T22:37:36",
"content": "Bless you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "653870",
"author": "Hummmmm",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T22:41:38",
"content": "Does anyone know... | 1,760,376,867.674433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/printing-circuitry-on-a-reprap/ | Printing Circuitry On A RepRap | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"3d printer",
"circuitry",
"printable circuit",
"printed circuit",
"reprap"
] | Over on the RepRap blog, [Rhys] has been experimenting with molten metal to
build circuits with the RepRap
.
Last June, [Rhys]
found a neat alloy
made of Tin, Bismuth, and a little bit of Indium that melts at around 130° C, and has just the right properties to be extruded with a standard RepRap setup. The results were encouraging, but the molten metal quickly dissolved the brass and aluminum nozzles [Rhys] was pushing liquid metal through.
The solution to this problem was solved by anodizing the heck out of a RepRap nozzle to make a hard, protective oxide layer. Already [Rhys] has logged hundreds of hours squirting molten metal out of his RepRap with no signs of any damage to the nozzle.
Since [Rhys] figured out how to print in metal, he whipped up an extremely minimal Sanguino board. You can see this RepRapped PCB running a LED blink program after the break. Now to work on the RepRap pick and place…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxnjeZBhBzY&w=470] | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "653776",
"author": "jaf",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T21:11:00",
"content": "while this is impressive it is also over a month old a little disappointing for some one like me who regularly checks the reprap blog",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,376,867.884628 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/teaching-beaglebone-to-play-with-lidd-displays/ | Teaching BeagleBone To Play With LIDD Displays | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"angstrom",
"beaglebone",
"lcd",
"lcdc",
"lidd",
"linux"
] | [Chris] hasn’t managed to get his hands on a Raspberry Pi yet, so he ordered a BeagleBone and got down to business. He was surprised to find that there isn’t much info out there about using LIDD type displays with the hardware. This protocol is used in many of the 320×240 smart LCD modules on the market, so
he hammered out his own drivers
and is sharing the details.
The system is designed to run a Linux kernel and [Chris] has chosen to go with Angstrom. His journey started by working out how to compile and patch the kernel himself. From there it was just a matter of getting the pin mapping right, and compiling a driver (it sounds way too simple when put like that).
Apparently he’s pretty close to getting the X desktop environment up and running. No idea what he plans for the hardware, but we’re all for people sharing their work to make it easier for others. Thanks! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "653746",
"author": "muriani",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T20:31:44",
"content": "Ahh, KermMartian.Good to see Cemetech is still doing cool stuff in this post-graphing-calculator era :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "653778",
"... | 1,760,376,867.241553 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/how-to-build-a-competitive-battle-robot/ | How To Build A Competitive Battle Robot | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"battle robots",
"battlebots",
"pneumatic"
] | Ever wonder what’s under the hood with a competitive battle robot like this one? It’s usually a big secret as teams don’t care to give their competition any help. But [AlexHrn] decided not only to give us a peek, but also shows us
his step-by-step build process for Phoenix
, the 30 pound flipping battle robot.
[Alex] has already seen quite a bit of success with a different robot, but he couldn’t quite beat another competitor whose bot included a flipping arm which threw its competition across the ring. So [Alex] decided to join in on the technique with this build. The arm itself uses air pressure to exert a large force very quickly. Inside, a paintball gun tank powers the pneumatic ram. It looks like this tank is charged up before the competition and only gets about 12 shots before it’s depleted. You can see the power in the quick clip after the break.
For locomotion the unit uses a couple of cordless drill motors. These have a fairly high RPM and work well when powered by batteries. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "653696",
"author": "Thopter",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T19:20:35",
"content": "I’d shield my bot’s electronics from EMP, and short out a supercap or something to disable the opponent’s bot. Possibly put a spark gap on an arm to slide under the other bot for pinpoint zapping.That’s ju... | 1,760,376,867.358468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/accelerometer-may-help-make-you-a-sharpshooter/ | Accelerometer May Help Make You A Sharpshooter | Mike Szczys | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"mini-14",
"rifle",
"ruger",
"shooting"
] | [Chris Suprock] is interested in using technology to improve your accuracy with a firearm. To that end, he’s using an
Accelerometer mounted to a gun to gather feedback
about each shot.
The hardware setup is pretty simple. We don’t have specific details, but it looks like he’s using a QFN accelerometer chip like you would find in a cellphone. The milled aluminum mounting bracket that holds the board has ‘USB’ printed on it, although the connector is something we don’t really recognize.
In the video after the break [Chris] demonstrates the feedback he can get when the device is mounted on the stock of a Ruger Mini-14. The graph of the data makes it obvious when the trigger was pulled. The most useful part may be the period leading up to that event, as it shows any unnecessary movement prior to the shot. If you’re into sport shooting, this may be one more tool that will help give you the edge on your competitors. | 36 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "653652",
"author": "HAD",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T18:10:02",
"content": "Connector looks like a 4 pin pico or nano at first glance.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653723",
"author": "Rollyn01",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,867.31228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/a-new-method-for-adding-audio-input-to-a-sansa-clip/ | A New Method For Adding Audio Input To A Sansa Clip+ | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"audio input",
"clip",
"fm radio",
"sansa"
] | The Sansa Clip+ is a nice little MP3 player and recorder. But it doesn’t offer an input connector, instead relying on the built-in microphone. [Simon Frank] wanted to extend its functionality so he figured out how to
add a standard audio jack for analog input
.
This is not the first time this has been done, but [Simon] has found a different method of accomplishing the task at hand. The other external input hack we saw
cannibalized the internal microphone
, rerouting its connections as an external input. But the method seen here keeps that microphone intact. The device includes an FM radio chip which is attached to an ADC on one of the devices other integrated circuits. [Simon] just patched into those signals. Now all he has to do is set up the device to record from the radio and connect his source to the jack which he epoxied to the base of the enclosure. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "653609",
"author": "Eddie",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T17:22:58",
"content": "What power microscope was used to solder to the correct pins?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "653611",
"author": "Eddie",
"timestamp": "2012-05-... | 1,760,376,867.832862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/sparkfun-gets-a-subpoena-for-all-orders-says-nah/ | SparkFun Gets A Subpoena For All Orders; Says Nah | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"credit card",
"legal",
"skimmer",
"sparkfun",
"subpoena"
] | It’s no secret that we’re fans of open source, and open hardware. And we have to applaud companies like SparkFun who also keep their customers in the loop about what’s going on with the business end of the company. For instance, they were recently contacted by a Sheriff’s office and asked for customer information and are sharing the story. One of their products had been used in a series of credit card skimmers and the officers wanted to get purchase information to track down the bad guys. SparkFun doesn’t just give out customer data and so
was subsequently served with a subpoena
.
The thing is, the document asks for all customer orders shipped to Georgia during a six month period. This seemed like it covered way too many orders, since the majority of them didn’t include the part in question. But the officials were willing to work with the company and narrowed the request to just the 20 or so orders that had the item in them.
It’s an interesting read, and we agree with SparkFun’s point about white hats and black hats. Often when posting about projects here we wonder about the potential to use the knowledge for no-good. But restricting the availability of knowledge (or hardware in this case) because of a few bad-actors is a concept we oppose. It’s like being a hacking super hero, with great skill comes great responsibility. | 82 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "653533",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T16:14:38",
"content": "note to myself: If you ever want to get into organized crime, order your parts a year ahead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653550",
"auth... | 1,760,376,867.791336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/improvised-weapons-roundup/ | Improvised Weapons Roundup | Brian Benchoff | [
"Roundup",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"crossbow",
"flamethrower",
"joerg sprave",
"mortar",
"roundup"
] | There’s something special about improvised weapons built for the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Whether it’s a
Lousiville Decapitron
or a
shotgun revolver
, we’re always fascinated by homemade weapons. Here’s a few that rolled into the tip line over the last few weeks:
You call that a knife?
[Joerg Sprave], a.k.a. that German guy on YouTube that has fun with slingshots, built a
spinning steak knife saw thing
. Basically, it’s eight steak knives attached to a wheel and driven with an electric drill. It’s not a terribly complex build, but it does give off a zombie apocalypse/first person shooter melee weapon vibe.
Battery cannon, because why not
Why use potatoes when you can use D-cell batteries? [CasterTown] on YouTube put together a small
propane-powered spud gun
that can put a battery through a car door. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
batteries used as ammo
, but it’s still an extremely powerful build.
Oh man the 60s were cool.
Back in the 60s, safety wasn’t a huge concern. Any 10-year-old could walk into a dime store and buy Jarts – a game consisting of kids throwing sharp spikes at each other. Also, magazines had descriptions of how to
build a freaking mortar
in a backyard. Able to make a 20-foot grouping at 1900 feet, this would probably merit a visit from a SWAT team today. Needless to say, don’t try this at home.
Don’t do this. Please.
Last but not least is [Rocketlab] and [SadisticTheory]’s
$15 flamethrower
. It’s just a gas tank from a 2-stroke engine, a 12 volt battery and a pump. Common sense requires us to mention
this build is very,
very illegal
(apparently it is legal)and extremely unsafe.
Don’t replicate this build
.
Actually, we take that back.
You shouldn’t build any of these weapons because they’re very dangerous.
Just think of these as a neat thing to look at. Let other people hurt themselves. You may complain about how unsafe these weapons are in the comments. | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "653502",
"author": "Morgen",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T15:26:54",
"content": "You should correct your statement about the legality of the flamethrower. There are no federal regulations specifically addressing the construction, possession, or use of a flamethrower.Of course using one... | 1,760,376,867.53943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/a-color-maximite-for-glorious-3-bit-basic/ | A Color Maximite For Glorious 3-bit BASIC | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"Maximite",
"quantumite"
] | [Kilian] sent in a link to a
color version of a tiny educational computer
. It’s called the Quantumite and it’s designed to be a throwback to the early 80s microcomputers we all grew up on.
The Quantumite is a clone of the
Maximite
, the tiny single board computer / BASIC interpreter designed by [Geoff Graham]. Both the Quantumite and Maximite are meant to be a throwback to the amazingly simple microcomputers of the early 80s, giving the 8-year-olds of today the simplicity of a BASIC compter most Hackaday readers had back in 1980s.
Both the Maximite and Quantumite are powered by the same 32-bit PIC microcontroller and have connections for a composite or VGA monitor, SD card, and PS/2 keyboard. Unlike the Maximite, the Quantumite can display 8 colors on its screen; a great addition that somehow seems even more retro than a monochrome display.
As far as getting the younglings to learn programming, we couldn’t think of a better tool than the ‘boot straight into a programming language’ Maximite. With a retro-impressive 3 bits of color, it’s sure to be a hit with the schoolchildren this computer is targeted at. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "653500",
"author": "DanJ",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T15:15:25",
"content": "Would be fun to find some old 1980’s busted computer and replace the circuit-board filled with TTL with one of these.The Maximite is an under-appreciated dev board IMHO. Lots of built-in functions and IO cap... | 1,760,376,868.192035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/a-rocking-and-walking-beam-robot/ | A Rocking And Walking BEAM Robot | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"beam robotics"
] | We’ve seen a few minimalist robots in our time, but very few compare to [Thomas Rinsma]’s
amazingly agile BEAM robot
. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch this little robot crawl around on its circular legs.
BEAM robots
are extremely simple robots built without a microcontroller of any kind. The idea that extremely simple circuits built from logic chips and amplifiers came from the fruitful mind of [Mark Tilden] while studying insectoid robots at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The first BEAM robot –
a small walker
made out of a Sony Walkman – impressed a lot of mid-90s makers and tinkerers. Although interest in these robots died out, there are
communities around the web
for BEAM builders to get together and show off their creation.
Most BEAM robots use four to six legs as a means of locomotion. [Thomas]’ robot only uses two metal rings to get around; an extremely simple design and also the most fluid gait we’ve seen from a BEAM robot. You can check out the video of [Thomas]’ build walking around after the break.
Tip ‘o the hat to [mefeder] for sending this one in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwxzuKO6B8&w=470] | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "653451",
"author": "DarkAnt",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T13:13:15",
"content": "How does it mechanically shifts its weight? The site only provides circuit diagrams.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653468",
"author": "c0d... | 1,760,376,868.237748 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/mixing-colors-on-the-reprap/ | Mixing Colors On The Reprap | Caleb Kraft | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"makerbot",
"reprap"
] | 3d printing has come huge strides in ability to construct detailed objects. Unfortunately, color is still a considerable limitation. Here, some people at the Reprap blog are having fun coming up with an
extruder head that actually mixes two colors as it deposits them
. Don’t confuse this with the dual head that Makerbot is touting that allows you to switch colors on the fly, this is a single head that actually has a cavity where the material is melted, then stirred to create a combination of the two. It is an interesting method of overcoming a limited supply of colors.
Having this extra stirring chamber means that there would be a small amount of material wasted any time that you wanted to make a change to the color, as it would have to be purged. There are some interesting thoughts in their comments on how to use this extra material most efficiently. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "653433",
"author": "harviecz",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T12:29:18",
"content": "OMG! CMYK RepRaps FTW! :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653512",
"author": "keastes",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T15:38:14",
... | 1,760,376,868.288538 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/snake-like-robot-can-roll-around-in-a-ring/ | Snake-like Robot Can Roll Around In A Ring | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"link",
"quadruped",
"spider",
"tank",
"tread"
] | A lot of 3D printing and a many servo motors went into
this snake-like robot
, and it’s only about half of what [Toby Baumgartner] plans to accomplish. In this orientation the snake is rolled into a circle, and apparently some special movements in the segments allow it to roll around like this. He compares it to a tank tread without the tank attached to it. Notice that each link is rounded on the outside. When the snake opens itself up, the toothed inside of the links contacts the ground for added traction.
It looks like eventually the larger link at the bottom will be about three times as wide. This will make room for him to mount a second ring of links. The idea is that the larger link will act as the body and this can unfold itself into a quaruped. Motors that allow the segments to pivot side to side would make it something like a four-legged spider bot. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "652894",
"author": "ddt",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T18:55:17",
"content": "The torque coming from those servos looks marginal at best for snaking around… Let alone 4-legged gait",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "652909",
"autho... | 1,760,376,868.060035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/bananaphone-lets-you-use-fruit-and-other-things-as-switches/ | Bananaphone Lets You Use Fruit And Other Things As Switches | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"banana",
"capacitive",
"Gadget Gangster",
"propeller",
"touch sensor"
] | We’re used to [Sprite_TM] rolling out his own hacks hot on the heels of new concepts. Now we’re glad to see that [Jeff Ledger] is doing the same thing here. He was inspired by a Kickstarter project which vows to let you use fruit, clay, and a number of other common (but weird for this use) substances to interface with electronic projects. The mess you see above is the Bananaphone,
a synthesizer played with touch sensitive bananas
. Think of them as keys on a piano.
The interface works by measuring R/C decay. Each banana is connected to its own input pin on the Propeller board. The capacitance of the bananas rise when you touch them, and this results in a longer R/C decay measurement. Calibrate the target decay period, and you’ve got a reliable capacitive touch sensor which also happens to be delicious. Check out the results which [Jeff] achieves in the video after the break. | 16 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "652858",
"author": "Nvoid82",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T17:57:01",
"content": "Ring,Ring,Ring,Ring,Ring,Ring,Ring, Bannanaphone!Really cool project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653194",
"author": "Fred",
"ti... | 1,760,376,868.111594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/time-and-date-clock-does-it-with-rgb-led-strips/ | Time And Date Clock Does It With RGB LED Strips | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"led strips",
"rgb"
] | [Craig’s]
color clock really came together
quite nicely. The majority of the body is acrylic, with two large clear squares and a pair of colored discs. All are held in place by a ring of hardware with spacers in them, and the RGB LED strip that is used to display time and date wraps around those spacers. This hides the components in the center, with a USB cord connecting to the Arduino compatible board to power the device.
Hours are displayed in red, with minutes shown in green, and blue used as a background color. In the center you can see one of two red LEDs which alternate like a pendulum to mark the passing seconds. There are timed events every ten , fifteen, and thirty minute. At the fifteen minute mark the clock switches to display the date. The other two events are animations to keep things interesting. All of the settings for the clock are accessed using just two momentary push buttons mounted on the back of the clock. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "653138",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T02:24:14",
"content": "Looks really nice.But he didn’t have the guts to overlap colours like i did :))http://www.electrobob.com/combi-clock/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,868.153231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/building-a-ranque-hilsch-vortex-cooling-tube/ | Building A Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Cooling Tube | Caleb Kraft | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cooling",
"physics",
"vortex"
] | The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube is an interesting piece of equipment. It can, without any moving parts or chemicals, separate hot and cold compressed gasses that are passed through it. Interestingly enough, you can cobble one together with very few parts for fairly cheap. [Otto Belden]
tossed one together in a weekend
back in 2009 just to see if he could do it. His results were fairly good and
he shared some video tutorials on its construction
.
His
latest version
, which you can see in the video below, takes compressed air at about 78degrees and spits out about 112degrees on the hot side and 8degrees on the cold side. Not too bad! | 44 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "652763",
"author": "Erronous Monk",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T15:53:06",
"content": "I came to use such devices while installing sensitive instruments in extreme hostile environments. Compressed air is an expensive energy. The noise and the heat are problematic waste products.No di... | 1,760,376,868.644654 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/a-bit-more-about-the-diode/ | A Bit More About The Diode | Adam Munich | [
"HackIt"
] | [
"101",
"diode"
] | Last week
we covered diodes
, specifically thermionic and PN junction diodes. But oh, there are more; and they’re special!
One of the the most commonly used ‘specialty’ diode would have to be the metal-semiconductor junction diode. Since metal has a lower work function than semiconductor crystal, electrons tend to flow from the metal to the crystal and a diode can be made. These
Crystal Rectifiers
actually predate both the silicon and thermionic diode, and at one point were very commonplace. So much so, that old schematics
identify diodes as ‘CR’ rather than ‘D’
.
Crystal rectifiers are still used today, albeit in much smaller quantities. Although they are generally poor at their job, these diodes have a very low voltage drop and absolutely no reverse recovery time. This makes them well suited for RF applications; things like Class-C amplifiers and radio detectors. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find a radio without one of these guys right after the tuning capacitor.
That said, point-contact crystal rectifiers are all but completely useless for large signals and HF rectification. Luckily for us there is a modern equivalent which can preform these tasks; the
Schottky Diode
.
Operationally these diodes are no different than Crystal Rectifiers, but modern manufacturing techniques allow us to directly bond a metal cathode to silicon, creating a larger contact area than a pointed needle could ever hope to achieve. As a result, we get all the low voltage goodness of a crystal rectifier combined with all the high current fun of a PN junction. Rectifying 200 amps at 150kHz? No problem.
But what if even these aren’t fast enough? 1Ghz just isn’t enough! Well, there’s always the Tunnel Diode.
Tunnel Diodes
aren’t all that different from PN diodes, in fact they are PN diodes. Unlike a normal rectifier, tunnel diodes are doped very, very heavily and as a result have a very small bandgap –and a very small capacitance and recovery time.
Tunnel diodes are tricky little beasts. As you increase the diode’s forward bias electrons begin to tunnel through the barrier, but as the voltage increases further
less
electrons will flow and a negative resistance is established. By increasing the voltage further, normal diode operation is established.
This negative resistance region allows the diode to not only rectify microwaves, but generate them too. With the right LC tank it’s possible to
make a microwave generator
with a tunnel diode, or a microwave amplifier if you’re really daring. Albeit they are not wonderful oscillators, they do work.
There is a better diode for that job though, but that one comes next week… | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "721837",
"author": "Destate9",
"timestamp": "2012-08-02T16:56:27",
"content": "Ya done goofed, Adam…It’s a shame because this is actually a pretty awesome article",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,868.680542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/making-a-miniature-x-ray-tube-from-scratch/ | Making A Miniature X-Ray Tube From Scratch | Caleb Kraft | [
"how-to",
"Medical Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"tube",
"xray"
] | We know that most of you will have no reason to ever
make a miniature X-ray tube
. However, we also know that many of you will find this video mesmerizing like we did. [Glasslinger] does a fantastic job of explaining the entire process of creating the mini x-ray tube from, procuring the uranium glass and tungsten stem, creating the filament from scratch, all the glass work, and the testing.
Admittedly, most of us here at hackaday won’t go any further than admiring the craftsmanship, though we’re curious to see what [
Adam Munich
] has to say when he sees this story.
If you enjoyed the tube construction in the video, be sure to check out [Glasslinger’s] other videos. He makes all kinds of tubes in his shop and usually shares so much information along the process that each one has useful information beyond that particular project. Another crazy part is that he has
made most of his own tools, including his glass lathe
.
We really shouldn’t have to point out that X-Rays are dangerous. Don’t mess with them unless you have researched how to do it safely. | 39 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "652684",
"author": "Techie",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T14:22:32",
"content": "Cool work, however, too bad the guy won’t be around for too long with all these crazy X-ray exposure… What is he thinking about?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,376,868.753666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/brawndo-drinking-fountain-its-got-what-geeks-crave/ | Brawndo Drinking Fountain – It’s Got What Geeks Crave! | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"idiocracy",
"inevitable future",
"water fountain"
] | If you’re tired of drinking mere water, like from the toilet, then you should definitely install a
Brawndo
drinking fountain. Apparently, in addition to being what plants crave, geeks also enjoy this futuristic beverage.
As with many hacks, this fountain started out with a broken piece of equipment – a water fountain. After searching unsuccessfully for a new pushbutton valve [Dave] and [Craig] decided to use a solenoid valve instead. Logically, they decided that if a new valve was needed, some new features to go along with it were also needed. Along with this valve, a peristalsis pump was installed to add flavoring to the water if Brawndo was selected (as opposed to toilet water).
The hack was finished off with some nice decals and a switch plate. As you may have suspected, the Brawndo fountain was custom made for a makerspace. In this case Kansas City’s own
Hammerspace
. Be sure to check them out if you’re in the area! | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "652635",
"author": "bemis",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T12:45:56",
"content": "Cool idea, and nice implementation.Seems like it can be a waste of the additive tho if people just let it run down the drain while drinking?Might be nice to have a double push button… one starts the water, a... | 1,760,376,868.484079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/18/hacking-ipod-headphone-controller-for-use-with-android/ | Hacking IPod Headphone Controller For Use With Android | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"control",
"headset",
"ipod"
] | [Buddhra] wanted to use a set of ear buds that also had a controller built into the wire. The headset he chose to go with is meant for use with iPod, but he figured it should be possible to make it work with Android too. He was right, and
managed to alter the controller for Android use
and still fit it into the original case.
He had already made a custom control module that has fast forward and rewind features and play/pause events. The signals used for the controls are based on resistive dividers. The play/pause button on the iLuv headset already worked, so he cracked the controller open to see why the forward and back buttons didn’t work. It turns out all he needed to do was add the right resistors to those buttons. Here you can almost see the 0603 surface mount packages he used to add a 220 Ohm resistor to the back button, and a 600 Ohm resistor to the forward switch. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "653419",
"author": "cde",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T12:09:41",
"content": "Remember, not all android devices use the same standard. Some use apple trrs (left/right/ground/mic) and some use nokia trrs (left/right/mic/ground). You might have to swap the cable connections too.",
"pa... | 1,760,376,868.795889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/3d-printed-nes-portable-looks-fantastic-and-contains-no-hot-glue/ | 3d Printed Nes Portable Looks Fantastic And Contains No Hot Glue | Caleb Kraft | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Portable Video Hacks"
] | [
"NES portable"
] | [Parker] emailed us today to show off
his latest NES portable build
. This time he’s using the standard “top loader” NES instead of the typically used NES on a chip. This is pretty cool since the NES on a chip has compatibility issues with some games. For the screen, he uses a common PSone screen with a slight power modification. From the factory, the screen takes 7.4 V and converts it down to 5V to use. He removed this and ran it directly from his own 5V power source. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but with portables, every bit counts. He also ditched the sound amplifier from the PSone screen in favor of something a little more efficient. He seems to have done a pretty good job because he says it gets roughly 10 hours at full volume right now.
Another cool aspect of this deign is that the cartridge serves as a sort of stand for the unit, although the button placement looks like it might be a tiny bit awkward when used this way. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "653093",
"author": "atomsoft",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T01:10:29",
"content": "Damn thats sexy! I dont play NES but now i want one… i need to hit the lotto all the cool Shi* on this site :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "653173... | 1,760,376,868.840332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/building-sensors-for-the-scratch-programming-language/ | Building Sensors For The Scratch Programming Language | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"arduino",
"distance sensor",
"graphics",
"mit",
"scratch",
"Teensy"
] | [Kevin Osborn] is making it a bit easier for young programmers to write programs that interact with the physical world. The device he’s holding in the picture is an
Arduino based accelerometer and distance sensor meant for the Scratch language
.
Scratch is a programming language developed at MIT. It has kids in mind, and focuses on graphical building blocks. This can make it quite a bit easier to introduce youngsters to programming concepts without the roadblocks and gotchas that come with learning syntax.
As you can see in the clip after the break, [Kevin’s] Arduino sketch includes hooks that automatically pull the accelerometer and distance data into the Scratch environment. We figure his example provides everything you need to get just about any type of sensor up and running, be it a magnetometer or LDR (both of which would make a nice burglar-alarm type project). Give it a try with your own hardware and see what you can accomplish. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "653066",
"author": "kobilica",
"timestamp": "2012-05-18T00:01:55",
"content": "I don’t know about you dudes, but code in general is easier to me than flowcharts…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653094",
"author": "Jare... | 1,760,376,869.740767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/retrotechtacular-shakey-shows-off-robotics-innovation-from-1972/ | Retrotechtacular: Shakey Shows Off Robotics Innovation From 1972 | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"retrotechtacular",
"robot",
"shakey",
"sri",
"standford"
] | In this installement of Retrotechtacular
we’re taking a look at Shakey
, a robot developed between 1966 and 1972 at the Stanford Reserach Lab. This was a glorious time when students had long hair but still wore long sleeves and ties to do their research.
The robot is actually communicating wirelessly with the PDP-10 computer which handles the processing. No computer monitor is used for interacting with the robot. Instead, a teletype machine lets you type out your commands on paper, and the response from the machine is printed back to you on the same sheet. There’s a camera which is used for image recognition, and sensors that give feedback when the body comes in contact with an obstacle.
We’d sure love to know what kind of budget this project had, but alas we couldn’t find any info about that. You can go and see Shakey in person if you want to.
This info page
mentions that the machine is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "653000",
"author": "Moser",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T22:20:08",
"content": "And the music be jamminAl Jarreau – take five?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhq7fSrXn0c",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "653003",
"author": "s... | 1,760,376,868.98822 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/giving-a-powerpoint-presentation-with-an-apple/ | Giving A Powerpoint Presentation With An Apple ][ | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"apple II",
"apple iie",
"Powerpoint",
"presentation",
"slide show"
] | When [Vince] saw a coworker give a presentation with an iPad, he thought to himself what a tremendous waste of computing resources he was witnessing; an iPad is just as powerful as an early Cray supercomputer, and displaying slides isn’t a computationally intensive task. We’re assuming [Vince]’s train of thought went off the rails at that point, because he came up with a neat way to
give a presentation with an Apple ][
.
To get his slides onto his Apple ][, [Vince] created a tool to convert the text and images for a presentation to an Applesoft BASIC program. Yes, six-color images are supported in a wonderful 280×192 resolution. The presentation was transferred onto a CompactFlash card and loaded onto the Apple with the help of a
CFFA card
, making it much faster to load images during the presentation than a 5.25″ disk would allow.
Of course, after the presentation some of [Vince]’s coworkers wanted to play Oregon Trail, a request easily handled by the voluminous CF card loaded with Apple ][ programs. You can check out video demo/walkthrough of his presentation after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB0y-jSNW_c&w=470] | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "653005",
"author": "Moser",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T22:24:21",
"content": "now someone write a program to read .ppt off an sd card and put it on composite with the propeller.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "653049",
"author... | 1,760,376,868.92829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/cheap-wooden-hexapod-frame-greatly-reduces-cost/ | Cheap Wooden Hexapod Frame Greatly Reduces Cost | Caleb Kraft | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"basic",
"hexapod"
] | [Balline] really wanted to play with a hexapod but found the cost to be prohibitive. Being a mechanical engineer, he was able to
fairly quickly come up with a stable 3 servo design that would allow him to experiment
with the platform. He chose to use wood as the construction material to help reduce costs even more. As you can see in the video after the break, his design gets around fairly well. His cost for the whole thing, including the 3 servos, the basic stamp hobby board, the recycled batteries, and the frame, was under $100.
This is a great system to start with, though he unfairly compares the cost to the dancing ones he had seen in the past.
C’mon, your bot ain’t no [Lou Vega]
. It is still pretty cool though. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "652943",
"author": "bzroom",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T20:19:24",
"content": "Very nice, i like the clever geometry of the legs that allows the feet to move in a straight forward line. The offset of the swing axes. Reminds me of automobile suspension. I wonder how much computer assis... | 1,760,376,868.88556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/electric-imp-connects-projects-to-the-internet/ | Electric Imp Connects Projects To The Internet | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Electric Imp",
"wifi"
] | If you’re planning a build that communicates wirelessly to that ‘Internet of things’ we’ve been hearing about, you might want to check out the
Electric Imp
. This tiny little card connects your project to the Internet without all the hassle of configuring an embedded wireless device.
Inside the Electric Imp is a
good bit of hardware
: an ARM CortexM3, and an 802.11b/g/n wi-fi module that will connect to your wireless network automatically. There are also a few pins left over for serial, I2C, SPI and PWM applications.
Instead of manually configuring the DNS and WPA encryption, the Electric Imp does all of this automatically.
We have no idea
how
the Electric Imp configures itself, but we’d bet it’s something along the lines of plugging the SD card-sized Imp into a computer and piggybacking off the computer’s credentials
. The Imp also uses a cloud service, but we’ll bet once Imps are out in the wild, you’ll be able to use them with your own network.
The Electric Imp card itself will sell for about $25, but there are also
dev kits
to turn the Imp into an Arduino-compatible board. If everything goes as planned, the Imp will be released sometime this summer; we’ll probably see a few Electric Imp projects finished before August.
EDIT: [Kevin] over at Electronic Imp wrote in and told us about the configuration process:
We have an iOS and Android app where the user enters their wireless network’s SSID and the password, then they hold the screen up to the Imp. There’s a photosensor in the Imp that picks up the phone’s flashing and configures the device optically, without the need of plugging it in to a computer, setting up a temporary network for config, or any other cumbersome mechanisms.
We’re basically looking at a much cooler version of the
Timex Datalink
here. Awesome. | 28 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "652911",
"author": "Robot",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T19:17:23",
"content": "Neat. This development board (which Brian mentioned) caught my eye:“Duino: Arduino, with ImpFeaturing an ATMEGA328 processor, this board is compatible with the Arduino Uno but instead of having a USB-serial ... | 1,760,376,869.072563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/tron-costume-fits-nice-and-snug/ | Tron Costume Fits Nice And Snug | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"electroluminescent",
"halloween",
"tron"
] | We’ve seen our fair share of Tron costumes and props, but much like [Sean-h] points out, they are usually pretty bulky and baggy. He’s
gone a slightly different route by starting with a wetsuit
instead of bulkier items like leather jackets. The lighting is done in the same manner we’ve seen before, copious amounts of EL wire and EL tape. The additional layers of this costume were made from foam, so they could be fairly form fitting as well.
[Sean-h] points out that there are some downfalls to his design. The wetsuit, while looking great, gets pretty hot while indoors and the foam layers have a tendency to detach if you move around too much. We think it looks great though. Good job [Sean-H] | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "652612",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T11:37:31",
"content": "He is going to die at a convention. A wetsuit is hot to begin with, couple that with 90,000 nerds in a convention center and I can see a tron dressed guy passed out on the floor.Looking good is 1/2 the ... | 1,760,376,869.211965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/silidoodle-a-500-3d-printer/ | Solidoodle, A $500 3d Printer | Caleb Kraft | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"makerbot",
"reprap",
"solidoodle"
] | 3D printers are very popular right now. We’ve seen them go from an interesting project to multiple commercial entities. Makerbot seems to be the poster child for the commercial side of things, at least they were. Their former COO [Samuel Cervantes] is now in charge of a new company called
Solidoodle
. Their main product is a complete 3d printing kit for $499. You supply power and a computer.
The Solidoodle is capable of building things 6″x6″x6″. The quality seems to be comparable to most of the others we’ve seen. They tout a .1mm layer thickness in HD mode (makerbot shows .2-.3mm). Not bad considering it is less than 1/3 the price of the makerbot replicator with a single extruder. The video after the shows it in action, as well as both with the optional case and door and without. | 69 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "652344",
"author": "TheInternet",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T01:15:14",
"content": "Pretty cool, but looking at their pictures in the gallery I am wondering if it has as good of quality as claimed.Do all 3D printers leave little lines as seen in their gallery?I am genuinely interested... | 1,760,376,869.647626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/mothers-day-heart-chaser/ | Mother’s Day Heart Chaser | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"heart",
"led",
"mother's day"
] | [Robert Mibus] took on a project which his kids could present to Mom on Mother’s Day. It’s
an LED heart built into a ring or necklace box
. The series of white LEDs are animated in a chase pattern. The project let [Robert] push his comfort boundaries by moving past a stock Arduino board.
Inside you’ll find an ATtiny85. He picked up the chip to try
running Arduino sketches on smaller hardware
. But the total of five available I/O pins presented an issue with driving the LEDs. Ten LEDs are used here and even a standard multiplex display would need no less than seven to control them without additional chips or the need for
Charlieplexing
. His solution was to drive two opposite LEDs at once, which cuts the need down to his five available pins.
Once he got it all soldered together he realized that he had made a coding error. But a few soldered wires let him reflash it in place using ISP. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "654066",
"author": "Roger Wilco",
"timestamp": "2012-05-19T05:16:44",
"content": "Theres still time to build this if you live in France or Sweden :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "654587",
"author": "YouCantSeeMe",
"tim... | 1,760,376,869.451972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/motion-sensitive-rgb-lamp-can-standby-for-3-years/ | Motion Sensitive RGB Lamp Can Standby For 3 Years | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"atmega328",
"lamp",
"ldr",
"motion sensing",
"pir",
"rgb"
] | Ooooh, nice enclosure! This is
a little motion sensing lamp
which [Krazatchu] built a few years back as a Mother’s Day gift. The PIR sensor is easy enough to see as the white dome on the front of the case. But look closely below that and you’ll see the LDR which it uses to keep the thing asleep during the day. This is intended to save on batteries but the original version still ate through them like crazy. This year he gutted it and worked out a much more power-friendly design.
He moved to a TLC1079 OpAmp which greatly reduced power consumption when reading from the PIR sensor. The microcontroller was also upgraded from an ATtiny13 to an ATmega328, making the new version Arduino compatible. It puts itself to sleep and keeps the lights out during the day, drawing just 0.08 mA. When driving the RGB LED the lamp pulls about 50 mA. That should still last a while on three AA batteries but we’d still recommend using rechargeables. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "652360",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T01:43:51",
"content": "There are some cheap $3 PIR sensors on ebay. The ones i bought are missing the LDR but there is space for it on the PCB plus another resistor. It’s much easier to use that than to make the actual PIR detect... | 1,760,376,869.491721 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/a-simpler-sous-vide-hack/ | A Simpler Sous-vide Hack | Mike Szczys | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"dimmer",
"LM34",
"pid",
"slow cooker",
"sous-vide"
] | Here are the contronl modules for
a sous-vide project over at Nerdkits
. [Humberto] and crew continue doing a great job of focusing a project on one goal, then explaining the steps needed to get there. In this case they wanted to build their own sous-vide appliance that was cheap, and didn’t really require the user to deal with mains voltage. We like it because most of the parts can be found at a hardware store and big box store.
He started with a slow cooker,
which is pretty standard
. Next he needed a way to switch power to the device. Instead of using a solid state relay, he went for a standard dimmer switch. It’s build into a double gang electrical box, and controls an outlet which is occupying the second position in that box. Now current to the slow cooker is limited by the position of the dimmer. The next task was to add a cardboard frame which marries a servo motor to the dimmer’s knob.
With the control scheme in place [Humberto] needed a feedback sensor. He built his own water proof temperature probe by covering an LM34 temperature sensor with shrink tube and sealing the ends. Just one probe in the cooking water isn’t very reliable so he added a second between the slow cooker’s base and ceramic vessel to improve the performace of the PID algorithm. He goes into detail about that in the video after the break. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "652252",
"author": "monopole",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T21:13:28",
"content": "It strikes me as a huge amount of obfuscation to get around dealing with line current and RTD or thermocouple probes. If you are terrified of mains voltage, get one of these :https://www.adafruit.com/prod... | 1,760,376,869.408905 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/iphone-wielding-guitar-adds-tip-of-your-finger-or-tip-the-instrument-control/ | IPhone Wielding Guitar Adds Tip Of Your Finger Or Tip The Instrument Control | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"guitar",
"guitarrig",
"iphone",
"maxmsp",
"theremin",
"touch screen",
"touchosc"
] | [Rob Morris] has been hard at working improving his guitar augmentation techniques. Here he’s demonstrating
the use of an iPhone to control the effects while he plays
. This builds on the work he shared a few years ago where
he strapped a Wii remote to the body of his ax
.
Just like the Wii remote, the iPhone includes an accelerometer. As you would expect the best parts of the older hack made it into this one, but the inclusion of the touch screen adds a lot more. In the clip after the break he starts by showing off the screen controlling a whammy bar functionality. But we really love the octave offset feature that comes next. This kind of sound manipulation simply can’t be done using a purely physical method (like the whammy bar can). But he’s not done yet. The demo finishes with a Theremin feature. You’ll notice he plucks a string but no sound comes out until he starts touching the screen. This turns it into an entirely different type of instrument.
The only info we have about putting this together is the list of packages he’s using: TouchOSC, Max/Msp, and GuitarRig | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "652208",
"author": "dude",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T20:11:15",
"content": "Last!!!!1But where is the tutorial?!? I want one !?!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "652219",
"author": "Jarel",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T20:31:5... | 1,760,376,869.542414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/prototyping-a-solar-charger-for-your-truck/ | Prototyping A Solar Charger For Your Truck | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"battery",
"charger",
"solar"
] | [Bryan] got his hands on a solar panel and decided to take it on the road rather than throwing it on the roof of the house. On sunny days it will top off the car battery, letting him use his stereo in the middle of nowhere without needing to keep the engine running. Instead of buying a ready-made solution
he chose to design and build his own charging circuitry
.
The charger uses an Arduino, which draws its own power from the panel via a regulator. It senses the voltage level of the battery and the available juice from the panel, connecting or disconnecting it from the electrical system as necessary. The system includes a set of LED indicators, which he installed in the dashboard near the cigarette lighter. This also gave him an excuse to install a voltmeter which uses a 2.5 digit seven segment display to read out the battery voltage. You can see a brief overview after the break. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "652185",
"author": "strange bob brown pants",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T19:32:19",
"content": "wow 2 amps from that little panel seriously?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "652192",
"author": "RobThePyro",
"times... | 1,760,376,869.697282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/alarm-clock-wakes-you-like-lawrence-welk/ | Alarm Clock Wakes You Like [Lawrence Welk] | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"alarm clock",
"bubbles",
"lawrence welk",
"ldr"
] | That awful buzzing/beeping beside the bed in the morning might not seem so bad if it were a cascade of bubbles instead. At least that’s what [Will] is hoping for. He took a child’s toy and
turned it into a bubble blowing alarm clock
.
We’re guessing you’re not going to be too happy with the alarm settings feature. This isn’t using a real-time clock, or any clock at all really. [Will] rolled his own light detection circuit using a PNP transistor whose base is controlled by an LDR. When the light level in the room reaches a certain threshold the bubbles start streaming out of the front of this thing. He test the system in the video by switching a lamp on and off in a dark room.
Up at dawn has never been a way we could describe ourselves, but the one-wire control method seen here could easily be provided by a microcontroller rather than the LDR. Oh, and for those that don’t get it; the [Lawrence Welk] show always
started with a screen full of bubbles
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvHPadvbk6g | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "652148",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T18:25:27",
"content": "Good work, Will! At this rate, you’ll grow up to be a real hacker some day!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "652215",
"author": "revoltlab",
... | 1,760,376,869.931168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/3d-gesture-tracking-with-lidar/ | 3D Gesture Tracking With LIDAR | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"gesture",
"gesture recognition",
"Kinect",
"lidar"
] | [Reza] has been working on
detecting hand gestures with LIDAR
for about 10 years now, and we’ve got to say the end result is worth the wait.
The build uses three
small LIDAR sensors
to measure the distance to an object. These sensors work by sending out an infrared pulse and recording the time of flight for a beam of light to be emmitted and reflected back to a light sensor. Basically, it’s radar but with infrared light. Three of these LIDAR sensors are mounted on a stand and plugged into an Arduino Uno. By measuring how far away an object is to each sensor, [Reza] can determine the object’s position in 3D space relative to the sensor.
Unlike the Kinect-based gesture applications we’ve seen, [Reza]’s LIDAR can work outside in the sun. Because each LIDAR sensor is measuring the distance a million times a second, it’s also much more responsive than a Kinect as well. Not bad for 10 years worth of work.
You can check out [Reza]’s gesture control demo, as well as a few demos of his LIDAR hardware after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Ornv-NlEk&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk2xY3usY0k&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACVx70x8mtg&w=470] | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "652135",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T17:47:07",
"content": "Although the LDR-M10 may send out a million pulses per second, it outputs distance through an analog signal; with a bandwidth of 50hz.It also has a beamwidth of 20°. And isn’t scanned, so it only returns on... | 1,760,376,869.883661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/controlling-a-tv-with-a-microcontroller/ | Controlling A TV With A Microcontroller | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ntsc",
"television",
"tv",
"TVout"
] | Here’s two builds that print text to a TV with only two pins:
Still Alive with an Arduino
After seeing all the builds that play
Still Alive
, [Bob] decided to take a 1972 amber monitor and
recreate the cut scene at the end of
Portal
.
The build uses the
TVout library
for Arduino. There were a few problems with running the Unix and Still Alive animations at the same time, so [Bob] flips a bit in the EEPROM at the end of the command line animation and restarts into GLaDOS’ report. You can check out the old school color monitor
here
ATMega Video Text Generator
[Stian] didn’t think his build was good enough for Hackaday, but his friend [Mikael] thought otherwise. [Stian] wrote a library to
generate an NTSC video signal
in real time. It’s a text-based build with 37×17 character resolution and only requires about 3kB of RAM. As a bonus, it only takes up two pins on [Stian]’s ATMega128.
You can check out the videos for both these builds after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnu4YTLhco&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbCXDgIpuw8&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PU8UWDMPlY&w=470] | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "652140",
"author": "Spork",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T18:00:23",
"content": "This is great. I’d love to have one of these as like a kiosk. One button -> run entire display w/ sound -> back to main screen.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,869.97152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/sell-your-projects-with-club-jameco/ | Sell Your Projects With Club Jameco | Brian Benchoff | [
"News"
] | [
"jameco",
"kit"
] | Everyone’s favorite electronic component distributor, Jameco, rolled out a new way for you to make a few bucks off of your projects. It’s called
Club Jameco
and looks like a great place to design, sell, and learn about new projects from around the Internet.
The premise behind Club Jameco is simple. You send Jameco a short description of one of your projects. If the folks at Jameco think your project will sell, they’ll post it on Club Jameco for some feedback while you write up the instructions and the BOM. Once your project is done, Jameco will build it, sell it, and send you a nice royalty check in the mail.
Already there are some pretty neat projects up on Club Jameco like a
build your own transformer kit
and a
photodiode geiger counter
. We’re sure Hackaday readers have a few interesting projects up their sleeves, so we’ll wait patiently until we see them on Club Jameco.
Tip ‘o the hat to [War_Spigot] and [PUNiSH3R] for sending this one in. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "652042",
"author": "Indyaner",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T15:50:39",
"content": "Personally I would rather like to see those projects on instructables. Its nice that they build and sell it, but I want free education. Both is gone with this. So I hope some of our HaD-readers still make... | 1,760,376,870.029487 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/turning-an-oscilloscope-into-a-logic-analyzer/ | Turning An Oscilloscope Into A Logic Analyzer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"74HC126",
"logic analyzer",
"oscilloscope"
] | Sooner or later, you’re going to need a logic analyzer. If you don’t have a Bus Pirate or Logic Sniffer lying around, [Joonas] has a great MacGyverism that turns an oscilloscope into the
simplest logic analyzer ever
.
The basic premise of the build is tying four digital lines to the analog input of an oscope. This is done with a 74HC126 buffer that provides a high impedance input for the logic probes and outputs the four-bit status of each logic channel. With a few resistors in an R-2R network, the state of four digital lines can be easily read.
[Joonas] included the source code to turn his Picoscope 2000 into a logic analyzer, but there’s no reason why this couldn’t be done with any digital scope that has a serial output. Not bad for a very, very simple logic analyzer – just one chip and a handful of resistors – that costs less than $5. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "651990",
"author": "sqnewton",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T14:13:22",
"content": "Interesting concept. Valid. Good idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "652011",
"author": "steaky",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T15:05:41",
"... | 1,760,376,870.111931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/diy-science-acidbase-natural-indicators/ | DIY Science – Acid/Base Natural Indicators | Jeremy Cook | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"acid",
"base",
"pH"
] | Nearly everything at [HAD] is at least based on science in some way or another. If, however, you would like to do some actual scientific experiments with stuff around the house,
[Observationsblog]
might be for you.
The particular posts that [Ken] wrote in to tell us about were all about acids, bases, and natural indicators. In his
first post
he goes over some definitions of acids, bases, and what pH exactly means. A good refresher for those that have forgotten some of their high school (or college) chemistry classes.
The other two posts have to do with making your own natural acid/base indicators. The first is called Anthocyanin, and can be extracted from Red Cabbage. Quite specific directions can be
found here
. Similar
directions
can be found to turn the Indian spice of [Turmeric] into an indicator as well. Although these concepts probably won’t help build your next robot, they could easily
be copied
inspire young minds for a great science fair project! | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "651981",
"author": "Natalie",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T13:54:39",
"content": "beyond inspiring young minds…for the rest of us digital ph meters are inexpensive, though one has to be careful with the probe and contamination.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,376,870.072116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/self-powered-usb-host-mode-on-the-hp-touchpad/ | Self-Powered USB Host Mode On The HP Touchpad | Mike Nathan | [
"Android Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"host mode",
"HP TouchPad",
"usb"
] | [ften] was having plenty of fun running Android on his HP Touchpad, but he soon discovered that the tablet’s micro USB port didn’t
provide enough juice to his peripherals when running in host mode.
He started digging around and found the perfect means of providing the extra power while maintaining the device’s stock appearance.
He pried the tablet apart and installed a small DC step up converter in an empty space located behind the Touchpad’s dummy SIM slot. After wiring the converter to the battery terminals, he installed a micro USB adapter in the empty slot, which fit perfectly after a bit of sanding.
He hacked together a USB Y-cable to pull power from his new USB jack, while retaining the existing data connection through the original USB interface. You can see the results of his work in the video below, and while [ften] hasn’t said how much his mod affects the Touchpad’s battery life, he has confirmed that it will still shut down gracefully once you inevitably sap the battery dry.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0V1Ezi4ADms&w=470] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "651991",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T14:14:55",
"content": "A USB Host mode mod…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "652004",
"author": "ScottInNH",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T14:53:34",
"content": "I can’t t... | 1,760,376,870.293084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/engineerguy-explains-how-a-ccd-works/ | [Engineerguy] Explains How A CCD Works | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"basics",
"book",
"engineerguy"
] | [Bill] is back with another fantastic video explaining a piece of intriguing hardware. This time, he’s explaining how a CCD works. For many of us, these things are part of our daily life, but aside from the fact that they capture an image, we don’t put much thought into them. [Bill] breaks things down in a way that we really enjoy. Fast paced and detailed, yet simple enough for even non-engineers to follow. This time, however, he’s also promoting his companion book which includes tons more information, not only on the construction and function of these ideas, but the underlying scientific principles.
The book, called
Eight Amazing Engineering Stories
, covers the following items:
Digital camera imagers
tiny accelerometers
atomic clocks
enriched uranium
batteries
microwave ovens
lasers
anodized metals
We’re excited about the book and it looks like they’ve worked really hard to deliver a quality product. Great job guys. | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "651532",
"author": "roboman2444",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T17:48:45",
"content": "so that’s why you get that weird colorization in darkish pictures when you look at small groups of pixels…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "65158... | 1,760,376,870.391199 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/an-interview-with-justin-gray/ | An Interview With [Justin Gray] | Caleb Kraft | [
"Interviews"
] | [
"darwin",
"fire"
] | When it comes to the subject of hacking, we all have different ideas of what is the coolest. Some prefer bits and solder, some prefer hammers and fire. [Justin Gray] has built a name for himself doing a broad mixture of the two. Mainly known for his fire sculpture bots, [justin] also has a fab shop where he builds electric motorcycles.
Make magazine recently did a fun interview with some great pictures that show a little bit of [justin’s] work
.
Justin’s advice for aspiring hackers:
9. What advice do you have for young makers who are inspired by your work?
I think that people who are inspired my work should decide to build and be committed to build and stop listening to the people who insist on going the normal route in life. For kids, keep playing, keep imagining, keep painting and making art.
Join us after the break to see a little bit of robot demolition fun. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "651773",
"author": "BoKu",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T05:46:51",
"content": "Video didnt play :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utqhUDkuEc&feature=player_embedded",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,376,870.246803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/i-build-stuff-too-fire-cannon-edition/ | I Build Stuff Too! Fire Cannon Edition | Jesse Congdon | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"desperate plea for attention",
"fire cannon"
] | After hanging around festivals and burners for a bit I decided that it was finally time to show my stuff and actually build one of these crazy fire cannons everyone is always talking about. The easiest way to go about this would have been to just follow plans from any given website: replace the valve from an empty grill tank with a 4 way fitting, add an electric solenoid, barrel, low pressure regulator (for the pilot), and then pipe in a regulated propane source. Easy.
The problem
My problem with this stock fire cannon design is that it looks like every other fire cannon out there, you have your off the shelf propane bottle and a long thin copper barrel poking up from it, the fire is nice but the cannon is not very fun to look at. Also you can only fit a given size valve, and that does not allow for very much fuel to be released at once. This limits the size of the plume of fire, and where is the fun in that. The central idea is to add lots of little bottles instead of one big one; I stumbled on a nice pretty anodized aluminum water manifold and the idea grew out from there.
Now, keep in mind I did not just set out to build this crazy thing out of nowhere and slap everything together without laying out
some plans
. I have been working with the folks over at
Frank’s Kitchens
for
some time
, and have been able to pick up a lot of safety practices and general safe handling procedure to keep myself from burning down the entire county. If you want to set out to make a flame effect that is great, but just read up on safety first and try to check out a fire cannon in person… That’s what I did and I still have most of my eyebrows as a result (no arm hair though).
Enough freaking text. Check out the video below for a tour!
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwiyydzxQDU&w=470] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "651475",
"author": "HAD",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T15:28:45",
"content": "No PVC. Seems legit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "651486",
"author": "anybodysguess",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T15:57:53",
"content": "Shoul... | 1,760,376,870.342877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/3d-printing-saves-the-day-for-time-lapse-photography/ | 3d Printing Saves The Day For Time-lapse Photography | Caleb Kraft | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"fab"
] | Several of us here at Hackaday have discussed how much we’d like to have some tools, like a 3d printer, but just can’t justify the cost. What would we make? Why do we really need one? Why don’t we just bother [Brian Benchoff] who already has one to make us parts instead. That’s usually how the conversation goes.
[Alexander Weber]
gave us another little reason
to drop in our “list of reasons we need a 3d printer” list with this little hack. He wanted to play with
CHDK
but found the camera’s battery unable to stay alive for longer than 2 hours. There is a commercially available adapter to allow you to plug into the wall, but the cost was outrageous. At least it is outrageous to someone who already owns a 3d printer. We just need a few hundred more dollars worth of reasons to justify that sweet 3d printer we’ve been pining over.
[via
Adafruit
] | 21 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "651409",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T14:11:12",
"content": "Or just buy a cheap knock-off battery on ebay and use the casing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651415",
"author": "frank",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,870.668278 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/standalone-usb-temperature-logger/ | Standalone USB Temperature Logger | Caleb Kraft | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"pic",
"temperature"
] | [Jean] wrote in eager to share his latest project, a
standalone temperature logger with USB connectivity
.
Back in November,
[Jean] found himself wanting a temperature logger that was roughly the size of a USB memory stick. What he found on the market was not quite adequate in terms of price or size, so he decided to design his own. His would be the size he wanted and wouldn’t require any software or drivers to run. You simply plug it in, edit the configuration text file to set your intervals, and off you go!
You can follow along through the entire design and fabrication on his site. He’s really great about discussing why he made each decision and how he resolved any errors he ran into. You can download the schematics and source code on his site. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "651381",
"author": "elektrophreak",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T13:05:56",
"content": "Nice design, great looking PCB! :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "651388",
"author": "load.nikon",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T13:14:05",
... | 1,760,376,870.556025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/youll-throw-your-back-out-playing-this-analog-tv-synth/ | You’ll Throw Your Back Out Playing This Analog TV Synth | Mike Nathan | [
"classic hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"art",
"atmel 328",
"crt",
"de/rastra",
"television",
"tv",
"xbee"
] | While CRT televisions fall to the wayside as more people adopt flat-panel TVs, the abundance of unused sets gives hacker/artist [Kyle Evans]
an unlimited number of analog canvases on which to project his vision.
He recently wrote in to share his latest creation which he dubs “de/Rastra”.
The “CRT Performance Interface” as he calls it, is an old analog television which he hacked to display signals created by moving the TV around. Fitted with an array of force sensors, accelerometers, and switches, the display is dynamically generated by the movements of whomever happens to be holding the set.
Signals are sent wirelessly from his sensor array to an Atmel 328 microcontroller with the help of a pair of XBee radios, where they are analyzed and used to generate a series of audio streams. The signals are fed into a 400W amplifier before being inserted into the CRT’s yoke, and subsequently displayed on the screen.
We’re sure [Kyle] is probably trying to express a complex metaphor about man’s futile attempts to impose his control over technology with his project, but we think it simply looks cool.
Check out [Kyle’s] work for yourself in the video below and give us your take in the comments.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZzbRoJkIBo&feature=player_embedded#!&w=470] | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "651355",
"author": "jameswilddev",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T11:11:37",
"content": "When I first saw it I thought it was creating sound by the movements of the user deforming a waveform shown on the screen by interfering with the CRT. As it stands, it’s basically a big controller fo... | 1,760,376,870.611311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/mapping-the-surface-of-a-video-game-moon/ | Mapping The Surface Of A Video Game Moon | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"cnc hacks",
"Featured",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"BanateCAD",
"heightmap",
"kerbal space program"
] | Writing for Hackaday isn’t all fun and games; occasionally I need to actually write posts and reply to emails from builders around the globe. Usually, though, I’m knee-deep in a personal project, or just hanging out playing a few video games. Recently I’ve gone off the deep end with Kerbal Space Program, an awesome little space flight simulator set in an alternate reality where everyone is just slightly incompetent.
As it turns out, there’s actually a lot of fairly technical objectives in this game, from performing orbital rendezvous to mapping the surface of another planet. It didn’t take long for me to go off the deep end and start mapping the Kerbal moon and turning it into a 3D object. Check out how I did this after the break.
Kerbal Space Program
is a little indie space simulator where you manage your own space race. There’s no real object to the game; is a completely open sandbox where you build your own rockets, launch them into orbit, and hopefully make it to the moon. Think of it as a cartoony version of
Orbiter
and
Eagle Lander 3D
. To me, KSP is the perfect mix of the nerdtacular orbital dynamics, Hohmann transfers, and
massive explosions
.
There’s an amazing amount of user-contributed content for KSP. From
3D printed figurines
to a bunch of
additional rocket parts
to an
orbital laser
, there’s a lot of fun to be had in this game. One of the most interesting add-ons I’ve found is [Innsewerants]
satellite mapping module
. The idea behind this mapping module is simple; just attach a radar dish to your spacecraft, launch it into orbit, and a .CSV file of altitude data is generated for celestial body you’re currently orbiting.
Here’s my satellite mapping probe orbiting Kerbal’s Mun
With the command-line tool included with the satellite mapping module, it’s very easy to generate topographical maps of the planets and moons in the Kerbal universe. Since these worlds are procedurally generated, it’s also the only way to do large-scale reconnaissance looking for flat landing areas. After parking my satellite mapping probe in a polar orbit around Kerbal’s Mun, all I had to do was sit back and let the data grow:
Yes, I cheated and put another probe at a 30° inclination to get more data from the mid-latitudes.
After a few days of watching my probe circle around the Mun, I had a fairly complete data set. Now, what to do with it? From the outset of my little topographical endeavor, I thought it would be cool to have a three-dimensional globe of this video game moon. I already had the tools to generate a greyscale height map; all I needed to do was make a 3D mesh out of this data.
I ended up using [William A. Adams]’s
BanateCAD
. It’s a tiny little CAD package reminiscent of OpenSCAD. There’s also an example of applying a heightmap to a sphere, so making a Kerbal Mun 3D mesh is as simple as changing a few lines of code.
The result of several days’ data collection from munar orbit
I haven’t gotten around to printing my Munar globe just yet, but I did put the .STL
up on Thingiverse
, along with the large versions of the color and grayscale topomaps. The data in those heightmaps isn’t completely accurate; despite the data file being about 400 MB, there were still a few small patches without terrain data. I filled those in with a judicious use of the Photoshop ‘smudge’ tool.
I’m also thinking about recreating the fabulous National Geographic moon poster (shown below) using the data from my Kerbal Mun probe. In any event, it was a fun project and a fantastic way to keep from having to deal with the regular Hackaday rigmarole. | 24 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "651174",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T01:34:29",
"content": "You used “off the deep end” twice, almost successively. Otherwise, I’ll have to check this out. Looks awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651464",... | 1,760,376,870.732213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/16/cardboard-kinetic-creatures/ | Cardboard Kinetic Creatures | Caleb Kraft | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"cardboard",
"elephant",
"robotic platform",
"toy"
] | Browsing around today, I saw this little kit on kickstarter called
Kinetic Creatures
. These flat packed models are made from cardboard and can be assembled without tools. Their mechanical legs are operated either by a simple cam that you turn by hand or by a motorized attachment. I love the basic idea here. This is the kind of thing that my 6 year old would really enjoy doing that also serves to get him into making things (he’d probably insist on motorizing it with scraps, he collects dc motors and has quite a collection).
I did notice that they mentioned using it as a robotic platform, adding custom electronics to the empty space allowed in the body of the animal. This initially got me quite excited, thinking that I could, for $30 have a 1 foot tall quadruped platform that looked awesome, then I realized it can’t turn. I guess I’ll have to hack it a little bit to put separate drives in for each side. That would be a cool upgrade they could offer.
Have any of you tried to do turning with a set of only 4 [jansen] legs before? | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "651992",
"author": "Erik Johansson",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T14:17:33",
"content": "Cool laser cut thingies! But I don’t like precut kits much, it becomes cool when you can make your own changes to the design, and this project doesn’t allow that.They say they need 2 hours of laser ... | 1,760,376,870.82313 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/constant-current-dummy-load/ | Constant Current Dummy Load | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"power",
"test"
] | Inspired by a
design he saw on the EEVblog
, [George Graves] put together this
constant current dummy load
. You might need on of these if you’re testing power supplies or batteries. They pull a constant current regardless of the voltage of the supply. [George’s] version extends the range of the original a little bit by running the op-amp at 8 volts. He says that everything runs fine at 1 amp. He tried 2 amps but things got hot pretty quickly. What we really like though, is he took fantastic pictures. Sometimes even simple things can catch our attention with the right pictures! | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "651707",
"author": "sdfdsf",
"timestamp": "2012-05-16T01:16:52",
"content": "wonder if this could help:http://www.elektor.com/magazines/2012/may/lossless-load.2135766.lynkx",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "652737",
"aut... | 1,760,376,870.778945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/universal-20-channel-project-controller-from-a-ps2-controller/ | Universal 20 Channel Project Controller From A Ps2 Controller | Caleb Kraft | [
"Playstation Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ps2",
"radio controlled",
"rc",
"xbee"
] | So you’ve got a really cool project that requires a wireless controller and a ton of different channels. What are you going to do? Are you going to go pick up an expensive RC controller? Nah, you’re going to build your own. This project makes a
generic 20 channel controller for your projects
by stuffing an SMDuino and an XBee module inside a ps2 controller. Unfortunately you lose the force feedback since you have to remove the motors to make space for the extra components and batteries. You do end up with a decently ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing controller though. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "651641",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T22:25:22",
"content": "You don’t “lose” the force feedback. One will simply re-purpose them into an unsuspecting co-worker’s mouse to trigger on right-click.I’ll have to remember this mod in the future. I have a few extra RC pistols... | 1,760,376,872.789669 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/controlling-robots-with-a-trs-80/ | Controlling Robots With A TRS-80 | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"ez-builder",
"trs-80",
"TRS-80 model 100"
] | [DJ Sures], mastermind behind the EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller, sent in a really interesting build where he
controls a robot with a 1983 TRS-80 computer
.
The robot in question is [DJ Sures]’ adorable WALL-E
we’ve seen before.
WALL-E is controlled through a Bluetooth connection to a desktop PC with the
EZ-Builder
hardware and software package.
To get the Trash-80 talking to WALL-E, [Sures] connected a tiny Bluetooth module to the TX pin of the 6402 UART. It’s a very, very simple modification that adds a Bluetooth serial connection to one of the first notebook computers. After syncing the TRS-80 and WALL-E to the computer running EZ-Builder, it’s a piece of cake to make the robot respond to the clanging of a 30-year-old keyboard.
There’s a video of [DJ Sures] going over his build after the break with a wonderful demo of WALL-E freaking out to a little dubstep. Check that out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUclTa5wqcE&w=470] | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "651617",
"author": "Kaj",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T21:10:11",
"content": "Back in high school, I built a controller board that interfaces with the T-100/T-102 printer port.Two Gearmotors, a swivel caster and an RC car battery later, and the Tandy drove itself around.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,872.641687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/floating-sensor-networks/ | Floating Sensor Networks | Caleb Kraft | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"floater",
"water"
] | These
cool looking little bots are part of a fleet of floating water sensors
built by The Lagrangian Sensor Systems Laboratory (LSSL) at UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) and the California Department of Water Resources.
In an emergency such as a levee break, flood, or spill, they can be deployed to gather information in a way that is completely impossible with stationary sensors. These 17″ tall bots can steer with the help of their twin props and communicate water quality information back to the base via cellular communication and short wave radio. They describe the resulting data as being like a “google traffic map” showing speed, depth, and contamination of the water.
There’s a ton of detail on their site, including breakdowns of how the software and hardware are put together. There’s even a bit of the evolution of the hardware showing the abandoned previous models. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "651601",
"author": "octel",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T20:37:15",
"content": "“levi break”Also known as a catastrophic trouser failure?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651609",
"author": "Caleb Kraft",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,872.689516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/building-a-4-bit-ttl-computer/ | Building A 4-bit TTL Computer | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"74181",
"74xx",
"logic chips",
"ttl",
"TTL computer"
] | When [GG] was 12 years old, he was introduced to BugBooks, the wonderful ‘introduction to digital design’ books from the early 1970s. It has always been a dream of [GG] to build the TTL computer featured in the BugBooks, and now that he has the necessary time and money available to him, the
Apollo181 has become a reality
.
[GG]’s computer is built around a
74181 ALU
, an exceptionally old-school chip that provides the core of a computer in a neat 24-pin chip. With a 256-byte RAM and a few additional logic chips, [GG]’s computer is an
exceptional piece of engineering
able to perform 625,000 instructions per second when clocked at 2.5 MHz.
This isn’t [GG]’s first homebrew computer build; last year we saw his incredible
Z80 minicomputer
. Now we can’t wait to see what’s on tap for next year. After the break, you can check out [GG] loading in operands and operators into his computer and letting the Apollo181 churn away on its program.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeSSkvwFDHs&w=580] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "651587",
"author": "nes",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T20:08:23",
"content": "Astounding work and beautifully documented. I’m impressed it can be clocked that fast despite the early TTL logic.That’s a manly power supply along the top edge too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,872.513999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/15/building-a-sound-reactive-el-panel-and-learning-something-in-the-process/ | Building A Sound Reactive EL Panel And Learning Something In The Process | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"EL panel",
"el wire",
"electroluminescent",
"sound reactive",
"transformer"
] | We’ve seen a lot of builds using electroluminescent wire, usually in the realm of costumes and props. Unfortunately, most electrical engineers don’t deal with blinking and dimming EL wire and panels and any tinkerer trying to control electroluminescence doesn’t have a lot of resources on how to control EL stuff. [ch00f] wanted to fill this knowledge gap, so he build a
sound reactive EL panel driver
and learned a lot in the process.
Nobody really knows how electroluminescent wire and panels work on a molecular level, but [ch00f] did know that changing the direction of an electric field will cause the EL material to glow. Changing the frequency of this electric field will change the EL material’s brightness, so all [ch00f] had to do was make a variable-frequency EL driver – something that’s a lot harder than it sounds.
We won’t bore you with the details because we couldn’t do [ch00f]’s write up any justice. We will skip to the end and tell you [ch00f] was able to make a sound reactive EL panel after a month of work that included making his own transformers and doing a whole bunch of math. You can check out the video of [ch00f]’s [Tony Stark]-esque EL panel after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKl3iO8wjA&w=470] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "651558",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T18:45:01",
"content": "Awesome write-up. It’s also a great tutorial on winding your own flyback transformers, which can be useful even if you have no interest in EL panels.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,376,872.735107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/your-mug-on-an-etch-a-sketch-automatically/ | Your Mug On An Etch A Sketch — Automatically | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"etch a sketch",
"photo",
"plotter",
"printer",
"stepper motor"
] | [Jim’s] pretty serious about his Etch a Sketch. He’s gone to the trouble of building a rig that will
automatically render a photograph as Etch a Sketch art
. Do you recognize the US political figure being plotted in this image? He actually cracks these open and removes all of the internals to preserve the artwork when the reassembled body is ready to be hung on a wall. But we like it for the hacker-friendly interface techniques he used.
He moves the knobs using a pair of stepper motors. They attach thanks to a pair of 3D printed gears he modeled which go over the stock knobs and secure with four set screws. He says he can be up and printing in five minutes using these along with the MDF jig that holds the body and the motors.
He converts photos to 1-bit images, then runs them through ImageMagick to convert them into a text file. A Python script parses that text, sending appropriate commands to an Arduino which drives the motors. The image is drawn much like a scanning CRT monitor. The stylus tracks one horizontal line at a time, drawing a squiggle if the pixel should be black, or skipping it if it should be white.
We wish there was a video of the printing process. Since we didn’t find one, there’s a bonus project unrelated to this one after the break. It’s an Etch a Sketch clock. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "651126",
"author": "Skitchin",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T23:14:32",
"content": "I give up, who is it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651141",
"author": "mattieshoes",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T00:05:29",
... | 1,760,376,872.837979 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/garden-sensors-measure-soil-moisture-and-greenhouse-temperature/ | Garden Sensors Measure Soil Moisture And Greenhouse Temperature | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"garden",
"gardening",
"moisture",
"soil",
"temperature",
"tmp36"
] | [Andy] is getting his garden up and running. This year it’s been pretty cold so he decided to get small plastic domed tunnel which acts as a mini greenhouse. To help monitor that environment he built this sensor array which
displays temperature and soil moisture readings
.
Temperature is quite simple. He’s using a TMP36 sensor which is held a few inches above the soil. The moisture sensor is of his own design. It uses two building screws embedded in foam. These are pushed into the soil and a resistance reading indicates moisture level. By driving voltage on one screw, and measuring voltage on the other he gets some useful data. It’s not a standardized value, but observation over time will let him know how the scale relates to dry or wet soil.
During the build process he found that he needed a pull-down resistor on the probe used to take the moisture measurement. He also uses an I/O pin to drive the other screw. This gives him a way to shut off the juice when not taking a reading. We just hope he’s either got a current limiting resistor, or is using a transistor to drive it high. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "651138",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2012-05-15T00:01:04",
"content": "I would be a little bit worried about having your screws dissolve over time, or even simple oxidation skewing your results. Another option would be to dip the screws in wax or some other inert coating, then u... | 1,760,376,872.9372 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/graphic-equalizer-display-flashes-led-sign-to-the-beat/ | Graphic Equalizer Display Flashes LED Sign To The Beat | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"flash",
"graphic equilizer"
] | Careful planning and a steady hand let [Leo Rampen] fit everything he needed to
build a graphic equalizer display on his LED wall sign
. There’s a lot of components that needed to fit on this board, and he decided not use to an etched board for the build.
The idea for the project started off as just an LED sign. After spelling out “Sweat Box” using LED rope lights, he needed a way to switch them on and off. But why stop there? He also decided to use an MSGEQ7 chip in the build since the sign adorns their party-room and adding music-based flashing lights seemed like a good idea.
He laid out the equalizer chip, ATmega328 (running the Arduino bootloader) and a series of N-channel MOSFETS for switching the LEDS out in Eagle. With design in hand he grabbed a medium-sized piece of strip board and used a drill to cut the traces where necessary. In the end he has a very flashy sign as shown in the clip after the break. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "651078",
"author": "Scope",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T21:10:10",
"content": "not to be too picky but this is a spectrum analyzer not an eq.eq’s are used to shape the sound.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651326",
"auth... | 1,760,376,872.884576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/arduino-compatible-home-automation-for-smart-phone-or-voice-control/ | Arduino Compatible Home Automation For Smart Phone Or Voice Control | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ios",
"relay",
"smart phone",
"voice control"
] | [Joseph] wrote in to share this home automation system he’s working on as a college project. He calls it the Room Engine and the house-side of the hardware is
built on top of the circuit you see here
. This is the most basic part of the REBoard, which is meant to connect to a computer uses RS232 or USB, and in turn use a set of relays to switch mains voltage devices.
You can follow the bread crumb on his webpage to get a broader video of the system. The interface is designed to use two parts. One is a voice recognition system that is supported by the computer. The other is an iOS interface that includes login credentials and a button-based control system. The video after the break shows off the smart phone portion of the controller. We think he’s done a good job of integrating a few appliances without the need for commercial products such as X10 modules.
If you’re just interested in switching a few things without cord’s reach of each other this can get it done, and offers scheduling functionality. It would also be pretty easy to set this up with a WiFi module and do away with the PC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dgvuo1r5_c | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "651054",
"author": "xtremegamer",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T20:14:20",
"content": "mhm , if you just instead of controlling relays , hot-wire to a remote for wireless outlets ?you have wire-less control no clutter – action range is a bit lower but hey !. usb-micro controller on Open-... | 1,760,376,872.974891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/helicopter-light-painting-continues-to-snuff-out-physics-lesson-on-your-brain/ | Helicopter Light Painting Continues To Snuff Out Physics Lesson On Your Brain | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"helicopter",
"light painting",
"physics"
] | Cool picture, huh? Wait until you see the
video footage of this LED-adorned RC helicopter flying on a dark night
. But this isn’t an art project. Analyzing the long-exposure photography turns out to be a great way of clearing up some of the physics of flight which otherwise are not at all intuitive. The helicopter used here has different colored lights on the nose and tail, as well as lights on the rotors.
Depending on how the aircraft is moving, different 3D spirography is captured by the camera. When you zoom in on part of the flight path it becomes clear that there are wider arcs on one side of the fuselage than there are on the other. This has to do with the forward progress of the aircraft and the rotation of the blades. The phenomenon is well known by helicopter enthusiasts, and accounted for in the design. But what we didn’t realize is that it actually translates to a theoretical speed limit for the aircraft. Our childhood love of Airwolf — the TV helicopter that could outrun jets — has been deflated.
You should remember
the helicopter physics videos
featured here last month. This is the latest offering and we’re still wanting more!
[via
Reddit
] | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "651070",
"author": "soopergooman",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T20:51:07",
"content": "I’m pretty cetain airwolf had turbo jets on the side of it. nice video, gonna remix it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651098",
"autho... | 1,760,376,873.021825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/recycle-lithium-cells-by-building-custom-flashlights/ | Recycle Lithium Cells By Building Custom Flashlights | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"cell",
"flashlight",
"lithium",
"rechargeable"
] | This isn’t a brightest flashlight in the world type of hack (but it does manage to push about 1000 lumens). [Stephen Webb] is finding a use for leftover parts by
building his own simple LED flashlights
. As you can see, he uses PVC parts available at any hardware or home store. These are a good choice; they’re cheap, light weight, resilient, designed to be water tight, they easily thread together and have connectors that reduce the diameter of the fittings.
The electronics use standard size cylindrical Lithium cells. These are found in many types of Laptop and Power Tool batteries. Often when one of those battery packs bites the dust it’s
an issue of one or more bad cells
. [Stephen] desolders the cells, and reuses the good ones in this project.
We didn’t see any mention of a recharging technique. Does anyone have any advice on how to top these cells off if they’re not in their original power pack form? | 30 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "650990",
"author": "zaprodk",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T18:12:18",
"content": "I wonder how he is cooling those LED’s in the final version ? They won’t last long in that PVC-pipe…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651010",
... | 1,760,376,873.150223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/designing-a-self-replicating-milling-machine/ | Designing A Self-replicating Milling Machine | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"mill",
"milling machine"
] | For his senior design project at Swarthmore College, [Julian] decided to build a metalworking equivalent to the RepRap. [Julian]’s final project is a
self-replicating milling machine
, and hopefully giving some serious metalworking power to all the makers with CNC routers and RepRaps out there.
At first glance, [Julian]’s mill doesn’t look like something you would find in a machine shop. The machine is built around a tetrahedral machine tool frame, giving the machine an amazing amount of stiffness with the added bonus of a degree of self-alignment. The spindle and motor are off-the-shelf units, but the entire bed assembly is made by [Julian] himself.
Right now, [Julian] still considers his project a very early prototype; there’s still a bit of chatter issues he’s working out, and the cost of the finished machine – about $1200, not including many hours of fine tuning – means it isn’t as competitive as other options. Still, [Julian] made a mill from scratch, and that’s nothing to scoff at. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "650960",
"author": "Mr. Mudcrab",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T17:11:03",
"content": "From some pricing estimates I have found about 1200 not including tooling to be the bare bones price to get sub .003″ tolerances in tool steel. That leaves a small work area, low maximum bed weight, an... | 1,760,376,873.468908 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/hackaday-around-the-web-and-into-the-future/ | Hackaday Around The Web And Into The Future | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"announcements",
"faacebook",
"g++",
"social networking",
"videos"
] | Like everyone else, we’re scattered all over the web. We would be silly not to be getting our information out there in as many ways as we can manage. We promise that the site always comes first, but you can also find us on
Facebook
,
G+
(yes, we’re approved this time),
twitter
, and we even have a
flickr group
where people post pictures of their projects!
We’ve got some stuff planned for the near future that we’re excited about too.
1.We’re working behind the scenes to bring out a new template for the site. This will allow us to clean things up a bit and hopefully make browsing a little easier (searching too!). Don’t worry, we’re not changing the logo.
2.We are also planning on starting some “show and tell” sessions on G+. We love what
Adafruit has been doing with theirs
, and we’re hoping to join in on the fun. We realize some of you are opposed to g+, so feel free to offer other solutions to do the show and tell, we would be happy to hear them. They will be recorded and linked on the site here, so you can follow along even if you can’t join.
3.We’re bringing back the store! This time, however, we’ll have a full spread of stuff. We’re not making it in our garages anymore. For now, it will be clothing and accessories, but we’re considering doing some electronics and tools in the near future as well.
The writers are also very busy with things on the web. We’re not always locked to our keyboards slaving away. If you want to be able to follow along with us, you can find our information after the break.
Mike Szczys
Site:
jumptuck.com
Twitter:
@szczys
Mike Nathan
Site:
Geek-republic.com
Twiter:
@mikenathan_
g+:
here
Brian Benchoff
site:
brianbenchoff.wordpress.com/
Adam Munich
Site:
teravolt.org
twitter:
@adammunich
Jeremy Cook
Site:
jcopro.net/
Twitter:
@JeremySCook
Jesse Congdon
Facebook:
JWCongdon
Caleb Kraft
site:
calebkraft.com
Facebook:
caleb.kraft
g+:
here | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "650909",
"author": "pinkertron",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T16:06:43",
"content": "OPEN THE SHOPS!need. had. swag.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "650959",
"author": "Tomasito",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T17:10:43",
"con... | 1,760,376,873.586301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/improving-a-software-defined-radio-with-a-few-bits-of-wire/ | Improving A Software Defined Radio With A Few Bits Of Wire | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"discone",
"software-defined radio"
] | Impressed by the recent advances in the software defined radio scene, [Jason] picked up a $20 USB TV tuner dongle to check out his local airwaves. Unfortunately, the antenna included with the little USB dongle is terrible at receiving any signal other than broadcast TV. [Jason] wanted to improve his reception, so he got some wire and
made his own discone antenna
.
The
discone antenna
is ideally suited for [Jason]’s setup – properly constructed, it’s able to receive over the entire 64 to 1700 MHz band the RTL-SDR dongle is able to read. To construct his antenna, [Jason] checked out [VE3SQB]’s list of
antenna design programs
, got the dimensions of his antenna, and set to work attaching wire to PVC pipe.
The antenna is a massive improvement over the stock antenna included with the TV tuner dongle. After mounting his discone at the far end of his back yard, [Jason] started picking up a few blips from the transponders of passing aircraft. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "650891",
"author": "Doktor Jeep",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T15:21:46",
"content": "As they always say, it’s all in the antenna.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651004",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2012-05-... | 1,760,376,873.715427 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/mapping-the-motor-cortex/ | Mapping The Motor Cortex | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"brain",
"spectroscopy"
] | [Bruce] sent us another fantastic final project from the ECE4760 class at Cornell. What you see above is
an array of 36 near infra red LEDs shining into this young man’s brain for the purpose of spectroscopy
. Light bounces back differently based on brain activity (blood flow). For this project, they are mapping their motor cortex and displaying it on a PC using a java app. You can see the entire rig, as well as the readings in the two videos after the break.
When this tip came in, one of our writers,[Jesse Congdon], chimed in as well.
hey I actually used to work in this as an intern, at Upenn. two frequencies of near infrared light are used that both penetrate skin and bone, one bounces off of blood in general and the other bounces off oxygenated blood. Since your brain actually regulates the flow of blood to parts that are in use you can see brain activity by looking at blood flow, but then you also need to see if the brain is actually using that blood, so oxygenation gives you a full picture. The frontal cortex is a nice place to measure cause there is no hair on that portion of the skull, and it gives you emotional responses and the “aha!” moment when you figure out a problem.
One article from way back
said the system was going to be used as a lie detector, since when you lie you think about the truth and the lie simoltaneously and show an increase in activity.
It’s tough though to categorize a response since you can’t really establish “base line” activity by turning off the brain | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "650867",
"author": "Leif",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T14:44:47",
"content": "“you can’t really establish “base line” activity by turning off the brain”Oh, I don’t know about that… about 15 minutes of just about any popular reality TV show ought to do the trick.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,873.651549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/the-making-of-a-vacuum-tube/ | The Making Of A Vacuum Tube | Adam Munich | [
"News"
] | [
"history",
"vacuum tube"
] | With the death of Heathkit looming in our minds it’s high time for a a heartwarming story. [Ronald Dekker] has done a wonderful job
documenting the history
of the E1T beam counting tube, detailing everything from the work led up to the invention of the tube to the lives of the inventors themselves.
For those who are unaware, the E1T is a rather strange vacuum tube capable counting from 0 to 9. While that’s nothing too special in itself, the tube also displays the numbers on a phosphor screen, much like a miniature cathode ray tube. In fact, this phosphor screen and the secondary emission caused by it is critical to the tubes operation. To put it bluntly, it’s a
dekatron
and a
magic eye tube
smashed together with the kind of love only a group of physicists could provide.
Now, who wants to have the honor of transposing Ronald’s story into a wikipedia article? | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "650801",
"author": "Cpu86",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T12:23:21",
"content": "I love the E1T, not only because of their beautiful green/blue glow and shape but also for the working principle. I was awed the first time i read about them. Too bad that the beam spreads too much when bend... | 1,760,376,873.779768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/amphi-cycle-lets-you-ride-the-trails-the-waves-and-back-again/ | Amphi-Cycle Lets You Ride The Trails, The Waves, And Back Again | Mike Nathan | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"amphibious",
"Berto",
"bicycle",
"trolling motor"
] | Hackaday regular [Berto] is always looking for new ways to get around, and wrote in to share his most recent creation,
an amphibious bicycle.
He bought an off-the-shelf inflatable boat and constructed a rig that allows him to stably mount the bike on it. Once [Berto] comes across a body of water he wants to cross, all he requires is about 7 minutes time to inflate the boat and attach his bike. Using a modified version of his
electric drill-based trolling motor
we saw last year, the Amphi-cycle glides across the water effortlessly as demonstrated by his assistant in the video below.
Right now the boat is propelled solely by the trolling motor and a large lead-acid battery. We would love to see the amphi-cycle powered by its rider, though we don’t know how that would affect the “one boat fits all” design [Berto] is aiming for.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKN20Vc4bnE&w=470] | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "650779",
"author": "RooTer",
"timestamp": "2012-05-14T11:26:10",
"content": "I don’t want to be mean, but isn’t that bicycle totally unnecessary on the boat? you could just take it as a luggage, without fancy construction around it, and it would float as well or better. It would be ... | 1,760,376,873.530457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/13/getting-started-with-opencv/ | Getting Started With OpenCV | Brian Benchoff | [
"how-to"
] | [
"opencv",
"tutorial"
] | [Eric Gregori] sent in an article he wrote for EETimes to
introduce the concepts behind computer vision
to the masses. As a nice little bonus, [Eric] included a VMware image containing Ubuntu and all the packages and examples necessary to write your own OpenCV apps.
There’s a ton of awesome stuff you can do with computer vision – from
automated sentries to keep squirrels away
, a
kitchen that will tell you when to do the dishes
, and automating blindness by
mounting a laser on a face tracker
, there’s a lot of unexplored territory in the area of computer vision.
Included in [Eric]’s VM image are a motion and line detection example app, an ‘optical flow’ example, and a face detection example. There’s enough here to make a few very interesting projects, so hopefully, [Eric]’s VM image and examples will get your next CV project up and running quickly. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "650566",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2012-05-13T22:16:52",
"content": "Good guide. For thoese less skilled at coding in C or C++, there is “SimpleCV” too, or Matlab, which are compared here:http://blog.fixational.com/post/19177752599/opencv-vs-matlab",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,873.975611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/13/accessing-an-sd-card-through-a-parallel-port-just-because/ | Accessing An SD Card Through A Parallel Port, Just Because | Brian Benchoff | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"linux",
"parallel port",
"sd card"
] | [Vinod] sent in a very cool build he says is somewhat of a ‘mad project’: he mounted an MMC and SD card under Linux
using the parallel port
on his computer. Even though parallel ports are getting rarer these days, we absolutely love [Vinod]’s dedication and willingness to dig around the Linux kernel.
The hardware portion of the build is very simple – just an SD/MMC header and a few resistors wired up to a parallel port. The software side of the hack gets pretty interesting with [Vinod] building a kernel module, something we rarely see on Hackaday.
We’d have to agree with [Vinod]’s ‘mad project’ sentiment, if only because of the terrible throughput of [Vinod]’s adapter; it takes him more than a minute to transfer a 1.5 MB file onto the SD card – terribly slow, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, we’ve got to respect [Vinod] for pushing the limits of uselessness and still building something cool in the process. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "650472",
"author": "mkb",
"timestamp": "2012-05-13T20:09:32",
"content": "I would argue that this is actually pretty useful: a lot of industrial boxes still use floppies and parallel ports.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "650564... | 1,760,376,873.92797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/13/more-pins-and-more-power-with-a-diy-sanguino/ | More Pins And More Power With A DIY Sanguino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Sanguino"
] | Not long after [CulinarilySpeaking] got into the Arduino game, he began to want more IO pins and a larger program space for more ambitious projects. This, of course, led him down the path towards the Sanguino, the ATMega644-based dev board with many more IO pins than Arduino boards based on the ATMega328. Instead of buying new, [CulinarilySpeaking] decided to
make his own Sanguino
, and the results look fantastic.
After coming across an ATMega644 while browsing for parts on line, [CulinarilySpeaking] found the micro that had enough power and pins to do some fairly complex stuff. A bunch of other people though about
using this chip in the Arduino environment
before, so all [CulinarilySpeaking] had to do was copy the circuit with the parts he had on hand.
After soldering all the components to the neat breadboard-style PCB, [CulinarilySpeaking] fired up the Arduino IDE and put the Blink example on the 644. Everything worked, so now there’s a board with much more power than a standard Arduino built with only $8 USD in parts.
via
reddit | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "650453",
"author": "adr990",
"timestamp": "2012-05-13T19:05:28",
"content": "Nice, I really want to play with Arduino stuff more!I guess I’ll order some parts and build this one, good work. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "650... | 1,760,376,874.020801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/13/hacking-magnets-into-your-skin/ | Hacking Magnets Into Your Skin | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"implant",
"subdermal"
] | [Dave] loved his iPod nano so much that
he implanted 4 magnets in his arm to hold it
.
Ok, go ahead and shout “fanboy” at your screen and say something snide about apples products or lament the poor working conditions at foxconn. Got it out of your system? Cool.
Actually, if we had to guess, [Dave] really isn’t doing this all for his love of the device or the company. It is much more likely that he is just really into body modding and this was a convenient theme for a mod. We find the idea pretty interesting. We’ve
seen implants before
, but they are
usually of the RFID type
. Typically those are used for some kind of security or computer control.
Implanting a magnet, however, is interesting because it could almost give you a “sixth sense” You could detect what was magnetic, and how magnetic it was. If we were going to do something like this, we would probably go fully sub-dermal though to help avoid infection.
What other kind of implants could you realistically do with today’s technology to give yourself other senses? | 79 | 42 | [
{
"comment_id": "650393",
"author": "YT2095",
"timestamp": "2012-05-13T17:08:25",
"content": "wont the pressure between the magnets and the device deprive his skin of blood and oxygen and just Rot over time?naah… seriously Dumb!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,874.13508 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/13/hackaday-links-may-13th-2012/ | Hackaday Links May 13th 2012 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"ass",
"balloon",
"Kinect",
"laser",
"time-lapse"
] | Amazing ass… for a robot
Yep, Japan still has the creepy robotics market cornered. Case in point is
this robotic posterior
. Don’t worry, they’ve included a dissection so you can see how the insides work too. [via
Gizmodo
]
Time-lapse camera module results
As promised, [Quinn Dunki] sent in a link to
the photo album from her time lapse camera module
. In case you missed it, she
built it in a Tic Tac container
and stuck it to the side of a racecar.
Kinect controlled killbot
Didn’t we learn anything from RoboCop? We could totally see
this Kinect controlled robot
(which happens to weigh five tons) going out of control and liquefying an unsuspecting movie extra standing near it. [via
Dvice
]
Laser popping domino balloons
apparently [Scott] has set a world record by
using a laser to pop a line of 100 red balloons
. We enjoy seeing the size of the 1W laser that does the popping… it can’t be long now before we get a hold of handheld laser pistols. [via
Gizmodo
]
Laser balloon targeting
If that last one was a bit of a let down, you might enjoy
this automatic targeting system
more. The blue triangle shaped icon is setting a target, the amber triangles have already been targeted. Once all the balloons are identified a laser quickly zaps each in order. Quite impressive, although no details have been provided. [Thanks everyone who sent in a link to this]
http://gizmodo.com/5909007/we-hope-lasers-popping-hundreds-of-balloons-is-the-new-dominos-fad | 17 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "650364",
"author": "Sci",
"timestamp": "2012-05-13T15:15:16",
"content": "I can’t actually see a Kinect being used anywhere in that robot video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "650367",
"author": "brad",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,874.190095 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/hacking-the-kingston-wi-drive/ | Hacking The Kingston Wi-Drive | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"Kingston Wi-Drive",
"Wi-Drive"
] | [Andrew] got his
hands on a Kingston Wi-Drive
, and being the responsible Hackaday reader he is, spent the better part of a weekend figuring out how to get root on this shiny new toy
The
Kingston Wi-Drive
is a small battery-powered Flash drive with a wi-fi adapter in a small, compact case. Even though Kingston is going after a fairly niche market by advertising the Wi-Drive to expand the storage of iOS and Android devices, a network attached storage solution that can fit in a pocket is somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, Kingston decided to lock down the Wi-Drive; [Andrew] can’t even get a terminal running on this little box.
After a weekend, [Andrew] is no closer to his goal of getting root on the Wi-Drive. He suspects the problem may be there simply isn’t a terminal for Telnet to bind to. [Andrew] realized he was a bit out of his league on this hack and decided to open up his research to people much more experienced in embedded Linux environments. If you’ve been playing around with a Wi-Drive, or you want a tiny battery-powered NAS, send us something
on the tip line
and we’ll follow up on this post. | 56 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "650014",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T20:42:21",
"content": "I wish these things were more useful. 250gig and can be accessed as a SMB share from a laptop? Great idea. 32 gig for a ipad? what a waste, I’ve already got 64 gig in there, I’m looking to carry a lot... | 1,760,376,874.433281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/putting-a-software-defined-radio-on-a-mac/ | Putting A Software Defined Radio On A Mac | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"RTL-SDR",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio"
] | A few months ago [Antti Palosaari] discovered cheap USB TV tuners could be used as a software-defined radio. Since then, we’ve seen these TV tuners receive signals from GPS satellites and even the signals between air traffic control and passenger aircraft. Like everything cool, Mac support for these drivers is slightly terrible so [hpux735]
wrote his own Cocoa app
to support these amazing dongles.
[hpux735]’s driver is a port of the
osmocom driver
, repackaged as a native Cocoa app so the terribly fickle libusb and other dependencies aren’t needed. All the code is up on
GitHub
, ready for you to start playing around with SDR.
As far as tutorials for those wading into the deep waters of software-defined radio, a number of how-to guides have popped up over the last month to get SDR noobs up and running quickly. Here’s a few of the best ones we’ve seen:
[braingram] put up
an Instructable
for Ubuntu users.
For people who have a Windows box lying around [balint] put up a
getting started guide
.
There’s a slightly more thorough Windows guide
here
.
Most of the development in the TV tuner SDR community is happening on the
RTLSDR subreddit
, and there’s more than enough info there to do just about anything with these TV tuner dongles. If you come up with a novel use for one of these dongles, send it in
on the tip line
. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "650070",
"author": "EschatologicalEngineer",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T23:45:26",
"content": "I am eager to work with this device. Unfortunately, the order I placed a couple months ago, still has not been fulfilled. DX had them listed as in stock and ready to ship when I placed my or... | 1,760,376,874.291487 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/heathkit-closes-down-again/ | Heathkit Closes Down, Again. | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"heathkit",
"news"
] | With this rather large flip flop,
Heathkit has closed its doors… again
. The company that so many of us remember fondly from their myriad of electronics kits originally closed its doors in 1992. Last year,
there was an announcement of a revival
and a call for kit submissions. Unfortunately, it looks like that just didn’t work out. While this isn’t an official announcement, the facts appear to line up to Heathkit closing their doors.
If you’d like to re-live a few fond memories, here’s a
Heathkit unboxing
at EMSL. | 15 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "649968",
"author": "MS3FGX",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T18:21:06",
"content": "Well, that was quick.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649993",
"author": "A.Lizard",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T20:00:54",
"content": "My dev... | 1,760,376,874.341691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/destroying-stuff-for-the-good-of-all-mankind/ | Destroying Stuff For The Good Of All Mankind | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"destruction",
"research"
] | NC state’s constructed facilities laboratory
is a place where things get broken for science
. We’ve
shared several videos lately
of things being sliced, diced, sheared, exploded, and smashed, purely for the fun of it, and now we feel like we should compensate a little bit. No, we’re not going to
undergo physical punishment
, instead, we’ll share some educational destruction.
In the video after the break, you can see a few things pushed to their absolute limits, then a bit further. The Constructed Facilities Laboratory is a research lab that tests the limits of some of the infrastructure that we rely on daily. Bridges, roads, walls, support beams. Someone needs to figure out what they can really handle. Even more interesting than the short video below, are all the different videos in the tour that explain how the facility is constructed an how they operate. Take a few minutes and enjoy the tour. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "649946",
"author": "XOIIO",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T17:28:52",
"content": "Dream Job = Located",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "652636",
"author": "FYI",
"timestamp": "2012-05-17T12:49:49",
"content": "... | 1,760,376,874.234525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/matts-bubble-display-updated/ | [Matt’s] Bubble Display Updated | Caleb Kraft | [
"hardware",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"check valve",
"display"
] | [Matt] emailed in to show us how he has
improved his bubble display since the last time we saw it
. If you recall
from last time
, he was having issues with the air pressure dropping when multiple bubbles were released, resulting in smaller bubbles. This time around, he has added an aesthetically pleasing air reservoir to help ensure that his bubbles don’t vary too much. There really wasn’t a reason to use two containers for the reservoir, aside from the fact it is what he had on hand. He has also torn part the part of the display that houses the oil, replacing it with individual tubes for each vertical segment. This makes it easier to regulate the speed of the bubbles, as he found they travel at a constant rate if they are in contact with the edges of the tube.
One downfall of using the vinyl tubes is the fact that it comes in a giant roll. This leaves the tube wanting to curl. To get around this, he stretched it on a wooden dowel and heated it with a heat gun till it relaxed. Using clear PVC or acrylic tubing would be an alternative but would be more expensive. | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "649161",
"author": "JoshC",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T12:13:19",
"content": "ok now light the tubes with RGB leds. so the bubble reflects the light. and you just made a new way to play rock band.if you had 8 bars. with rgb leds so the color of the tube tells you what octive/note to p... | 1,760,376,874.576315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/generating-electricity-with-swing-sets/ | Generating Electricity With Swing Sets | Caleb Kraft | [
"green hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"playground",
"swingset"
] | [Guelherme Pena Costa] came up with an idea to
light up a swing set using the motion of the people swinging on it to generate electricity
. The goal was to get people to enjoy the playground at night and we think, this might actually be a pretty good way to achieve that. People love blink lights, especially if they are interactive.
To Light the LEd ropes, [Guelherme] has attached a gear motor to the frame of the swing set and an arm to the chain. When the swinger swings, it spins the motor generating between 6 and 10 volts at 230-400 mA. As you can see in the video below, that works fine to illuminate the LEDs, though we think a charging circuit to allow the lights to stay lit for longer would also be cool. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "649146",
"author": "Deg",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T11:28:26",
"content": "What a clever idea! I wonder if the ~5W of electrical power (so maybe >10W of mechanical power) is a noticeable drag on the swing. I also wonder if kids or adults would enjoy this more.. :)..as long as an armc... | 1,760,376,874.665419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/project-octopus/ | Project Octopus | Caleb Kraft | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cephalopod",
"octopus"
] | You know who thinks building a robotic octopus is an awesome idea? EVERYONE. Apparently the idea is a solid enough idea that the
European Commision has funded this project
. The goal is to mimic the capabilities of the squishiest of the cephalopods in order to advance soft robotics. Or possibly to take over the world. They are hoping to have a fully capable robot octopus with no rigid structures at all.
You may be thinking that making a squirming tentacle is easy business. What they are attempting however, is the actual movement of an octopus including extension/contraction as well as grasping. This requires a complex system of control wires as well as “artificial muscular hydrostats” to allow it to do all these movements. A flexible skin covered in sensors will be added to the final design. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "648846",
"author": "DosX",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T23:14:56",
"content": "Really Interested to see how this pans out",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "648863",
"author": "kaydat",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T00:01:56",
"... | 1,760,376,874.621433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/extremely-detailed-light-painting-bar/ | Extremely Detailed Light Painting Bar | Caleb Kraft | [
"hardware",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"light painting",
"POV"
] | [Matt Pandina] has been documenting his build of a
very nice light painting bar on his G+ page
. His light painting bar has 64 RGB LEDs being driven by an ATmega328P and four TLC5940 chips. He wrote his own libraries to talk to the TLC5940 as well as his own libraries to pull images off of a MicroSD card. He also wrote a cross-platform program that automatically converts a directory of pngs to something the TLC5940s expect. He says the secret to getting his24-bit color correction looking right is gamma correction. It seems that when the LEDs were run too bright, he couldn’t get the colors quite right. In case you’re curious, those images are 15 inches tall!
You can follow along through his posts as he starts with just a few LEDs and slowly updates and grows it to the impressive state it is at currently. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "648827",
"author": "gabriel",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T22:18:31",
"content": "uh, no you can’t. at least i can’t see it there besides the color cycling leds point.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649031",
"author": "Tom",
... | 1,760,376,874.706345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/a-much-easier-take-on-an-android-garage-door-opener/ | A Much Easier Take On An Android Garage Door Opener | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"android",
"arduino",
"bluetooth",
"garage door",
"relay"
] | [Andy] is taking the complexity of
a smartphone-controlled garage door
down a notch with this project. He’s not interested in checking on the state of the door (open or closed)
using a video feed
, or in controlling the thing from anywhere in the world. He just wants to use his Android as the remote control and we say amen to that.
The circuitry in the garage is pretty simple. A relay is used to simulate a button press on the in-garage wired opener. This relay is driven by an Arduino which uses a Bluetooth shield for connectivity. Since his Android phone has a Bluetooth modem the rest of the project is just app development. As you can see in the video, the app automatically connects to the Arduino when it is launched, then waits for the button press to send the electronic equivalent of ‘Open Sesame”.
The project covers a series of posts so if you want to see how he got the app up and running make sure to browse through his archives. The next iteration for this app needs to be a background widget that enables Bluetooth, connects to the Arduino, and send s the open command all with one press.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD2ktMTmljU | 21 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "648804",
"author": "Colecago",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T21:25:48",
"content": "I would have liked to see a clever use of the tx pin from the bluetooth module to control the micro and eliminate the arduino, but still cool. Can’t wait to see his Android program write up.",
"paren... | 1,760,376,874.766355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/fuzzy-time-used-to-keep-the-kids-in-bed/ | Fuzzy Time Used To Keep The Kids In Bed | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"children",
"fuzzy time",
"kids",
"wake"
] | Like many parents, [Mike Tsao] is plagued by his kids’ urge to rise like the dead long before he’s ready to wake up. In an effort to preserve sanity, he built this
clock to let the young ones know when it’s okay to get out of bed
. Fittingly, he calls it the OK-Wake.
You may notice that the clock doesn’t have a display. That’s because his children are still too young to tell time (this is the foundation for needing a custom clock). Instead, that LED acts as the feedback. At night it will be off. Starting ninety minutes before it’s time to wake the LED will begin to pulse red, increasing in frequency as the target time approaches. When it’s okay to get out of bed the LED turns green and exhibits a pleasant “breathing” behaviour.
An ATtiny25 drives the device, along with an RTC chip. The single button is used to set the alarm. Actual time doesn’t really matter at all. Instead, the button just sets the alarm for twelve hours from when it’s pressed. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "648773",
"author": "mohonri",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T20:33:34",
"content": "I need to make one of these. Now that it gets light at 5:30 in the morning, our kids are bouncing out of bed way too early.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,376,874.966766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/builing-a-bigger-bar-graph/ | Building A Bigger Bar Graph | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"595",
"bar graph",
"led",
"shift register",
"transistor array"
] | Take a gander at
the Giant LED bar graph
which [Chunky Hampton] recently completed (from this image we don’t think the nick name suits him). It’s simple both mechanically and electrically, but we love the look and think it would be a nice addition to your home, hackerspace, or as a children’s museum exhibit (
we’re looking at you
[Mr. Porter]).
The enclosure is a hunk of PVC electrical conduit. It’s got to be one of the largest sizes, but still should be found at most home stores. The base mounts easily and the cover snaps into place. [Chunky] used a hole saw to create the openings for the LED modules. They’re circular boards with multiple single-color LEDs on them. A common power bus feeds the high side of each bit, while a couple of transistor ICs controlled by 595 shift registers address them on the low side. From there just use any controller you wish, but in this case it’s an Arduino.
[Chunky] uses the meter to display power output from his stationary bicycle generator. But he also put together a little
Larson Scanner
demo which you can see after the break. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "648758",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T20:10:34",
"content": "A giant VU meter comes to mind. Could be useful in jam room or open stage events. The original must be the giant thermometer at the ’34 Worlds Fair Chicago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,376,874.910016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/hackerspace-intro-tkkrlab-in-enschede-netherlands/ | Hackerspace Intro: TkkrLab In Enschede, Netherlands | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"Netherlands",
"tkkrlab"
] | [Dave Borghuis] put together
a quick video tour
of the
TkkrLab hackerspace
in the Netherlands.
The tour stats off with the entry system.
We looked in on this project
at the end of last year. The space totals about 150 square meters (about 1600 square feet) divided into three rooms. There’s a ‘dirt’ room which houses some tools for woodworking and general fabrications. Another room is used for electronics prototyping, including a 3D printer and CNC mill. Finally there’s the large meeting room which acts a hang-out lounge to work on your projects, watch some movies, or hold events.
There are weekly meetings on Tuesday nights which are open to everyone. There’s also a range of classes given covering topics like learning Python, or an intro to Arduino.
We really enjoy seeing these tours. What are you waiting for?
Send us a video tour
of your own hackerspace! | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "649399",
"author": "Elias",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T19:22:57",
"content": "Damn, I live in Enschede and never heard of this :D Cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649447",
"author": "masterburner",
"timestamp": "2012-... | 1,760,376,875.014603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/golden-spiral-chicken-coop/ | Golden Spiral Chicken Coop | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"chicken coop",
"golden spiral"
] | [Marchelo] wanted to build his own chicken coop. He started researching different designs and
ended up basing his build on the golden spiral
.
In addition to the interesting shape, a ton of clever design choice made it into the build. For instance, [Marchello] took the time to dramatically round over the lumber used as the skids of the base. This, along with wheels on one side, will make it much easier to slide the coop if he needs to move it. Also, the roosting boxes are an addition to the side wall of the hen-house. The roof for these boxes is hinged, so checking on the chickens, or harvesting eggs happens at a comfortable height for the farmer. And finally, the plank that allows entry for the hens doubles as the door at night. So far this is a manual-operation, but we could see
some mechanization
as a future improvement.
[via
reddit
] | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "649395",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T19:16:07",
"content": "Now this is clever!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649398",
"author": "Vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T19:20:51",
"content": "Why? I’m ... | 1,760,376,875.057115 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/hackaday-links-may-11-2012/ | Hackaday Links: May 11, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3d printer",
"espresso",
"makerslide",
"new scientis",
"raspberry pi",
"shapeoko",
"text message",
"utilimaker"
] | Three days of work in 5 minutes
[Celso] bought himself a Ultimaker kit and put together
a time-lapse video
of him putting it together. There’s a lot of work that goes into these machines, but being able to print a nearly perfect cube on the first run is nearly magical.
How about a CNC mill, too?
The folks over at Inventables have put together a
tiny CNC mill kit
designed from the fruitful mind of [Edward Ford]. The Shapeoko mill is designed around the
Makerslide linear bearing system
, so you’re getting a lot of precision very easily. Here’s
some more info
on the Shapeoko
Update the firmware on your RasPi
[Hexxeh] has been playing around with the Linux images for his Raspberry Pi, so he needs to reinstall the firmware on an image quite a lot. He
wrote a tool
to automate this task, but it should be useful for RasPi users that want to keep kernel and firmware up to date. You can get the rpi-updater at
[Hexxeh]’s GitHub
.
Your robotic barista is
still
always on the phone
Zipwhip is a company that provides a bridge from your phone to your computer so text messages can be displayed on your desktop. To show off their tech, they created a
text enabled espresso machine
. Everything on this robotic barista is automatic: the cups are grabbed from a warming tray with a servo arm, coffee is automatically brewed, and the last three digits of your cell phone number are printed on the foam to identify each cuppa. Check out
the video
; action starts at 1:30.
Awesome reading material
If you’re looking for something to read on that fancy tablet computer of yours, here’s
every issue of New Scientist
from 1956 to 1985. The early 60s issues say fusion power plants are about 50 years away, so we should be
just fine
in a couple of years. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "649432",
"author": "Fractal",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T20:33:08",
"content": "That new scientist thing is very neat, though having google books take up 1/3rd of my screen is not helpful (laptop). I’m wondering if there is a way to just grab a big archive of the back issues, and read... | 1,760,376,875.095277 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/usb-connectivity-that-is-so-very-very-small/ | USB Connectivity That Is So Very Very Small | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"0402",
"breakout",
"ftdi",
"qfn",
"small",
"usb"
] | Using FTDI chips as a USB to Serial solution is nothing new, but
this MicroFTX board
takes the footprint to a new low. If you’re space limited this should have no problem fitting into your project. But if you plan to use it for prototyping we predict it’ll be lost in the parts bin forever as soon as you take your eyes off of it.
The USB Mini-B connector is becoming quite popular with hobby electronics these days. But here [Jim Paris] chose to use its little brother, the USB micro connector. Want to put this together by hand? How are you with 0402 footprints and QFN chips? In fact, there’s a ground pad on the bottom of that IC which means you really need to use a reflow oven to do the job right.
Aside from the diy-unfriendly fabrication size, we do like the design. There are four output pins (voltage, ground, TX, and RX) with a set of four solder jumpers to configure them. It can be powered from the USB port or an external connection, with the option for 5V or 3.3V output.
[Thanks John] | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "649293",
"author": "atomsoft",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T16:27:40",
"content": "Could be even smaller is IC was on bottom :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "649303",
"author": "Rob Wentworth",
"timestamp": "2012... | 1,760,376,875.244017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/tesla-gun-will-probably-kill-something-sometime/ | Tesla Gun Will Probably Kill Something, Sometime | Brian Benchoff | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"high voltage",
"tesla coil",
"tesla gun"
] | After reading
The Five Fists of Science
, a retelling of ‘war of the currents’ between [Tesla] and [Edison], [Rob] knew he needed a Tesla gun, the sidearm of the story’s protagonist. Since nothing as stupidly awesome and dangerous as a portable Tesla coil has ever been made, [Rob]
needed to make his own
.
[Rob] started his build as any good weird weapon build begins: taking apart a Nerf gun. A new Aluminum sand cast body replaced the wimpy plastic body of the Nerf gun and after a few days on a mill, [Rob] had an aluminum Nerf gun perfect for holding the guts of a Tesla coil. The high voltage switch is
made of porcelain
, and the power supply is an 18 V cordless drill battery and a flyback transformer potted with silicone in a PVC pipe end cap.
[Rob] really has a remarkable build on his hands here, and certainly something no one else has ever tried before. While he hasn’t fired his gun yet, we’re sure we’ll hear about it on the nightly news when he does. | 45 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "649246",
"author": "No One",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T15:04:35",
"content": "Correct me if I’m wrong but he just needs to wear a Faraday cage to protect himself, right?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "649253",
"author"... | 1,760,376,875.412574 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/the-wiikart-a-wireless-go-kart/ | The WiiKart, A Wireless Go Kart | Caleb Kraft | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"kart",
"nintendo",
"wii"
] | Whoops… Looks like
we covered this already
. My mistake.
In case the name didn’t tip you off, this fun little kart was inspired by MarioKart. The goal was to
build a functional go kart that could be controlled via the Nintendo Wiimote
. They did a pretty good job and kept it fairly simple too. They designed a frame that vaguely mimics the shape of the carts in the game. The steering is handled by a 4″ stroke linear actuator. This was initially hooked directly to the tie-rod, but they found it to be too slow. Their solution was to put a lever in between the two with a 1to 3 ratio. This made everything much snappier.
Though they were capable of implementing PWM on the motors in their hardware, they opted to stick with full on, full off because of the push-button nature of the controller. The connection and communication are handled with an Arduino and they don’t mention what bluetooth module they use.
You can see in the video below it is fairly responsive and has more than enough power to lug a passenger over some varied terrain. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "649212",
"author": "hunternet93",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T14:14:58",
"content": "Umm… Oops?http://hackaday.com/2011/10/29/wii-remote-controling-the-vehicle-youre-riding-in/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "649218",
"au... | 1,760,376,875.333497 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/digital-magic-8-ball/ | Digital Magic 8 Ball | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Magic 8-ball",
"oled",
"PIC16F"
] | [sjm4306] had a small Magic 8-Ball key chain as a kid. The fluid in this key chain eventually dried up, and if [sjm] is anything like us the 20-sided die is now lost to the sands of time or at the very least hidden in a box in the basement. After remembering the old Magic 8-Ball one day, [sjm] decided to
build a digital version
of everyone’s favorite bewitched billiard ball.
The digital magic 8-ball uses a PIC16f886; more than enough to hold the twenty possible replies from a real magic 8-ball. The display is a tin 3 cm OLED which surprisingly emulates the ‘icosahedron with raised letters floating in purple liquid’ aesthetic very well.
Right now, this is just a breadboard prototype – there isn’t an accelerometer or tilt switch in the build yet, so shaking the project does absolutely nothing. [sjm] may add that functionality later by turning his project into a watch, key chain, or installing it in a real Magic 8-Ball case. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,875.2807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/pipe-crawling-snake-robot-is-a-masterpiece-of-a-senior-project/ | Pipe Crawling Snake Robot Is A Masterpiece Of A Senior Project | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"pipe robot",
"snake",
"snake robot"
] | Here’s an oldie but a goodie: [Eiki], [Mark], and [Sheraz] built a
pipe crawling robot
for their senior engineering project at Florida Atlantic University way back in 2004. Despite being a rather old build, its aged well and still demonstrates the clever ways the guys overcame some engineering obstacles.
The original plan for the pipe crawler was to mount three spring-loaded wheels 120° apart at the fore and aft of each robot section. Six independent wheels for each section of the robot is overly complex, and too much for a single operator to control; the team moved on to a ‘screw drive’ system where each wheel is canted forward a few degrees. This drive system propels the snakebot along by simply spinning, although it does bring in a few challenges all its own.
The robot had separate sections consisting to house a motor, camera, and electronics, so a way to pass wires through a rotating shaft was needed. This came in the form of a few pairs of incredibly small ball bearings around a hollow shaft. After the mechanical portion of the build was finished, the team moved on to the electronic part where an IMU was built out of three small gyroscope sensors mounted perpendicularly to each other.
Sadly, there are no videos of the inside of a sewage pipe from the pipe crawler’s point of view, but YouTube wasn’t launched until a year after this project was finished. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "649913",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T15:47:34",
"content": "“Six independent wheels for each section of the robot is overly complex, and too much for a single operator to control”This implies that each wheel needs its own control device, and that somehow the opera... | 1,760,376,875.452097 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/12/the-trials-of-working-with-brushless-dc-motors-for-the-first-time/ | The Trials Of Working With Brushless DC Motors For The First Time. | Caleb Kraft | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"bldcs",
"brushless",
"motors"
] | We’ve all worked with DC motors at some point. Even if you aren’t a big hardware person, you’ve probably at least picked up a motor as a kid and touched a battery to the leads causing it to whir to life. These are usually standard DC motors and not their brushless relatives. Brushless motors require a bit more work since you are manually controlling things that are normally taken care of with the brushes. This article won’t teach you how, rather it will
show you the mistakes one person made in his inaugural effort to use them
. It is mildly amusing, but the project summary that he’s using them for seems even more interesting.
The job that’s been paying my bills and keeping me away from artsy-fartsy circuits for the past six months involves making a set of these enormous robot doors for a Certain Very Fancy Person’s house. Each door is 13 feet tall, around 7 feet wide, and weighs 1500 pounds. There are 66 of them in said house, and more in the servant quarters(!?!). The circuits on board each door have to handle running an onboard air compressor (which regulates a pneumatic weatherseal) as well as keeping track of temperature to linearize the pressure sensors when the weather gets cold. They also have to charge and maintain sealed lead acid batteries. They have commutated power rails. They have to communicate over said power rails, and do so using an capacitively-coupled data slicer and a proprietary protocol I wrote. This protocol has to be robust enough to bootload the processor over. It’s a proper embedded systems job.
Wow.
[via
Adafruit
] | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "649885",
"author": "andar_b",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T14:21:34",
"content": "I’m halfway wondering if he’s working on the Star Trek (would be neat if it wasn’t the 2009 version) themed fantasy hotel I read about a few months back. :pAlthough his comment certainly gives me an idea o... | 1,760,376,875.585504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/monitor-your-heartbeat-with-a-webcam-and-a-flashlight/ | Monitor Your Heartbeat With A Webcam And A Flashlight | Mike Szczys | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"c++",
"flashlight",
"heart rate",
"pulse",
"webcam"
] | After seeing some heart rate monitor apps for Android which use the camera and flashlight features of the phones, [Tyson] took on the challenge of coding this for himself. But he’s not using a smart phone, instead
he grabbed a headlamp and webcam for his heat rate monitor
.
To start out he recorded a test video with his smart phone to see what it looks like to cover both the flash LED and camera module with his thumb. The picture is mainly pink, but there’s quite obviously a color gradient that pulses with each gush of blood through his skin. The next task was to write some filtering software that could make use of this type of image coming from a webcam. He used C# to write a GUI which shows the live feed, as well as a scrolling graph of the processed data. He took several tries at it, we’ve embedded one of the earlier efforts after the break. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "649573",
"author": "snowrail",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T01:34:09",
"content": "You shouldn’t need the extra lamp for this. I have an app on my iPhone that watches my face to tell me my pulse quite accurately. I have others that work my illuminating my finger using the built-in flash... | 1,760,376,875.536213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/morse-code-interpreter/ | Morse Code Interpreter | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"atmega8",
"microphone",
"morse code",
"opamp"
] | [Sulaiman Habsi] and two classmates put together
a Morse Code interpreter
as a class project at Sultan Qaboos University. The system listens to a morse code signal using a microphone, then translates that input to text which is displayed on this character LCD.
The breadboarded circuit feeds an audio signal from the microphone, through an OpAmp, to the ADC of an ATmega8 microcontroller. The captured signal is stored as a byte in a special way. The three least-significant bits signify how many total dots or dashes are contained in the character, the remaining bits represent those dots and dashes with zeros and ones. A full description of this process is included in a PDF linked in the article above. As you can see in the video after the break, the hardware waits to process all of the signals once the full message has been received.
This would be a great add-on for
a Morse Code practice keyer
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "649515",
"author": "jwsmithc4",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T23:09:52",
"content": "I’m curious what speed it can handle.Anyone remember that Travolta movie where he listened to the local army base’s recorded Morse code. it was played in repeat really fast and he cracked it.Something ab... | 1,760,376,875.677805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/digital-stethoscope-can-record-playback-and-analyzer-heart-sounds/ | Digital Stethoscope Can Record, Playback, And Analyzer Heart Sounds | Mike Szczys | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"stethascope",
"stethoscope"
] | It’s somewhat amazing how these rather
inexpensive electronics can augment the functionality of a common stethoscope
. This digital stethoscope is using audio processing to add the features. A standard chest piece feeds a condenser microphone which is fed through a pretty standard OpAmp circuit which supplies the ADC of an ATmega644. After being digitized, the heart sound can be recorded in ten second increments to a 1 Mb flash memory chip. The data can also be fed to MATLAB via a USB cable in real-time. There it is displayed as a waveform and the heart rate is calculated on the fly. Check out the video after the break for a great demo of the system.
The picture above shows a set of ear buds used as output. But this is a standard headphone jack, so the heart sounds can be played on speakers which we think would come in handy for teaching purposes. There’s also the option to hook it to a computer input which could be the audio used for a Skype session if a doctor is not close at hand. There is lots of potential here at a fairly low cost and we love that! | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "649488",
"author": "BiO",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T22:22:40",
"content": "The TSA also loves them!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649495",
"author": "bio",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T22:39:35",
"content": "The airport... | 1,760,376,875.630881 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/defying-gravity-for-new-user-interfaces/ | Defying Gravity For New User Interfaces | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"Magnetic levitation"
] | [Jinha Lee] at the MIT Media Lab created a new interface allowing new ways to modify and play with 3D objects. It’s called
ZeroN
, and it’s nothing short of a futuristic device straight out of Star Trek.
ZeroN is simply a platform for levitating a small spherical permanent magnet in 3D space. It does this by mounting a hall effect sensor on an electromagnet. The hall sensor measure the strength of the magnetic field of the ball every few milliseconds and keeps the spherical magnet levitated. To move the object in 3D space, a few webcams track the ball over the platform and tell the electromagnet to move on a CNC-like x y table.
[Jinha] showed off a lot of cool stuff that is possible with the ZeroN; ping-pong is by far the coolest implementation, but it’s also possible to use the magnetic sphere to demonstrate n-body gravity or as a camera flying around a digital scene.
It’s a really amazing piece of work with an exceptional demo video. You can check that video out after the break. Thanks, [ferdinand] for sending this one in. | 40 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "649454",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T21:08:47",
"content": "I’d like to know how much noise it makes during use. And I would like to see it handle two balls.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "651166",
"a... | 1,760,376,875.768609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/11/pleasing-results-from-a-cnc-mill-project/ | Pleasing Results From A CNC Mill Project | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"mill",
"stepper"
] | [Roy] is getting to the end of
his second CNC mill project
and finally seeing some results. Here you can see a bear he milled in some floural foam.
The project started out as an Arduino-based pen plotter. It move the pen along one axis, and the drawing surface along another, with the third axis allowing the pen to be lifted and repositioned. With that in his back pocket he went all out and began what he calls the Mark II. He used T-slot aluminum for the frame, which really helped when it came to aligning the linear rod supports for each axis. After a lot of drilling, and tapping he managed to bring each axis on line one at a time. A pre-fab CNC driver kit drives the stepper motors, making them groan as they do their work. hear it for yourself in the test video after the break were the machine is first tested as a pen plotter. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "649497",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2012-05-11T22:42:07",
"content": "floral",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "649578",
"author": "graphmastur",
"timestamp": "2012-05-12T01:48:10",
"content": "What software did y... | 1,760,376,875.812981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/what-the-flux-buy-it-or-brew-it-yourself/ | What The Flux: Buy It Or Brew It Yourself | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"acetone",
"alcohol",
"dangerous prototypes",
"flux",
"rosin"
] | Flux generally makes our lives easier. It’s the best bet when trying to prevent solder bridges with fine-pitch components like you see here. But it is also indispensable when it comes to desoldering components from a board (we’re talking just one component without disturbing all of the others). But have you ever looked at what it costs to pick up a syringe of liquid flux from an online retailer? In addition to the cost of the product itself there’s usually a hazardous material handling fee that is rolled into the shipping cost. So we were happy that [Christopher] sent in a link to
the DIY flux page over at Dangerous Prototypes
.
The concept is simple enough. Mix some rosin with some solvent. Turns out these items are really easy to source. The solvent can be acetone (which you may have on hand for removing toner transfer from freshly etched PCBs) or plain old rubbing alcohol. And an easy source for rosin is your local music store. They sell it to use on bow hair for String players. Grind it up, throw it in a bottle and you’re good to go. Now does anyone know where we can source needle-tipped bottles locally?
For those that still just want to buy flux we highly recommend watching
part one
and
part two
of [Ian’s] flux review series. | 38 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "648671",
"author": "TopHatHacker",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T18:09:08",
"content": "You can buy syringes at Home of Economy or Tractor supply or any farm supply shop. they usually are good and sturdy and have alot of capacity. you can just use the syringe or take off the needle and g... | 1,760,376,876.065884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/wireless-ipod-charger-built-from-scratch/ | Wireless IPod Charger Built From Scratch | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ac",
"charger",
"coil",
"induction",
"rectifier"
] | Despite the obvious use of a lot of wire, this project is actually
a wireless charging system
. [Jared] built it as a way to explore the concepts behind transferring power inductively. Alternating current on one of the white coils induces current on the other. This is then rectified, and regulated for use as a 5V charger. In this case it powers his iPod, but any USB device should work with the setup.
The transmitter uses the power supply from an old laptop as a source. Some filtering and a couple of MOSFETS are responsible for generating the AC current on the transmitting coil. The receiving coil feeds the bridge rectifier. In the writeup that voltage is fed to a 7805 regulator to provide a stable 5V output. However, in the video demo after the break [Jared] shows off the boost converter that he uses on his improved circuit. This way if the voltage drops due to poor alignment of the coils it will still be able to provide a steady output.
We’ve seen the same coil concept used to
add wireless charging to cellphones too
.
[via
Make
] | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "648638",
"author": "Drake",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T17:08:17",
"content": "Use the same amount of copper, drop the regulator to 3V and squeeze it into a wireless mouse … never need batteries",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64... | 1,760,376,876.126611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/05/10/reverse-engineering-an-rgb-led-remote/ | Reverse Engineering An RGB LED Remote | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"remote control",
"RGB LED"
] | In the quest to add some mood lighting in his basement, [Mohonri] found an infrared wireless remote that is able to control several RGB LED strips. The only problem with this remote is the inability to control it via a wall-mount panel or even a computer. Obviously this would not stand for such a swank basement, so [Mohonri] did the reasonable thing and
reverse engineered one of these remotes
.
The build started with ripping the remote apart and figuring out how it ticks. [Mohonri] found the small IR LED transmitter and hooked up an oscilloscope to capture some data. After a bunch of trial and error and a
big help from relevant documentation
he had the entire button matrix – and thus the functions available to the LED strip – available to output via wall panel or computer.
[Mohonri] hasn’t completed his build yet; this was just the reverse engineering and documentation stage. Now, though, it shouldn’t be hard to control the RGB LED strips through an Arduino, a computer, or even an Android/iOS device with a small IR LED plugged into the headphone jack. | 30 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "648616",
"author": "Sven",
"timestamp": "2012-05-10T16:33:46",
"content": "Isn’t this the wrong way to go? The PWM in these cheap units is low frequency and has choppy fading.I would have rather made a new PWM controller that accepts the old remote as an input along with computer co... | 1,760,376,876.192474 |
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