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https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/model-helicopter-physics/ | (Model) Helicopter Physics | Jeremy Cook | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"helicopter",
"physics",
"remote control"
] | If you’ve ever wondered how a helicopter is able to fly, or would just like to see some awesome RC piloting, the four
videos
after the break should be just the thing! Although the basic physics of how one works is explained in the last three, one would still be hard pressed to explain how [Carl] is able to fly his RC helo the way he does. The video has to be seen to be believed or even explained, but one of the simpler tricks involved taking off a few feet, doing a forward flip, and flying off backwards and upside-down!
As explained in detail in the
other
videos
, a helicopter is controlled by something called a swash plate on the main rotor, which in short translates a linear action into a rotational one. The same thing is done with the tail rotor, but you’ll have to check out the videos after the break for a full explanation! Really ingenious that someone could come up with this analog control system to use before computers were available.
Of particular interest to physics geeks, an explanation of
gyroscopic precession
is given in the fourth video. Controlling a helicopter may not work exactly the way you thought!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEWzqsfeHM&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaB4k1SgfUg&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2mITQ53kr8&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTjGTxSevHE&w=470&h=315%5D
Via [
Geeksaresexy
] | 32 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "633977",
"author": "tehnoo",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T23:34:45",
"content": "Reminded me of a model airplane piloting video I saw somewhat recently, doesn’t explain physics or anything, but it’s damned impressive to watch.http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tzowQtqOM_I",
"paren... | 1,760,376,900.166519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/linus-wins-the-millennium-technology-prize/ | [Linus] Wins The Millennium Technology Prize | Caleb Kraft | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"dead badger",
"linus"
] | [Linus Torvalds] pumped out Linux roughly 20 years ago and has now
won some pretty major recognition for his contributions
. We’ve seen different flavors of Linux installed on virtually everything you can think of, even on
a dead badger
. This prize is being compared to the Nobel Peace Prize, since there isn’t a Nobel prize for technology(why not?).
While some might be wondering what the big deal about Linux is, consider this quote from the ZDnet article for a moment.
Is it deserved? Well, judge for yourself. Since
Torvalds created Linux in 1991
, it has become the world’s most ubiquitous operating system it powers the popular Android phones and eight out of 10 financial trades; it runs Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major web networks. It is the dominant OS for supercomputers, supporting nine of 10 of these major systems, and is the preferable platform for cloud computing. | 26 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "633959",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T22:55:25",
"content": "Tomorrow I’m going to tag Tux all over the city!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "633983",
"author": "Lloyd Atkinson",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T23:... | 1,760,376,900.227513 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/dcpu-16-running-pac-man/ | DCPU-16 Running Pac-Man | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"0x10c",
"assembly",
"DCPU-16",
"notch",
"pac-man"
] | If you’ve been trying to think of stuff you can do with the DCPU-16 this may inspire you to write a clone of a classic game.
This version of Pac-Man
was written using a sprite system with a 16 color pallette. It runs in an HTML-based emulator, so you can even monkey around with the assembly code to help you figure out how it works. But if you’re not into writing code that is this machine-close, you can just click the ‘run’ button and use your keyboard arrows to play through a level or two. You’ll notice there’s only one game board available so far and some things are still missing like that familiar waka-waka as he gobbles up the dots. Let us know if you mange to extend the features of this version.
In case you missed it, this emulator is running
the DCPU-16 spec from Notch’s new game
, 0x10c (. We have no idea how that’s going to shape up, but getting in on the game early will pay off it turns out to be as popular as Minecraft. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "633907",
"author": "Gdogg",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T21:40:20",
"content": "Impressive. I can’t believe it’s only ~750 lines of code.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "633921",
"author": "Plaid",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T2... | 1,760,376,900.279185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/simple-proximity-sensor/ | Simple Proximity Sensor | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny13",
"infrared",
"ir",
"phototransistor",
"proximity sensor",
"reflectance",
"reflective sensor"
] | [Dustin Andrews] built this
add-on board which works as a proximity sensor
. He wanted a standalone sensor for his Arduino projects which would use a single pin as a trigger. This lets him alert the Arduino when an object approaches the sensor without the need for polling or extra code on the Arduino side of things.
As you can see, a single chip on the board takes care of all the work. That’s an ATtiny13, they’re inexpensive and sometimes you can even salvage them from consumer electronics
like this color changing light bulb
. The microcontroller monitors the phototransistor which is wrapped in electrical tape to isolate it from the IR LED emitters on either side. This setup creates a reflective sensor. When an object nears the board, the infrared light from the emitters reflects off of it and onto the phototransistor. And since the Arduino works as an AVR programmer you don’t need special hardware to program the device. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "633856",
"author": "Rogan Dawes",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T20:16:58",
"content": "Some heatshrink tubing might be a better idea than the electrical tape. You can always shrink the portion around the phototransistor’s legs to keep it in place.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,376,900.476231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/computer-control-for-your-xbox-controller/ | Computer Control For Your Xbox Controller | Mike Szczys | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"18f4550",
"macro",
"rapid fire",
"xbox 360",
"xbox controller"
] | This wiring nightmare lets [H. Smeitink]
map all the buttons from an Xbox 360 controller to his PC
. It gives him the ability to push control input from his PC to the console. But it goes a step further than that because it actually acts as a pass-through device. He connected a wired controller to the computer and uses a program he wrote to translate those inputs and send them to the hacked controller.
The software is written in C#. It’s got a recording function that lets him save the keypress data from the wired controller while it’s sent to the Xbox in real time. When he finds a combination that he uses frequently he plucks out those commands, sets them up as a macro, and assigns one of the buttons to execute it. The controller hack uses one transistor for each button, and a PIC 18F4550 which controls them and provides USB connectivity with the PC.
This isn’t one nice package like
some integrated rapid-fire and macro solutions
we’ve seen. But it certainly opens up a lot more possibilities. See for yourself in the clip after the break. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "633826",
"author": "SAC_Rob",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T19:08:49",
"content": "Very cool setup. Too bad xbox live is so quick to ban for any type of hardware mods.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "634527",
"author": "adc... | 1,760,376,899.993361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/building-a-computer-with-discrete-transistors/ | Building A Computer With Discrete Transistors | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"cpu",
"discrete",
"processor",
"transistor"
] | You’re going to want to do some stretching before undertaking a soldering project like this one. We’re betting that the physical toll of assembling
this 4-bit discrete processor project
is starting to drive [SV3ORA] just a bit crazy. This small piece of electronic real estate is playing host to 62 transistors so far, and he’s not done yet.
It’s one thing to build some logic gates in Minecraft (and then turn then into
a huge 16-bit ALU
). But it’s another thing to actually commit to a physical build. [SV3ORA] does a great job of showing the scope of the project by posting a tight shot of one inverter, then three in a row, then the entire 8-bit address and display system. These gates are built on the copper side of the board, with the power feed, LEDs for displays, and jumpers for control on the opposite side. We’re excited to see where he goes with this project!
But hey, if you don’t want to do that much soldering
there’s a lot you can do on a few breadboards
. | 22 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "633812",
"author": "Yorkshire",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T18:34:01",
"content": "Inb4 “What is the point” and “Waa, waste of time, waa”This is ace and everyone should think so.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "633821",
"author... | 1,760,376,900.09877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/building-an-arduino-chiptunes-project-inside-an-fpga/ | Building An Arduino Chiptunes Project Inside An FPGA | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"chiptune",
"fpga",
"papilio",
"soft processor",
"ym2149"
] | From time to time we find ourselves in the mood for some Chiptunes. You know, the music that accompanied all of the best 8-bit console games? These days there are a lot of projects that use the audio chips of yore to recreate the sounds, but you’re always faced with the issue of sourcing those parts. [Jack Gassett] took some inspiration from one of those projects, but solved the rare hardware dilemma by
building his own Chiptunes MIDI device in an FPGA
.
He saw one of our features on
an Arduino controlled YM2149
programmable sound generator. He realized that you can already find FPGA libraries out there that mimic this sound generation hardware, and he’s already done extensive
work with an Arduino soft processor
. Why not combine the two?
He’s using a Papilio FPGA with a wing that includes a MIDI connector and audio-out jack. As you can hear in the clip after the break this sounds just like the real thing. And he’s got plans to roll as many different types of sound generating chips into the mix as possible. You know, one FPGA synth to rule them all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbCybapnKTw | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "633775",
"author": "gadgetfactory",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T17:45:08",
"content": "I just wanted to add a quick note.This would not have been possible without the ZPUino Soft Processor and help from Alvaro Lopes. Alvaro Lopes had already done the heavy lifting of integrating the YM... | 1,760,376,900.42496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/a-flight-simulator-made-out-of-a-real-737-cockpit/ | A Flight Simulator Made Out Of A Real 737 Cockpit | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"737",
"cockpit",
"flight simulator"
] | [Trent] sent in
an awesome story
about a single man who bought the nose of a 737, put it in his garage, and built a flight simulator inside the cockpit. His name is [James Price], and right now the only thing we’re wondering is when we can have a visit.
The cockpit came from an aircraft boneyard in Oklahoma. After [James] plunked down $1500 for the shell of a cockpit, he moved his new toy to a Livermore, California aircraft hangar and eventually into his garage. While the plane is meant to be a simulator, [James] is a tinkerer at heart: he says the best part of building his 737 is building the systems, programming the computers, and making everything work together. We’ve got to admire that.
Of course this isn’t the first cockpit-in-a-garage build we’ve seen. Years ago we featured an
Avro Lancaster
, and just a few months ago we saw a strikingly
similar
replica
737 flight deck
(it’s made out of wood, and not a real 737). [James]’ build is one of the very few home-built simulators made out of a real airplane. Someone get this guy an F15 cockpit stat. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "633722",
"author": "colecoman1982",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T16:05:12",
"content": "He should really look into pairing this up with the DIY collimated display project that was posted here a while back.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,900.037308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/hackaday-links-april-20-2012/ | Hackaday Links: April 20, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"advertising",
"casting",
"eye protection",
"flux pen",
"media",
"Nook Color"
] | Introducing Hackaday: how it’s made edition
Ever wonder how the make the forms for marine propellers? Now you have.
It turns out
they use a bunch of plywood, Bondo, and sandpaper. Awesome viewing for a coffee break.
Finally a new way to hurt yourself!
[Darrell]’s solder flux pen was filled and capped at sea level. When this pen made it to his work bench high in the mountains of Colorado there was a significant amount of pressure in that pen. The flux squirted out
right into [Darrell]’s eye
. Better get some Visine on that, man.
The most accurate television portrayal of hacking ever
[Russell] was watching TV last night and saw an
interesting commercial
. It’s a bunch of electronic components, then a nook color showing the front page of
Make: Projects
, an Arduino schematic, and finally a happy robot. Two observations: firstly, someone in media and advertising doesn’t think ‘hacking’ is
WarGames
stealing bank accounts. Secondly, an ad exec
looked
into
current
users
.
Here’s the
official YouTube video
of the commercial.
In a world… where components aren’t soldered… one man… uses a soldering station.
Adafruit linked to the
most outrageous promo video ever
. This Weller soldering station provides 240 watts, battles alongside Agamemnon at Troy, has rework tweezers, and travels to Italy to wage war against the Latins.
An IDE for the 21st century
[Chris] is currently developing a new paradigm for programming. He calls it
Light Table
, and it’s designed to be an improvement over a simple text editor and project manager. All the documentation is at your fingertips, you can make changes on the fly. It reminds us of the
zzstructure emulator
we saw last year. It’s something to keep an eye on at least. | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "633698",
"author": "B",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T15:18:33",
"content": "Not visine…medical attention. As in, regular flushing with saline solution. Do NOT mess around with your eyes!Also: any time you’re working with chemicals, you NEED EYE PROTECTION. This is why.",
"parent_... | 1,760,376,900.333803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/one-hackaday-readers-experience-going-on-the-ben-heck-show/ | One Hackaday Reader’s Experience Going On The Ben Heck Show | Caleb Kraft | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"ben heck",
"forums"
] | In the Hackaday Froums, [Colecago]
shares his experience collaborating with [Ben Heck]
. They were building some “Robot Luggage”, and you can see the episode after the break below. The idea was that they would build a piece of luggage that would follow you through an airport instead of having to be dragged.
[Colecago] shares a little about the “behind the scenes process”. There’s a surprising amount of work that goes into a very little amount of video. From what we can gather, this video took over a month to make. [Jesse/Colecago] was quite embarrassed to have run into a mistake that he called “UART Dislexia”, where he repeatedly wired the circuit incorrectly. We say, don’t stress, it happens to everyone.
Another point he brings up is how much of a pain in the butt the Arduino was in this process. While people in the comments often argue about the use of the arduino, [Jesse] explains how this specific case would have been much easier without.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAyWrJoVUbs] | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "633666",
"author": "Colecago",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T14:23:07",
"content": "I also had my PNP transistor drawn upside down :-(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "633683",
"author": "Caleb Kraft",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,900.385108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/real-bmw-dash-cluster-for-your-racing-games/ | Real BMW Dash Cluster For Your Racing Games | Caleb Kraft | [
"computer hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"racing"
] | Here’s a cool add on that could making racing games just a little more engaging. How about a real instrument cluster? [Herctrap] has
written up the schematics and shared the code
to get a real car’s instrument cluster to be driven from x-sim. It is a slightly different approach than
we’ve seen before
, but really not too complicated.While this is still just another accessory sitting on his desk, it really seems to add a considerable amount of feedback to the game. Next he needs to build a motion rig for his seat! | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "633643",
"author": "Max",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T13:29:46",
"content": "It doesn’t look like he’s doing anything too clever. I was hoping for som CANbus integration, which I could back port into my BM to make the matrix display do something more interesting. Or at least set the ti... | 1,760,376,900.765708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/20/tearing-down-a-colonoscopy-pill-camera/ | Tearing Down A Colonoscopy Pill Camera | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"colonoscopy",
"medical",
"pillcam"
] | Normally, colonoscopies are rather invasive affairs. Swallowing a small pill with a camera is much more amenable to a patient’s dignity and are seeing increasing usage in colon cancer screening. [Mike] acquired a pillcam from a relative who underwent the procedure and
did a teardown
to figure out how it works.
To get the video signal out of the body, the pillcam has two contacts that conduct the video signal through the body to stick-on contacts; It’s a more power efficient way of doing things versus a radio transmitter. After opening the plastic and metal capsule, [Mike] found three batteries and an impressively small circuit that contained an array of LEDs, a camera, and what might be a small MCU.
Taking a scope to the electronics in the pill, [Mike] found an
impressively complex waveform
that sends uncompressed image data to the receiver every few seconds. Although the camera was somewhat destroyed in the teardown, we’re pretty confident [Mike] could decode the image data if he had another… ‘sample.’
[Mike] says if you can ‘retrieve’ another one of these pill cameras, he’ll gladly accept any donations and look into the differences between different makes and models. Just make sure you sanitize it first. After the break you can see [Mike]’s teardown and the inevitable poop jokes in the comments. One last thing – if you’re over 50, doctors should be looking at your colon every 5 or 10 years. Get screened.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAKuPGhK3I&w=470] | 59 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "633600",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T12:08:22",
"content": "I hope I don’t have to use the receiver unit he pulled apart, reassembled and then returned to the hospital as if nothing had happened!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,900.719944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/spend-your-weekend-contributing-to-the-exploration-of-space/ | Spend Your Weekend Contributing To The Exploration Of Space | Brian Benchoff | [
"News"
] | [
"hackerspaces",
"nasa",
"space",
"space apps challenge"
] | Earlier today we posted a link to a
tournament NASA is holding
. NASA is trying to crowdsource the organization of terabytes of data collected from missions all over the solar system. A few Hackaday readers wrote in (thanks [grbgout] and all the others) to tell us there is an
International Space Apps Challenge
going on this weekend to crowdsourse solutions to the problems of space flight.
The challenge is the product of a partnership between NASA, the National Science Foundation, the UK and Japanese Space Agencies and
a host of other organizations
like GitHub, Yahoo Developer Network, and even a few hackerspaces. The idea behind the challenge is simple: spend a weekend
solving software, hardware, and science challenges
to improve the state of space sciences.
There are a lot of interesting projects like
programming an interface to a NASA mission simulator
, figure out how to print
3D objects in space
, and even develop the
hardware and software for an underwater ROV
.
Aside from the fancy software and hardware challenges, there are also some very interesting data visualization problems, like clearly explaining the fact that
space is mostly empty
. If you can figure out how to tell people they aren’t the center of the Universe, take a shot at it – there’s probably a Nobel in Literature in it for you.
Right now there are
dozens of locations
on all seven continents and in Low Earth Orbit (McMurdo Station in Antartica and the ISS) that will have people contributing to these projects. Of course you’re free to
work out of the home
and help scientists, engineers, and researchers reach to the stars. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "633311",
"author": "random",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T00:52:25",
"content": "Space based 3d printing.. sounds like a good bend for the MetalicaRap (3d printing with metal) project to take, since one of the major hindrances has been the vacuum chamber.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,901.080172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/badges-we-dont-need-no-stinking-badges/ | Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges! | Caleb Kraft | [
"downloads hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"badges",
"patches"
] | In a an obvious marketing move akin to a drug dealer offering up free samples,
Urban threads is offering free badge plans
for hackerspaces that have robotic embroidery machines. We’ve seen this trend of badges coming up lately and we don’t know if it is the boy/girl scout in us, or the punk rocker that makes us pine for them. You may laugh, but look at that skull with the welding goggles on. If you don’t think that’s badass… then we disagree.
The idea of giving some away free isn’t new. You can download free photoshop brushes, free fonts, free circuits and all kinds of other free stuff from sites that sell better versions as well. We just couldn’t pass up the chance to point out that skull, and helping out hackerspaces is always good in our eyes. So, who has one of those embroidery machines? | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "633297",
"author": "barryronaldo",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T00:36:14",
"content": "My sister has one of those embroidery machines. She made me towels with Homer on them and my initials, which is far more legitimate than most merit badges lol. I think they are pointless but I am al... | 1,760,376,900.990028 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/improving-a-freestyle-kayak/ | Improving A Freestyle Kayak | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"freestyle kayak",
"kayak",
"rodeo keyak"
] | When [Andrea] was looking for a freestyle kayak, he bought the cheap version of a high-end kayak. The hull is exactly the same as the high-end model, but to differentiate between product lines, Pyranha chose to use less expensive fittings. [Andrea] decided to
bring his new kayak up to spec
(Italian, here’s a
Google translation
) by fixing the problems in the cheaper model by bringing it up to more professional standards.
When [Andrea] got a hold of his kayak, the back rest was held on by a piece of nylon webbing secured with a plastic clamp. This was bound to fail after just a few outings, so he fixed this with a few steel nuts and bolts. The eyelets used to tie ropes to the kayak were terrible, so with a little bit of nylon webbing and a pair of buckles these were replaced.
Now, [Andrea] has a very nice kayak indeed, for less than the price of the more expensive version. Good job, [Andrea]. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "633319",
"author": "Grant",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T01:20:14",
"content": "As a fellow paddler, its nice to see a kayak hack! I would have probably submitted some but I’ve lived far away from any good whitewater for a couple of years. :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,901.316528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/monitoring-air-quality-with-a-12-sensor/ | Monitoring Air Quality With A $12 Sensor | Caleb Kraft | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"air quality"
] | [Chris] has allergies, asthma, and uses a wood burning stove. You can imagine why testing his air quality might be something he’d be interested in. He has a very nice $290 laser particle counter, but was really curious how the $12 sharp sensor he found would stack up. To find out,
he plugged it into an arduino and started logging both on pachube
.
After a few different tests, like lighting a match, blowing it out, and letting the smoke flow into the sensors, he decided he needed something better. Cooking some pancakes turned out to be his ultimate method. After charting the dissipation of particles after cooking a nice batch of griddle cakes, he found the two sensors to be surprisingly similar. | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "633181",
"author": "MobileWill",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T21:09:32",
"content": "This gives me some ideas for at home. Both my fiance and I have allergies and this would interesting to see the air quality at home.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,901.420659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/do-anything-with-the-help-of-lucid-dreaming-goggles/ | Do Anything With The Help Of Lucid Dreaming Goggles | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"lucid dream",
"psyops"
] | In the world of your dreams, you can build an entire world, an entire universe, an entire society governed by your every whim. While lucid dreaming you are a god in your own mind, free to create or destroy at will. You can train yourself to recognize when you are dreaming, but sometimes a little technological help can speed you towards the path of becoming an old testament god. [Will] over at revolt lab built a
set of lucid dreaming goggles
so he could take control of his own dreams.
To induce a lucid dream, [Will] took a pair of safety goggles and attached red LEDs to shine into his closed eyes. A simple circuit was constructed out of an ATtiny85 that blinks the LEDs two hours after being turned on. The idea is these LEDs will be noticed by the user during REM sleep and they will realize they’re still sleeping. After that, it’s basically
Inception.
It is possible to induce lucid dreaming through psychological and not technological hacks;
just asking yourself, ‘am I dreaming’
throughout the day may be enough to make a holodeck in your mind while you’re sleeping. You can check out a video of [Will] wearing his goggles after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6x0mFyoJZo&w=470] | 29 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "633142",
"author": "mikesowbug",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T20:17:00",
"content": "I’ve been working on a similar project, called theHypna Go Go. The hardware is similar to Will’s, but I think my firmware is worth a look, because it uses virtually no battery power during idle (it uses... | 1,760,376,901.262427 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/building-the-mind-of-a-robot-overlord/ | Building The Mind Of A Robot Overlord | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"speech synthesizer"
] | The folks at the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 now have a
fabulous piece of wall art
that is also a speech synthesizer. The speech synthesizer is over two feet long and is made of nine panels of stripboard connected with right angle headers. An awesome piece of art if there ever was one.
This speech synthesizer is actually 30 years in the making.
In the early 1980s
, one of the members of LVL1 across a few text-to-speech ICs in a bin in Radio Shack. These ICs sat in a drawer while college got in the way, and in 1990,
the project was resurrected
. The speech synth chips sat in a drawer for another decade, and it was finally decided to build a wall-mounted speech synth for LVL1.
This speech synthesizer is intended to be the voice box for FATHER, LVL1’s second hackerspace AI. Already the first AI – MOTHER – is already
telling people to take out the trash
and generally trying to become the AI-gone-amok we all deserve. FATHER will be implemented
in a robotic monkey
, so right now the only question we have is who has been messing with the Louisville water supply. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "633116",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T19:09:35",
"content": "I got one of those synth speech chips from a Radio Shack closeout bin too! (Probably the same time they got theirs) So, I guess it is time to start building mine…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,901.200231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/controlling-blinkenlights-with-modern-computers/ | Controlling Blinkenlights With Modern Computers | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"beaglebone",
"blinkenlights",
"pdp-11"
] | A few old timers may remember that once, long ago, computers didn’t require keyboards. The earliest personal computers such as the Altair 8800 and the server rack-sized minicomputers like the PDP-11 could be controlled with a panel filled with switches and lights, giving us the term
blinkenlights
. Today, most of these machines have been thrown away or locked up in museums and private collections; even if you were to get your hands on one of these control panels, you’ll have a heck of a time doing something useful with one.
Fear not, because [Jörg] has come up with a
great way to control these blinkenlights
and simulate the computers of yesteryear. He calls his build BlinkenBone, and it’s able to control the blinkenlight panels from dozens of historical computers and simulate every thrown switch and tiny light bulb.
BlinkenBone is a
BeagleBone
single board Linux computer running the
SimH
simulator for antique computers. Right now the BlinkenBone is able to simulate the PDP-1, PDP-8, PDP-11, a lot of old IBM machines, the Altair 8800, and even some HP boxes.
Without a BlinkenBone or similar simulation device, the still-surviving control panels for these computers are just pieces of art to hang on a wall. When they’re running a simulation of their original hardware that was long-lost to the scrap yard, they become the useful devices they once were. Also, it’s much easier to appreciate how far technology has come in the last 40 years.
You can check out a short demo of [Jörg] using his BlinkenBone on a PDP-11/40 after the break. Look at those lights go.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEenHwSFmgQ&w=470] | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "633109",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T18:50:41",
"content": "On a related topic, I made a miniature Altair 8800 replica with a modern Core i5 Windows PC inside it. You can check it out athttp://www.galacticstudios.org/mini-altair-8800-pc/",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,901.031548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/automated-beer-brewing/ | Automated Beer Brewing | Caleb Kraft | [
"Beer Hacks"
] | [
"beer",
"brewing"
] | [Randyrob] is pretty serious about their beer. So serious, that he wanted to build a fully automated system for brewing. Dubbed the Halfluck Automated Brewing System, or HABS, it is actually
his first micro controller project
. You can follow along on the arduino forums to get a little more information, including the source code if you should want to build one of your own. There are a few videos on
his youtube channel
, but unfortunately, we didn’t notice any full tours of the entire thing.
Like
some others we’ve seen
, this one only handles the brewing aspect, not the
fermenting stages
. It would be interesting to see a system that handled it all. You could fairly easily get the machine to siphon it into a keg for final carbonation too. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "633327",
"author": "Brad",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T01:43:56",
"content": "I can’t believe you didn’t mention he uses a super NES controller to drive it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "633328",
"author": "Brad",
... | 1,760,376,901.360818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/2-horse-power-3-wheeled-beast/ | 2 Horse Power 3 Wheeled Beast | Caleb Kraft | [
"Solar Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"solar"
] | This beast above is the result of what is
probably the coolest class project ever
. The instructors[Michael Ham] and [Kenny Ham] gave their students a pile of junk and said “build something”. The goal was a “vehicle that could recharge itself”. In the pile were motorcycle tires, an old classroom seat, the front suspension from a VW bug, some old power drills, a solar panel, and a battery, amongst other bits and pieces. What you see above was the result. While it may not win any drag races any time soon, it was a fantastic class project that had the students thinking their way around many problems.
The videos on the project page show that this thing isn’t quite as sluggish as we would have expected for its size.
[via
Make
] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "633060",
"author": "Cole",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T16:49:52",
"content": "Those look like early 80s suzukie rims. I’m planning on doing something similar but I’m going to use an 1100 cc engine",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,376,901.51257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/how-to-properly-fly-with-electronics/ | How To Properly Fly With Electronics | Caleb Kraft | [
"how-to",
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airport",
"flying",
"TSA"
] | Some electronics professionals have to fly relatively frequently. One such person, [Steve Hoefer] shares with us
how to properly fly with your exposed wires and bits
without getting
nabbed by the TSA for suspicion of being a terrorist
. The article is fairly in depth with tips on how to handle most situations including being pulled aside and put in a tiny room for questioning. Most of it boils down to the fact that you can’t expect the TSA agents to be experts in everything. They see stuff that is slightly out of the norm, they have to follow up. We’re not talking about pat-downs and body scanners here, we’re talking about circuit boards, duct tape, and battery packs.
One story [Steve] shares is especially humorous. He noted that the servos had been disconnected from one of his robots. He wonders, why disconnect them? If they were suspected of being an explosive, they shouldn’t have messed with them. If they weren’t… why did they un-plug them? | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "632992",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T15:12:46",
"content": "Most of it boils down to the fact that you can’t expect the TSA agents to be experts in *anything*. Or even slightly competent. :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"co... | 1,760,376,901.469737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/youre-invited-to-sift-through-100-terabytes-of-data-for-nasa/ | You’re Invited To Sift Through 100 Terabytes Of Data For NASA | Caleb Kraft | [
"contests"
] | [
"nasa",
"programming",
"telemetry",
"tournament"
] | Most people we know had at least one phase where they dreamt of working for NASA. That dream may have faded for many of us, but it could suddenly be a real possibility again with
a tournament NASA is holding
. The goal is to sift through all of the data that they have collected; roughly 100 terabytes of pictures, telemetry data,
top secret pictures of martian yeti
, and models. All of this information was gathered over different missions, on different instruments, in different formats. It is a mess. Take this data and make it easily accessible to both scientists, and non-scientists. They want their information to be useful and compelling to the world.
The grand prize for your fantastic final result is $10,000 and the title of “Space Coder of the Galaxy 2012”. I know I’d settle for a week at
space camp
.
Note: I just noticed the following bit:
And one talented high school winner will receive a special VIP invitation from NASA
I’m not sure if that means this is for high schoolers only, but I’m pretty sure it means a lot of them won’t identify with that space camp link above. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "632953",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T14:07:49",
"content": "Hey guys, do free labor for us and one of the many of you might get, what one of our engineers earns in a month! Yay! Sounds good. Not.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,901.703363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/lego-mindstorms-used-to-automate-tedious-laboratory-tasks/ | Lego Mindstorms Used To Automate Tedious Laboratory Tasks | Mike Nathan | [
"chemistry hacks",
"News",
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"mindstorms",
"research",
"university of cambridge"
] | Modern society owes so much to medical research, though what happens behind the scenes in a laboratory is usually far less than glamorous. A group of scientists at the University of Cambridge are working to develop synthetic bone tissue, but
the process to create the samples used in the study is incredibly tedious.
To make the bones, a substructure must be dipped in a mixture of calcium and protein, rinsed, then dipped in a mixture of phosphate and protein…hundreds and hundreds of times. Equipment that can automate the process is available but very cost prohibitive, so the scientists did what they do best and built a set of robots to do the work for them.
Their new bone manufacturing setup was constructed using Lego Mindstorm kits, which were a perfect solution to their problem in several ways. The kits are relatively cheap, easy to construct, easy to program, and able to perform the same function precisely for days on end.
Now instead of burning time manually creating synthetic bone samples, the group can focus on the more important facets of their research.
Continue reading to see a video presented at the 2012 Google Science Fair, showing how everything came together for the crew at Cambridge.
[via
Make
]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WBEtUJmp05w&w=470] | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "632903",
"author": "Amatol",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T12:38:56",
"content": "This is excellent, although I think it could have been simplified by just using a single robot, with a rotating base, and dipping mechanisim.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,376,901.813354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/19/a-3d-pantograph/ | A 3D Pantograph | Jeremy Cook | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"pantograph",
"woodworking"
] | It seems that there is no end to ingenious woodworking tools, such as this
3-D Router Pantograph
from
[Woodgears.ca]
. The
pantograph
, a design using linkages to trace and scale drawings, may have been invented in the 1600s, but if we were honest, most of us haven’t heard of this device. This particular pantograph is able to trace letters or other stencils in three dimensions by pivoting about an additional axis.
If you’re wondering where to get these stencils, they’ve got you covered with an online
stencil generation tool
. However, if you want to make even more detailed stencils, we might recommend using a free drafting tool such as
Draftsight
(here’s a
review
), or
Sketchup
.
[Woodgears] gives a good explanation of how it’s made in the video after the break. You can also buy plans for it if you want templates to use to cut everything.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUGkroZus_Y%5D
On the other hand, if you’re feeling a bit more (or less depending on your skill set) adventurous, you could always try
building a CNC router
! | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "632821",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T11:13:36",
"content": "Woodgears is an absolutely awesome site which I suggest everyone here should have a look at.The projects posted there are essentialy the same as the ones here except that they’re all made of wood. :P",
"pa... | 1,760,376,902.616174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/harnessing-the-electrical-power-of-clams/ | Harnessing The Electrical Power Of Clams | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"clams",
"matrix"
] | Yes, that is a clam. Yes
researchers are using them as batteries
. Yes, that quip about the matrix and clam-Neo that is bubbling up into your temporal lobe is appropriate. While keeping a clam as “happy as a clam” might not necessitate a virtual world, they don’t really produce much electricity either. Researchers were able to siphon almost 29 millijoules over the course of an hour. This was enough to turn their electric motor one quarter of a turn.
Wether you find
this kind of biological hacking
ethical or not, you’ll probably agree that the following quote is, at least a tiny bit, creepy.
The researchers tried different ways to connect three clams at a time as a collective living battery. A serial circuit boosted the battery’s voltage (electric potential), whereas a parallel circuit increased the current (rate of charge flow) — but the overall electricity available often changed depending on each clam’s health. | 24 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "632344",
"author": "Real Scientist",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T22:20:55",
"content": "I’m a real scientist. A tissue engineer. These are not real scientists.Their conclusion: Clams are bad batteries…Perhaps I should publish about lots of materials that are bad for tissue engineering.... | 1,760,376,901.923011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/2012-robogames-this-weekend-in-san-mateo-california/ | 2012 Robogames This Weekend In San Mateo California | Caleb Kraft | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"battletech",
"robogames",
"robot jox"
] | As you may recall, many of us here at Hackaday are big fans of any activity involving robot competitions. One of the better known events that fits that description would be the
Robogames
, an international event where robots can compete in 50 different events. Granted, not all of them are as visually exciting as the ball of fire and twisted steel shown above, but they are interesting nonetheless. The event is happening this weekend, April 20th, in San Mateo California. Unfortunately, none of the Hackaday staff will be able to make it this year, but we’re really looking forward to seeing all the cool pictures that seem to flow out of the event.
If you happen to make it to the event, we’d love to see your pictures and videos.
Join us after the break for a short video that gives a taste of what the games are like. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "633043",
"author": "dbear",
"timestamp": "2012-04-19T16:34:47",
"content": "What is that thing at 2:08???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "633410",
"author": "nightauditarant",
"timestamp": "2012-04-20T05:26:11",
"con... | 1,760,376,901.76031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/ethernet-over-telephone-wire/ | Ethernet Over Telephone Wire | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"adsl",
"ethernet",
"fiber",
"home plug",
"telephone",
"tp-link"
] | When [Bobo1on1] upgraded his Internet connection from ADSL to Fiber he ran into an issue of actually getting that speed to his desktop computer though his LAN setup. Before he had been using a telephone extension wire which ran from where the DSL entered the house, through a splitter, to his computer where the modem was located. Now that the router used by the fiber system is located at teh entry point, he has no easy way to run Ethernet cable to his computer room. Wifi is predictably slower than the 50mbit WAN connection, and he was unable to use the telephone cable as Ethernet directly.
The solution turns out to be a pair of TP-Link home plug adapters. These are designed to use your home’s mains wiring for data transfer. But [Bob]
rigged it up so that they can push 224 mbits/sec over the telephone wire
. Since you can’t run mains voltage through the telephone wire he had to hack a method to separate power for the devices from the data I/O. This was done with an external power supply and some passive components for filtering. The drawback is that this is half-duplex so up/down communications cannot happen at the same time. | 83 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "632238",
"author": "Alexander",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T20:13:18",
"content": "I may be missing something, but why not just use the homeplug via the power socket next to the router, IE for its intended purpose?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,902.244634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/steam-fife/ | Steam Fife | Mike Szczys | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"fife",
"flute",
"kettle",
"penny whistle",
"recorder",
"solenoid",
"steam"
] | This
auto-flute does it with steam
. Well, electricity gets its piece of the action too as the tone holes are opened and closed using a set of solenoids.
We’re at a loss on how the sound is actually produced. We would think that a penny whistle has been used here, except if that were the case the solenoid nearest the kettle would have no use. Then again, after watching the demo after the break we’re not sure that it does have much of an effect. It may be meant to stop the sound but it doesn’t really work all that well.
At any rate we’d love to see some spin-off hacks. Assuming the plastic can stand up to the steam heat this would be a perfect robot controller for
recorder controlled snake
. You can get a recorder for a buck at the right dollar store, and
solenoids can be made out of simple materials
. If you know of a way to produce the sound yourself, all it takes are
a few careful calculations to place the tone holes
.
[via
Presurfer
] | 14 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "632211",
"author": "Apexys",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T19:39:45",
"content": "Pretty cool and good-looking hack!If he would control the pressure going into the fife, the tones wouldn’t drop so much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,902.083735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/robotic-whiteboard-writes-your-wall-on-the-wall/ | Robotic Whiteboard Writes Your Wall On The Wall | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"dry erase",
"eibotboard",
"stepper motor",
"whiteboard"
] | [Dave’s] drawbot
writes his Facebook wall messages on a whiteboard
. The setup is pretty simple, depending on a pair of stepper motors and common household goods. As you can see in the image, the stylus is a plain old dry-erase marker held by a big spring clip (the kind that holds a stack of papers together). What you can’t see is that there’s a kick stand to hold the writing head away from the board when moving to the next plot point.
In this example a cursive font is being used, but [Dave] included two other fonts in the code. Those require the felt tip to be frequently lifted from the board, and a servo motor does this by pressing a cotton swab against the surface. This does erase any marker lines it slides past, but it’s a pretty small area that is lost. To control the motors [Dave] is using
the EiBotBoard
which was originally designed for
the EggBot
. It’s got a USB mini-b connector which lets a computer push messages scraped from the Internet. Don’t miss the video demonstration embedded after the break.
A small modification would make this into
a pretty nifty light painting rig
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FJZvrvfXlE | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "632183",
"author": "Colecago",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T18:56:12",
"content": "I wanted to build one of these for awhile. I’m definitely gonna look this thing over more in depth for ideas, its pretty good.As for his comments on a future build and using a lid for the marker, he coul... | 1,760,376,902.031848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/fifty-dollars-to-make-your-car-audio-bluetooth-compatible/ | Fifty Dollars To Make Your Car Audio Bluetooth Compatible | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aux",
"bluetooth",
"hands free",
"stereo"
] | We’re rather impressed with the work [Aaron] did to
add Bluetooth connectivity to his 2008 Honda
. He used an aftermarket kit, but rolled in his own revisions to make it look and feel like an original feature.
After being disappointed by an expensive docking system he grabbed a Jensen BT360 kit for about $35. It comes with an external speaker which would look horrid mounted on the dash. That speaker is meant to play your telephone audio via Bluetooth, while music from the phone is sent to the car stereo using an FM transmitter. Since he planned on hiding the control unit under the dash anyway, it wasn’t too hard to add some wires which intercept the audio being fed to that FM transmitter. From there he added a couple of relays to automatically route the audio signals (when present) and patched the whole thing into the Aux input. This way he doesn’t need the extra speaker, and all sound is feed to the head unit via wire instead of radio transmissions.
The final setup works pretty well. If a phone call comes in it automatically mutes the volume, or pauses the iPod if that’s what’s currently playing through the Aux port. [Aaron] thinks the bass from music played via Bluetooth is not quite as rich as when using the Aux port, but if you don’t mind the cables that’s still an option too. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "632119",
"author": "GS",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T17:23:13",
"content": "I use one of these… works OKhttp://www.amazon.com/Miccus-BluBridge-Mini-Jack-Bluetooth-Bluetooth-Enabled/dp/B0038MA11U",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,376,902.128728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/chess-board-step-sequencer/ | Chess Board Step Sequencer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"chess",
"chess board",
"monome",
"reed switches"
] | [tinkartank] wrote in to tell us about the
chess board step sequencer
he built. It’s a great piece of work that combines the wonderful classical erudition a set of chess pieces confers with modern technological musical equipment such as a monome.
The build began by routing small holes underneath each square and fitting very small and fragile reed switches. Sixty four of these switches are wired into rows and columns then attached to the digital inputs of an Arduino Mega. To close these reed switches, magnets are implanted into the base of each chess piece so whenever a piece is on the board is moved a circuit closes.
On the control side of things, [tinkartank] built a
very nice control panel
to change the key being played*, the tempo, an ‘arpeggio dial,’ number of steps, and if there is a whole or half step in between notes. With this control panel, [tinkartank] can play just about any scale.
How does it sound? Well, the Arduino Mega outputs MIDI so realistically it can sound like anything imaginable. From the video demo (available after the break), we really like the interface and a reed switch array chess board is slowly climbing up our ‘to build’ list, if only for
all the cool stuff
you can do with one.
*Using H to denote the key of B is not uncommon in some parts of Europe. In this system, the key of Bb is notated as B and B is H. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "632081",
"author": "cruster",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T16:22:56",
"content": "Nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "632084",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T16:26:43",
"content": "If you hook this up with ... | 1,760,376,902.386162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/preparing-sushi-with-the-help-of-lasers/ | Preparing Sushi With The Help Of Lasers | Mike Nathan | [
"Laser Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"food",
"laser cutter",
"nori",
"sushi"
] | It’s not too often that we cover food here on Hackaday, but when we saw how
a laser cutter was being used to help enhance the look of sushi
, we decided to share. Even if you don’t enjoy sushi, it’s hard not to argue that it can often be more like edible art than simply food. The preparation that goes into well-made sushi is extensive, and this laser cut maki certainly takes things up a notch.
In the wake of the 2011 tsunami many businesses were suffering, including Umino Seaweed whose primary product is nori – the ubiquitous green seaweed wrapper found in/on many sushi rolls. They were looking for something to attract attention to the brand, while remaining respectful to the centuries-old tradition of making sushi.
They sent their request to ad agency I&SBBDO who came up with the fancy looking nori you see above. Each sheet of seaweed is laser cut with traditional Japanese imagery, from the Sakura (cherry blossom) to the Kumikikkou (tortoise shell). We’re not sure if these sheets of nori are actually for sale or have just been put together for solely advertising, either way we think this is a novel and frivolous, but awesome use for a laser cutter. Also, we’re pretty hungry now – anyone up for grabbing some sushi?
[via
Make
] | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "632103",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T17:01:17",
"content": "Okay, I’ll bite…(pun intended)I agree that Sushi is an art form and these cutouts look good.Are they too beautiful to eat?I’ll use that as an excuse to move the tray on to someone else.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,902.477361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/reading-credit-cards-with-a-tape-head/ | Reading Credit Cards With A Tape Head | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"credit card",
"credit cards",
"magnetic",
"tape head"
] | A company called Square is giving out free credit card readers that turn any iPhone or iPad into a Point of Sale terminal. [Steve] got a hold of one of these tiny peripherals and did what any sane person would do:
tear it apart and learn how it works
. This bit of hardware is a little unimpressive; unsurprising because Square
is giving them away
. With simplicity comes an ease in understanding, and [Steve] was able to successfully read his own credit card with this tiny and free credit card reader.
[Steve]’s work in decoding credit card data builds off [Count Zero]’s article
from the bbs days
. Basically, each credit card has two or three tracks. Track three is mostly unused, whereas track one contains the card holder name, account number,
cvc code
and other ancillary data. Track two only contains the credit card number and expiration date.
The only components in the Square card reader are a head from a tape player and a 1/8″ microphone jack. The magnetic head in the Square card reader is positioned to only read track two. With a small shim, it’s possible to re-align the head to get the data from track one. After recording an audio file of him sliding his card though the Square reader, [Steve] looked at the number of times the waveform flipped from positive to negative. From this, he was able to get the 1s and 0s on the card and converted them to alphanumeric using the 6-bit ANSI/ISO alpha format.
[Steve] isn’t going to share the code he wrote for Android just yet, but it should be relatively easy to replicate his work with the
Android tutorial
he used. Also,
yes
, we did just pose the question of how these Square credit card readers work
just hours ago
. Good job being on the ball, [Steve]. Tips ‘o the hat go out to [Bobby], [Leif], [Derek] and anyone else we might have missed.
EDIT: [Stephen] sent in
his teardown
minutes after this post went live. Hackaday readers are too fast at this stuff. | 103 | 46 | [
{
"comment_id": "631966",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T14:05:43",
"content": "I remember doing almost the same sort of thing with credit cards on Beta Max players back in the 80’s. You’d run the player and run the CC over the magnetic tape head and see the CC number show up on the scre... | 1,760,376,902.746113 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/multiple-marble-machine-mayhem/ | Multiple Marble Machine Mayhem | Jeremy Cook | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"machine",
"marble"
] | If you like marble machines, or if you simply like alliteration, prepare to be amazed. [Denha] apparently has had a lot of time to spare over the years, as the marble machine collection he’s amassed is quite incredible. Dating back to 2009,
the collection
includes relatively simple machines, like the one pictured at the beginning, to one that includes physical logic gates around 5:30.
Interestingly enough, even the “simple” one that consists of two mechanisms to lift the marbles and a slide has a trick up it’s sleeve. The slide is actually modular, so that you can use the same “pumping” mechanism with different slide designs. Not that this is the only “pump” design, the last machine featured a marble lifting mechanism with an ingenious linkage assembly that translates the motion of a motor into a sort of lifting hand.
If this wasn’t enough Maddness, there is another marble-lifting surprise awaiting you in the video after the break around 4:35! | 12 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "631952",
"author": "cruster",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T13:50:37",
"content": "Wow! wow! wow! These are all superb, fantastic work :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "631964",
"author": "Patrick",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18... | 1,760,376,902.428359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/hackaday-links-april-18-2012/ | Hackaday Links: April 18, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3ds",
"apple",
"credit card",
"credit cards",
"educational",
"legal",
"oled",
"pewter",
"sandcasting",
"vacuum tubes"
] | Sandcasting at the beach
[mkb] sent in a video he found of [Max Lamb]
sandcasting a stool
at a beach in England. The material is pewter, or >90% tin with a little bit copper and antimony thrown in for good measure. While we’re sure there will be a few complaints from environmentalists, it’s still a cool video to see.
Your project needs an OLED display
Here’s a Kickstarter
for a tiny 96×16 OLED display. Connect this thing to any I2C bus and you get a 15×2 character display (or a graphic display if that’s your inclination) very easily. Thanks to [Chris] for sending this one in.
Here’s one for a larf
[Ryan Inman] is
suing 20 companies
because he got mercury poisoning from vacuum tubes. Read that last line again. Most of the companies that sell antique/repro/hard-to-find components like Angela Instruments, Antique Electronic Supply, and even eBay are listed as defendants in the case. This might put at least
one company out of business
even though they never sold [Ryan] a vacuum tube
edit: they
did
sell him a neon bulb, and courts are generally idiotic when it comes to technological issues. It’s hilarious and sad, so we’ll keep you updated if we get more info.
Nostalgia, the pain from an old wound
The Adafruit blog
posted an excellent piece
on the Apple ][ game
Rocky’s Boots
, an educational game from 1982 that teaches kids how to connect logic gates. You can play this game
in your browser
, but we’d like to hear our stories of ancient video games that teach you engineering concepts like
The Incredible Machine
or
Widget Workshop
. Leave a note in the comments if we’re leaving any out.
A question posed to the community
A company is
giving away credit card readers
that plug into the headphone jack of an iDevice. [J Smith] writes in to ask us if anyone has gotten one of these and opened them up. Like [J Smith] we’re expecting something a
repeat of the CueCat
where free hardware is opened up to everybody. If you’ve done a teardown of one of these card readers,
send it in
.
3DS homebrew
[Mike] sent us a link to
[neimod]’s Flickr photostream
. It looks like we’re on the cusp of tearing open the Nintendo 3DS for homebrew apps. Someone who uses
this much hot glue
must know what they’re doing, right? | 38 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "631895",
"author": "dave",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T12:22:40",
"content": "The Square credit card readers are a magnetic reader (think tape head from a cassette player or reel-to-reel) and a male 4 conductor headphone style jack. I can’t remember if it had a resistor as well, but ei... | 1,760,376,902.557118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/18/android-app-review-adsdroid-gives-you-every-datasheet-ever/ | Android App Review: ADSdroid Gives You Every Datasheet, Ever | Brian Benchoff | [
"Android Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"alldatasheet.com",
"android",
"app",
"data sheet"
] | A few months ago when I reviewed the Android electronic reference app
ElectroDroid
, I made the offhand remark that a front end app for
alldatasheet.com
would be a killer mobile electronic reference app. [András Veres-Szentkirályi] accepted my challenge and
built ADSdroid
, the unofficial Android app for alldatasheet.com. You can check out my complete review after the break.
Before I begin this review, I’d like to point out that [András] is giving ADSdroid away for free because he thinks his work exists in a moral gray area. ADSdroid simply parses the HTML generated by a search on alldatasheet.com, strips out the ads, and serves the .PDFs. It’s no different than opening up alldatasheet in your browser. The folks at alldatasheet survive on advertising, though, so we’ll agree that [András]’ choice not to put his app up on the Android market is probably the right decision.
The good
After launching ADSdroid for the first time, you’re greeted with a simple text box asking you what part you want to search for. Like the search tool on alldatasheet.com, your search term can be
included
in the part name,
an exact match
for the part name, or have the returned entries
start
or
end
with your search term. There is no ‘search by description,’ as on alldatasheet.com, but I can’t imagine that function is used very much.
When ADSdroid returns your search, you’re presented with a list of matching parts. In all honesty, an ATtiny25 might have been one of the worst searches I could have made to demonstrate this app; alldatasheet.com returns
two pages of entries
for ATtiny25 microcontrollers. These entries are just the same chip rated for different voltages, speeds, and in different packages.
After clicking on one of the entries, ADSdroid downloads the linked .PDF and displays it on my screen:
Of course, finding the datasheet for an ATtiny25 is very easy. I decided to give ADSdroid something harder to find. ADSdroid can find anything on alldatasheet.com, and the value in having a portable reference is weighted more towards the more esoteric components users would come across. After digging through my parts drawers to find the strangest part to pit against ADSdroid, I finally settled on a linear CCD made by Toshiba, part number TCD143D:
How did ADSdroid fare? Not well, I’m afraid. ADSdroid is simply a front end to alldatasheet.com, so anything
not hosted by alldatasheet
won’t be found. ADSdroid did manage to find two close cousins of my linear CCD chip; possibly good enough to get the pinout, but not much besides that.
The still very good
Even though ADSdroid wasn’t able to find exactly what I needed, it’s only as capable as the database behind it. Alldatasheet.com doesn’t have information on every single electronic component, but ADSdroid does it’s job very well.
There’s a few features/bugs that I’m sure a few people will complain about: Firstly, there is no built-in PDF viewer. ADSdroid relies on the default PDF viewer on your phone. While this is a great software design choice, if you don’t have a PDF viewer installed, you won’t be able to view datasheets.
Secondly, ADSdroid saves PDFs to the internal SD card by default. Again, a great design choice but I found it awfully confusing as to why downloads kept failing while I was recording screenshots with
MyPhoneExplorer
. No big deal, I just need a way for cyanogenmod to give me native screen capture support.
Lastly, there’s the issue of returning dozens of similarly-or-identically named components, as I experienced when searching for ‘ATtiny25.’ Giving the user a list of seemingly identical items to choose from is a
terrible
problem with the UI of ADSdroid, but that problem can be
easily
not so easily solved by just returning one result for each unique search result. (see vsza’s comment below)
That’s an overly harsh review, I know. ADSdroid is a remarkable tool that is now sitting right beside ElectroDroid on my phone. It really is a great app as it is right now, and I would gladly pay a dollar for it if it were available in the Android Market.
Because [András] had a few moral questions about his app, he hasn’t put it up on the Android Market (or Google Play). Instead, he’s providing the .apk
on his website
and the source
on github
. Just download the .apk, connect your phone to a USB cable and transfer it over to the SD card. A very simple installation if you know what you’re doing. If you’re even considering getting an app to download datasheets, you probably have the technical skills to install ADSdroid.
In short, ADSdroid is the app I’ve been waiting for. The
current Android datasheet app
is, ‘no better than a bookmark,’ per one user’s review, so [András]’ app fills a huge gap in the mobile electronic reference category. Just try not to use it too much; we don’t know if the folks at alldatasheet.com will be happy with serving .PDFs without getting ad revenue. | 34 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "631861",
"author": "iUser",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T11:13:01",
"content": "Cool beans, will there be one for iOS too?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "631868",
"author": "EvilPharmacist",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T11:28:3... | 1,760,376,902.820547 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/view-gerber-files-in-3d-in-your-browser/ | View Gerber Files In 3d In Your Browser | Caleb Kraft | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d",
"cad"
] | [Mark] wrote in, eager to show off this new tool he’s created to
view your gerber files in 3d
. He also wrote an instructible to go along with it, to help you
figure out how to use the tool
. Being an in-browser tool also means you can shoot it to your friends for a quick 3d review as well. Some of you may not feel that the 3d view is that helpful to the process, but we think that this is a welcomed feature that just might get some use around here.
[Mark] points out that it is still being actively developed, so please shoot him bugs via the form on the website if you should encounter any. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "631571",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T23:31:38",
"content": "Doesn’t work with my gerber files :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "631896",
"author": "joaf",
"timestamp": "2012-04-18T12:23:24... | 1,760,376,902.87694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/a-locking-chest-with-a-musical-key/ | A Locking Chest With A Musical Key | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks",
"News",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"chest",
"lock",
"ocarina of time",
"servo",
"zelda"
] | [Basil Shikin] was thinking about different types of locks, and was trying to come up with a locking solution that he had yet to see. It dawned on him that he had never come across
a lock triggered by music
, so he set off to construct one of his own.
He ordered a wooden chest online, then proceeded to piece together the electronics required for the locking mechanism as well as the music detecting logic. Using an Atmega328P paired with an electret mic, his system listens for a particular tune (the Prelude of Light from the Ocarina of Time) to be played , which triggers a tiny servo to undo the latch. To do this, he implemented a version of the Goertzel Algorithm on the Arduino, allowing him to accurately detect the magical tune by frequency, regardless of what instrument it is played on.
Be sure to check out the video below to see his musical lock in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpMhZ3Fbm5g&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 31 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "631531",
"author": "Bruce Rennie",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T22:20:33",
"content": "Check out an episode of Stargate Atlantis (cannot remember the season). Room unlocked by series of musical notes. Rodney and Daniel looking for a hidden laboratory.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,376,902.987994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/tinkering-with-odb-ii-and-the-can-bus/ | Tinkering With ODB II And The CAN Bus | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"can-bus",
"dsPic",
"dspic33f",
"mcp2551",
"odb-ii"
] | [Debrah] is taking his next project out to the garage. He built
his own CAN bus reader using a dsPIC
.
The nice thing about working with Control Area Network is that it’s a universal standard found on every modern production line automobile. And because of this, the chip you need in order to communicate using that protocol will cost just over a dollar. [Debraj] chose the MCP2551, which comes in several different 8-pin packages. There is even
an application note
tailored for use with the dsPIC33F family.
The project is running on both 5V and 3.3V rails. This complicates things just a bit, but a level converter makes sure that there’s no communications problems between the chips. A four line character LCD acts as the output during the tests (you can see this in the clip after the break) but he’s already got a second version which looks quite a bit better on the dashboard.
What else can be done with this hack? Well, we’ve seen
a method used to read control buttons from the steering wheel
before. It all depends on what data your vehicle is transmitting and one way to find that out is to build some hardware and start logging the packets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHou_66MbgQ | 13 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "631492",
"author": "MGTJ91",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T21:18:31",
"content": "Sweet, I may attempt implementing this with my ’99 Accord’s OBDII. Will post a build log!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "631493",
"author": "Drake... | 1,760,376,902.922581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/original-prince-of-persia-game-source-code-released/ | Original Prince Of Persia Game Source Code Released | Mike Szczys | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"apple II",
"jordan mechner",
"prince of persia",
"source code"
] | The game that launched a multi-billion dollar franchise is now laid bare for your hacking pleasure. [Jordan Mechner] just posted
the once-lost source code for Prince of Persia
. This game was ground-breaking for its use of rotoscoping to mimic the movements of an actor (in this case it was his younger brother). Oh, and it’s a ton of fun to play.
This comes at an appropriate time since yesterday was the
the 35th anniversary of the Apple II release
. PoP was written for that platform but should be easy to get running on an emulator if you’re just interested in cloning the repository so that you can play it through once again. Interestingly enough, the source code went missing for many years. [Jordan’s] been
looking for the original source code for a decade
. Turns out his Dad came across a cardboard box with some original copies of the game in it and shipped it off for [Jordan] to take care of. Inside was a set of 3.5″ disks that are pure retro gold.
So here’s your chance to inject yourself into the game. The question is, will you be the Prince or will you be Jaffar? | 16 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "631469",
"author": "AphoticJezter",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T20:38:14",
"content": "Get my hopes up will you? Screenshot is for the DOS version, not Apple. I’d actually be excited if it was the PC code that was released. :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,376,903.038847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/emulating-arm-on-an-8-pin-avr/ | Emulating ARM On An 8-pin AVR | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"arm",
"attiny",
"emulation",
"emulator"
] | Falling on the heels of some fabulous ‘lets see what we can emulate on an AVR’ builds we’ve seen, [Dimitri]
emulated an ARM Cortex-M0
on an 8-pin ATtiny85.
The emulator is written entirely in AVR assembly. Unfortunately, the instruction set of ATtinys don’t have a multiply instruction, so that had to emulated in a separate piece of code. Even with this addition, the emulator is very small; the core is just over 1300 instructions and small enough to fit on the Flash of the very small ‘tiny85.
Unlike the
ATMega running Linux
we saw last month, [Dimitri] won’t be doing anything crazy like making the tiniest and worst Linux computer ever. The Cortex-M0 doesn’t have a MMU, so Linux is out of the question. [Dimitri] could go with
μCLinux
, with the addition of a I2C EEPROM and RAM, but don’t expect a speed demon for an emulated ARM running at 200kHz.
[Dimitri] put all the code up on his webpage, and the installation is just running ‘make.’ It looks easy enough to get up and running very quickly, so we’re sure some bored hardware guru will come up with something interesting to do with this code. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "631439",
"author": "Dmitry Grinberg",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T19:18:43",
"content": "Well, 200KHz is better than 6.5KHz of my last emulator :) and uClinux is a cool idea :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "631453",
"author":... | 1,760,376,903.085374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/the-messagepad-a-thoroughly-hacked-macbook-turned-tablet/ | The MessagePad; A Thoroughly Hacked Macbook Turned Tablet | Caleb Kraft | [
"laptops hacks",
"Mac Hacks",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"ipad",
"tablet"
] | Remember the times before the iPad existed? When a tablet PC was actually a full computer in a tablet form factor? Yeah, those days we were all so very optimistic about the future of tablet computing. Don’t think we don’t appreciate the new amazing toys that we’ve got around with the plethora of tablets to choose from, but we still dream of fully functional tablet computers.
[Brian] wrote in to show us his build of a
fully featured tablet macbook conversion
dubbed the MessagePad. Though
we’ve seen a wide selection of home spun tablets
before, this one has an impressive list of added features. It boasts both front and rear facing cameras, an SSD drive, a built in Teensy, and a line-in. It doesn’t matter if you believe in the dream of a full blown pc in tablet format, or if your preference would have been a Windows or Linux machine. You’ll surely love the bevy of photos he took along the way as he was hacking and slashing on this thing. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "630989",
"author": "heatgap",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T01:29:57",
"content": "I think the main thing to look at here is this is something Brian wanted so he set out and hacked one up. Great job man pretty impressive cramming everything together.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,376,903.143213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/flea-market-finds/ | Flea Market Finds | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"components",
"flea market"
] | We sometimes wonder why do don’t see classic electronic equipment at second-hand stores. We had thought it’s because these items tend to get snapped up quickly, but perhaps we’re not shopping in the right places. Here’s
a photo set documenting some of the finds from a recent flea market
.
The offerings cover a wide range of products and components. There are all kinds of bench tools like oscilloscopes, voltage meters, and bench supplies. But we also see more modern computer parts like cardboard boxes full of motherboards, and heaps of PC power bus wires. You can get five tube sockets for a buck and if you need the tubes they’re just $3-5 a piece. One of the more useful finds is a display case full of shrink tube of every diameter; and one vendor is selling wire by the foot.
License plates and common sense place this Flea Market in the Silicon Valley area. But if you’ve got more concrete info on where this type of event goes down please share it in the comments section.
[via
Adafruit
] | 47 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "630939",
"author": "Slipster",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T00:12:46",
"content": "Most likely a hamfest.My best guess it was this one:http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "630967",
"author"... | 1,760,376,903.339405 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/shocking-use-of-ice-cube-trays/ | Shocking Use Of Ice Cube Trays | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"battery",
"Chemistry"
] | Looks like ice-cube trays are once again proving their versatility as this one is serving as
the vessel for a home made lead-acid battery
. With a collection of uniformly sized non-conductive containers, it makes the perfect base for a set of small cells. This project is the culmination of a Hackerspace class about batteries, and was put together to turn theoretical knowledge into a hands-on lab.
This is a captured image from the low-quality video found after the break. [Carpespasm] describes the setup; the black pieces are lead plates which are bent into a U-shape to straddle two ice-cube compartments. The each end of the plate is dipping into the acid to make the connection. Once assembled the battery was connected to a charger for about two hours. It puts out 8.5V and is tested by powering an LED cube. This works for just a short period and really drives home the lesson that battery concepts are easy to understand, but reliable battery technology is a bit harder to achieve.
[via
Reddit
] | 13 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "630909",
"author": "Drake",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T23:11:05",
"content": "The motion of the video feel extrodinaryly fake not to mention not seeing a result. Guess its some sort of anti shake feature on his camera.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,903.387516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/joinery-sure-to-be-useful-on-your-next-sheet-goods-enclosure/ | Joinery Sure To Be Useful On Your Next Sheet Goods Enclosure | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"joinery",
"wood"
] | It’s hard to be an expert at everything, but
this collection of wood joinery techniques
will make your next project look like you’ve just finished your degree in mechanical engineering. They’re targeted for use in projects where thin sheets of plywood are CNC cut to make enclosures and parts. [Sean Ragan] mentions that these are not new, but we haven’t come across such a large collection of examples as this.
The joints shown above address a series of different needs. You’re probably already familiar with the joint on the bottom right which makes nice corners for a box, providing a lot of surface area for gluing. But just above that is a simple variation on the idea which includes slots for square nuts. This type of mechanical fastener brings strength while keeping the option to take the joint apart again
To the top left you can see a design that includes a snap lock. As the two pieces are slotted together, the barbs flex until they find their mating openings and hold the pieces firmly together. Below that are some bulbed finger joints which don’t need glue to hold themselves together.
[Sean’s] post goes on and on with these designs. He even covers
the laser-cut bendable hinges
which we are quite fond of. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "630877",
"author": "sureshotstudio",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T22:18:16",
"content": "hah, i just finished a table a few weeks back that i made using some of those wood joints from the jochen gros’s files. gotta love not using nails and screws!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,376,903.43062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/mechanical-cpu-clock-is-just-as-confusing-as-its-namesake/ | Mechanical CPU Clock Is Just As Confusing As Its Namesake | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"adder",
"ball bearing",
"binary",
"cpu"
] | [Lior Elazary] designed and
built this clock to simulate the function of a CPU
. The problem is that if you don’t already have a good grasp of how a CPU works we think this clock will be hopelessly confusing. But lucky for us, we get it, and we love it!
Hour data is shown as a binary number on Register A. This is the center column of red parts and is organized with the MSB on the bottom, the LSB on the top, and left-pointing bits function as digital 1. The clock lacks the complexity necessary for displaying any other time data. But that’s okay, because the sound made by the ball-bearing dropping every minute might drive you a bit loony anyway. [Lior] doesn’t talk about the mechanism that transports that ball bearing, but you can see from the video after the break that a magnet on a circular path picks it up and transports it to the top of the clock where gravity is used to feed the registers. There are two tracks which allow the ball to bypass the A register and enter the B register to the right. This works in conjunction with register C (on the left) to reset the hours when the count is greater than 11.
If you need a kickstart on how these mechanical adders are put together, check out
this wooden adder project
. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "630850",
"author": "bio",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T21:17:04",
"content": "its as simple as trying to read assembly language from binary! 83",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "630858",
"author": "AtomSoftTech",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,903.478051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/playing-air-traffic-controller-with-software-defined-radio/ | Playing Air Traffic Controller With Software Defined Radio | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"air traffic controller",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio",
"tv tuner"
] | Being an air traffic controller is a very cool career path – you get to see planes flying around on computer screens and orchestrate their flight paths like a modern-day magician. [Balint] sent in a
DIY aviation mapper
so anyone can see the flight paths of all the planes in the air, with the added bonus of not increasing your risk of heart attack or stroke.
[Balint]’s Aviation Mapper uses software defined radio to overlay RADAR and
ACARS
messages from aircraft and control towers in an instance of Google Earth running in a web browser. After grabbing all the radio data from a software defined radio, [Balint]’s server parses everything and chucks it into the Google Earth framework. There’s a ton of info, pictures, and explanations of the inner machinations of the hardware on [Balint]’s
official project page
.
Right now, Aviation Mapper only displays planes within 500 km of Sydney airspace, but [Balint] is working on expanding the coverage with the help of other plane spotters. If you’re willing to help [Balint] expand his coverage, be sure to drop him a line.
Of course, [Balint] is the guy who gave us a
software radio source block
for those cheap
USB TV tuner dongles
. Just a few days ago we saw these dongles
receiving GPS data
, so we’re very impressed with what these little boxes can do in the right hands. [Balint] says his Aviation Mapper application will work with any GNU Radio receiver, so it’s entirely possible to copy his work with a handful of TV tuner dongles.
After the break, there’s two videos of [Balint] sitting at the end of the runway near the Sydney airport watching arrivials come in right above his head and on his laptop. It’s very cool, but we’d be interested in an enterprising hacker in the New York City area copy [Balint]’s work.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvg7WwzVldg&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17_unMQyVWc&w=470] | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "630824",
"author": "bio",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T20:28:49",
"content": "it a bit scary that this info is accessible by the public but never the less its awesome!i want one!amazing job! just hope the feds think the same thing X3",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,376,903.590296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/the-put-put-golf-course-every-hackerspace-must-build/ | The Put-put Golf Course Every Hackerspace Must Build | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"mini golf",
"put put"
] | Ever played a mini-golf course that includes a vacuum powered tube transport and Wii Nunchuk controlled labyrinth? We’d bet the answer is no on both counts, unless you’re friends with [Tom Scott]. He
enlisted his local hacker friends to build a uniquely geeky mini-golf course
to help him celebrate a milestone birthday — 10k days on this Earth. Last month we looked in on
one of the Portal themed holes
, but the finished course is almost unbelievably larger and more amazing.
Our count puts the course at twelve holes. We’re already familiar with the Companion Sphere Incinerator hole, but joining in that theme is a Turret Hole (whith lasers!), and a clever hack that uses hidden balls to simulate a portal jump. The image above shows the Real Turf hole which starts with a put up some living sod into the indoor/outdoor carpet lined labyrinth. The Twin Looper hole will suck a well placed putt through thirty meters of tubing. And of course there’s the Minecraft hole which includes a Creeper and TNT block.
Don’t miss the clip after the break which shows off the course. And if you’d like to hit these links yourself they’ll be making an appearance at
the Derby Maker Faire (in the UK)
on June 3rd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ki5Vpon5c
[Thanks Chris] | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "630781",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T19:11:37",
"content": "Put-put? Don’t you mean putt-putt?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "630857",
"author": "furiousd",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T21:30:02",... | 1,760,376,903.53174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/he-blinded-me-with-backup-lights/ | He Blinded Me With Backup Lights | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"backup light",
"cree",
"reverse light",
"t6",
"xm-l"
] | When driving at night you need to be able to see where you’re going. And that goes for reversing up as well. But the stock white lights on [Ryan’s] ride didn’t provide the type of illumination he wanted, so
he replaced them with two sets of super bright LED modules
. These are ridiculously bright, perhaps outshining some types of headlights. And since they bring a lot of heat there’s a fair amount of work that went into mounting them.
He sourced some Cree XM-L T6 LED modules, two for each side of the car. These can put out intensity approaching 1000 Lumens each. To keep them cool he grabbed one CPU heat sink for each. These include a copper core with aluminum fins coming off like a spiral starburst. To act as a bezel he used a piece of copper clad board. This gives him a surface to mount the heat sinks, and after coating it with chrome brite it also acts as a reflector. Once mounted he fires it up and
the difference is remarkable
. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "631417",
"author": "Mythgarr",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T18:21:38",
"content": "While I could be mistaken, I’m fairly certain that these are NOT street-legal in the US. I suppose this could be good if you often find yourself out at night with the sudden need to throw the car in rever... | 1,760,376,903.65148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/full-linux-distro-on-a-nook-color/ | Full Linux Distro On A Nook Color | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"arch",
"chroot",
"lxde",
"Nook",
"Nook Color"
] | We should have included a footnote in the title. You can say that [Thomas Polasek] installed
a full version of Arch Linux on his Nook Color
, but there’s one caveat. It’s running on top of the Android kernel and his proof-of-concept uses a second computer to get it up and running. But there’s potential for that to change moving forward.
Unlike
previous attempts to run a Linux distro on Android
, this does away with using a VNC to show the desktop. [Thomas] is commandeering Android’s frame buffer so that it can be used by the X desktop without needing to set up display drivers. To start off he installed a ROM based on CM7. A couple of Android apps give him the functionality needed to get the Arch Linux distro running from the SD card. This is accomplished by tunneling into the tablet via SSH, and using the ‘chroot’ command to make it active. The hope is that this can somehow be automated by a script.
A female to female USB coupler was used to connect the keyboard and mouse to the Nook. It looks like LXDE would be useless without them; touch control is not yet implemented. Those shortcomings aside, everything seems to be running pretty fast in the video after the break. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "631386",
"author": "jc",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T17:14:46",
"content": "really? you can run linux on an arm device? no freaking way !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "631397",
"author": "jstylen",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,905.40234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/forget-tupac-check-out-this-front-yard-hologram/ | Forget Tupac, Check Out This Front Yard “hologram” | Caleb Kraft | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"2pac",
"halloween",
"pepper's ghost"
] | Yep, the story is everywhere right now. Tupac performed at Coachella from beyond the grave in the form of a “hologram”. Most of you probably recognize what is going on pretty quickly though. This is the same Pepper’s Ghost trick we’ve seen several times already in concert performances from various virtual bands
like the Gorillaz
.
While reading this
article explaining Pepper’s Ghost to the masses
, we saw that they had found a true gem of a hack! [Kevin] was inspired by a trip to disney’s haunted mansion back in 2007. He came home and went to work
building his own really cool back yard attraction
that happened to include the same trick they are now using for imaginary performers. There are tons of pictures of the build and some nice notes along the way covering 2 years of operation and upgrades. It is an ancient trick, but we always love seeing a good build. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "631347",
"author": "plfx",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T16:15:48",
"content": "Disney’s “Haunted Mention”? Is that a reference with ghosts in it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "631348",
"author": "Eddie",
"timestamp": "2012... | 1,760,376,905.454058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/all-aluminum-longboard-shows-its-mettle/ | All Aluminum Longboard Shows Its Mettle | Jesse Congdon | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aluminum",
"skateboard"
] | Reddit user [davvik] made an album to show off his custom
all aluminum longboard
. The whole setup weighs about 12lbs, which is not exactly light for a board. In spite of the added weight [davvik] comments that it is actually pretty responsive. The design is
not uncommon
but seems to have opted out of the speed holes in favor of structural rigidity, and frankly we love it.
We might not risk wearing sandals on the thing, but [davvik] says for the most part the whole setup has the feel of a wooden longboard, and the added weight makes it fun downhill. Future plans for the board include machining out the ends, we think this would be a great opportunity for some DIY
anodizing
!
[via
Reddit
] | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "631316",
"author": "Hyratel",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T15:05:03",
"content": "Do want video",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "631343",
"author": "Jesse Congdon",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T16:13:58",
"conte... | 1,760,376,905.255626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/a-new-and-improved-magnetic-cello/ | A New And Improved Magnetic Cello | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"cello",
"ribbon sensor"
] | Over the past few months, [Magnetovore] has been working on his magnetic cell project. It’s a very interesting instrument that seems right out of the electronic music explosion of the 1970s. Now, he’s ready to
share his invention with the world
, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we see this instrument being picked up by a few avant-garde musicians in the next few years.
Last September,
we were introduced
to [Magnetovore]’s magnetic cello. The original version used four ribbon sensors for each of the strings and had completely analog electronics, leaving us wondering why this cello wasn’t invented in the 70s. The new version of the cello keeps the analog electronics that sound remarkably like a real acoustic cello, but does away with three of the ribbon sensors. Now the cello has a single ribbon sensor being used as all four strings – to change which string is played, the musician just has to press a button on the ‘bow’.
There is a drawback to using only one ribbon sensor; it’s now impossible to play two strings simultaneously as on an acoustic cello. The electronics in [Magnetovore]’s original magnetic cello were monophonic anyway, so we’ll chalk this design change-up to reducing component cost.
After the break, you can check out a trio of very talented cellists playing [Magnetovore]’s magnetic cello. There’s the classic Pokemon Center theme, the Mario Bros. theme, as well a Bach minuet and a crazy improvisation showing off what the magnetic cello can do.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiveu9LSorU&w=470] | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "631294",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T14:22:18",
"content": "Become one of the first owners of the Magnetic Cello. Demand will be highNice project, but I somehow doubt that ‘Demand will be high’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"... | 1,760,376,905.616872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/neosporin-the-retrobright-for-bench-equipment/ | Neosporin…the Retrobright For Bench Equipment? | Mike Nathan | [
"chemistry hacks",
"classic hacks",
"News"
] | [
"bench equipment",
"restoration",
"retr0brite",
"retrobright",
"vintage",
"white petrolatum"
] | [linux-works] picked up an old power supply from eBay, and as it was built back in the 60’s or 70’s, it was in need of a little TLC. One thing that immediately caught his eye was
the condition of the knobs, dials, and banana plug receptacles
– they were dull and faded, showing off 40+ years of heavy usage.
He started off by simply removing the knobs from the power supply, giving them a thorough cleaning with soapy water before leaving them to air dry. They didn’t look any better afterward, so he decided to take a different approach and apply some triple antibiotic ointment to the knobs. As it turns out, letting the ointment sit for a few minutes then wiping the knobs with a soft cloth really made them shine, as you can see in the image above. [linux-works] attributes the effect to the white petrolatum base of the product rather than the antibiotics, likely making a wide array of products equally suitable for the job.
We know how well
Retr0bright has worked for the vintage computer folks
, so we’ll be interested to see how long the effects of the triple antibiotic treatment last. It certainly can’t hurt those readers who
spend their time perusing flea markets
in search of classic electronic equipment. | 31 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "631254",
"author": "Deep Thought",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T13:07:33",
"content": "Oooops, broken link. Thehttp://hackaday.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=71767&action=editlink points to the admin pages where we mere mortals have no access",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,376,905.858588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/17/communicating-from-anywhere-with-a-spot-connect/ | Communicating From Anywhere With A SPOT Connect | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"satellite",
"satellite communication",
"spot"
] | [Nate] over at Sparkfun put up a great tutorial for using the
SPOT personal satellite communicator
with just about any microcontroller. These personal satellite transmitters were originally intended to pair with the bluetooth module of a smart phone, allowing you to send a short 41-character message from anywhere in the world. Now, you can use these neat little boxes for getting data from remote sensors, or even telemetry from a weather balloon.
[Nate]’s teardown expands on [
natrium42/a>] and [
Travis Goodspeed
]’s efforts in reverse-engineering the SPOT satellite communicator. The hardware works with the
Globalstar
satellite constellation only for uplink use. That is, you can’t send stuff
to
a remote device with a SPOT. After poking around the circuitry of the original, first-edition SPOT, [Nate] pulled out a much cheaper
SPOT Connect
from his bag of tricks. Like the previous hacks, tying into the bluetooth TX/RX lines granted [Nate] full access to broadcast anything he wants to a satellite sitting in orbit.
We’ve seen the SPOT satellite messaging service put to use in a
high altitude balloon
over the wilds of northern California where it proved to be a very reliable, if expensive, means of data collection. Sometimes, though, XBees and terrestrial radio
just aren’t good enough
, and you need a satellite solution.
The SPOT satellite service has an enormous coverage area, seen in the title pic of this post. The only major landmasses not covered are eastern and southern Africa, India, and the southern tip of South America. If anyone out there wants to build a transatlantic UAV, SPOT, and [Nate]’s awesome tutorial, are the tools to use.
Tip ‘o the hat to [MS3FGX] for sending this one in. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "631251",
"author": "the dude",
"timestamp": "2012-04-17T12:56:06",
"content": "nice!!! this could be handy for ppl surfing/sailing/kayaking and in trouble on open sea.hang a receptor on a pc for automated text messaging, and we’ve got a elcheapo sos system",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,905.573471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/15/playing-zork-on-the-arduino/ | Playing Zork On The Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"infocom",
"z-code",
"zmachine",
"zork"
] | If you’re looking for something to do on a boring Sunday afternoon, how about dusting off your Arduino and
playing a text adventure
? [Louis] wrote in to tell us about his project called AZIP, an app that will let you play classic 1980s text adventures on your Arduino.
The famous Infocom text adventure games such as
Zork
and
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
(reputed to be better than the book, by the way) all ran on a virtual machine called a
ZMachine
. We’ve seen a
few unsuccessful attempts
to run a ZMachine on an Arduino, but these builds usually end up going with a Linux-based single board computer. As far as we’re aware, [Louis]’ build is the first time classic text adventures have been available on the Arduino.
[Louis] based his build on the popular
Jzip ZMachine
. The required hardware is fairly minimal – just an Arduino with an SD card. Right now the limitations of Flash and RAM on the Arduino means [Louis] needed to remove the game save and restore functions, but with a little clever coding and continued development those functions can be restored. Very cool indeed. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "630087",
"author": "lochnessduck",
"timestamp": "2012-04-15T16:56:42",
"content": "this would be really cool if it could become a standalone program to output to an lcd (I see that size limitations are limiting that), because I do remember an arduino hack to allow access to a ps/2 k... | 1,760,376,905.301624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/15/printing-anything-with-a-thermal-receipt-printer/ | Printing Anything With A Thermal Receipt Printer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Parts"
] | [
"arduino",
"receipt printer",
"thermal printer"
] | Over the last year, [James] has been a part of a few commercial projects that used a thermal receipt printer as part of the build. Something must have cracked in his mind, because [James]
spent a lot of time developing
a way to print customized content on receipt printers, connecting these printers to the Internet, and sharing content with other Internet-connected receipt printers. Even [James] doesn’t know why he spent so much time on this project; [James] figured he was bound to find something interesting. We’ve got to commend him for that.
[James] had been aware of the
Adafruit Thermal Printer Library
, but this library is a little kludgy. Text is the Adafruit Library’s forte, and while graphics and non-ASCII characters are possible they’re certainly not easy to print with the existing libraries. With his current system based on HTML, CSS, and Javascript, [James] has a really easy way to print anything he can put on a webpage on receipt paper.
Getting his receipt printer onto the Internet had its own challenges. After wrangling with the Arduino Ethernet library through the month of February, [James] realized larger prints (about 15cm of paper) would fail inexplicably. To get around this, [James] wrote an HTTP client for the Arduino that would fetch data, put it on the SD card, and then start printing.
Right now, [James]’ project is a polished as anyone could hope. We’re a bit concerned – although we completely understand – that he could get sucked into the black hole of pointless development of receipt printer software so easily. All was not for naught, though; now anyone can make very professional-looking prints on receipt paper very easily. | 52 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "629997",
"author": "KG4MXV",
"timestamp": "2012-04-15T14:07:04",
"content": "Hey cool I can not scan in some of my old toll receipts and change the dates and get a few more bucks on my expense reports.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,376,905.704048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/14/extending-the-range-of-wireless-weather-stations-with-walkie-talkies/ | Extending The Range Of Wireless Weather Stations With Walkie Talkies | Brian Benchoff | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"packet radio",
"temperature sensor",
"walkie talkie",
"weather station",
"wireless"
] | [Roel] wanted to put a wireless weather station in his greenhouse. Even though the weather station was supposed to transmit over fairly long distances, the geometry of his back yard and a few stone walls killed the radio signal even after putting a good antenna on the receiving side of his wireless weather station setup. Wanting to get his weather station working, [Roel] did the sensible thing and built
a packet radio setup out of a pair of walkie talkies
, greatly increasing the range of his weather station.
This build comes after [Roel] spent a great deal of time
reverse engineering the wireless protocol
of his
Thierry Mugler weather station
. With a little bit of code, [Roel] is able to get the current temperature and humidity reading into his Linux box. This system relies on the transmitter inside the weather station, so the system falls apart over any sufficiently large distance.
To increase the range of his weather station, [Roel] took his existing hardware and added a pair of inexpensive FRS walkie talkies. The build uses the hardware from his previous build to get the radio data from the weather station. This data is sent over to an ATmega88 where it’s
converted to packet radio
and sent over the walkie-talkie. On the
receiving side
, the output of a second walkie-talkie is piped into the Linux soundmodem app (
link
, but it’s down as of this writing) where it’s decoded. Sending the received data to gnuplot makes a very nice graph of the temperature and humidity.
[Roel] put the code for both the tx and rx sides of the build up on his build page. Very nice work that uses very inexpensive hardware. | 33 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "629577",
"author": "brocktechnology",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T21:40:53",
"content": "It should Probably be pointed out that data transmission is strictly forbidden on the FRS band. The band is for FM voice communication only. However that wouldn’t stop me from doing it either.",
... | 1,760,376,905.525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/14/aquarium-automation-keeps-the-fish-fed-and-the-lights-on/ | Aquarium Automation Keeps The Fish Fed And The Lights On | Mike Nathan | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"aquarium",
"automation",
"fish",
"STM8L Discovery"
] | Anyone who owns a fish tank knows that a good amount of care is required to keep fish happy, healthy, and most of all – alive. [Vicente Jiménez] usually has no problem keeping up on the day to day maintenance such as feeding and switching the tank light, but he wanted to automate these processes for times
when he can’t be home to take care of the fish
(
Translation
).
His aquarium automation project is meant to cover three separate parts of the operation: light control, feeding, and pump regulation during feeding times. [Vincente] picked up an STM8L Discovery board to control his system, which enabled him to easily control the automation of all three.
He constructed the feeding mechanism using an old cassette player motor, which turns his food drum (an old film canister), twice a day at specified feeding times. Before the drum is turned to dispense food, the STM8L turns off the aquarium’s pump via a relay to ensure it doesn’t get clogged in the process. During the day he keeps the tank illuminated, but once night falls, the microcontroller shuts the lights off so the fish can get their rest.
There’s no video of the system in action, but [Vincente] has detailed its construction pretty thoroughly in his blog, so be sure to check it out if you are in need of something similar. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "629506",
"author": "bty",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T20:18:33",
"content": "wow, i’m really amazed by the quality of the online translation. es->en seems to work very well.Nice project btw.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "629990... | 1,760,376,905.345394 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/14/ir-helicopter-controller-hacked-into-a-linux-game-pad/ | IR Helicopter Controller Hacked Into A Linux Game Pad | Mike Nathan | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"gaming",
"infrared",
"ir",
"linux",
"msp430",
"Syma"
] | [Mike Kohn’s] Syma S107 helicopter wasn’t flying as well as it used to due to a broken gear, he figured
he might as well find some use for the toy’s controller
, since it was currently sitting around collecting dust. Having done a
bunch of work with Syma IR protocols earlier this year
, he decided it would be pretty easy to get the remote working as a game pad for his Linux desktop.
He patched an IR receiver into an MSP430 board, which decodes the incoming IR signals, sending them to his computer over a serial connection. [Mike] dug around in the Linux source for some good joystick driver code to borrow and found something that was close enough to work. After a bit of tweaking he loaded up his driver module and fired up Mame to give [Ms. Pacman] a try.
He says that the controller worked without much trouble, though as he discovered in previous projects, there are some quirks in the controller that make it somewhat less than convenient to use full time. Check out his site if you’re interested in taking a look at the code that he used to get things running. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "629429",
"author": "anthonyvenable110",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T18:01:34",
"content": "This ia very cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "629509",
"author": "techknowledgist",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T20:22:58",
"co... | 1,760,376,905.902255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/14/an-itunes-rating-box-for-everyone/ | An ITunes Rating Box For Everyone | Brian Benchoff | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"itunes",
"peripherals",
"rating box"
] | If you’ve ever scoffed at the idea of opening up iTunes every four minutes to rate a song, [Steve] is the guy to talk to. He built a
small hardware box
with five illuminated buttons to rate the current song playing on iTunes.
This build comes after [Steve]’s earlier
Arduino-based rating box
that was functional, but didn’t have the level of polish he desired. To get to the current iteration, [Steve]
designed a custom board
around a PIC18F microcontroller programmed as a
USB HID device
. After a great deal of frustration
soldering teeny SMD components
, [Steve] had a functioning USB five-star iTunes rating box. With a
custom acrylic case
the build was finally completed.
We’re very impressed with the finished version of [Steve]’s TuneConsole, as he calls it. We can certainly imagine other people wanting a similar device. Whether that comes from releasing the schematics and boards or selling PCBs on
Seeed Studio
is something we’re eager to find out. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "629354",
"author": "sxrguyinma",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T15:56:58",
"content": "Neat idea, but I still don’t see the point of rating songs on itunes. I just went into preferences and hid the ratings column. Seems useless. Nice hack though!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,906.02445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/14/racing-with-dysons-spare-parts/ | Racing With Dyson’s Spare Parts | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"car",
"challenge",
"dyson",
"pinewood derby",
"RACE",
"racing"
] | When it comes time to unwind at the Dyson design facility these engineers know how to do it right. Recently, the company challenged their engineers to a grown-up version of the Pinewood Derby in which
they raced their own cars powered by a Dyson motor
.
The video after the breaks shows a large collection of these time trials on a track made from upturned wooden pallets. Most of the vehicles are made from parts which we don’t recognize. But some of them are very familiar like our favorite hand dryer ever (seen above) and the iconic goldenrod manifold from the Dyson ball vacuum cleaner.
The course ends abruptly, as you can see in the last run of the video. There is one entry that included a human rider and he seems to be going nearly as fast as the riderless carriages are. The video cuts away before he hits the wall, but we can’t image he had the time to include brakes in that design.
[via
Dvice
] | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "629296",
"author": "syale",
"timestamp": "2012-04-14T14:26:05",
"content": "Owning a Dyson I recognize most of the parts. I wonder if my wife would notice the slightly modified vacuum cleaner when she uses it next. Maybe It will be me doing the vacuuming from now!",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,376,905.956584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/motorcycle-lighting-upgrade-ensures-other-drivers-know-youre-there/ | Motorcycle Lighting Upgrade Ensures Other Drivers Know You’re There | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"brake lights",
"led",
"motorcycle"
] | [Pete Mills] recently bought himself a motorcycle, and as people are known to do, they start trying to scare him with gruesome stories of cycling accidents once they hear about his purchase. While he tries to shrug them off as people simply not minding their own business, something must have resonated with him, because
he started tinkering with the bike’s taillight
in order to ensure he was always seen by other drivers.
He swapped out his motorcycle’s incandescent taillight for a smart LED-based lamp that he constructed using perfboard. Not only does his new brake light feature ultra bright LEDs, but the onboard ATtiny85 rapidly flashes the lights each time he hits the brakes, making his presence impossible to miss. Before everyone starts with the claims of, “Flashing red lights are illegal!”, let’s all take a deep breath and read on.
We’ve seen these sorts of lights on the back of motorcycles for years, though being a careful guy, [Pete] wrote to the state of Michigan in order to ensure that his modifications won’t get him pulled over. He has yet to hear back, but in the meantime, he merely needs to start the bike with the brakes applied to trigger the ATtiny85 to run the lights in “normal mode.”
Continue reading to see a short demo video of his brake light mod in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bsCtKpdZ1XY&w=470] | 52 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "630745",
"author": "BadHaddy",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T18:04:01",
"content": "The CHMSL (middle tail lamp) on my SRT8 blinks for a full second when I hit the brakes on my car, and the hazards come on when I really wail on the brakes. I suspect he would be fine, so long as it doesn... | 1,760,376,906.461484 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/portal-radio-is-why-valve-needs-to-build-hardware-2/ | Portal Radio Is Why Valve Needs To Build Hardware | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"model",
"modeling",
"portal",
"still alive",
"valve"
] | We’ve seen Portal gun builds, a few cute turret replicas, and even a miniaturized version of GLaDOS, but [John]‘s
Portal radio replica
is the first physical version of this oft-forgotten Portal item.
Interestingly, the entire radio is made from scrap. The spheroid body shell is made from the foam insulation from a commercial freezer, carefully sculpted, Bondoed, and painted over the course of 300 hours. The radio guts are taken from an upcycled radio, and powered by either an internal battery or a wall wart DC adapter – perfect for carrying around a test chamber with a portal gun.
Right now, there’s an AM/FM receiver inside the radio along with an audio input so an iPod or such can be plugged in. While we would have loved to see a loop of the
uptempo version Still Alive
, we’re guessing [John] hasn’t found an easy way to do that with junked parts yet.
Check out [John]‘s build video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxScP6XKNiU&w=470] | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "630717",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T17:11:07",
"content": "Even better would be to add GPS so that when taken to certain locations the LED would turn red and computer RFI noises would get played.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,376,906.321054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/diy-battery-powered-soldering-iron/ | DIY Battery Powered Soldering Iron | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"portable soldering iron",
"soldering",
"soldering iron"
] | When it’s time to get started on a project and put our irons in the fire, we usually reach for a nice Weller or Hakko soldering iron. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible when we’re soldering something away from a wall outlet. Portable soldering irons usually range from slightly to completely terrible, and [Adam] thought he could do better. He put together an Instructable for a
portable battery-powered soldering iron
that’s extremely easy to build.
[Adam]’s project mounts a standard Radio Shack soldering iron tip in an
E-10 flashlight bulb socket
. Power is provided by 6 Volts of AA batteries, with a small switch added for the obvious safety concerns. Although [Adam] could have added a small project box, he chose to build his entire project around a piece of wood. This is an excellent choice in our humble opinion; wood doesn’t melt, has very low thermal conductivity, and anyone using this iron should be smart enough to turn it off if the handle starts smoking.
While this isn’t the best possible portable soldering iron (we’re partial to the disposable-lighter-fueled torches with a soldering iron attachment), it’s much better than the
ColdHeat soldering iron
that received consistently bad reviews.
Edit: [Adam] updated his build to be a little safer after this story was posted. We changed the original title pic to reflect this;
here’s the old one
. | 46 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "630643",
"author": "bio",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T16:04:02",
"content": "the first cold heat fried every chip i had … the second one was way better … a good replacement for a 30 watt soldering iron for those small jobs!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,376,906.542272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/tiny-quadcopter-gets-an-update-on-the-virge-of-flying-without-pc/ | Tiny Quadcopter Gets An Update, On The Verge Of Flying Without PC | Caleb Kraft | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"quadcopter"
] | Crazyflie, the itty bitty quadcopter that uses a PCB for its frame is at the cusp of
being able to fly without a PC
. We were enamored with it when
we first spotted it
, and the Crazyflie has only gotten better. As you can see, a new PCB gives it a slightly more stylized look, but that’s not all. There have been major improvements to the design of the software, and various parts of the hardware. They’re waiting for the final prototype to arrive from the factory to test the ultimate goal, PC-less flight. We’re not sure why this tiny quadcopter is so enthralling, but it sure has us captivated.
Be sure to check out another flight video after the break. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "630616",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T15:23:59",
"content": "Cool, but if I heard it coming I’d haul ass. Sounds like a swarm of bees…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "630627",
"author": "Ed",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,906.375025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/16/upgrading-a-rockford-fosgate-punch-601s-to-an-801s-with-just-a-handful-of-parts/ | Upgrading A Rockford Fosgate Punch 601s To An 801s With Just A Handful Of Parts | Mike Nathan | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"amp",
"car audio",
"upgrade"
] | [Simon] had a Rockford Fosgate Punch 601s amplifier in his car, and while it was a great piece of equipment, he wanted a little more power behind his stereo system. It turns out that with just a handful of parts and a bit of soldering work,
he was able to increase his amplifier’s output by 200 watts
, putting it on par with a Punch 801s.
The main board in each amp is laid out identically, making the conversion a relatively easy process. A handful of MOSFETs need to be added, along with some resistors and capacitors. Most of the work can be done with a decent soldering iron, though you might want a hot air reflow station to handle the smaller resistors – it all depends on your skill set.
We’re really not sure how big the price difference is between the two amps, but we’re pretty certain that the conversion would be worth it. [Simon]
sells conversion kits on his web site
for under $60, but you may be able to find the parts for a bit less if you hunt around. | 29 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "630565",
"author": "Techie",
"timestamp": "2012-04-16T13:20:38",
"content": "From 0 to deaf in 2.4 seconds… Do you really need 200 watts (extra) in a car?!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "630591",
"author": "tomas316",... | 1,760,376,906.266571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/15/barrel-organ-made-from-lego-plays-the-star-wars-theme/ | Barrel Organ Made From Lego Plays The Star Wars Theme | Mike Nathan | [
"Musical Hacks",
"News",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"barrel organ",
"lego",
"star wars",
"theme"
] | Whether or not you are a fan of the first installment of the Star Wars prequels, you have to see what [Lorenz Lnggrtnr] and [Renee Hoffmeister]
have put together for the movie’s 3D debut.
In an attempt to capture the essence of Star Wars in a new fashion, they constructed a large barrel organ from Lego bricks that plays the movie’s legendary opening theme when turned. The barrel is separated into four parts, each representing one of the series’ iconic settings in plastic block form.
Hoth, the Death Star, Tatooine, and Endor are all featured on the organ, with each environment’s structures playing specific notes from the song. As the barrel turns each Lego structure toggles a note to be played on the attached organ, via a “reading” mechanism built from metal arms and Lego tires.
It looks fantastic, and sounds pretty decent too. Be sure to stick around for a short video that shows off the barrel organ in action.
[via
Wired
]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Lgcen-PGI&w=470] | 36 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "630192",
"author": "Jarel",
"timestamp": "2012-04-15T20:20:55",
"content": "I don’t know if that girl is just not cranking at a steady tempo or if the design just sucks, but that sounded awful!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,376,906.723526 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/15/a-glorious-mechanical-seven-segment-display/ | A Glorious Mechanical Seven Segment Display | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"mechanical clock",
"seven segment"
] | If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve never seen a mechanical seven-segment display,
now you know
. They’re fairly complicated and most likely absurdly expensive, especially when a few light bulbs or LEDs would do the same job equally well. This didn’t stop [kiu] from completing his mechanical seven-segment clock he calls SevenBlocks, and for that we are thankful.
Each of the 28 segments in [kiu]’s clock is made of three layers of acrylic and a short section of a rack gear. Unlike every seven-segment display you’ve ever seen,
tiny hobby servos
provide the indication for each segment. For the electronics, An ATMega8 is used for the brains of the outfit with a 74HC595 shift register to expand the number of I/O lines. A DS1307 RTC module provides accurate timekeeping, and the dozens of servo outputs
visible in the ‘guts shot’
makes you realize why you’ve never seen a mechanical seven segment display before – they’re really friggin’ complex.
If you want to build your own mechanical seven-segment clock, [kiu] put
all the files up on Github
. Everything is there, from the .DXF files ready to feed to a laser cutter to the schematic and board files for each of the three PCBs. A video showing this clock in action is sort of necessary, so you can check that out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ZiZt0TA9A&w=470] | 36 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "630127",
"author": "Unanymous",
"timestamp": "2012-04-15T18:17:02",
"content": "Lovely build. I love how it also handles temperature.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "630130",
"author": "gabe",
"timestamp": "2012-04-15T18... | 1,760,376,906.788628 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/those-usb-tv-tuners-used-for-sdr-can-also-grab-gps-data/ | Those USB TV Tuners Used For SDR Can Also Grab GPS Data | Mike Szczys | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"dongle",
"doppler shift",
"gps",
"sdr",
"tv tuner",
"usb"
] | Talk about versatile hardware. These inexpensive
TV tuner dongles can also grab GPS data
. You may remember seeing this same hardware
used as a $20 option for software defined radio
. But [Michele Bavaro] decided to see what other tricks they could pull off.
Would it surprise you that he can get location data accurate to about 20 centimeters? That figure doesn’t tell the whole story, as readings were taken while the dongle was stationary for three hours, then averaged to achieve that type of accuracy. But depending on what you need the data for this might not be a problem. And [Michele] does plan to implement real-time GPS data in his next iteration of the project. He plans to use an SDR acquisition algorithm to measure doppler shift in accounting for the slow clock speed of the dongles compared to standard GPS receivers. We can understand how that would work, but we’re glad he has the skills to actually make it happen because we’re at a loss on how the concept could be implemented.
[via
Reddit
] | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "628704",
"author": "Temo",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T23:35:58",
"content": "Wait wait wait… How does it get triangulate? Like does it use satellites or does it do some other type of witchcraft.not trolling. I want to know.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,906.60601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/stair-accent-lights-made-from-cheap-led-strips/ | Stair Accent Lights Made From Cheap LED Strips | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"led strip",
"pwm",
"stairs",
"tlc5940"
] | We really like [Geert’s] take on accent lighting for his stairs. He built his own
LED channels which mount under the bullnose
of each step. The LED strips that he used are actually quite inexpensive. They are RGB versions, but the pixels are not individually addressable. This means that instead of having drivers integrated into the strip (usually those use SPI for color data) this strip just has a power rail and three ground rails for the colors. Ten meters of the strip cost him under forty dollars.
He did want to be able to address each step separately, as well as mix and match colors, so he designed the driver board seen above to use a set of TLC5940 LED drivers. These are controlled by the Arduino which handles color changing and animations. It will eventually include sensors to affect the LEDs as you walk up the stairs. Each strip is mounted in a piece of angle bracket, and they’re connected back to the driver board using telephone extension wire. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "628687",
"author": "Rick 'Autre",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T23:05:42",
"content": "Just plese, please,PLEASE, dont go all disco strobe-ie or irregular stair step patterns on me when the most important natural drive is the one for belly-contents-delete-at-high-terminal-velocity… rofl!... | 1,760,376,906.653286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/free-formed-circuit-protected-by-a-brick-of-crystal-clear-resin/ | Free Formed Circuit Protected By A Brick Of Crystal Clear Resin | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"casting",
"mold",
"polyester",
"resin"
] | The look of this crystal clear resin brick is pretty amazing. [Rupert Hirst] decided to
encase his amplifier circuit in a block of polyester resin
. We just hope he got everything in his circuit right because there’s no way to replace any of those parts now!
He deserves a lot of credit for working out a visually pleasing way to mount each component. There wasn’t any type of substrate used, but a few lower gauge wires were picked as the rails and they add some mounting stability. Before casting, he took the case of each of the three jacks apart and sealed the seams with some of the casting resin to prevent the final pour from filling them up.
Eagle CAD was used to design the mold. He printed it out on some card stock, then used a hobby knife to cut the pieces out and super glue to assemble them. A second layer of super glue was run on each seam to ensure they’re water tight. After the casting was made [Rupert] spent plenty of time sanding, routing, and polishing the brick to achieve this look.
This makes us wonder about heat dissipation. Do you think it will be a problem? Tells us what your opinion by leaving a comment. | 63 | 42 | [
{
"comment_id": "628606",
"author": "jameswilddev",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T20:44:36",
"content": "That’s COOL.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "628612",
"author": "jameswilddev",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T20:48:56",
"co... | 1,760,376,906.971525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/add-a-train-horn-to-your-hoopty-earplugs-not-included/ | Add A Train Horn To Your Hoopty (earplugs Not Included) | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"air horn",
"bicycle",
"train horn"
] | [TheChadster] was kind enough to explain that
the air horn he attached to his bicycle
is not actually as loud as a train horn. This one can only be heard from a half a mile away. But we’re sure the ringing in your ears will seem the same… the video after the break proves this thing is way too loud.
You don’t need much for this, just a pair of air horns and a source of compressed air. [Chad] has a ten gallon air tank strapped onto the luggage rack on the back. We’d bet he can lay on the horn for quite a while before depleting that reservoir. The hardest part of the build (other than sourcing the parts without breaking the bank) is going to be attaching everything to the bike. This is why he recommends using a cruiser bicycle because they often already have a rack on the back. For the horn holder [Chad] found a leather cup holder worked almost perfectly.
We think he needs to turn this around and
add some compressed combustibles
for a fiery and noisy flame boost.
[via
Gizmodo
] | 14 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "628568",
"author": "Faelenor",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T19:48:12",
"content": "OMG, that’s an air tank! I thought it was a bag at first…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "628574",
"author": "NewCommentor1283",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,907.069437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/arduino-midi-sequencer-displays-a-lot-of-data/ | Arduino MIDI Sequencer Displays A Lot Of Data | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"midi",
"sequencer",
"shift register"
] | This Arduino MIDI sequencer
has no shortage of ways to display loop info. The screen above is a touch-sensitive interface that acts as the user input. But if this screen is not visible, you can still see which tracks have activated samples for each beat and what effects are being used. That’s thanks to the collection of display boards which are shown in the video after the break.
The setup acts as the MIDI front end, relying on other hardware to generate the samples. It presents all of the options through several pages on the 320×240 touch screen display. The Ardunio Mega is responsible for monitoring the UI data, crafting and sending the MIDI commands, as well as updating the LED-based display boards. These include bar graphs for the various effects, a four row by sixteen pixel beat pattern display, and 7-segment displays to track the current location within the loop. All in that’s 368 LEDs driven by 18 shift registers.
Update:
Link to a gallery can be found after the break as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g93A__xsE6E
Gallery | 8 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "628588",
"author": "zuul",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T20:10:54",
"content": "Pretty cool, I like the display but I’m not sure why there is so many external leds , wouldn’t there be a way to do that on the screen too. The redrawing looked a bit slow so maybe that’s why.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,376,907.01929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/using-diodes-and-transistors-as-solar-cells/ | Using Diodes And Transistors As Solar Cells | Brian Benchoff | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"diode",
"photovo",
"semiconductor",
"transistor"
] | When you get down to it, solar cells aren’t much different from the diodes and transistors in your parts drawers or inside your beloved electronics. They’re both made of silicon or some other semiconductor, and surprisingly can produce electricity in the presence of light. Here’s two semiconductors-as-solar panel projects that rolled into the tip line over the past few days.
[Steven Dufresne]
cut open a 2N3055 power transistor
to expose the semiconductor material to light. In full sunlight, he was able to produce 500 millivolts and 5.5 milliamps. In other words, he’d need around 5000 of these transistors wired up to turn on a compact fluorescent light bulb. A small calculator
has a much lower power requirement
, so after opening up five transistors he was able to make a solar-powered calculator with a handful of transistors.
[Sarang] was studying solar cells and realized a standard silicon diode is very similar; both are p-n junctions and the only real difference is the surface area. He connected a
1N4148 to a multimeter
and to his surprise it worked. [Sarang] is able to get about 150 millivolts out of his diode with the help of a magnifying glass. While he doubts his diode is more efficient than a normal solar cell, he thinks it could be useful in low-cost, low power applications. We’re thinking this might be useful as a high-intensity light detector for a solar cooker or similar.
After the break, you can check out the videos [Steven] and [Sarang] put up demonstrating their solar cells.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bUc8RqSFXs&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww_a9JS9IJ8&w=470] | 33 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "628487",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T17:52:40",
"content": "Sounds like a waste of some nice transistors to me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "628567",
"author": "stevendpe",
"timestamp": "2012-... | 1,760,376,907.14453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/qart-codes-the-better-way-to-put-picture-in-a-qr-code/ | QArt Codes, The Better Way To Put Picture In A QR Code | Brian Benchoff | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"QR codes",
"reed-solomon"
] | [Russ Cox], current Googler and formerly of Bell Labs, posted an awesome guide to
putting images in a QR code
. Unlike this
terrible attempt
I wrote last August, [Russ]’s method does much more than simply paste an image into a QR code and hope the error correction passes. This new method generates a unique URL to be encoded for each QR code. In other words, the embedded image is actually part of the QR code and not just a copy and paste attempt.
The basis of [Russ]’ hack is the ability to change the message contained in a QR code to be made of either ASCII/UTF-8 or decimal numbers coded as binary. By appending an anchor tag (i.e.
http://swtch.com/pjw/#123456789
...
) to the URL that will be encoded, [Russ] can change a whole bunch of pixels in a QR code to make just about any image.
With a few tricks like building new Reed-Solomon encoded blocks, [Russ] can change where in the pixels required by the QR code are placed. This allows for the full-width image of
PJW’s binary likeness
to be displayed in the QR code.
[Russ] put up a
QArt coder
that allows anyone to put a pixelated image in any QR code. [Luke Shumaker] (thanks for sending this in, [Luke]) took this tool and put the ‘ol skull ‘n wrenches
inside a QR code
pointing to hackaday.com. Very nice work from [Russ], and puts my work to shame. I’ll go cry in a corner now. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "628360",
"author": "KNfLrPn",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T14:16:49",
"content": "The QR code definitely looks nice, but now the URL is ugly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "628370",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,907.206755 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/experimenting-with-8-bit-graphics/ | Experimenting With 8-bit Graphics | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega32",
"AVR",
"composite video",
"pal"
] | [Vinod] has done a lot of work with microcontrollers, but this is
his first try at displaying graphics using composite video
. He had a small PAL television on hand, and an ATmega32 which just needs a stable clock source and a few resistors to get things going.
There are a lot of other hacks around that
use composite video out with microcontrollers
. But this is a ground-up approach which will help you understand the concepts behind these graphics. [Vinod] started by calculating the possible resolution. He needs to hold a frame buffer in memory, and since his chip has just 2 kilobytes of SRAM this will be the limiting factor. He settled on a display area of 128 by 64 pixels. This divides evenly by 8 so he’s not wasting any bits, and it totals 1k, leaving half of the SRAM for use in calculating the shapes which populate the buffer. An interrupt service routine runs ever 64 microseconds to feed data for each line of the display.
With the scanning in place, he moved on to fill the frame buffer. Two functions are used, one which sets a pixel the other clears a pixel. He compares these to using a pencil and an eraser. By calling these functions from his main program he is able to draw lines, boxes, and circles. A bit of creative looping and he’ll have animations as well, but that’s a concept for a different post. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "626800",
"author": "Neo",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T18:04:09",
"content": "Preparing for 0x10c ???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626854",
"author": "ScottInNH",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T19:15:28",
"content": "I know... | 1,760,376,907.249242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/separating-a-working-scanner-from-its-broken-printer/ | Separating A Working Scanner From Its Broken Printer | Mike Szczys | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"all-in-one",
"laser printer",
"printer",
"scanner"
] | The laser printer portion of this all-in-one machine gave up the ghost and [Entropia] couldn’t get it working again. But the scanner was still functioning so he decided to
separate the scanner from its dead printer module
.
The model in question is a Samsung SCX-4200. The design is actually perfect for separation because the scanner sits on top of the out feed tray of the printer. It can even be lifted to allow more room for printed pages to pile up. All he has to do is separate the hinged connector and reroute the flat cables. But the real question in [Entropia’s] mind was whether or not the control board would work without the laser printer components connected to it.
He carefully disassembled the unit, spilling toner here and there which is left over from a catastrophic knock-off toner cartridge incident. A quick test showed him that although the drivers complain that the paper tray is open, the scanner does still work. He glued the controller board seen on the left to the bottom of the scanner enclosure, and added some felt feet. Now his scanner is closer to the size you’d expect. And on the plus side he gained a geared stepper motor, laser scanning unit, exhaust fan, and a couple of solenoids to use in future projects. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "626749",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T16:22:44",
"content": "Nice work. I have the same printer, but still in working condition :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626776",
"author": "simplifyIT",
"times... | 1,760,376,907.423447 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/a-six-year-adventure-into-the-world-of-cnc-fabrication/ | A Six-year Adventure Into The World Of CNC Fabrication | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"machining",
"resin",
"resin casting"
] | Hackaday doesn’t always get the entire back story of a build. The usual assumption is that someone decided to build something, and with just a little bit of effort the project makes it into the Hackaday tip line. This doesn’t do justice to the builder, with skills honed after years of practice and experience. A 200-word summary is deceiving, and makes everything look almost too easy. [Michal] decided to buck that trend and sent in his
half-decade long adventure
of becoming one of the best micro-scale machinists we’ve ever seen.
In 2006, with years of robots made out of hot glue and cardboard behind him, and the quality of 3D printers not up to his exacting specifications, [Michal] snapped. He sunk the better part of $3000 into a
Roland MDX-15 desktop mill
. After several months of futzing about with acrylic sheet, [Michal] came across the
wonderful machining properties
of modeling board.
Determined to do something useful with this modeling board, [Michal] started looking into resin casting. Casting in resin
is a common technique
in the artist and model maker communities to mass produce small plastic parts. After getting his hands on eight liters of polyurethane resin, [Michal]
made a useful part
guiding the direction his skill set would grow in the coming years.
After years of experimenting with techniques, materials, and mediums, [Michal] eventually honed his craft and was able to finally start building real robots. These projects were a far cry from the cardboard and milk jug contraptions made earlier in his career. [Michal] was now producing incredibly precise gear assemblies with accuracies within 0.002 mm.
You may remember [Michal] from his
robot with pivoting wheels
we showcased last week. He got a lot of email from people wanting to know how to start delving into his unique blend of artistry, engineering, and craftsmanship. The good news is you can now learn from his mistakes, so a planetary gearbox shouldn’t take more than a few months to finish. | 51 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "626695",
"author": "cruster",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T15:16:42",
"content": "Awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626699",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T15:21:58",
"content": "As a (good) 3D printer... | 1,760,376,907.513377 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/simple-tweak-alerts-you-when-youve-left-your-headlights-on/ | Simple Tweak Alerts You When You’ve Left Your Headlights On | Mike Nathan | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"buzzer",
"headlights",
"Land Rover",
"relay"
] | [Paul McGuinness] owns a Series III Land Rover, and as the vehicle as formerly used by the British military, it’s lacking some of the modern amenities he was accustomed to. Overlooking the lack of power steering and all-around drum brakes, the one item that [Paul] really missed was
a buzzer that let him know when he left the lights running.
On more than one occasion, he’s had to have “The Sarge” jump started after leaving the lights running all day. Explaining the humiliation involved with jump-starting a Land Rover with a Nissan Micra (an unfortunate excuse for a vehicle, known here in the states as the Nissan Versa) in his blog, [Paul] decided that he’d had enough – it was time to build a headlight warning buzzer.
The circuit itself is straightforward, consisting of a normally closed relay connected to his headlights and ignition, along with a buzzer. When the key is in the ignition and the lights are on, the relay is open and the buzzer is silent. However, if the lights are on and the relay is not supplied power from the ignition, it closes and sounds the alarm.
A simple fix for a frustrating problem – we like that. | 47 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "626658",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T14:15:57",
"content": "Why not just wire the headlights to shut off when you turn the car off? I find any kind of headlight chime extremely annoying, because it shouldn’t be something I have to deal with. What if I actually do wan... | 1,760,376,907.64552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/adding-an-electronic-lock-to-a-diy-book-safe/ | Adding An Electronic Lock To A DIY Book Safe | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"book safe",
"latch",
"lock",
"servo"
] | DIY book safes are well and good, but if you give someone enough time to peruse your book collection, the 3-inch thick “Case study on Animal Husbandry Techniques during the 14th Century” is likely to stand out among your collection of hand-bound “Twilight” fan fiction. In an attempt to teach his friend a bit about microcontrollers and circuits, [Jonathan] spent some time
adding a bit more security to your run of the mill book safe.
The pair started out with the time-consuming process of gluing the book’s pages together and creating enough hollow space for both storage and the electronics. With that out of the way, they installed a latch and servo motor inside the cavity, the latter of which is controlled using an Atmega328p with the Arduino bootloader. To gain access to the goodies stashed away inside, Jonathan hooks up a small PS/2 keypad and enters a passcode. This triggers the servo motor, opening the latch.
While the latch likely only adds a nominal bit of security to the book safe, it’s a fun enough learning exercise to justify the time spent putting it together.
Continue reading to see a short video of [Jonathan’s] electronic latching book safe in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cUY-xZqdRK8&w=470] | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "626630",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T13:50:22",
"content": "Okay, I admit, I didn’t watch the video, but did he put the micro-controller (uC) in the keypad, and not in the book? Even though it was a lesson in uC’s, it makes more sense to put the uC inside the safe, so... | 1,760,376,907.371761 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/advanced-compassaccelerometer-library-for-arduino/ | Advanced Compass/accelerometer Library For Arduino | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"compass",
"digital compass",
"dof",
"magnetometer"
] | We don’t have much personal experience with DOF hardware, but this Arduino library which
reads and compensates for three-axis magnetometer and accelerometer data
looks very impressive. It should work for existing hardware, but there’s also a demo design using a Honeywell HMC5883L compass and a Freescale MMA8453Q accelerometer which you can build yourself. Unfortunately these come in QFN packages (like most cheap accelerometers these days) so you may need to
be creative when soldering
.
What’s so special about this library? Watch the video after the break (use 720p in fullscreen to get the full effect) and you’ll see three different scatter plots of the output data. The image above is a capture of the third example, which is using the hard iron offset and accelerometer compensation. That is to say, metal on and around the board is accounted for, as well as the physical orientation of the device. Even if you have no prior experience with this type of hardware it’s easy to see the usefulness of this kind of software compensation.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF1ezexJuHk&w=470] | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "626192",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T01:39:25",
"content": "A nice write up … but after reading the linked Freescale app note, it doesn’t seem like there was much originality here. Simply ported an excellently written app note from C# to an arduino library (which th... | 1,760,376,907.561494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/veronica-gets-vram-and-its-own-boot-logo/ | Veronica Gets VRAM And Its Own Boot Logo | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"sram",
"veronica",
"vga",
"vram"
] | [Quinn Dunki] just reported in on the latest iteration in her computer project which is called Veronica. This time
she added RAM to increase the VGA performance
of her build. Like just about every other part of the project, [Quinn] knew what she wanted to do, but had to overcome a lot of issues along the way.
The goal is to implement a 256×240 display with 8-bit color depth. [Quinn] says this is on par with game console technology from the 1980’s. The problem is that the 10MHz AVR controller can’t really keep up with the scan rate of this size of display. The answer is to add RAM which stores all of the color data, the microcontroller will simply advance the address pointer on the memory chips to match the sync rate of the VGA output.
After hooking up her hardware design she gets a screen full of uninitialized pixel data. But moving from there to the final product seen above was quite frustrating. It turns out that noise on the breadboard was most of the problem, further compounded by entire breadboard row which wasn’t contacting the wires to make the temporary connections. A bit of jockeying for position and by Jove, she’s got a boot screen.
That breadboard sure has become crowded since
her first VGA experiments
. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "626155",
"author": "Galane",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T23:53:56",
"content": "256×240 display with 8-bit color depth1, 2 and 4 bit color or 2, 4 and 16 colors were the norm for small computers.As for game consoles, they were somewhat better in the number of colors onscreen. The NES w... | 1,760,376,907.943323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/water-strider-robot-does-it-with-lego-parts/ | Water Strider Robot Does It With Lego Parts | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"float",
"lego",
"pontoon"
] | This Lego watercraft
uses drinking bottles as pontoons arranged in a pattern that make it look very much like a
Water Strider
, the insects that dance on the surface of a lake.
After the break you can see a video of the rig gracefully navigating a local pond, along with a raft of ducks. It’s quiet enough not to startle them, which is nice. We don’t get a good look at the propulsion system, but [Vimal Patel] calls the floats “hockey bottles” in his Flickr comments. They appear to be Lego themed and we’re wondering if they are some type of packaging for a small set that doubles as a sports drinking bottle once the pieces are removed? The rig includes a camera which provides a great persepcive very near the water level.
This isn’t his only floating creation.
He’s got a second rig
that was used to film some of the footage of this one. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "626067",
"author": "elboydo",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T21:10:28",
"content": "The lego ‘bottles’ are actually tubs/containers that certain lego types (like Lego Bionics (I think)) come in, which themselves have lego connection points so that they can be joined to other lego pieces."... | 1,760,376,907.692285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/ps3-ir-dongle-tamed-for-use-with-a-linux-box/ | PS3 IR Dongle Tamed For Use With A Linux Box | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"dongle",
"ir",
"playstation 3",
"ps3",
"usb"
] | So a man walks into a Radio Shack and the clerk says “Why the long face?”. No, that’s not it. [Ms3fgx] walks into a Radio Shack and says “holy crap, that PS3 IR dongle is only two bucks”. He’s been looking for an IR remote receiver to use with a Linux machine and
decided to bend this PS3 dongle to his will
. It’s a lot less expensive that the parts to build the simplest IR receivers like
this FTDI cable version
, or
a microcontroller based receiver
.
He plugged it in and was delighted to find that it enumerates. The kernel has PlayStation 3 controller support built-in and has no problem picking up this device. When he uses ‘cat’ to display the incoming data all he gets is repetitive garbage. This is because the dongle only supports Sony remote control codes. But after a bit of universal remote setup, he’s got unique commands for each button. The last piece of the puzzle is to map the controller commands to keyboard keys. This is done with the QJoyPad package, but there are a myriad of ways to remap these buttons so go with what you know. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "626032",
"author": "BadHaddy",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T20:26:26",
"content": "I picked one of these up a while back too! Don’t get excited, opening them you find nothing but a potted die, so you cant really identify or have any fun with whatever chip it uses. it does have pads br... | 1,760,376,907.738175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/building-a-word-clock-with-genetic-algorithms/ | Building A Word Clock With Genetic Algorithms | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"genetic algorithm",
"word clock"
] | Maybe it was a language barrier he ran into, or possibly an inclination to do things the hard and smart way, but we really like [Alessio]’s take on building the display for his word clock. Instead of relying on a pre-designed word layout, he made
his own word pattern with a genetic algorithm
.
While looking at other word clock builds on the Internet, [Alessio] noticed all the DIY copies used the same pattern of letters as the original
QLOCKTWO
word clock. There are obvious reasons for this, laziness chief among them, but [Alessio] decided to do one better. Armed with
JGAP
, he made a 10×10 German language word clock and a 11×11 English language word clock.
[Alessio]’s algorithm takes a list of regular expressions – ‘five past four’ and ‘four five’ are both valid expressions for 4:05 – and combines solutions together for a hopefully optimal solution. One added bonus of [Alessio]’s method is the ability to generate non-square word clocks. On his project page, [Alessio] put up examples for round, triangular, and diamond-shaped word clocks.
[Alessio] ended up building a 10×10 square German language word clock with an Arduino Nano, DS1307 real-time clock, RGB LEDs, and a few shift registers. Very nice work for a custom-designed word clock. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "625965",
"author": "MrX",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T19:13:07",
"content": "“regular expressions”I don’t think that means what you think it means.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "626016",
"author": "Thopter",
"ti... | 1,760,376,908.002326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/html-based-avr-compiler-aims-to-make-arduino-development-on-ios-possible/ | HTML Based AVR Compiler Aims To Make Arduino Development On IOS Possible | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"iphone hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"AVR",
"compiler",
"html",
"ios"
] | It’s surprising what lengths people will go to in order to bring functionality to their smart phones. In this case, [Tadpol] wanted a way to develop for his Arduino on an iOS device like an iPad or iPhone. He figures it’s possible to rewrite the IDE as HTML5, but since that’s a pretty large mountain to climb,
he started by building a browser-based AVR compiler
. It’s an interesting concept, and he’s got
a working prototype up on Github
for you to test. Perhaps you can throw your hat in the ring and help him with development?
The web interface uses boxes to add to the code. What you see above is three sets of commands which will blink an LED. The project, named Avrian Jump, uses a simple ladder language to feed the compiler, with several different options for output. The most interesting in our mind is a WAV file which can be
used to program an AVR from the audio out of your device
. That would make programming as simple as connecting the specially modified AVR to your headphone jack. There’s also an ASCII output which allows you to save your programs for later alteration, S19 output for AVRdude programming, and an assembler output for debugging purposes. It’s hard to see where this project might go, but we have to admit that the concept is intriguing. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "625933",
"author": "ScottInNH",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T18:21:14",
"content": "awesome!Not sure how fast an iOS compiler would be (never mind the jailbreaking issues) but a network based compiler “webservice” could take care of that, then stream the compiled binary back as a WAV, e... | 1,760,376,907.796649 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/wooden-cnc-touch-probe/ | Wooden CNC Touch Probe | Mike Nathan | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"touch probe"
] | [Gary] sent a few pictures of his latest project our way via Flickr, which we thought a few of you CNC owners might be interested in. He has been working with his CNC machine a lot lately and decided it was about time
he built a touch probe for his rig.
His initial goal was to use the touch probe to ensure his CNC table was perfectly level, but we’re thinking it will be helpful for a lot of different projects in the future. [Gary] says he was really looking to put together a proof of concept device, but that things worked out so well he had to share.
His probe seems to work very well, even without the fit and finish
of others we’ve seen in the past.
The body of the probe itself was built using several layers of quarter inch plywood, housing three sets of two screws. The screws are wired together in order to form a closed circuit when the brass probe is inserted. When the probe makes contact with a solid object, the circuit is broken, and the coordinates of the probe’s head are recorded.
Though [Gary] admits that he was not super careful when it came to building the probe, we think the results speak for themselves. For a first iteration its scanning abilities are pretty impressive – we can’t wait to see version 2. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "625967",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T19:16:48",
"content": "“His probe seems to work very well.” E.G., the picture on the right is a scan of a U.S. quarter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626136",
"author": "... | 1,760,376,908.041452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/wireless-door-alarms-protect-your-stuff-from-afar/ | Wireless Door Alarms Protect Your Stuff From Afar | Mike Nathan | [
"home hacks",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"alarm",
"IR proximity sensor",
"personal radio",
"pic",
"wireless"
] | [Webby] had a friend named [Steve], and as the story goes [Steve] had a few storage sheds on his property
that were prone to break-ins.
While the doors were all fitted with a lock, wooden doors are only so strong, and are easy fodder for intruders bearing crowbars and the like. [Steve] was looking for a good way to know when people were poking their heads where they don’t belong, so he rigged up a set of simple alarms that let him know when it’s time to break out the shotgun.
On each of the shed doors, he installed a small IR proximity sensor wired up to a PIC12F675 microcontroller. The PIC is is connected to the “call” button a medium range wireless radio, so that whenever the IR sensor detects that the door is ajar, the PIC triggers an alert on the base unit.
The solution is simple, which we figure also makes it pretty reliable – nice job! | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "625852",
"author": "jameswilddev",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T16:13:12",
"content": "Is that walkie talkie just sitting on two screws? With the forcing of the door, it’s gonna pop out of those, fall to the floor and probably rip the circuit off the door in the process.",
"parent_... | 1,760,376,908.237402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/10/a-jukebox-in-a-bell-jar/ | A “Jukebox” In A Bell Jar | Jeremy Cook | [
"ipod hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bell jar",
"hard drive",
"iPod Mini"
] | [Tim] wrote in to tell us about his
Mark III hard drive
in a bell jar, and we were quite impressed! The principle of using a bell jar to protect the hard drive inside so the world can see it spinning is really a cool idea, but his execution of this project is excellent. It was reportedly so good that an unnamed college actually asked him to build one of his drive displays for them.
The Mark III is an excellent build, and the little hard drive has been swapped to the front of it for better visualisation. The disadvantage of the iPod Mini used for the Mark III build is that it actually buffers enough so that the read head doesn’t have to spin during the entire song. Because of this, we thought that
his first build
, nicknamed [pink], was even more interesting, if ever so slightly less refined. By many of our hacking standards though, both are incredibly finished works of art!
Both these builds feature a plethora of LEDs to keep you entertained, and can be seen demonstrated after the break!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGPPSzfo0aI%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5un_GkwjCs%5D | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "625831",
"author": "Matthew French",
"timestamp": "2012-04-10T15:39:52",
"content": "Pretty cool, How did he manage to open up the hard drive without ruining the disc and read/write head with dust.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,376,908.117808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/12/putting-qr-codes-in-copper/ | Putting QR Codes In Copper | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"copper",
"etching",
"qr code"
] | Former Hackaday contributor [mikeysklar] has been
trying to etch a QR code
into a sheet of copper. Although his phone can’t read the CuR codes he’s made so far, he’s still made an impressive piece of milled copper.
The biggest problem [mikey] ran into is getting Inkscape to generate proper cnc tool paths instead of just tracing a bitmap image. He’s got the CNC part of his build under control, but he still can’t find a QR code reader that will register his work.
We’re
no stranger to QR codes
here at Hack a Day, and it’s very possible the only thing that could be stopping [mikey]’s QR code from being read by a phone is the contrast of the image. We’re thinking a little bit of printer’s ink forced into the non-copper part of the PCB would make the QR code register. Since [mikey] already has a very nice negative etching of his QR code, he could easily use his new board
as a printing plate
, making infinite paper copies of his copper-based QR code.
If you’ve got any ideas on how [mikey] can get his QR code working, post them in the comments. | 18 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "627564",
"author": "smoker_dave",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T15:40:14",
"content": "http://wtfqrcodes.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "627571",
"author": "Mikey Sklar",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T15:49:14",
"content"... | 1,760,376,908.176117 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/12/using-gps-to-stay-aware-of-red-light-cameras/ | Using GPS To Stay Aware Of Red Light Cameras | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"gps hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"adafruit",
"arduino",
"gps",
"red light camera"
] | Depending on how you view them, red light cameras are a great way to get people to drive carefully, or an utter nuisance. We agree with the latter opinion, as does [Dave],
so he built a handy little device
that alerts him when he’s about to approach one of these intersections.
His Red Light Camera Alerter is based around an Atmega 328P sporting the Arduino bootloader. The micro obtains GPS coordinates while [Dave] is driving, comparing his current location with a table of all known red light intersections in the area. As he nears a red light camera, the status LED changes colors from blue to yellow to red as he gets closer, making it easy to keep aware of his situation. He also included an Adafruit OLED display in his device, which relays his speed, GPS coordinates, heading, and actual distance from the red light in real time.
While [Dave] admits that he doesn’t really have a need for the alerter as there are only a couple located in his immediate vicinity, he says it was a fun and easy way to get some experience with using GPS sensors in his projects. He doesn’t have any video of it in action, but you can find the code he uses to drive the alerter on his blog. | 62 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "627425",
"author": "ameyring",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T12:06:16",
"content": "Will be very useful in Philadelphia, as they are being set up at intersections known for large numbers of accidents and I want to respect them in case I miss the signage.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,908.373267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/diy-project-glass-clone-looks-almost-too-good-to-be-true/ | DIY “Project Glass” Clone Looks Almost Too Good To Be True | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Portable Video Hacks"
] | [
"augmented reality",
"google",
"Project Glass",
"vuzix"
] | By now we’re assuming you are all familiar with Google’s “Project Glass”, an ambitious augmented reality project for which they revealed a promotional video last week. [Will Powell] saw the promo vid and was so inspired that he attempted to
rig up a demo of Project Glass for himself
at home.
While it might seem like a daunting project to take on, [Will] does a lot of work with Kinect-based augmented reality, so his Vuzix/HD webcam/Dragon Naturally Speaking mashup wasn’t a huge step beyond what he does at work. As you can see in the video below, the interface he implemented looks very much like the one Google showed off in their demo, responding to his voice commands in a similar fashion.
He says that the video was recorded in “real time”, though there are plenty of people who debate that claim. We’re guessing that he recorded the video stream fed into the Vuzix glasses rather than recording what was being shown in the glasses, which would make the most sense.
We’d hate to think that the video was faked, mostly because we would love to see Google encounter some healthy competition, but you can decide for yourself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=33wOKBMA2QA&w=470] | 57 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "627021",
"author": "atomsoft",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T00:35:11",
"content": "I doubt its portable yet. Would be nice to have a linux based device like this since windows ce wont run anything usefull.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,376,908.463599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/building-a-game-clock-for-go-or-chess/ | Building A Game Clock For Go Or Chess | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"chess",
"game timer",
"Go",
"nano",
"timer"
] | [Matias] is just getting into hobby electronics and decided to push the limits of his skill by
building this game clock
(site dead try
Internet Archive
). He comes from a software design background and that really shows through in the UI design seen in the video after the break. We enjoy the journey through his prototyping process which started with an Arduino and a breadboard, and ended with this standalone timer.
After building the first working prototype with four buttons and a character LCD, he migrated to a plastic ice cream container as an enclosure. This worked well enough, but the flimsy case needed an upgrade. As he looked toward the next version he decided to move to an Arduino Nano board to save on space. The rest of the components were soldered to some protoboard, with a pair of pin headers to receive the Nano. The finished board is the same length as the Nano and only about twice as wide.
The box was modeled on the computer (it looks like SketchUp to us be we could be wrong) then cut from pieces of Masonite. It hosts the character LCD with a pair of arcade buttons for each player to shift the time burden to his or her opponent. The middle button pauses the game, and there’s a trimpot on the back to adjust the screen contrast. [Matias] managed to include a surprising number of settings which will make this little box useful for a wide range of game types.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0bREuYBKjU&w=470] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "627015",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T00:10:47",
"content": "Software people always build good UIs. From my software background Ive always gotten that comment and I just think it comes from the mindset of being a hardcore coder.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,908.275622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/board-lets-you-know-when-to-hold-em-know-when-to-fold-em/ | Board Lets You Know When To Hold ’em; Know When To Fold ’em | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"CHEATING",
"odds",
"poker",
"propeller"
] | Don’t mind me, I’m just listening to some tunes during our poker game. Well, that and
getting some electronic coaching about poker odds
. This board lets you wiggle your toes to input the upcards, and those in your hand. After each entry the gadget will tell you your odds of winning the hand. Take it easy with this kind of stuff, if
Rounders
was at all realistic, getting caught cheating is a painful mistake.
The thing we find interesting about the system is that it doesn’t use a stored odds database. Instead, the Propeller chip runs a simulation of 1000 hands of poker based on the cards you have entered and uses the results to calculate the odds. [Nick] says that this runs quickly because he’s using multiple cores for the calculations, and it cuts down on the data that the device needs to have on board. Right now the feedback uses a text-to-speech generated voice, but you can customize the audio clips if you’d like. Check out a demo of the device in the clip after the break.
Not looking to get the beat down for cheating? Here’s
a poker tournament timer
that we assure you is on the up-and-up.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/39729505 w=470] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "626958",
"author": "Mark R",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T22:26:24",
"content": "someone’s getting kneecapped",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "626990",
"author": "zuul",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T23:16:49",
"content": "and... | 1,760,376,908.506982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/automated-turntable-photography/ | Automated Turntable Photography | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"16f628a",
"pic",
"stepper motor",
"turntable",
"usb"
] | [Muris] has a friend who is selling items on the internet. This friend wanted a simple way to make rotating images of the products and asked him to help. The result of his labors is
this base unit that drives the turn table and controls the camera
.
The first iteration of the turntable was powered by the stepper motor from a floppy drive. A disc was mounted directly on the motor spindle, but the results were a bit poor. This is because the motor had a fairly low resolution of 200 steps per rotation. That doesn’t allow for smooth animation, and there was a lot of vibration in the system. An upgrade to the geared system you see above included swapping out that motor for one from an old scanner. Now it achieves 1200 steps per rotation and the vibration is gone.
The connectors seen in the base are USB, incoming power, and shutter control. [Muris] wrote a program to control the PIC 16F628A inside the base. The program sends commands via USB and has parameters for number of frames per rotation, direction of rotation, and the like. Set it up as desired, place the product on the turntable, and hit start. Unfortunately there’s no video of this in action because [Muris] gave it to his friend as soon as it was finished. We guess the fact that he didn’t get it back means it’s working great.
If you don’t mind some rough edges and exposed wiring you can
throw a system of your own together pretty quickly
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "627502",
"author": "ColinB",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T14:15:40",
"content": "With decent microstepping drive, the original stepper motor could probably have done fine.The LiniStepperis an example of a really nice and smooth driver.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,376,908.545767 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/11/hackaday-links-april-11-2012/ | Hackaday Links: April 11, 2012 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"battlebots",
"circuit bending",
"classroom",
"gems",
"goldsmith",
"jet engine",
"robot wars",
"science teacher",
"Sega Saturn",
"steam engine",
"stop motion"
] | This hurts our head
You know you can ‘freeze’ drops of water in mid-air by
flashing a LED at the right time
, right? Well, according
to this video
you don’t even need a strobing light; just use the frame rate of the camera. Much cooler if you don’t know how it works, in our humble opinion.
Now do Junkyard Wars!
[James Cameron] and [Mark Burnett] (the guy who created
Survivor
) are bringing
Battlebots back to the Discovery Channel
. The new show is called
Robogeddon
and calls upon the current talent in the fighting robot world. Our prediction? Someone is going to build an amazing piece of art that will be completely destroyed in the first round; a wedge with wheels will take the championship.
A steam engine made out of rocks
[Hansmeevis] just spent 230 hours
hand carving a steam engine out of gems
. It’s called “Dragon’s Breath” and it’s an amazing piece of work: the cylinder is carved out of quartz, while the flywheel, mount, and base are carved out of jasper, onyx, zugalite, and other semi precious gems. Amazing artistry
and it works
.
Don’t lose a finger on all that science over there
[Dr. W] is a science teacher in Saint-Louis, France. Next year, his students will be learning about reaction propulsion and impulse conservation. To demonstrate these properties, [Dr. W] hacked up an
old vacuum cleaner in to a jet engine
and built a Pitot tube to measure the 140 km/h wind speed.
Google translation
.
Circuit bending a Sega Saturn
Making cool glitched-up graphics from Ataris and Nintendos is old hat, but not much has been done with circuit bending slightly more modern consoles. [big pauper] found his old Sega Saturn in his grandma’s attic and wondered what secrets this forgotten box held. It turns out he can make some
pretty cool sounds
and even cooler glitched out graphics. The pic above is from Virtua Fighter; done correctly these glitched low-polygon graphics could easily find themselves in a very stylistic indie game. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "626824",
"author": "joe",
"timestamp": "2012-04-11T18:36:46",
"content": "Can’t expect stone to hold up nearly as well. Bet it cracks after not too long. Seems to vibrate more than I would expect. Also would be nice to have the steam source in there too.Neat.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,376,908.65122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/13/this-led-table-really-ties-the-room-together/ | This LED Table Really Ties The Room Together | Mike Nathan | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega128",
"furniture",
"led",
"matrix",
"table"
] | Along with quadrotors, and portable game consoles, one of the hacks we never get tired of seeing is an LED matrix table. [Christian Enchelmaier] wrote in to share his take on the ever popular pixelated furniture,
which we think came out pretty well
(
Translation
).
Instead of going for a full-sized coffee table, [Christian] decided to keep things on the smaller scale his first time out, opting for an ottoman/end table nstead. He constructed a 16×16 matrix using RGB LEDs, encapsulating each one in its own “pixel”, as is common with these builds. [Christian] uses an Atmega 128 to run the show, displaying the current time and date, temperature, music visualizations, games, images, along with short videos. He also outfitted the table with an IR receiver so that he can control the table’s display from afar.
As of right now, [Christian] doesn’t have any video of the table in action, but there’s plenty in the way of pictures scattered throughout his build log to keep you busy in the meantime. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "628352",
"author": "DanWake",
"timestamp": "2012-04-13T14:01:42",
"content": "Hmm – 16×16 grid. I’d light up every other block of four pixels and play checkers!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "628437",
"author": "Fred",
... | 1,760,376,909.301009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/04/12/autonomous-time-lapse-with-a-video-camera-throwie/ | Autonomous Time Lapse With A Video Camera Throwie | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"attiny45",
"fob video",
"keychain video",
"time-lapse"
] | When [Matt] came across a small video camera made to fit onto a keychain, the first thing that came to mind is a time-lapse video throwie. Like the LED + coin cell battery + magnet we’ve seen we’ve seen before (and deployed…),
[Matt]’s video throwie
would be deployed in interesting spots for a few days and shoot a time-lapse video until the battery ran out.
The camera [Matt] picked up has the capability of shooting video or still pictures and writing them to a microSD card. To make his camera film a time-lapse video, [Matt] connected an ATtiny45 to the camera shutter and power buttons and uploaded a short bit of code that would snap a picture ever 15 seconds.
Right now, [Matt] is having
a few problems
with his video throwie. When the camera is turned on, it iterates through the SD card to find the next unused file name. This eats up a few seconds, so the current setup will slowly speed up the time-lapse video. This isn’t an insurmountable problem, so we’re looking forward to the very interesting videos these
tough little cameras
will film.
Check out [Matt]’s video of ice melting after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtWfPSzhBXw&w=470] | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "627856",
"author": "RM",
"timestamp": "2012-04-12T22:14:29",
"content": "That is seriously cool.I had the same idea, but had not yet got around to it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "627873",
"author": "Jamie",
"timestam... | 1,760,376,908.698314 |
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