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https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/cellphone-microscope-for-about-20/ | Cellphone Microscope For About $20 | Mike Szczys | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"marble",
"microscope",
"spectrometer"
] | Medical-grade microscope photography for $20 might be a game changer in areas where medical services are unavailable. This particular hack uses an iPhone’s
2 megapixel camera, as well as a tiny glass marble, to magnify a sample
to about 350 times its actual size. The two images seen on the left are red blood cells photographed with the improvised microscope. The main issue with this magnification method is a very thin plane of focus that is overcome with processing in software.
This makes us think of the microscope hack that
shined a laser through a droplet of water
, to project the image on a wall. The
concept was later refined
to work with samples on glass slides. There are a couple of distinct advantages to using this cellphone-based method. First, the sample can be seen with its true colors. Second, you not only magnify the sample, but you have a digitized image already on a device that connects to the Internet. If you’re trying to make a medical diagnosis this can easily be sent to a qualified professional for analysis.
The team that came up with this technique also figured out how to build a cellphone-based spectrometer for just a few bucks. The image in the upper right is the result of that hack. Both have a step-by-step build guide on the page linked at the top. The microscope is just a glass bead in a piece of rubber, as seen here. The spectrometer is a bit more involved.
[Thanks Fabien] | 30 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "484534",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T20:32:19",
"content": "So how do they take multiple images to do the focus stacking? I’d think handholding the phone would not be suitable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "4... | 1,760,377,053.877893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/multicolor-3d-prints-the-hard-way/ | Multicolor 3D Prints The Hard Way | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"makerbot",
"multicolor",
"openscad"
] | After drooling over the Makerbot dual-head extruder, [Brett] decided to get off his duff and make a
proper multi-color print
.
[Brett] has been making a few
bottle openers
for friends and has been successfully experimenting with switching filaments in the middle of a print. For his
“Saturday Killer”
bottle opener, he decided to push multicolored prints to the limit. For the “Saturday Killer,” [Brett] decided to print an abridged version of the classic Simpsons quote, “Beer, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems” on the
side
of a bottle opener in 4 different colors.
The files necessary to print the Saturday Killer were generated in
OpenSCAD
. The general principle behind the design is to generate separate .STL files for the bottle opener and the sides, split those files into 2-layer chunks, and print those files while constantly adjusting the z-height. It’s not called the Saturday Killer for nothing, so [Brett] had to change the color of his filament 25 times.
A much simpler version of a complex multi-color print is [Brett]’s Shepard Fairey inspired
self-portrait
. Still, we’re thinking a dual head extruder is somewhere in [Brett]’s future. At least he’s got the technique down. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "484494",
"author": "Regulus",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T19:06:07",
"content": "I chatted with Brett at NY Makerfaire, he’s a pretty awesome dude.This work is fantastic, and makes me wonder why there are no automatic filament changers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,377,054.165769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/c64-joystick-adapter/ | C64 Joystick Adapter | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"24fj64gb002",
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"Joystick",
"pic",
"usb"
] | [Marcus Gritsch] wanted to do his retro gaming using retro hardware… or at least using some retro hardware. Although he was playing his Commodore 64 games in an emulator, he figured that using an original controller would boost the nostalgia quite a bit. This is a vintage Competition Pro joystick that has buttons and a joystick of a similar quality to arcade hardware and a DE-9 connector. He managed to connect new to old by
building his own USB to C64 joystick adapter
.
His project started out by breadboarding a circuit based on a PIC 24FJ64GB002 microcontroller. This does all of the work, having native USB support, and no problem reading and translating the signals from the old hardware which are simply conductors for each internal switch that pull to ground when actuated. Once working, he soldered everything to some protoboard; a connector at each end, the chip itself, a voltage regulator, and some passive components. It’s a, robust build that should give him years of emulated fun. | 8 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "483699",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T20:16:03",
"content": "Great! Real knoby stick, not those dinky crosses and ‘dials’ that don’t turn.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "483716",
"author": "Knightmare",
... | 1,760,377,054.121215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/years-of-robotic-projects-dumped-for-your-enjoyment/ | Years Of Robotic Projects – Dumped For Your Enjoyment | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"build log"
] | Meet tippy, just one of the multitude of robotic projects [Oneironaut] has taken on over the years. He ‘dug deep’ and put together
a huge data dump of pictures and descriptions of his old robotic projects
, then posted them for your enjoyment. When he wrote in to Hackaday on Monday he mentioned 33 pages of them, but he must be adding material as he finds it because we see 52 pages.
These aren’t micro-robots either. These are
I’m going to chase you down because I’m your worst nightmare
robots. They use heavy welded-iron frames, lead-acid batteries, and gear-motor driven locomotion. Some of his project names include
The Tank
,
The Sentinel
, and
The Megatron
. Bookmark the link you see above, because you’re going to want to spend some time sifting through the candy-shop of projects which seem to be too plentiful to be the hobby of just one man. Although we shouldn’t be surprised, just look at the multitude of spy-gadgets he’s come up with lately like the
GPS tracker
and the
long-range laser night vision
. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "483707",
"author": "Heatgap/Ho0d0o",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T20:30:48",
"content": "I’m liking this article idea! I’m combing through them now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "483725",
"author": "JMS",
"timestamp": "201... | 1,760,377,053.653909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/throw-together-a-temperature-logger-in-minutes/ | Throw Together A Temperature Logger In Minutes | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"12f1822",
"logger",
"MCP9701A",
"pic",
"temperature",
"uart",
"usb"
] | [Rajendra] found
an easy way to make a USB temperature logger
. He already had a USB to UART adapter that takes care of the heavy lifting. On one end it’s got the USB plug, on the other a set of pins provide a ground connection, 3.3V and 5V feed, as well as RX/TX lines.
To get the hardware up and running all he needed was something to read a temperature sensor and push that data over the serial connection. An 8-pin microcontroller in the form of a PIC 12F1822 does the trick. It runs off of the 5V pin on the USB-UART, and uses the ADC to get temperature data from an MCP9701A sensor.
The sample rate is hard-coded into to the PIC’s firmware, but adding a button, or coding some serial monitoring could easily make that configurable. [Rajendra] used Processing to write an app which displays the incoming temperature info and uses the computer to time-stamp and log the inputs. We could see this as a quick solution to tracking wort temperature during fermentation to make sure your beer comes out just right. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "483603",
"author": "Paul Potter",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T17:38:17",
"content": "Nicely done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "483630",
"author": "Curious man",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T18:12:19",
"content": "What US... | 1,760,377,053.975129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/building-the-second-tiniest-tetris/ | Building The Second Tiniest Tetris | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"atari",
"crt",
"tetris"
] | A few years ago, [Richard] pulled a crushed camcorder out of a junk box at a hamfest. After pulling the half-inch CRT out of the viewfinder, he needed to find a project. [Richard] ended up building the
second tiniest game of Tetris
we’ve ever seen.
After futzing around with the CRT, [Richard] discovered that one of the pins would accept an NTSC input. He also found a
similar project
that used a dime-sized CRT to play Tetris. With ready to go code, [Richard] started assembling his project into a handsome wooden box.
There are two PCBs for the build – a CRT driver circuit, and a small custom board that handles the game and controller code. The circuit for the game board was found on
this site
, but the featured boards there were too large for the project. A stripped-down board was fabricated by BatchPCB and put into the box.
There aren’t any controls on the console itself, for that a standard DB-9 connector was installed so a vintage Atari joystick could be used. For a more ergonomic Tetris experience, a Sega Genesis controller could be used. For something that looks like it comes out a steampunk laboratory, playing Tetris is a bit unexpected. Check out the demo video of the screen at 20x magnification after the break.
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMYwlN9wpcQ&w=470] | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "483559",
"author": "t&p",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T16:25:26",
"content": "That would make a great conversational piece!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "483560",
"author": "Oneironaut",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T16:30:15",... | 1,760,377,053.922009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/tiny-mp3-module-is-perfect-for-your-next-project/ | Tiny MP3 Module Is Perfect For Your Next Project | Mike Nathan | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"microsd",
"mp3",
"pic24f",
"tiny",
"vs1011"
] | If your next project needs the ability to play MP3s but you don’t have a lot of room to spare in your enclosure, [Boris] has just the thing you need. His
tiny embedded MP3 module
supports playback of up to 65,536 songs or as many as you can fit on a 16GB microSD card, which isn’t bad in the least.
The module relies on a PIC24F for input and control, while a VS1011 handles all of the MP3 decoding responsibilities. He says that the module would be great for voice-enabled vending machines, telephone systems, cars, and more.
With such a wide range of possible applications, he decided that the module should be able to support several different input methods. The board can be controlled via a set of digital input buttons, which is perfect for direct human interaction, while it also supports serial control for scenarios where it is part of a larger embedded system.
Of course, we’ve seen
tiny MP3 players like this before
, but we like the fact that this module was designed to operate in standalone mode or as a component in a larger device. Of course all of the device’s schematics, code, and a BoM are available, allowing you to build your own if you are comfortable with SMD soldering. | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "483513",
"author": "DooWeeNo",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T15:13:15",
"content": "Any chance these are available for purchase in commercial quantity?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "483520",
"author": "mankmanger",
"timesta... | 1,760,377,053.711418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/a-cd-changer-made-of-wood/ | A CD Changer Made Of Wood | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cd changer",
"printer port",
"woodworking"
] | Although this is by no means a new hack – it was made circe 2002 –
this wooden CD changer
is an interesting piece of machinery. The whole thing is a simple pick-and-place device. The gripper is brilliant in it’s simplicity, using only a rubber band, wood, and a solenoid. It grips the CD by the middle hole, picks it up, and the assembly then travels to the CD tray or the stack. Everything works with DC motors and string, and several micro-switches make sure everything is picked up and dropped in the correct position.
Although we may think this is a pretty cool device,
[Matthias]
is quite humble about his machine’s abilities. In his estimation, although one could probably duplicate 12 CDs with relative ease, if you really wanted to duplicate a large number, it’d be best to buy one. Maybe he works in manufacturing.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7axt7Tr-j8&w=470&h=315%5D
In case you’d like another way to change your CDs, check out
this machine
powered by an Arduino instead of a PC. | 15 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "483447",
"author": "James Shield",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T14:07:49",
"content": "this was posted in 2006 on here guyshttp://hackaday.com/2006/06/17/diy-optical-disc-duplicator/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "483480",
... | 1,760,377,054.025972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/powering-kids-toys-by-hand/ | Powering Kids’ Toys By Hand | Mike Nathan | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"crank",
"flashlight",
"toy"
] | [Dominik’s] daughter had
an old toy piano that she loved
, but when the batteries started to die down, it played awful tones and sounded generally out of tune. While this is likely something our circuit bending friends might be interested in, [Dominik] preferred when things sounded more cheery.
He considered simply replacing the batteries, but it seemed like a far better idea to do away with them altogether. he hunted around for a solution, and eventually found one at the local IKEA store. He grabbed a LJUSA hand-powered flashlight and disassembled it, saving the crank and circuitry.
He installed the crank on the back side of his daughter’s piano, and mounted the electronic bits inside the toy’s shell. The crank spins a brushless motor, generating an AC current which is rectified to DC before being stored in a capacitor. He says that a 30 second crank will play just a few tunes, which isn’t ideal, though it is better than frequently replacing batteries.
[Thanks, Roger] | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "483432",
"author": "A dad",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T13:40:15",
"content": "Mike,you wrote“He says that a 30 second crank will play just a few tunes, which isn’t ideal…”are you serious… every dad will agree that this IS PERFECT!!!!My son has a few of this kind of toys (most presents... | 1,760,377,054.079286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/on-the-life-of-dennis-ritchie/ | On The Life Of [Dennis Ritchie] | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"c++",
"dennis ritchie",
"unix"
] | Chances are you have already heard of the passing of [Dennis Ritchie]. We admit, we’re among the throngs who knew little of his life, but [Cade Metz] has posted
an excellent remembrance of his life
which we think is well worth reading.
[Dennis] passed on October 12th at the age of 70. This image shows him receiving the National Medal of Technology awarded to him by [Bill Clinton] in 1998. His legacy lives on in the work that earned him this award as the creator of the C programming language; a side project which he developed to help him achieve the creation of a new system kernel called UNIX. This work, of course, was the precursor that led to universal software packages like OSX, iOS, Linux, and even Windows (which at one point was itself written using the C language).
There has been some Internet fodder regarding media coverage of [Steve Jobs’] death and not of [Dennis’] passing. It’s harder for those lacking experience with programming to comprehend [Dennis’] contributions. We’re glad to have an opportunity to pass on the story of his life and to take a moment to appreciate his accomplishments.
[Thanks Dave]
[
Photo Source
] | 40 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "482839",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T23:12:31",
"content": "Dennis, you’re a real hero in my world. Thanks for everything you did for the world of software development.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "482842",
... | 1,760,377,053.609494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/anodizing-and-dying-aluminum-without-battery-acid/ | Anodizing And Dyeing Aluminum Without Battery Acid | Mike Nathan | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"aluminum",
"anodizing",
"Chemistry",
"sodium bisulfate",
"sodium hydroxide",
"sulfuric acid"
] | While many people have tried their hand at anodizing aluminum at home, there are plenty who would just as soon leave it up to the professionals due to the highly concentrated sulfuric acid required for the process. [Ken] started thinking about the process and wondered if there was a way
to get comparable results using chemicals that are easier to obtain and dispose of.
Through some experimentation he found that sodium bisulfate (NaHSO4), which is a sodium salt of sulfuric acid, can easily be used in its place with great results. The chemical is typically advertised in hardware and pool stores as “Aqua Chem”, and can be had at a very reasonable price. When paired with the proper DC current along with a cathode, the sodium bisulfate easily anodizes an aluminum workpiece and renders it ready for coloring with RIT, readily available cloth dye.
We were impressed with the results, and when looking at [Ken’s] test pieces, it seems that the metal dyed with sodium bisulfate has a more uniform, less streaky coloring to it. It’s also worth mentioning that [Ken] has found it is fairly easy to etch the aluminum before anodizing using a solution of sodium hydroxide, which is great for individuals who prefer a more matte finish.
If this is something that interests you, be sure to swing by his site. He has a posted nice video overview of the process that may be of some help. | 43 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "482802",
"author": "Ken Quast",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T22:15:38",
"content": "Actually Mike it is NaHSO4. One too many H’s LOL, Ken.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "482809",
"author": "wisdom",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17... | 1,760,377,054.249982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/halloween-hacks-transform-that-annoying-dancing-santa-into-a-halloween-mummy/ | Halloween Hacks: Transform That Annoying Dancing Santa Into A Halloween Mummy! | Mike Nathan | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"repurpose",
"santa-pede",
"toys"
] | If you have one of those annoying dancing (Santa/Elvis/Frankenstein) decorations sitting around collecting dust, you could always
repurpose it like [mischka] did.
He originally wanted to enter
our Santa-Pede challenge
and purchased a dancing Santa, but time eventually got the best of him. With no other use for it in mind, he decided to make his dancing Christmas toy into a fun Halloween decoration.
An electronic rendition of “Jingle Bells” isn’t exactly the scariest thing around, so he dismantled the dancing toy and started fiddling with the sound board. A few well placed resistors later, his circuit-bent Santa Claus started to sound like he had five too many egg nogs, which was perfect for the dancing mummy [mischka] had in mind.
He transplanted some LEDs from Santa’s base into his head, and masked it off with some electrical tape so that only the eyes were visible. He then wrapped the mummy in the requisite bloodied bandages and set him out for the kids to enjoy.
Since it’s hard to find someone who genuinely likes these dancing toys, we think this is a great way to make them useful again. If you’ve got a few of these things kicking around, we suggest reenacting the dance routine from Thriller using an army of Santa-zombies and sending a video our way.
Continue reading to see a video of [mischka’s] mummy in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uAhzeCY9xdo&w=470] | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "482656",
"author": "jethomson",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T21:36:54",
"content": "That’s so very cool! Great job. I can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to me to get my Franken-Santa out for Halloween.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FQl_ufDUshttp://jethomson.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/fra... | 1,760,377,054.8368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/monkey-powered-scooter-is-all-electric/ | Monkey-powered Scooter Is All Electric | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric",
"scooter"
] | [Knife141] lets this monkey push him around all day long. It’s a whimsical touch for
his scratch-built electric scooter
. He started the build without a set of plans, cutting angle iron and clamping it together until the frame looked about right. Once the welding was done, he began adding all the parts to make it functional. There are front and rear brakes, operated by a lever on the handlebars. The rear wheel has a sprocket bolted to it, along with some spacers to give the chain adequate clearance.
Inside the saddle enclosure you’ll find a set of three lead-acid batteries. These are 12 volt 10 amp models that provide 36 volts of juice to the electric motor. The only thing we know about the electronics is that both the motor and the controller were purchased at a surplus store.
The sock monkey that pushes him around is sort of an afterthought. But since it’s just a couple of wheels with the feet attached, this might make a fun project for the kids to add to a bike. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "482620",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T20:47:51",
"content": "Similarly, I’ve seen a lawn tractor “pulling” a much larger tractor in a parade. Actually the links in the “tow chain” were welded stiff and the large tractor was pushing the smaller tractor.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,377,054.795609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/lcd-backpack-from-arduino-board-to-homemade-pcb/ | LCD Backpack: From Arduino Board To Homemade Pcb | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"character lcd",
"pcb"
] | [Kaushlesh Chandel] prototyped a few projects on his Arduino that use an HD44780 Character LCD. Wanting to keep these projects in one piece, but not sacrifice his Arduino board, so
he etched his own LCD backpack that is Arduino compatible
. If you’ve never made it past the Arduino board to build a module that only uses the parts you need for a project, this is a great source of inspiration for you to give it a try.
The design that [Kaushlesh] drew up is quite simple. It connects directly to the single in-line header of the character LCD. It looks like he’s using the 4-bit mode for addressing that display, which leaves you with quite a few pins (both digital and analog) to work with in the future. The important components rolled into his design are the chip itself, an ATmega8/168/328, the crystal to make sure it is running at the correct speed for Arduino timing, and a trimpot for adjusting the contrast on the display. The final feature you’ll want to be sure to include in your own design is a pin header for programming the chip via an FTDI cable.
Never etched your own PCB before? Give
our PCB fab tutorial
a try. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "482616",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T20:44:45",
"content": "Maybe there is nothing new here, but I like the presentation and the toner transfer link, plus the idea that he left the remaining data lines available for a header.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,054.882139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/popcard-vending-machine-enhancement-gets-upgraded/ | PopCARD Vending Machine Enhancement Gets Upgraded | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"rfid",
"soda",
"vending machine"
] | [Alex] wrote in to let us know he just completed
a pretty major upgrade to his PopCARD RFID vending machine system
. You may remember that earlier this year he
added an Arduino based RFID reader to a soda machine
so that thirsty patrons could pay with plastic instead of cold hard cash. That system worked, but at the beginning of the video after the break [Alex] goes over some of its flaws. There was a button to add cash from the card to the machine in $1 increments, rather than the system just knowing how much to charge you. Also, if you accidentally selected something that was out of stock you were out of luck and were charged anyway.
The new system does away with the button, and knows what product is sold out. The control hardware was upgraded to an Arduino mega to gain extra I/O pins. The device now sits in between the machine’s buttons and its own controller. When cash is used, the Arduino sits passively and lets the machine do its thing. But when a card is scanned, it takes over control of the buttons, sensing your selection, then simulating coin and button presses to vend accordingly. The new setup also uses an Ethernet shield which allows [Alex] to tell what items are running low without being at the machine itself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAXSO_yA7nk&w=470] | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "482514",
"author": "Fritoeata",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T18:35:39",
"content": "Me being unfamiliar with the original project, I was actually thinking just yesterday that a guy could do this… Great idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,377,054.693367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/tactile-4-bit-maze/ | Tactile 4-bit Maze | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"logic game",
"maze",
"motorized fader"
] | [Oskar] has been making puzzles for some time now. In 2000, he made a small electromechanical 4-bit maze that’s really fun to play. Lately though, he’s been working on an
improved version
that could be the beginnings of a commercial product.
The earlier
electromechanical maze
(you can play it in an applet on that page) is just a microcontroller hooked up to electromagnets and switches. To complete the maze, find the patterns of bits that move everything from 0 to 1. It’s a little bit like the
Fox Chicken Grain puzzle
, only a bit more complicated.
[Oskar]’s latest version uses motorized faders to represent the 0 and 1 states of the bits. The same logic in the electromechanical version is in the newest version. An Ardunio takes care of the motor control and game logic.
As a tiny logic game toy, it’s a great idea; everybody needs to get some hands-on action with Karnaugh maps sometime in their life. Check out the video below for the demo of the 4-bit maze in action.
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKQTuVD2ac&w=470] | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "482289",
"author": "Gragg",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T17:12:29",
"content": "Looks like fun. Where can I get some of those cool sliders?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "482291",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,377,054.749677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/unbricking-and-upgrading-an-asus-wl520-router/ | Unbricking And Upgrading An ASUS Wl520 Router | Mike Nathan | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"ASUS wl520-gU",
"repair",
"router",
"unbrick"
] | [Andrew]
has an ASUS wl520-gU route
r that he is pretty fond of, despite its numerous problems. CPU clock bug aside, the router only has 16MB or memory like many others on the market. While tooling around with the bootloader he bricked the device, so he decided it was time for an overhaul.
After some searching online, he found that the router could be unbricked by shorting out one of the pins on its flash chip. With an emergency unbrick button installed on the board, he can now reset it in seconds by power cycling the device.
Now that he had a working router again, he proceeded to remedy his initial gripe – the lackluster amount of memory. He soldered in a 512Mbit (64MB) module in the original chip’s place, crossed his fingers and booted the router. It started up just fine, so he ran a few commands to instruct the router to recognize the new memory capacity. After rebooting, he found that it only recognized 32MB of RAM, which was remedied by soldering a 22 Ohm resistor to one of the module’s pins.
It did take a bit of careful soldering to get things upgraded and working, but we think it was well worth the effort. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "484437",
"author": "afex",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T17:05:50",
"content": "serious question here – how does a RAM upgrade actually help a router? i guess i can see if you’re doing some extra-curricular stuff with openWRT (torrenting, other services, etc) but for a stock firmware rou... | 1,760,377,054.641177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/halloween-hacks-scaring-small-children-with-huffman-coding/ | Halloween Hacks: Scaring Small Children With Huffman Coding | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"digital audio",
"Halloween hacks",
"huffman coding",
"nerdkits"
] | The team over at NerdKits decided they needed to do something for Halloween. Only on Halloween is scaring small children is an admirable goal, so they demoed a way to
play creepy sounds
after a door has been opened.
To trigger the sound, a magnetic reed switch from an alarm system is attached to a front door. This triggers the microcontroller and with a bit of delay, some creepy audio can be played on a pair of speakers. The team decided to store all the audio data on the flash memory of their ATmega328p, but that wouldn’t allow for a very long scream. To extend the length of the wails of the damned, the NerdKits team decided to use
Huffman coded audio
.
Because Huffman coding relies on the most common value being assigned the shortest code, the team used a bit of Python and C magic to figure out the optimal encoding for their audio file. After the evil laugh was sufficiently compressed, the microcontroller was programmed to decode the audio and send it to a pair of speakers. The team made all the software for their project available
here
for your perusal.
Although this project could be thrown together in an hour with an Arduino and an MP3 shield, the NerdKits team wants to get kids to learn
how
things work, also an admirable goal. [Humberto] from NerdKits put a video up explaining the theory of the project. Check it out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE-kCSjbauw&w=470] | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "484480",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T18:37:35",
"content": "Huffman encoding is great for learning bit-twiddling in C, but Fibonacci-delta compression (4 bits per sample) is a good alternative, and much simpler. Plus, it’s the only practical use of the Fibonacci sequ... | 1,760,377,054.941149 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/baking-an-hp-laserjet-1522-series-back-to-life/ | Baking An HP LaserJet 1522 Series Back To Life | Mike Nathan | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"HP",
"laserjet 1522",
"printer",
"reflow"
] | [Thice] had himself a problem.
As luck would have it his HP laser printer died shortly after the warranty period expired, and HP was ready to charge him €350 to repair it. Since that would pretty much buy [Thice] a new one, he decided to try fixing the problem himself. He scoured the Internet for a solution to his problem, and luckily discovered that his printer might be recoverable.
The entire LaserJet M1522 series is apparently pretty prone to breaking, with the formatter board being the usual point of failure. To fix his printer, he disassembled the outer shell, removing the formatter board from the unit. Once the onboard battery was removed, he constructed a set of standoffs using aluminum foil, and set the board in his oven at 180°C (~356°F) for about eight minutes.
After cooling, he reinstalled the board, and his printer behaved as good as new. [Thice] says that the only problem with his fix is that he needs to bake the board every 6 months or so, making this a great hack but not the most ideal solution in the long term. | 51 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "484395",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T15:08:10",
"content": "That looks like a combo convection / microwave. It’s good to know that the procedures for repairing and destroying the board differ by only one button press.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,377,055.028039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/beefing-up-your-laptops-gaming-chops-with-an-external-gpu/ | Beefing Up Your Laptop’s Gaming Chops With An External GPU | Mike Nathan | [
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"eGPU",
"express card",
"external",
"PCIe",
"video card"
] | If you’re not willing to shell out for a reasonably powerful laptop it seems that there’s not a ton that can be done to boost your gaming performance. That is, unless you have an empty Express card slot and the right chipset.
[Phatboy69] recently put together
an external video card for his notebook
, with fantastic results. His Vaio Z128GG had an Nvidia GT330M graphics card onboard, which is decent but nothing to write home about. Using an Express card to PCIe adapter, he added an external Nvidia GTX580 to his system, and he couldn’t be more pleased with the results. While the card does take a performance hit when connected to his laptop in this way, he claims that his graphics performance has increased ten-fold, which isn’t too shabby.
There are many variables on which this process is heavily dependent, but with the right amount of tweaking, some great laptop gaming performance can be had. That said, it really does take the portability factor of your notebook down to about zero.
If this is something you might be interested in, be sure to check out
this thread over at the Notebook Review Forums
– it’s where [Phatboy69] found all the information he needed to get his system up and running properly.
[Thanks, Henry] | 42 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "484355",
"author": "Andrew Smith",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T14:05:14",
"content": "how much of a performance hit does the express to PCIe cause?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "484368",
"author": "third",
"time... | 1,760,377,055.193297 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/19/creating-a-voice-controlled-robotic-arm/ | Creating A Voice Controlled Robotic Arm | Mike Nathan | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"robotic arm",
"voice control"
] | [Arthur] was laid up with a wrist injury, so he decided it would be a great time to hang out around the house and tinker with electronics, since most outdoor activities were out of the question. He picked up a robotic arm kit and assembled it to test out some code written for it that he found online. Since typing commands into a terminal was awfully cumbersome considering his injury, he figured he might as well construct a voice control system for the arm.
He documents his work in a three part series, covering the process from concept to completion.
The first part
centers around the creation of the vocabulary and grammar for the voice recognition system, along with the how the grammar model was trained using voice samples.
The
second
and
third
portions of his tutorial deal with the software’s decoding of his commands and the Python scripts used to translate those commands into something the robotic arm can process.
[Arthur’s] voice control system works pretty well as you can see in the video below, though he already has a wish list full of improvements he hopes to make in the near future.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32nIxJZvqtI&w=470] | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "484361",
"author": "cooper",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T14:15:25",
"content": "You make me want to wish for an arm injury for 4 weeks so I can built this myself!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "484363",
"author": "psmay",
... | 1,760,377,055.244609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/halloween-props-pumpkin-battery/ | Halloween Props: Pumpkin Battery | Mike Szczys | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"cell",
"electrolyte",
"Halloween props",
"pumpkin"
] | This one would make a nice centerpiece for your Halloween party. It’s
a battery with tiny pumpkins serving as the cells
. [EM Daniels] shows us how to clear out the pumpkins, fill them with some freshly mixed electrolyte, and he even throws in the directions for baking the pumpkin seeds.
Each pumpkin will need a pair of conductors made of dissimilar metals to serve as the anode and cathode. Copper wire is used for one, aluminum for the other, and both wires have a spiral pattern bent on one end to increase the surface area that contacts the electrolytic solution. Now just boil up a slurry of vinegar, gelatin, and salt, then let it sit in the fridge over night. [EM Daniels] was able get 1.5V out of this project (enough to light one LED) for two hours, and 1.4V for six hours by using seven of the pumpkin cells in series.
[Thanks Karen] | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "483774",
"author": "spiritplumber",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T22:33:07",
"content": "Very cool, but will it run GLaDOS?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "484143",
"author": "Punkguyta",
"timestamp": "2011-10-19T07... | 1,760,377,055.292961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/18/can-you-develop-film-with-coffee-and-vitamin-c/ | Can You Develop Film With Coffee And Vitamin C? | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"coffee",
"developer",
"sodium carbonate",
"vitamin c"
] | Are you feeling a little MacGyver-ish and have access to a film camera? Perhaps you want to
try developing your pictures using coffee and vitamin C
instead of a traditional developing solution. [Danish Puthan Valiyandi] does a great job of walking us through the steps he took, including precise measurements, temperatures, and timings involved in achieving great results. This is probably not for the first-timers, as he does use special equipment associated with traditional developing methods.
The process uses a couple of easily obtainable materials: instant coffee, vitamin C powder, and
washing soda
(sodium carbonate). Once the roll of film has been exposed, it’s put onto a jig for developing (Danish does this with the lights on to make the video after the break worth watching, but you’ll need to do it in the dark). Once nestled inside of the development container, he mixes up a batch of his diy developer and agitates according to a times schedule. When the development is finished, a chemical fixer–no diy alternative used here–is added to set the film. Dry out the strips and use a scanner to digitize your work. We’re surprised by the quality of the finished product, but we shouldn’t be… he certainly knows what he’s doing.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZSKrfen6DU&w=470]
[Thanks Rob via
Photojojo
and
Found Photography
] | 25 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "483737",
"author": "lb",
"timestamp": "2011-10-18T21:29:32",
"content": "This is really old,old news. Go to Imagesfrugales blog if you want to know *all* about film development in Caffeine:http://caffenol.blogspot.com/Also there are a dozen or so flickr groups that deal with Caffeno... | 1,760,377,055.355025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/making-luminol-from-household-chemicals/ | Making Luminol From Household Chemicals | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"chemiluminescent",
"crime scene",
"csi",
"luminol"
] | What to make your own chemiluminescent material? Check out this process that
uses common household goods to synthesize luminol
. You’ll need some lab equipment, and [NurdRage] mentions some precautions to take as
luminol
is not itself toxic, but some of the fumes and intermediary chemicals found during the process are.
Start by cutting up some vinyl gloves and boiling them with some rubbing alcohol to extract diethyl hexyl phthalate. After filtering, that gets boiled with water and some drain cleaner. The goal here is to continue the process until you have pure phthalic anhydride. Almost done? Not even getting started. This is a very complicated process, but fascinating to watch. After the break you’ll find the full video, or a five-minute abridged version for those that just want a taste of this experiment.
When we looked at the
quantum dot manufacturing process
a couple of days ago we asked for more chemistry hacks. This is exactly what we were talking about and are thankful that [Rob] sent in the tip. Keep them coming!
Short version:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB_g2ddZZYk&w=470]
Long version:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Ve69s0qD0&w=470] | 45 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "482327",
"author": "Hephaix",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T17:29:50",
"content": "Breaking bad?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "482579",
"author": "Stevie",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T19:21:36",
"content": "L... | 1,760,377,055.525079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/how-to-develop-for-stm32-discovery-boards-using-linux/ | How To Develop For STM32 Discovery Boards Using Linux | Mike Szczys | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arm",
"cortex-m3",
"discovery board",
"linux",
"stm32"
] | Some hard work has gone into making it possible to
develop for the STM32 Discovery board using a Linux system
. The board boasts an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, which can be programmed via the mini-USB port on the side. But the company only supports development through their IDE’s which don’t run natively on Linux. The stlink project aims to solve this, providing a toolchain, and making it possible to flash the microcontroller via the USB connection.
The github project linked above also includes
a tutorial to get you started
(pdf). In addition to a walk through on compiling the software packages, it includes a simple blink program that you can use to test out your hardware.
GDB
, the familiar open-source debugger, is used to flash the chip. This is a bare-bones tutorial so if you end up posting about your experiences using this toolchain with the Discovery boards
we’d love to hear about it
.
[Thanks Texane] | 50 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "482220",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T15:13:48",
"content": "Cool. I bought one of these but never did use it much, because it was such a hassle. Also, STM’s hardware driver library is really sloppily written.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,377,055.608715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/modding-an-inkjet-for-pcb-production/ | Modding An Inkjet For PCB Production | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"epson",
"etchedpcb",
"inkjet",
"pcb",
"printer"
] | Like all of us, [Ryan] is tired of waiting for board production houses. To reduce some of that turnaround time, he modded an Epson inkjet into a
PCB printer
. The
Instructable
of his build is extremely thorough and it looks like he’s getting some quality boards out of his project
The build started off by disassembling an Epson C86 printer he had lying around the house. Going with an Epson printer is important – Epsons have a piezo print head accepts ink that would clog other printers. After tearing all the plastic off his printer, [Ryan] set to work raising the printer (or lowering the bed, whatever) and was off to the races.
The cartridges were filled with etch-resistant
yellow ink
and a piece of copper clad put onto the printer. After printing, [Ryan] etched his board in ferric chloride. Sadly, he’s getting small pinholes in his traces where a bit of the ink was eaten during etching. He’s tried HCl and
Peroxide
, but those turn his boards into green junk.
If you’ve got any tips to help [Ryan] out, leave them in the comments. Before that, check out the printing demo [Ryan] put up.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAFRbahnYV4&w=470] | 49 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "482190",
"author": "dizzey",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T14:32:46",
"content": "I dont know if is already doing this. but when i exprimented with printing directly to pcb i got the ink to stick better by pre-etching the board for a short while. The board turns really pink but it loks k... | 1,760,377,055.692776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/17/the-effervo-kinect-particle-effect-machine/ | The “Effervo” Kinect Particle Effect Machine | Jeremy Cook | [
"Kinect hacks"
] | [
"effervo",
"Kinect",
"particle"
] | Here’s a
new hack
for the Xbox Kinect called “Effervo”. It’s a really cool effect built using Openframeworks. The Kinect is setup in front of the user and the projector puts an image in front of the user’s screen. Three dimensional data about the person and his or her movements is captured using Microsoft’s sensor. As it is described, the Effervo program “uses simple iterative rules to govern its movement and gives the impression of swarm like behavior.” This may not be a “Haloween Hack”, but we could definitely see something similar used in a haunted house. Maybe it could use blood droplets instead of particles?
Maybe this hack will inspire other people to follow in [
Jayson’s
] footsteps. He describes himself as a “programmer turned artist.” We’d like to think that all engineering and programming work is a form of art, but the video of this piece in action after the break is especially eye-catching.
[vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/30432023
w=470&h=225] | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "482173",
"author": "Dax",
"timestamp": "2011-10-17T13:51:39",
"content": "Why don’t they write a software that would extrapolate the shape of the person’s back?Kinda like facial recognition, a program would indentify the object as a person, and would then apply some sort of a protot... | 1,760,377,055.44886 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/hackaday-links-october-16-2011/ | Hackaday Links: October 16, 2011 | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"7400",
"halftone",
"most useless machine",
"pong",
"sprites"
] | Spinning DNA animation using sprites
[James Bowman] shows a way to
use sprites to simulate parts of DNA moving in 3 dimensional space
. The animations are driven by an Arduino board and Maple board, which allows a comparison of the processing differences between the two. [Thanks Andrew]
Tiny Pong
This Pong game is so small
(
translated
), you’ll be fighting over who gets a closer view of the screen.
More CNC halftone pieces
[Christian] made
a bunch of halftone pictures with a CNC mill
. He took the concept from [Metalfusion’s]
halftone projects
and ran with it. He even posted
some video
of the
machining process
(turn down your sound before viewing this one).
Most useless machine
[Jumbleview’s]
take on the most useless machine
makes the entire lid shut off this rocker switch, instead of using a separate arm for the task.
7400 rectifier
[Noel] is using a couple of 7400 chips in an unorthodox way to
form a full-wave rectifier
. They’re not powered, but instead used for the internal diodes. It’s his entry in
the 7400 contest
. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "481510",
"author": "Hamtaro",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T22:00:51",
"content": "Gotta say, I do love the halftone pieces…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "481515",
"author": "ejonesss",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T22:07:46",
... | 1,760,377,055.74502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/we-want-this-led-ball/ | We Want This LED Ball | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"atmega 88",
"LED ball",
"MAX1674"
] | [Nikolai] has a friend who is into fire and light shows. Her birthday was coming up, so [Nikolai] decided to build something to compliment her performances. He came up with a 10 cm
LED ball
(Russian, Google
translation
) that has a matrix of 256 LEDs wrapped around its surface.
The ball’s structural support is its own PCBs. The bottom of the ball is a simple bus – no components needed. The processor module fits into the bus along with the side arcs with LEDs on the edge. The top holds two AA batteries and a MAX1674 step up converter. The
view
from the inside looks like some sort of bizarre alien device. Very cool.
The central processor module is based around an ATmega88. The microprocessor controls two ‘595 for each of the 16 side panels. So far, four modes of operation have been programmed – a sine graph wrapped around a sphere, a random function, two oscillating circles, and plain old lines. The code for the LED ball is available (
offsite link
), and thankfully the variables are in English. An impressive piece of engineering and board layout skills.
Check out the video of the LED ball after the break.
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NmFXt8k5Ao&w=470] | 56 | 42 | [
{
"comment_id": "481339",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T20:13:30",
"content": "WANT so bad",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "481341",
"author": "sneakypoo",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T20:15:57",
"content": "I’ve been thinking... | 1,760,377,055.834681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/easy-to-use-automatic-qr-code-generator/ | Easy To Use Automatic QR Code Generator | Mike Nathan | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"qr code",
"smartphones"
] | Love them or hate them, plenty of people around the world use QR codes on a daily basis. Since he thinks they’re pretty great, Hackaday reader [falldeaf] thought it would be cool to put together
an automatic QR code generator
to be used on web sites.
Inspired by the custom
QR logo embedding work done by our own [Brian Benchoff]
, his dynamic QR code generator allows you to do the same thing, but with far less work. The code requires that you have PHP and the GD library installed on your server, but other than that his code does the rest.
All you need to do is call up the page and pass along a URL, optional caption text, optional image overlay (to add your logo to the center of the code), as well as an optional hash code for tracking traffic sources. The page spits out a png image that can be used on its own, or embedded in a blog, which is what [falldeaf] plans on using it for.
If QR codes are your thing, be sure to grab a copy of his code, it will certainly be a handy tool to have around. | 20 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "481321",
"author": "Neftaly Hernandez",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T19:24:01",
"content": "This would probably be better done in Javascript after the page had finished loading, as having to generate and download the image on the server for every page is a little wasteful. I’d also reco... | 1,760,377,055.892307 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/small-tabletop-telepresence-robot/ | Small Tabletop Telepresence Robot | Mike Nathan | [
"iphone hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"iphone",
"pololu wixel",
"telepresence"
] | When [Peter] saw the Sparkfun Magician robot chassis in a recent new product post, he knew instantly that he
had to have one for a telepresence project
that had been kicking around in his head for a while.
Onto the robot chassis, he added an Arduino to provide the brains of the bot, an Adafruit motor shield for controlling the wheels, and a Pololu Wixel for wireless communications. An iPhone is mounted on the top of the robot, which communicates with his laptop using Apple’s Facetime app. The robot is controlled from his laptop as well using the Wixel, which enables him to direct the Magician chassis as if it was attached via USB.
While he thinks the robot is pretty neat and that it works well, [Peter] already has improvements in mind. The robot chassis is a bit weak on anything but smooth surfaces, so a new set of motors and wheels are likely the first changes he’ll make. He wants to add a servo-based aiming mechanism for the phone’s camera, as well as some sensors to prevent the bot from taking a nosedive off his table.
iPhone aside, this is probably one of the cheaper mobile telepresence setups we’ve seen, so we can’t wait to hear how the improvements work out, and how much they add to the robot’s cost. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "481269",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T17:34:44",
"content": "iphone, laptop, 2 shields and arduino, wouldnt call it cheap :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "481513",
"author": "Panq",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,377,055.943007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/over-engineering-a-game-of-lights-out/ | Over Engineering A Game Of Lights Out | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"74xx",
"Lights Out",
"logic competition"
] | [Bertho] might have outdone himself this time. He built a
Lights Out clone
for the 7400 logic competition.
Lights Out is an electronic toy sold by Tiger in the mid 90s. The goal of the game is to turn a 5 by 5 grid of light up buttons off. There’s a catch, though – pressing a button toggles the state of the four surrounding buttons. Check out
this Flash game
that’s faithful to the original.
[Bertho] read a few
Lights Out fan pages
and set out to design the circuit. Most of the build is made up of shift registers: the ‘game state’ is saved in five 74hc164 shift registers and a 4557 programmable register. The board is set with a random number generator that toggles bits in the game register until a solvable puzzle is found. A truly spectacular build.
For the light-up buttons themselves, [Bertho] found an
old Hack A Day post
that describes putting tact switches underneath a LED. The project was put into a nice Plexiglas enclosure after
15 hours of soldering
. [Bertho] was kind enough to put a video up of the game in action. Check it out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bb0QfZ2GNw&w=470] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "481250",
"author": "EccentricElectron",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T16:09:06",
"content": "Now that is a hack. Awesome work!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "481279",
"author": "Jriddles",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T17:57:43... | 1,760,377,055.984911 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/16/join-the-pen15-club-with-a-vibrator-shield/ | Join The Pen15 Club With A Vibrator Shield | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Kinect",
"teledildonics",
"that one scene in Lawnmower Man",
"virtual sex"
] | For all you teledildonics enthusiasts, there’s a new
Vibrator shield
for the Arduino. It gets better: you can use the Pen15 shield with a Kinect for wholesome and natural fun at home.
Decency and a ‘safe for work’ style prevents us from putting everything we know on the front page, so keep reading after the break.
We’re just going to jump right into this one. The
Pen15 board
is an Arduino-compatible shield, “built specifically for sex tech and
teledildonics
research.” The board is pretty simple – just a MOSFET, a few resistors and a jack to hook vibrators up to. The Pen15 board is the result of years of longing on the part of [qDot], author of
slashdong.org
.
[qDot] is going to be
holding a workshop
at Art && Code 3D at Carnegie Mellon University next week where he’ll do a mashup of the Pen15 and a Kinect. We don’t know what that entails, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to look like that one scene in
Lawnmower Man
.
Of course, the Pen15 shield is fully usable without a Kinect. [qDot] wrote
Deldo
, a vibration control and teledildonics mode for Emacs. Yes, you can now have sex with Emacs.
A big thanks to everyone who sent this one in. Really, you’re a big help. | 88 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "481164",
"author": "Paul Granis",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T14:02:34",
"content": "Gives a whole new meaning to “lol, dongs”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "481168",
"author": "Golan Levin",
"timestamp": "2011-10-16T14:07... | 1,760,377,056.200705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/15/christmasqualizer-is-the-next-light-switch-rave/ | Christmasqualizer Is The Next Light Switch Rave | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"christmas lights",
"color organ",
"relay"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la1OuczS_wM&w=470]
[Kyle] was looking for a way to spice up his boring brick-wall dorm room. The
Christmasqualizer
he came up with brightens up his room and would make an awesome place for a rave.
The strings of lights in [Kyle]’s Christmasqualizer are off-the-shelf Christmas lights. A simple circuit for the 7-band equalizer was built following
this article
. The build uses an MSGEQ7 equalizer chip takes audio from any source. The volume level of the seven EQ bands are output to an Arduino over a serial connection.
After the EQ chip was connected to the Arduino, [Kyle] needed a way to switch the strings of Christmas lights on and off. A few
solid state relays
later, and he was in business.
All the code for the Christmasqualizer is up
on github
. The sketch is pretty simple – connect the EQ chip as per the article, then connect the relays to the output pins on the Arduino. It’s a fun and easy project that really livens up a dorm room. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "480813",
"author": "Nathan Hotchkiss",
"timestamp": "2011-10-15T19:26:40",
"content": "That’s epic, let’s try and do that in our yard when you get back.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "480826",
"author": "frobisher",
"ti... | 1,760,377,056.314883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/15/remote-controlled-glass-block-led-matrix/ | Remote Controlled Glass Block LED Matrix | Mike Nathan | [
"Hackerspaces",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"hackerspace",
"Hive13",
"ios",
"led matrix",
"processing"
] | At Hive13, a Cincinnati-based hackerspace, they like to hack everything –
even their bathroom.
One of the bathroom’s walls faces the street, and is made up of thick glass privacy blocks. A few years ago, they thought it would be a cool idea to install an LED matrix to the back side of the glass wall to spruce things up a bit. After a couple of iterations, they finally had something they were happy to show off, but they wanted to make it even cooler.
While the the Arduino and ShiftBrite shield running the matrix could be controlled over a serial connection, they wanted to use the ProjectBlinkenlights tools to control things over the network. While that didn’t quite work out as planned, it wasn’t necessarily an exercise in futility. While Blinkenlights controls were out of the question, they were inspired to add OSC compatibility to the Processing sketch, which allows them to work the display with an app available for both Android and iOS devices.
The result is pretty slick, as you can see in the video below. Now all they need to do is get Tetris up and running!
[vimeo
http://vimeo.com/30413454
w=470] | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "480788",
"author": "David Dean",
"timestamp": "2011-10-15T18:32:11",
"content": "Oh man, I’d be sitting out there for hours playing with that thing. Next up, tricolors?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "480804",
"author... | 1,760,377,056.257977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/15/halloween-hacks-a-haunted-house-project-for-the-kids/ | Halloween Hacks: A Haunted House Project For The Kids | Mike Nathan | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"haunted house",
"led"
] | If the kids have been bugging you to get started with your Halloween decorating, [Dale] from BasicMicro has
a neat and interactive project that’s sure to satiate their thirst for ghoulish fun.
His wife was looking for some new decorations for this Halloween, so he took a quick trip to the craft store and found a DIY foam Haunted House kit. After convincing her to do the assembly, he outfitted the display with some Starlite RGB modules, which have all sorts of interesting lighting modes built in. When the lights are turned low, the house jumps to life, as you can see in the video below.
The construction and wiring are not an overly complex job, so it’s a great starting point for little minds and hands that are beginning to develop an interest in electronics. For those kids with a little bit of experience under their belts, the house could easily be modified to use servos to create swinging doors and shaking grave stones.
The limit is truly defined only by their imagination (and your electronics budget), so why not give it a try this weekend? We’d love to see what you and your budding hackers put together!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tNo-MZSn9Y&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,056.491808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/15/weekly-roundup-101511/ | Weekly Roundup 10/15/11 | Jack Buffington | [
"News",
"Weekly Roundup"
] | [
"weekly roundup"
] | In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week.
Our most popular post of the week was one about
a rocket that was built by the [Qu8k team]
that was their entry for the Carmack Prize, which put up a purse of $10,000 for proof and a nice writeup about a rocket that can launch to at least 100,000 feet. The rocket that we posted about managed to launch to 121,000 feet!
Next, we had a post about
another space-related project
called KickSat where they are hoping to launch many single-circuit-board satellites into space.
Our third most popular post is about an
octocopter built by the German effects company OMStudios
to fly a RED Epic camera around and above film shoots because training large birds to do it just wasn’t working.
Next we had a post about how to
build your own 23″ Android tablet
. Now you can make *everyone* around you jealous of your mad Angry Birds skills.
Surprisingly, our previous hackaday-original post about
how to put your logo into a QR code
hit the top five list again.
Since we have previously featured the QR code post in our weekly roundup in the past, we’ll break the rules and give you another so that we are featuring five new posts for this week. At number six, we have a post about
how to play dubstep live on real instruments. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,056.357524 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/laser-level-tripod-made-from-recycled-parts/ | Laser Level Tripod Made From Recycled Parts | Mike Nathan | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"level",
"tools",
"tripod"
] | [msuzuki777] is a self-proclaimed “Lazy Old Geek” with way too much free time on his hands. He recently picked up a laser cross and figured that he would use some of that time to make
a laser tripod
for various projects around the house.
He pulled out an old camera tripod, and modified an unused CD jewel case so that it could be screwed onto the traditional camera mount. He added three bolts to the platform, on which he mounted another CD case, letting him adjust both the laser platform as well as the tripod.
He put together a simple power supply for the laser, and then mounted it on a pair of CDs sandwiched on top of one another. The CD platform was then popped onto the guts of an old CD player, allowing him to spin his laser pointer in any direction without having to re-level it.
The laser cross tripod certainly looks a bit complicated, but [msuzuki777] says it works a treat, allowing him to easily hang pictures and the like. He also mentions that he wants to throw an Arduino at it to automate the leveling process, which is something we’d love to see. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "480027",
"author": "Whatnot",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T15:00:11",
"content": "He picked brittle thin acrylic? I’m sorry but that’s daft IMHO.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "480028",
"author": "simon",
"timesta... | 1,760,377,056.408125 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/poe-home-automation-control-panel/ | POE Home Automation Control Panel | Mike Nathan | [
"blackberry hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"blackberry",
"home automation",
"java",
"PoE",
"power over ethernet"
] | [Scott] wrote in to share a project he is currently working on, a
home automation system that relies on Power over Ethernet.
While he’s not completely finished, he’s made some great progress, and the work he has done so far definitely piqued our interest.
Part of [Scott’s] design relies on some
reverse engineered Blackberry screens
we showed you a while back. He has constructed a small control panel for his apartment, which incorporates one of the aforementioned Blackberry screens, along with 10 tactile switches and a PIR sensor. The panel is built to be mounted in a wall or as a standalone unit, allowing him to control various lights and appliances throughout his home.
[Scott] spent a lot of time working on the communications protocol and UI for his control panel. As it sits now, the panel takes advantage of a VNC-like protocol he designed, which allows him to interact with a Java application residing on his desktop computer.
Things are looking awesome so far, and [Scott] already has a handful of improvements planned for the near future. We can’t wait to check it out when it’s finished. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "479972",
"author": "Javi Lomas Durante",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T13:11:03",
"content": "Great! It looks like serious work and I am sure lots of people (me among others) would love to have one of those nearby their sofas when they come back home .What about integration with smartpho... | 1,760,377,056.549139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/n64-controller-input-using-an-attiny85/ | N64 Controller Input Using An ATtiny85 | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny85",
"controller",
"n64",
"serial"
] | [Larsim] worked out the timing necessary to
read button and joystick data from an N64 controller
using an ATtiny85 microcontroller. The project was spawned when he found this pair of controllers in the dumpster. We often intercept great stuff bound for the landfill, especially on
Hippie Christmas
when all the student switch apartments at the same time.
Instead of cracking the controllers open and patching directly to the buttons, [Larsim] looked up the pinout of the connector and patched into the serial data wire. In true hacker fashion, he used two 5V linear regulators and a diode in series to step his voltage source down to close to 3.6V, as he didn’t have a variable regulator on hand. It does sound like this causes noise which can result if false readings, but that can be fixed with the next parts order.
The controller waits for a polling signal before echoing back a response in which button data is embedded. This process is extremely quick, and without a crystal on hand, the chip needs to be configured to use its internal PLL to ramp the R/C oscillator up to 16Mhz. With the chip now running fast enough, an external interrupt reads the serial response from the controller, and the code reacts based on that input.
It seems the biggest reason these N64 controllers hit the trash can is because the analog joystick wears out. If you’ve got mad skills
you can replace it with a different type
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "479536",
"author": "matt",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T23:18:09",
"content": "“when he found this pair of controllers in the dumpster” what? lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "479537",
"author": "matt",
"timestam... | 1,760,377,057.527738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/electronic-die-rolls-up-to-100/ | Electronic Die Rolls Up To 100 | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"dice",
"electronic die",
"polyhedron",
"tilt switch"
] | If you’re gaming on the road, or just don’t have a die with the right number of sides on hand,
an electronic polyhedral die will be quite handy
. [Marcus] built this using a printed circuit board of his own design, and we think an electronically simple project like this is a great way to get your feet wet with PCB fab house techniques. He suggests Seeed Studios’ service, or
the DorkBotPDX group PCB order
. But this would not be a hard project to build on perfboard as well.
The concept is simple. A two-digit 7-segment display shows the value of the top face of your die. when it’s time to roll, just pick up the box and tip it over. A tilt switch senses this action and rolls the die by displaying the next pseudo-random number. The single button, seen here with a pyramid die glued to it, lets you select between die with different number of sides; from 2 (like a coin flip) all the way up to 100.
We like [Marcus’] projects. He’s the same guy that
built a scoring system in a game storage box
. | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "479633",
"author": "uzerzero",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T02:30:37",
"content": "It would be neat to see this reduced to the size of an actual dice (probably a larger one like the one used in Scattegories) with a weight in the bottom so the display always came up on top and a recessed... | 1,760,377,056.595349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/building-your-own-replacement-refrigerator-thermostat/ | Building Your Own Replacement Refrigerator Thermostat | Mike Nathan | [
"home hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"refrigerator",
"repair",
"thermostat"
] | [Ron’s] refrigerator broke
shortly after he came home from his weekly grocery trip, and since this was his second dead fridge in three years, he wanted to fix it rather than buy a new one…again. It turns out that the thermostat was toast, and a replacement would cost him $80. That was well more than he was willing to pay, but his groceries were starting to get warm, so he had to do something.
Being the tinkerer he is, he figured he could rig up his own thermostat that would work at least as well as the one that died on him. He scavenged an ATmega328 from a failed project, and after digging around online, put together the most barebones Arduino setup he could find. The microcontroller is tucked away in the back of the refrigerator where the old thermostat used to live, and takes input from a TMP36 temperature sensor, triggering a relay to start the refrigerator’s compressor whenever the the temp goes above 4°C.
[Ron] says his fix is just about the “worst kludge ever”, but as he saved $80 in parts and $150 in labor, we’re inclined to think it’s a job well done. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "479461",
"author": "aztraph",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T20:46:19",
"content": "grats on the fix, but seriously, if you have the wherewithal to build a thermostat, you can save the service call and just install it yourself. it’s not that hard",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,056.746204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/ultimaker-quality-faq-is-like-porn-for-3d-printers/ | Ultimaker Quality FAQ Is Like Porn For 3D Printers | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"quality",
"ultimaker"
] | Do you think it’s not really possible to get amazing resolution from extruder-based 3D printers? You’re wrong, and this post about
the attainable quality of prints on the Ultimaker
proves it. The Yoda bust seen above was printed with a layer thickness of 0.02mm. This is a hack in itself because this process actually used two different layer thicknesses. The interior of the print, which you can’t see, but serves as a support mechanism for the object was printed at 0.04mm, with just the visible perimeter printed in the smaller thickness. That trickery is just fine with us if this is the result.
[Dave Durrant] discusses the press the Ultimaker has received, which mostly focused on
the relatively fast printing process this hardware uses
. But he didn’t think the story of the quality you can get with the device was being told. So he put out a call on the mailing list to send in pictures of high-quality 3D prints and he wasn’t disappointed by the response. You’ll see images of busts, bodies, gears, animals, and art pieces. There’s information about how they were printed, but even those not interested in the particulars will appreciate the macro photography that gives you an up-close look at how far we’ve come with these table-top rapid prototyping machines.
[Thanks Taylor] | 72 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "479407",
"author": "CoolMod",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T19:41:56",
"content": "Weird title from Mike… Awesome printer, though…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "479411",
"author": "Jriddles",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T19:48:... | 1,760,377,056.864053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/solar-charger-for-occupy-boston/ | Solar Charger For Occupy Boston | Brian Benchoff | [
"green hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"charge",
"solar"
] | As soon as the team at Revolt Labs heard Occupy Wall Street was coming to Boston, they decided to pick up their soldering irons in support of the throngs of protestors. They came up with a
Solar charging USB box
to keep those cell phones and digital cameras charged.
The case came direct from an Army surplus store. Originally, the box was used by the Dutch military to test the air for poison gas and signal when it was safe to remove a gas mask – hopefully not a portent of things to come.
On top of the box is five solar panels that output two watts each. A bit of breadboard holds a 7805 voltage regulator, a few caps and a diode. This regulated output goes to a USB hub and provides power for recharging.
For a cheap and easy project for our brothers without arms, we couldn’t think of a better project for the Occupy Boston tent city. Of course heating units will be needed at the Occupy protests this winter, but at least now the protesters have the means to power their communications equipment.
update:
Once again, this has devolved into political argument and name calling. We, as hackaday, really couldn’t care less which party you are for or what your political beliefs are. We want to talk about the project, in this case a portable solar charger. We go to other sites to argue politics. Maybe you should
try here
. | 58 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "479296",
"author": "biozz",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T17:11:00",
"content": "brillent … here in occupy DC i have a hand crank for my laptop and a 3G hotspot … up to 20 devices p2p blocked i2p open ESSID BioLess open with AES encryption to stop hijacking (says WPA but any connection ... | 1,760,377,057.265622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/contest-entry-roulette/ | Contest Entry Roulette | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"contest",
"electroplating",
"gyroscope",
"thumb drive"
] | Over 150 projects made from scrap parts
(
translated
) have been posted for your viewing pleasure. They make up the entries in the “Make fast the scrap” project from c’t magazine. We already looked in on
a toilet paper printer
, but there’s a ton of other fun stuff to look at as well.
Every time you load the link at the top, the page picks a different set of entries to display. You can click through all the pages, or reload to play a little project roulette. The image above shows three that caught our eye. To the upper right is a lighbulb-man riding an old computer mouse reverse-cowgirl style. Quirky, but anyone who has access to an electroplating setup can get away with making simple objects like this into
awesome desktop sculptures
.
Moving clockwise we have a tiny
USB drive mated with an old vacuum tube
. The machine translation is a bit rough, but it looks like the LED from the thumb drive gives the tube a bit of a red glow. We just think it’s interesting to carry around a vacuum tube with you.
The final banner image shows
a gyroscope for a camcorder
. This is an awesome setup, which you can see in action after the break. A pair of broken hard drives provide motion stabilization for a camera. The entire assembly has a handle on the top with a universal joint. When the drives are spinning, the platform holds very still, even if the operator is swinging the unit around wildly.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu6Eo9G2DSQ&w=470]
[Thanks Arnuschky] | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "480294",
"author": "anybodysguess",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T23:16:07",
"content": "I want to build one of those gyro cams so bad, I haven’t seen any that could take out that much motion, but I only have two platters and have no idea where the motor went.Also. . . FIRST!",
"pare... | 1,760,377,056.973459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/panoramic-ball-camera-toss-to-snap-a-picture/ | Panoramic Ball Camera; Toss To Snap A Picture | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"ball",
"spherical"
] | This odd-looking ball can automatically
take a panoramic image whenever you throw it
up into the air. Seriously, that’s then entire set of operating instructions for the device. Inside, a 3D printed frame hosts an array of 36 cellphone cameras, each capable of taking a two megapixel image. Also included is an accelerometer. When it senses the change in momentum associated with the apex of its vertical trajectory it snaps an image with all of the cameras at the same time. The result is a spherical image with no obstructions-like a tripod or other support mechanism. The images are automatically stitched together and displayed on a computer which allows the user to pan and zoom.
The whole story is told in the video after the break. The example images shown are quite good, although there are a few artifacts where the segments meet. Most notably, color variances between the images captured by different CCD modules. We’d image that this can be fixed automatically in software if a talented programmer were willing to put in the time. The thing about spherical photos is that
methods using post processing to unwrap an image
always have some distortion to them. With that in mind, we think the ball camera is as good a solution as we’ve seen.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th5zlUe6gOE&w=470]
[Thanks Gregory and Hans] | 72 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "480257",
"author": "yetihehe",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T21:56:55",
"content": "It should be named religion ball. Photographers look like praying on all photos if they want to catch camera before it falls to ground. Otherwise – it’s amazing concept, so innovative I can’t even start t... | 1,760,377,057.070445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/surface-mount-solder-assitant/ | Surface Mount Solder Assitant | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"clamp",
"smd",
"surface mount"
] | Make sure those tiny parts know their place by using
this surface mount solder assistant
(
translated
). It’s like a clamp for small packages; gravity and a needle to hold them in place while you do some hand soldering. [Red Devil] started the built by soldering together some brass rails into a hinged frame with a clamp to accept the needle tip. Next, a pair of tubes were added to accept LEDs which light the work area (we think that’s a fantastic touch). Finally, the assembly was mounted to the corner of a square base that makes up the work surface.
This is basically a complex version of
a simple gravity clamp
. But if you’re doing some assembly line soldering this would be indispensable. For this kind of work,
custom jigs are often built
. That would still be the case, but this armature removes the need of building something into each jig to hold the SMD components in place. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "480185",
"author": "Rochey",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T19:30:57",
"content": "*Applause*Looking good. Could an artists pentograph be used instead, with a weight and a bunch of LED’s?/R",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "480209",
... | 1,760,377,057.314218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/hardware-version-control-using-visual-diff/ | Hardware Version Control Using Visual DIFF | Mike Szczys | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"diff",
"open source hardware",
"version control",
"visual diff"
] | As the Open Source Hardware movement gathers steam, it has become clear that the tools to work collaboratively on hardware are in the dark ages when compared with slick frameworks like Git used to work on software projects. We’ve read a fair amount about this lately, but the idea of
visual difference generation for PCB layout
is one of the better proposals we’ve seen.
Of course the big difference when it comes to version control is that software is text, but hardware is graphic and only represented by text for the computer to use. It’s easy to use the ‘diff’ command to show you what text is out and what text is in, but that doesn’t translate to a schematic. [Windell] is using command-line utilities to produce a schematic that colors changes differently for easy visual detection. This means exporting before and after schematics as PDF files or images, then using ImageMagick to process them. He also points out that there’s a package out there called
DiffPDF
that will let you compare differences in PDF files automatically.
Check out what he has to say in his article, and make sure you get to the bottom where he suggests ways you can help. We agree that it shouldn’t be hard to roll visual diff functionality into open source software packages used for hardware design, and to integrate that into version control systems. It’ll just take some time for the concept to proliferate. | 16 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "480151",
"author": "afex",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T18:10:17",
"content": "i guess i’m a little confused – if they are concerned with actual HW changes (pin swaps, etc) wouldn’t a netlist diff utility be better? this is what my old firm used to do – before even talking about the PCB... | 1,760,377,057.477841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/improving-sports-performance-with-a-kinect/ | Improving Sports Performance With A Kinect | Brian Benchoff | [
"Kinect hacks"
] | [
"coach",
"martial arts",
"sports"
] | As a recent Mech E grad, [Alessandro Timmi] knows a lot about moving bodies. His thesis,
Virtual Sensei
, aims to quantify those movements for better coaching and training in martial arts.
Virtual Sensei uses a Kinect for motion capture during training. From there, the skeleton recorded by the Kinect has a little bit of processing applied and the speed of the fists is calculated. Check out the
demo vid
for a much better explanation of what Virtual Sensei can do.
Considering the number of sports that require precise alignment of the skeleton and timing of certain movements, we’re thinking this could be the breakout (non-video game) app to get the Kinect into the wild. Golf pros would love to record the swings of their students to make sure their shoulders are aligned.
Most of the Kinect hacks we’ve seen are either
robot builds
with a few
3D scanners
and
virtual wardrobes
thrown into the mix. Virtual Sensei is a pretty impressive piece of software and with a few additional sports could make a killing.
Check out the freakin awesome animated FAQ and a demo video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsirrQ_PMcc&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3pgnOunLac&w=470] | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "480140",
"author": "Colecoman1982",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T17:48:56",
"content": "I wonder how limited this is by the 30fps limit on the Kinect’s webcam. Anyone with any decent martial arts training is going to be much, much faster than the guy in the video. At only 30 fps captu... | 1,760,377,057.36129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/video-learning-to-program-for-the-atmega328p-part-i/ | Video: Learning To Program For The ATmega328p Part I | Jack Buffington | [
"News",
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3pi",
"atmega",
"video"
] | Many of you are familiar with the Arduino. Many of you hate it…* This post isn’t about the Arduino. It is about the processor that is at the heart of many Arduino boards. If you are in the camp of people who can’t understand why others dislike the Arduino so much, this series is for you. In this series of videos, [Jack] will explore how to program for the ATmega328p processor using C. If you have been programming for the Arduino, you may have had some issues with the speed of your code at points. Programming in C will allow you to wring out nearly the last ounce of processing power that the ATmega processors can provide. It will also let you access the peripherals on the processor directly and to switch between different processors when you need more (or less) capabilities.
In this first video, [Jack] shows you all of the features of the 3pi robot, which he will be using as a fancy development board for the ATmega328p. He then shows you how to get your development environment set up and then walks you through one of the sample programs provided for the 3pi robot.
*Here at Hackaday, we are officially neutral in the ongoing Arduino love/hate war. We don’t care what microcontroller is used in the hacks that we show, only that they are cool.
Video is after the break!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzCnNKQGm9Y&w470] | 14 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "480104",
"author": "Gerardo Poggio",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T16:20:09",
"content": "I program my Arduino board using avr-gcc and writing in C. It takes a little more time but you really learn what you are doing, altought I understand why somebody not that technically oriented would... | 1,760,377,057.4169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/14/reverse-engineering-the-nike-hardware/ | Reverse Engineering The Nike+ Hardware | Jeremy Cook | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"encryption",
"ipod",
"nike+ipod"
] | The Nike+ hardware is obviously an interesting device. We haven’t heard a whole lot about hacking one until now, but [Dimitry] has
decided to change that
. Many would assume that the data transmitted off of these sensors is quite simple, however there’s a bit more than meets the eye. Amongst other challenges, all the data packets coming out of the transceiver are encrypted. [Dimitry] claims to have decoded this data stream and made use of it.
This hack also outlines how one can use this without the stock iPod receiver using a 2.4 GHz
chip from Sparkfun
. A lot of work has been done to figure out how these packets are decoded and the process one goes through to do this is well outlined in this post. This could serve as a good example for those wanting to figure out similar devices.
One thing [Dimitry] hasn’t done yet is release the source code for this hack. He cites some ethical issues that might not seem obvious on first glance, including the ability to follow someone in a crowd or simply jamming their data. He does add though that if you have a good reason for wanting it, to simply email him. We’re looking forward to what [Dimitry] comes up with in the future using this setup! | 31 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "480042",
"author": "ztryfe",
"timestamp": "2011-10-14T15:23:26",
"content": "He has posted the code just now, let the track… hacking begin!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "480043",
"author": "MS3FGX",
"timestamp": "2011-... | 1,760,377,059.621112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/build-a-binary-wall-clock-for-just-a-few-bucks/ | Build A Binary Wall Clock For Just A Few Bucks | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"atmega48",
"binary clock",
"bootloader",
"isp"
] | The weekend is almost here and if you’re looking for an afternoon project consider
building your own binary wall clock
. [Emihackr97] built the one you see above using parts on hand, but even if you put in an order for everything, it won’t cost you much.
He used a cardboard box as the housing for the clock, marking a grid for the LEDs on the face and drilling holes to house them. Two columns for hours and another two for minutes let the clock display 24-hour time with alternate firmware for 12 hour time. Since there are two buttons – one to set hours, the other to set minutes – a little coding would make it possible to select between the two either by clicking both buttons at once, or holding down one button.
[Emihackr97] is driving the display with an ATmega48, which is a pin-compatible replacement for the ATmega168/328. Those chips are the type most commonly found on Arduino boards an indeed this project is running the Arduino bootloader, but uses an ISP programmer and breadboarded circuit to keep the costs low. There are plenty of pins to drive the 13 LEDs directly, making the soldering quick and painless. Check out a demo clip after the break.
If you’re successful at this build and get the itch for something with more style, there’s a ton of ways to
spice up the look of a binary clock
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGLL9efyjjo&w=470] | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "479298",
"author": "Spike Snell",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T17:13:34",
"content": "This reminds me of a recent (very) small project I worked on with a digital photo frame:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G712InIBka0Nice work Emihackr97!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,377,059.16331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/non-invasive-ac-power-adapter-for-exercise-equipment/ | Non-invasive AC Power Adapter For Exercise Equipment | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"ac adapter",
"elliptical trainer",
"exercise",
"voltage regulator"
] | We often look at battery-operated hardware and shake our heads at the wastefulness of throwing away disposable batteries. There are some devices that minimize the waste, like those TV remotes that seem to never need new cells. But the C cells that [Quinn Dunki] kept replacing in her elliptical trainer were only lasting about three months at a time. The manufacturer hadn’t cared enough to build a power jack into the machine, so
she built her own AC adapter without modifying the stock hardware
.
The first thing she did was to patch in a couple of wires between two of the batteries. This let her measure the current consumption, which topped out at around 200mA. This is good news because that’s easily sourced with a cheap linear regulator. Out of the junk box came a 12V/1A wall wart transformer, which just leaves the need for a fuse and some capacitors to finish out a voltage regulator circuit.
Since [Quinn] didn’t want to permanently alter the exerciser, she came up with a way that it could take the same physical space as the batteries. Two long stand-offs are used as prongs to interface the spring terminals in the battery compartment. They attach to a piece of protoboard which hosts the rest of the circuitry. Now she just needs to remember to unplug this from the wall after each session and she’ll be in business. | 27 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "479228",
"author": "B",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T15:15:04",
"content": "Next time, just buy some low-drain NiMH batteries, like Eneloops…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "479233",
"author": "Quinn Dunki",
"times... | 1,760,377,059.226716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/hackers-age-14-18-can-compete-to-put-their-project-into-space/ | Hackers Age 14-18 Can Compete To Put Their Project Into Space | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"experiment",
"micro-gravity",
"nasa",
"science fair"
] | If you’re between the ages of 14 and 18, or have a child who is,
here’s a chance to put a project into space
. NASA is partnering with YouTube, Lenovo, and a few other entities for a contest that challenges participants to dream up low-gravity experiments. You can enter as an individual or in teams of up to three people, and may put forth up to three experiment ideas for judging. Getting in on the first round is as easy as recording and uploading a video. You’ll need to state a scientific question or principle you want to test, a hypothesis of what can be learned, and a method for testing it.
As with most of the projects we encounter, the seminal idea is always the toughest part. And since the folks here at Hackaday are too old to enter, we thought we’d propose throwing around some ideas in the comments to get the ball rolling (the contest FAQ says it’s okay to get help from others so we’re not ruining it for everyone). We’ll go first.
It looks like experiments can be Biology or Physics related, and can’t use hazardous chemicals, weapons, or anything sharp. We’d love to see some tests that measure how well electronic sensors work in the microgravity. For instance, can you use a gyroscope sensor reliably in micro-gravity? What about an electronic compass; does it always point toward earth? What about robotic propulsion? We’d love to see a minature ROV swimming through the air like
a water-bourne vessel
would on earth.
Your turn. Leave a comment to let us know what you’d do if you could enter. Oh, and we’ve also embedded the contest promo video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T41vZCadbAk&w=470] | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "479245",
"author": "jamdis",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T15:42:15",
"content": "“It looks like experiments can be Biology or Physics related, and can’t use hazardous chemicals, weapons, or anything sharp.”Ha! Somewhere there’s a sad teenager who just wanted to test the effects of micro... | 1,760,377,059.275626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/an-autonomous-minivan-for-busy-parents/ | An Autonomous Minivan For Busy Parents | Jeremy Cook | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous vehicle",
"minivan"
] | Although minivans are a staple of moms and dads that drive their kids to school, soccer practice, and the like,
this vehicle
imagines a time when maybe they won’t even have to. Autonomous cars have been in development for some time, but the video after the break gives a nice close-up view of how this particular vehicle was built and some of the testing that went into it.
Of particular interest was the external luggage pod modified to hold vehicle electronics. Everything is nicely laid out with wire duct to keep it neat. Those in the manufacturing industry might notice several other off-the-shelf components including an area scanner at 0:24 and extruded aluminum framing at 0:45. The apparent “E-stop” button on the passenger side comes from industry as well and may make the rider feel a bit more safe!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o04r1tuKJo&w=470&h=315%5D
If this wasn’t interesting enough, check out
this autonomous car
by Google that has already driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles! | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "479175",
"author": "Anno",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T13:10:46",
"content": "The music makes me wanna kill ^^",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "479222",
"author": "Drake",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T14:59:50",
... | 1,760,377,059.767107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/13/candied-leds-are-a-light-tasty-treat/ | Candied LEDs Are A Light, Tasty Treat | Mike Nathan | [
"contests",
"cooking hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"contest",
"food",
"leds",
"rock candy"
] | [Emily Daniels] recently snagged a free iPad in the Instructables “Play with your food challenge” with
an interesting way to work with LEDs.
Growing up, most kids attempted to make, or at least have seen rock candy be produced. [Emily] thought it would be interesting to mix LEDs with the stuff to see what she could come up with, and her candied LEDs are the result.
The process is pretty straightforward, and involves mixing up a batch of supersaturated sugar syrup in which LEDs are suspended. The LEDs act as a nucleation point for the crystal formation, growing a nice solid coating of sugar after a couple weeks’ time. After some cleaning up, the LEDs can be connected to a coin cell battery or similar, as you would normally do. The sugar acts as a diffusing medium for the LEDs, giving them a nice soft beam pattern.
Obviously you likely wouldn’t want to use these for any long-term electronics project, but it’s a fun activity for the kids, and it could be a good way to
incorporate electronics
into
baked goods. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "479126",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T11:53:22",
"content": "Wonder if the plastic used in LED production is food safe. But a very nice idea this is!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "479130",
"author": "Sparky... | 1,760,377,059.329289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/brewing-up-some-quantum-dots/ | Brewing Up Some Quantum Dots | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"cancer",
"lab",
"phosphorescent",
"quantum dot",
"research",
"scientist"
] | We’re taking a field trip from the backyard, garage, and basement hacking in order to look in on what research scientists are up to these days. A group from the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology has been
manufacturing quantum dots for use in the medical field
. Made up of Cadmium Selenide, this is a nanomaterial that you can think of as individual crystals of the smallest size possible.
Quantum dots
have many uses. Here, [Charli Dvoracek] takes the recently manufactured dots and activates them with antibodies capable of targeting cancer cells. Once mixed with a biological sample, the dots embed themselves in the walls of the cancer, allowing the researchers to find those cells thanks to the phosphorescent properties of the dots.
The video after the breaks walks us through the various steps involved in growing these dots. [Charli] has the benefit of a fully outfitted lab, using tools like an argon-filled glove box to protect her from harmful off-gases. You’re not likely have this sort of thing in your home laboratory, but as we’ve seen before, you can
make some of your own equipment
, and
produce interesting chemicals
with simple processes. If you’re someone who already tinkers with chemistry experiments we want to hear about your exploits so
please drop us a tip about what you’re up to
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3H0_8TLs-A&w=470]
[Thanks Aaron] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "478876",
"author": "noname",
"timestamp": "2011-10-13T01:20:40",
"content": "First off, Hack-a-Day, I’d love to see more chemistry articles like this one.So from what I’ve read, quantum dots offer better photostability and larger stokes shifts as compared to dyes like fluorescein an... | 1,760,377,059.427242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/usb-killswitch-turns-off-your-home-entertainment-bling-automatically/ | USB Killswitch Turns Off Your Home Entertainment Bling Automatically | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"killswitch",
"power",
"relay",
"usb",
"voltage regulator"
] | Finally, the USB port on the back of your television can be tapped for something useful. [Don] is using this add-on device to
automatically cut the power to his Ambilight clone
. Initially, he got tired of unplugging the power adapter each time he shut off the television, so he added a switch. But laziness overcame him and he decided he needed an automatic method. After probing around on the connections available, he established that the serial interface (normally used for servicing the device) was not of any use, but the USB port is. He measured the voltage of the power bus to be 5V when the TV is on, and 0.15V when it is off. He whipped up the circuit you see above which uses the USB connection to trigger a relay, connecting power to
his Ambilight clone
when the television comes on, and disconnecting it when the set is switched off.
Our dream has always been an XBMC capable device that can Velcro to the back of a TV, and be powered from that USB port. Unfortunately
the Beagle Board
hasn’t yet made it to a stable level when running XBMC. Our next hope is
the AppleTV 2
, which can run XBMC but would require some hacking to get it working off of the USB port, raising concerns about how much current it would draw at 5V. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "478791",
"author": "macegr",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T22:06:57",
"content": "Probably wouldn’t want your entire media PC to go through a hard poweroff with the TV anyway. Using it to turn off the LEDs is a great idea though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []... | 1,760,377,059.382516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/sweet-octocopter-takes-the-red-epic-to-new-heights/ | Sweet Octocopter Takes The RED Epic To New Heights | Mike Nathan | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"octocopter",
"rc",
"RED epic"
] | So you’ve got a $40k+ RED Epic video camera and you need to get it from
all the way down here to all the way up there.
Sure, you could rent an expensive crane and take your shots from above that way, but why bother with that when you can fly instead?
German video effects company OMStudios decided that it was up to the task of finding a crane alternative, so they built a crazy octocopter drone to get the camera up to where they needed it. Figuring that if four rotors is good eight is even better, the group’s octocopter lifts the camera to heights of up to 150 meters, which is pretty impressive considering the weight of its payload.
While we might be a little hesitant to trust such an expensive camera to a glorified RC helicopter, it actually looks pretty solid from the video. Besides, we’re pretty sure these guys know what they are doing since they have a RED camera in the first place.
[via
Engadget
]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/30255067 w=470] | 25 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "478445",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T13:20:52",
"content": "Wow finaly some sort of practical use for an octocopter! :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "478474",
"author": "Dennis",
"timestamp": "2011-10-... | 1,760,377,059.549403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/garage-door-monitoring-and-control-using-a-dedicated-android-phone/ | Garage Door Monitoring And Control Using A Dedicated Android Phone | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"btmate",
"garage door",
"webcam"
] | [Sean] happened to have an extra Android phone sitting around and wanted to see what type of home automation he could use it for. One simple hardware modification, and some apps from the Android Market let him
monitor and control his garage door remotely
.
The hardware modification is a hack we’ve already looked at.
The BTmate
uses a Bluetooth headset with an added transistor to short the connections on your garage door opener. The only issue is that you need to be within range for the Bluetooth to work. [Sean] adds a layer of abstraction by using two Android phones. One is permanently mounted in the garage and handles the Bluetooth connectivity, while the other uses VNC to tunnel in anywhere he has an Internet connection.
But why stop there? He knew that this one feature was overkill, and added a second which the phone was perfect for. Since it has its own camera, he used the tinyCam app to create a webcam server. This even allows him to turn the LED on and off for a better view in dim light conditions. See [Sean’s] demonstration after the break.
Overkill? Maybe, but if you’ve got a phone with a broken LCD, this might be just the thing to give it a new purpose.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ0j_vZ4AeM&w=470] | 29 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "477861",
"author": "hpux735",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T22:32:24",
"content": "I think “overkill” in this case is a misnomer. Sure, a phone has a ton of processing power, but how often is it completely wasted? Once it’s not the Phone Du Jour, it’s likely sitting in a drawer. I thi... | 1,760,377,059.490867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/send-a-satellite-into-space-for-300/ | Send A Satellite Into Space For $300 | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"cubesat",
"satellite",
"sprite satellite"
] | There’s a new Kickstarter campaign that promises to
launch a personalized satellite into orbit
for 300 bones.
The KickSat project is headed by [Zac Manchester], [Mason Peck], [Justin Atchison] and a few more contributors hailing from Cornell University. Their goal is to launch a
CubeSat
filled with hundreds of postage stamp-sized satellites and release these ‘Sprites’ into low Earth orbit.
The
Sprite concept
has been in development for a while now and has been featured on
IEEE Spectrum
. The tiny satellites are simple PCBs with a microcontroller and a radio powered by solar cells and capacitors. The first version of the Sprite is designed to beam down a few bytes of data – just a unique identifier and a Kickstarter backer’s name. Future versions will undoubtedly include more advanced sensors such as cameras, thermometers, and very tiny particle detectors.
The KickSat team will use the funding from the Kickstarter campaign to test and integrate the systems. The team hopes to hitch a ride on one of NASAs many
CubeSat launches
, but if they get funding from 400 people, they’ll get to fly on a commercial launch by early 2013.
We were wondering about the amazing amount of space junk this KickSat/Sprite build will produce, but the team says not to worry: The Sprites fly in a pretty low orbit and will reenter the atmosphere a few weeks after being deployed. Not bad, considering Sputnik orbited for only 3 months. | 63 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "477839",
"author": "Beat707",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T21:38:17",
"content": "Oh boy… I guess they haven’t seen that movie: Wall-e… its all we need, more space-junk…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "477843",
"author": "... | 1,760,377,059.990301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/simple-hack-reuses-an-air-freshener-pir-sensor/ | Simple Hack Reuses An Air Freshener PIR Sensor | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"airwick",
"arduino",
"PIR sensor"
] | A year ago [Lochie] bought
an Airwick automatic air freshener
, and while he thought it was a cool gadget, the freshening spray and the novelty ran out in short order. The device collected dust in his room for some a while until he recently unearthed it, and noticed that a perfectly good PIR sensor was looking him in the face all this time.
He disassembled the air freshener, then set out to figure out how he could interface with the PIR sensor. After finding
a helpful Instructable
on the topic, he had full access to the sensor’s signals, allowing him to easily wire it up to an Arduino. He decided it would be fun to trigger some simple music any time someone entered his room, so he encoded a short bit of the Super Mario Brothers theme in RTTTL, as he explains in the video below.
It’s a simple little hack, but [Lochie] is pleased with it, and we imagine that he likely has a long list of other creative ideas in mind for his newly discovered PIR sensor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cofqYukXTow&w=470] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "477852",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T22:10:55",
"content": "Basic, but pretty cool!I had an idea for two or three of these sensors:Arrange them in an array and use the order and relative time of their activation to detect the direction and speed of a passing han... | 1,760,377,059.892311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/playstation-3-controller-made-fully-remappable/ | PlayStation 3 Controller Made Fully Remappable | Mike Szczys | [
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"18f14k50",
"controller",
"pic",
"ps3",
"usb"
] | [Hazer] managed to take a PlayStation 3 SixAxis controller and modify it so that
all of the buttons can be remapped in hardware
. Aside from this being really cool, he had a good reason for doing it. Regular readers should remember the feature regarding [Chuck Bittner’s] internet petition calling for
button mapping as a feature in all games
. As the industry still hasn’t taken up the torch in this area, [Hazer] developed this mod for [Chuck] to use and has released it for any others out there who wish to give it a try.
The hardware alterations are pretty hardcore. On the left of the image, just below the rumble motor, a DIP microcontroller is nestled dead-bug style. This is a PIC 18F14K50. It’s running a bootloader, and has its own USB port on the opposite side of the controller. By cutting traces and soldering to vias, this chip intercepts button presses and shoots them off to the controller’s processor based on alternative mapping stored in EEPROM. There’s a helper app that lets you plug the controller into a computer to specify what each button does, including features like toggle for the buttons. Check out [Chuck’s] thoughts on the hardware in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV6MaHB1pO4&w=470]
[Thanks Matt] | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "477765",
"author": "Barrie Ellis",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T19:10:04",
"content": "Serious bit of work. For those without those skills, XCM sell a remapping device which although not perfect, is a great gadget:http://www.gamebase.info/magazine/read/one-handed-fps-play—ps3_726.html",... | 1,760,377,059.851718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/this-cube-of-playroom-drawers-is-quite-puzzling/ | This Cube Of Playroom Drawers Is Quite Puzzling | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"drawers",
"playroom",
"rubiks cube"
] | If you’re looking for a piece of custom furniture to anchor your child’s playroom,
this Rubik’s cube chest of drawers
is just the thing. [Makendo] went the extra couple of miles on the project, building the entire thing from scratch and adding one clever feature after another to make it something special.
It’s made up of three plywood boxes, open on one side to accept a plywood drawer. The drawers were carefully fitted so that it is difficult to see which side is actually the drawer face. [Makendo] even routed a hash-mark of grooves into each face of the cube to make it look like the seams that make up the 9×9 grid of colored squares. Speaking of those colors, the “stickers” themselves are made of 1/4″ plywood and are not permanently affixed. Each is held on with a magnet plus a pair of dowels to keep it from spinning. This way you can rearrange the colors as often as you please.
Each layer of the cube spins thanks to some lazy susan bearings. [Makendo] didn’t want to add too much distance between the different modules so he routed out each side to fit the circular hardware. As a final touch, the drawers themselves can be locked in place using a dowel underneath one of the colored squares. We’ve embedded a video of the cube at play after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr7DmfJTwyA&w=470]
[Thanks Karen] | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "477744",
"author": "deathventure",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T18:33:37",
"content": "cheaters, they’re just taking the labels off and re-applying them :PVery nice project, and high quality.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "477761... | 1,760,377,060.390146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/see-where-socks-has-been-using-a-gps-tracking-collar/ | See Where Socks Has Been Using A GPS Tracking Collar | Mike Szczys | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"cat",
"gps tracker"
] | [Buxtronix] wanted to know where his cat (named Ash, but we thought Socks sounded much more cliché) was going when on the loose. He designed a
GPS tracking collar and a way to map the data it collects
.
The hardware actually turns out to be very simple. He needed a GPS module to gather location data, and a way to store that information having decided that live broadcast was not feasible. He hit SparkFun because they have a GPS module that is small enough for a cat collar, and outputs data with one serial pin. Unfortunately this
module is no longer available
, but if you have a similarly sized replacement let us know in the comments. Data capture is made easy by this device, you just need to record the serial data as it comes down the pipeline. [Buxtronix] used an
OpenLog board
as it dumps the data onto an SD card. When [Ash] returns from his roaming, [Buxtronix] grabs the SD card, and uses a Python script to convert the NMEA data to KML format which can be overlaid on Google Earth and Google Maps. | 32 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "477709",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T17:18:59",
"content": "All it needs is a “Licking Myself” recording option! But seriously I saw a documentary where they tracked racoons in the city with huge radio collars, this set up would be far easier on the racoon and co... | 1,760,377,060.282968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/halloween-hacks-building-a-dark-ride-in-a-garage/ | Halloween Hacks: Building A Dark Ride In A Garage | Brian Benchoff | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"dark ride",
"halloween",
"haunted house"
] | Instead of the usual Jack-o-lanterns and creepy Halloween decorations, [Rick Murphy] built a
dark ride
in his garage a few years ago.
In case you’ve never been fortunate enough to see one in person, a dark ride is a track-based haunted house meant to be experienced on a small cart. Usually featuring sound, light, and animatronic displays, dark rides can be
just as entertaining
now as when you were eight years old.
[Rick]’s dark ride, “Scream in the Dark” was built in his 2-car garage over a few years. The kids that went though the ride were genuinely scared, but that made the kids in line even more curious – just the reaction [Rick] wanted.
The build is for the most part completely modular.
The track
is made up of 4-foot square panels that have either a straight track or 90 degree bend. The modular design means [Rick]’s garage doesn’t need to be a dark ride the entire year. The cart rides on this curved, raised track with the help of a few gear motors and 12 V battery pulled from a Power Wheels.
There’s a great
gallery
of the interior of the dark ride and a video after the break. If you’d like to build your own dark ride, check out
dafe.org
for a whole bunch of dark ride and fun house enthusiasts.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HCDS-8kNtc&w=470] | 15 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "478770",
"author": "heatgap",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T21:23:01",
"content": "Wow! Very cool idea. From the looks of it his hard work payed off. The kids and parents seem to love it.For a garage project this has to be one of the best self-made Halloween projects I’ve ever seen.Great... | 1,760,377,060.335308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/wireless-hackerspace-music-control/ | Wireless Hackerspace Music Control | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"433 mhz",
"music",
"Skipbutton",
"wireless"
] | The crew at the Netherlands-based Bitlair hackerspace
love their music
, and have set up a digital jukebox for their workshop using mpd and fookebox. One problem that you run into with a bunch of different people working in one place is that everyone has their own distinct taste in music. The rhythmic “wub wub wub” of Dubstep might be great for some while leaving others trying to solder while simultaneously covering their ears. To ensure that everyone can exercise a musical veto (a la Empire Records) now and again, they built a Skipbutton which allows members to change what’s playing.
The button allows users to skip to the next song in the queue. as well as to control the volume of the space’s sound system. It uses an Arduino pro mini to run the show, sending signals to the mpd daemon using a 433 MHz transmitter. Bitlair is pretty large and they often spend time outdoors, so they had to ensure that the Skipbutton worked wherever they did. To do this, they built a Yagi-Uda antenna at the receiving end to ensure that the button functions no matter where it’s being triggered from.
Check out their wiki if you’re interested in making a similar system for your home or hackerspace – all of the code and schematics are available for the taking. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "478736",
"author": "woutervddn",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T20:15:56",
"content": "Not spectacular, nevertheless: nifty!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "478753",
"author": "Tris",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T20:47:19",
"c... | 1,760,377,060.210873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/vintage-camera-retrofit-perfect-for-trolling-strangers/ | Vintage Camera Retrofit Perfect For Trolling Strangers | Mike Nathan | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"digital camera",
"prank",
"retrofit",
"vintage camera"
] | [John] likes making things out of unusual junk, and decided to
build something for the sole purpose of trolling others.
He thought it would be funny to stuff a new digital camera into the body of an old, obsolete camera, just to see how people would react to it.
He considered several different cameras, including a bulky old Polaroid, eventually settling on a far more manageable Argus C3. The camera wasn’t quite big enough to fit his new digicam inside, so he built a mock body using black micarta. He attached the Argus’ front and back to his plastic box, then spent some time fitting his digital camera inside. He transferred knobs from the original camera to his new false body, adding to the authenticity, before taking it out for some test shots.
You can see the final result above, and we think you would be hard pressed to notice that there’s something amiss with his camera unless you spent some time taking a closer look at it. He says that it works well for the most part, and it’s definitely a conversation starter. People are always puzzled by the fact that he is using such and old camera, and doubly so when he tells them it can take about 4,000 shots before he has to “develop” his pictures. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "478697",
"author": "Chuckt",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T19:19:19",
"content": "Just don’t put it in an Apple store.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "478707",
"author": "buzzles",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T19:37:12",
"con... | 1,760,377,060.44535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/building-a-better-clock-to-drive-you-insane/ | Building A Better Clock To Drive You Insane | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"discworld",
"PIC12F",
"Vetinari clock"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpqFU4SGe1Y&w=470]
[Simon] came up with
an improved version of Lord Vetinari’s clock
that begs to be installed in waiting rooms around the world.
Last week, we were introduced to a real-life
Vetinari Clock
that keeps regular time but ticks at irregular intervals. It’s a great way to turn someone’s mind into porridge, but the original build broke after a few weeks because of some limitations in the clock drive. [Simon] built a very minimal circuit does away with these problems.
Just as in the first build, a microcontroller pulses the second hand motor once every second. As for the random component of this build, the microcontroller has a puts 32 bytes into a 128 byte array. The array is checked 4 times a second, and if the byte is 1, the second hand is incremented. If the byte is 0, time stops for a little bit. [Simon] included the schematic, board layout and code if you’d like to build one yourself.
There are a few drawbacks to this design; the pattern of ticking and not ticking is hard-coded into the microcontroller. Even though the 32 second long pattern shouldn’t be noticeable by watching the clock, it’s not an entirely random solution.
Judging from the comments
on the original build, using radioactive decay to increment a second might be a bit uncalled for.
We would like to see a second hand that stops when you look at it though. Facial recognition, anyone? | 24 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "478657",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T18:07:21",
"content": "i like it!don’t have sound on (i’m “working”) but does it have a nice booming rhythmic tick.. that doesn’t follow the seconds arm at all?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,377,060.547249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/remote-controlled-vmusic2-audio-player/ | Remote-controlled VMUSIC2 Audio Player | Mike Nathan | [
"digital audio hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"home audio",
"ir",
"mp3",
"propeller",
"VMUSIC2"
] | [Ron] was looking for
a way to play his MP3s around the house
without having to use his computer. He also wanted the ability to remotely control his tunes with an old camcorder remote he had sitting around – not exactly a feature you would find in an off the shelf personal audio player.
Ultimately, he decided to construct his own remote-controlled audio player using a VMUSIC2 audio module, which can decode MP3s from any standard USB drive. The VMUSIC2 is controlled by a Propeller demo board, which also handles receiving and decoding IR signals from his camcorder remote. While he was originally dumping ID3 tag data to his computer for debugging purposes, he recently added an LCD screen for displaying song information in a more useful manner.
The MP3 player seems to work pretty well if the video below is any indication, though it’s begging for a nice enclosure to tie things together. We like the project so far, so we’re sure [Ron] won’t fail to impress when it’s completely finished.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PtN7-1do6Y&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "478626",
"author": "durfdee",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T17:23:27",
"content": "Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg would be proud.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "478632",
"author": "pants6000",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T17:30:... | 1,760,377,060.491852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/slick-music-synchronized-light-show-uses-uv-leds-and-water/ | Slick Music Synchronized Light Show Uses UV LEDs And Water | Mike Nathan | [
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"led",
"light show",
"uv"
] | [mike6789k] wanted to spice up his dorm room, so he built
a cool music synchronized light show
that struck us as being very well thought out. We have seen similar music-based visualizations before, but they tend to be pretty basic, relying on volume more than actual audio frequencies to trigger the lighting.
[mike6789k] didn’t want to build “just another” synchronized light show, and his all-analog approach gives a true representation of the music being played instead of just flashing lights along with the beat. Using a trio of simple filters, he broke the audio signals down into three distinct frequency bands before being driven through a high gain transistor to power a set of LEDs.
We were pretty impressed at how bright the display was given that he is using UV LEDs, but the 1W diodes seem to have no problem lighting up the place when aimed through the UV-reactive water, as you can see in the video below.
If you’re looking to make something similar for your next party, the folks over at Buildlounge were able to wrangle a schematic out of [mike6789k], which
you can find here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd3hzYAJzOo&w&w=470] | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "478578",
"author": "zing",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T16:08:53",
"content": "Embedding disable by request, yay.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "478589",
"author": "Beat707",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T16:27:43",
... | 1,760,377,060.600803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/12/cheap-ikea-camera-boom-ensures-shake-free-video/ | Cheap Ikea Camera Boom Ensures Shake-free Video | Mike Nathan | [
"cnc hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"camera boom",
"makerbot",
"webcam"
] | [Chris] recently got himself a nice web cam for
documenting his Makerbot builds
, and much like [Dino], he was looking for a way to get a bird’s-eye view of the action while keeping the camera nice and steady. While
[Dino] ventured off to the hardware store
, [Chris] tried a few different options that included tape, before heading off to Ikea to see what he could find.
$9 and a few Swedish meatballs later, he was on his way home with a “TERTIAL Work Lamp” that can be mounted on virtually any desk-like surface. He had to remove most of the web cam’s useless mounting hardware, doing the same with the lamp’s light fixture. He put together a small bracket in Google Sketchup, which he then printed out using his Makerbot.
It fit perfectly, and now he can get steady video of his Makerbot prints every single time. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "478483",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2011-10-12T14:12:49",
"content": "Those meatballs really aren’t very good, are they?Nifty hack, though I’d note that similar standing lamps can be had a bit cheaper from Goodwill; it was a very common style a few years ago, and if you’re jus... | 1,760,377,060.660972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/announcing-our-next-theme-halloween-hacks/ | Announcing Our Next Theme: Halloween Hacks | Brian Benchoff | [
"News"
] | [
"halloween",
"Halloween hacks"
] | It seems every year, Hack A Day is a little bit behind the times when it comes to Halloween hacks. Builds like the
Mario costumes
and the
house singing
Thriller
are great, but it makes a lot more sense for us to post them before Halloween.
To introduce our Halloween theme, we’d like to present [heavyweighthowe]’s
Halloween project
. It’s a small lighting automation build that syncs a string of lights to the theme of the
best
Halloween
Christmas
2nd best [Tim Burton] movie,
The Nightmare Before Christmas
. [heavyweighthowe] used
Vixen
to sequence the lights and an Arduino to interpret the serial commands from Vixen. It’s a nice build that would look great sitting on a porch next to a giant bowl of candy.
If you’ve got a Halloween build you’d like to show off, like a haunted house ride an awesome costume or even a really great Jack-O-Lantern, send it in on the
tip line
. We’re planning on putting up at least one Halloween post a day, so keep sending in those builds. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "477755",
"author": "QuantumRand",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T18:54:22",
"content": "Here’s my idea:Create a mirror frame with a monitor (or tablet) behind it. Hook it up to a motion sensor, and as someone walks up to it, it kicks on with an eerie video of a floating ghostly figure of ... | 1,760,377,060.707114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/genetic-testing-with-lego/ | Genetic Testing With Lego | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"biology",
"dna",
"lego"
] | From the dark recesses of the Internet circa 2009 comes the
BioBrick-A-Bot
, a liquid handling system for molecular biologists.
The
2009 iGEM competition
was a student competition to build devices for synthetic biology. The BioBrick-A-Bot’s goal is to build a simple, low-cost liquid handling system that sucks liquids out of petri dishes and into vials.
Like most lab equipment, the commercial version of this tech is insanely expensive – about 10 grand for a commercial liquid handling robot. The BioBrick-A-Bot is made nearly entirely out of LEGO parts, so the cost of the entire system was brought down to about $700.
There are two main parts to the BioBrick-A-Bot. The
Alpha module
holds four pipette on a
delta platform
We’ve seen this type of robot built out of LEGO
before
, but moving liquids is new territory. The
Phi module
contains all the mechanics to suck microliters of liquid into a pipette and spit them out into vials.
The BioBrick-A-Bot didn’t win the 2009 iGEM competition (that honor was taken by students from
Heidelberg
Cambridge
), but we’d take a LEGO robot any day of the week. Check out the demo after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRijFX0BpGI&w=470]
Thanks [Okian] for sending this one in. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "477688",
"author": "Charles Fracchia",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T16:11:58",
"content": "Correction: The 2009 iGEM competition was won by Cambridge (UK) for the creation of the colour parts (here).Also the iGEM competition stands for international Genetically Engineered Machine Compe... | 1,760,377,060.829629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/building-a-multidimensional-display-from-trash/ | Building A Multidimensional Display From Trash | Mike Szczys | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"hologram",
"lcd",
"volumetric"
] | Here’s a simple concept that will let you
turn any LCD screen into a multidimensional display
(
translated
). [Herdek] used bits of that impossible to open clear plastic packaging to construct this add-on for the smart phone seen above. Three pieces of the material have been mounted at a 45 degree angle between the screen and viewer. The material is both reflective and transparent, depending on the angle at which light hits it. This allows it to reflect the light from the screen toward the viewer, but let light from the baffles behind it pass through unimpeded. The three baffles allow the LCD to be partitioned into three different sections whose images will appear to be at different depths according to the viewer’s vantage point. After the break we’ve embedded a demonstration video, as well as the how-to that shows the construction technique for the add-on.
This follows the same concept at
the pyramidal volumetric display
, which is still one of our favorite LCD hacks.
Demo video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0AksET_XoQ&w=470]
How-to build the add-on:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chgaRH68SVg&w=470]
[Thanks E] | 17 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "477571",
"author": "hellfyr",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T14:24:22",
"content": "That is amazing! Great use of that horrendous plastic packaging that causes wounding and disfigurement during every end of year holiday celebration.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,377,061.29593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/11/simple-circuit-reminds-you-to-lock-the-door-as-you-rush-out-of-the-house/ | Simple Circuit Reminds You To Lock The Door As You Rush Out Of The House | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"attiny13",
"door",
"security"
] | It seems that [pppd] is always rushing out of his apartment to catch the bus, and he finds himself frequently questioning
whether or not he remembered to lock the door.
He often doubles back to check, and while he has never actually forgotten to lock the door, he would rather not deal with the worry.
Since he finally had some free time on his hands, he decided to put together a simple device that would help end his worry once and for all. Using an ATtiny13, [pppd] designed a circuit that would detect when his door has been unlocked and opened, beeping every few seconds until the lock is reengaged. The circuit relies on a reed switch installed inside the door frame, which is tripped by the magnet he glued to his door’s deadbolt.
He says that the system works well so far, though he does have a few improvements in mind already. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "477492",
"author": "Harald",
"timestamp": "2011-10-11T12:08:51",
"content": "Now that worries about the locked door too well….But the more important question: Is the Coffee machine turned off?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "4... | 1,760,377,061.238519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/link-spam-your-friends-with-printed-qr-codes/ | Link Spam Your Friends With Printed QR Codes | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"qr code",
"thermal printer"
] | While [Oryx] is down with social media like Facebook and Twitter, there are times when he wants to
share things with people he is hanging out with
in the real world. Sure, he could always email his friends links to the latest video of a cat doing something totally hilarious, but he wanted something a bit more tangible.
He had a small thermal printer from SparkFun kicking around, and thought it would be the ideal medium for sharing things with others. He sat down and put together a bit of code that allows him to interface the printer with his computer, generating QR codes from his web browser with the simple click of a button. Now, when he wants to pass something along to a friend, he can quickly print out a label bearing both a QR code and URL for easy access later on.
All in all it’s an interesting idea, though we would be curious to see what would happen if we handed our non-techie friends a printed QR code. | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "477160",
"author": "Taylor Alexander",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T23:34:33",
"content": "This just kind of reminds me,I have been considering putting up a QR code on my apartment door that links to a little “hello” page, so tech inclined neighbors can learn a bit about who I am, and p... | 1,760,377,061.177716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/character-lcd-spectrum-analyzer-made-simple-with-a-dedicated-ic/ | Character LCD Spectrum Analyzer Made Simple With A Dedicated IC | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"hd44780",
"msgeq7",
"spectrum analyzer"
] | [El Artis] just finished building
an audio spectrum analyzer that uses a character LCD
. The uses an Arduino to drive the display, but unlike other
meters that use the microcontroller for analysis
, [El Artis] is using a discrete IC for that task.
This project uses the MSGEQ7 graphic equilizer display filter chip to grab frequency data from the audio source. The chip connects to your microcontroller of choice using two digital pins and one analog pin. [El Artis] points us to [J Skoba’s] post about
how to use it with an Arduino
, then adds his own custom character routines for an HD44780 display. You’ll notice that there are sixteen bars in the image above, which conflicts with the 7 outputs the chip offers. [El Artis] averages neighboring values in order to add the extra outputs.
Don’t miss the demo video after the break. If you’re looking to use this part in one of your projects, we noticed they’re a little hard to find (octopart doesn’t return any suppliers) but
SparkFun has them
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpLLqgySCD4&w=470] | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "477120",
"author": "LinuxBoi",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T22:11:48",
"content": "I bet you could get the Arduino to do this by itself, without the extra IC.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "477127",
"author": "GCL",
"timest... | 1,760,377,061.102243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/full-color-ebook-reader-needs-only-8-bits-of-muscle/ | Full-color EBook Reader Needs Only 8-bits Of Muscle | Mike Szczys | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"ebook",
"epub",
"ereader",
"microtouch"
] | [Rossum’s] still coming up with great ways to use his microtouch hardware. This time, he’s taken his inspiration from Amazon’s announcement that a full-color eBook reader (and movie player) is on the way. Judging from the video after the break,
his fully functional reader is a big win for the device
.
You’re probably familiar with the hardware, an
ATmega644-based board connected to a touch sensitive LCD
screen. You can make your own or
buy one pre-assembled
(but currently out-of-stock). The board has a microSD card slot making it quite easy to add books to the device. At the start of the project [Rossum] thought he might be able to read ePub files directly, but the embedded images, and unzip function needed to open the package file is a bit too much for the 8-bit processor’s restrictions. One simple step does the trick. A helper script can be used to format the files before transferring them to the device. This does the unzipping, scales the images, and repaginates the text into a format friendly for the display size.
Now if we only had a nice little case to house the hardware we’d be in business.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=314v1H_aN2o&w=470] | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "477109",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T21:42:41",
"content": "This is one of the best projects featured on this site this year, one of the best ever. The performance puts many commercial readers and smartphones to shame.I like it a lot.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,377,061.405867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/ultrasonic-rangefinder-as-scanning-radar/ | Ultrasonic Rangefinder As Scanning Radar | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"18f4520",
"bar graph",
"pic",
"radar",
"ultrasonic"
] | Ultrasonic rangfinders are a cheap and easy way to gather obstacle avoidance data. When added to a servo motor they form something of
a scanning radar for near-proximity objects
.
In this implementation, [Rui Cabral] is driving the servo, and collecting data from the sensor using a PIC 18F4520. The servo rotates 180 degreees, taking sensor measurements in increments of nine degrees. If it discovers obstacles, the distance and orientation are recorded. Feedback is displayed on a 20-LED bar graph display which shows a moving LED to track the sensor orientation, with LEDs remaining lit whenever an object is found. Right now the obstacle data is pushed over a serial connection with a PC, but could easily be injected into navigation logic for a robot in order to triangulate a path around the obstruction. You can see [Rui’s] project in action after the break.
We looked in on the same concept with a different display technique a couple of years back. That hack used an Arduino and Processing to
map sensor data with a traditional green sweep display
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeNF3fzqa_I&w=470]
[Thanks Oryx] | 14 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "477066",
"author": "Khordas",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T20:59:21",
"content": "Fun way to get some use out of some older tech. I wonder if it would be possible to scan the rangefinder smoothly, and just sample the data at intervals, for a less jerky appearance, or does the rangefind... | 1,760,377,061.347752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/how-to-build-a-23-android-tablet/ | How To Build A 23″ Android Tablet | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"monitor",
"resistive",
"tablet",
"touchscreen"
] | If you’re looking to build a really big Android tablet the trick is not to start from scratch. [Peter] pulled off
a 23″ Android Tablet
hack using a collection of easily acquired parts, leaving the hard work up to hardware that was designed to do it.
He didn’t really build a tablet, as much as he built a big touch-screen add-on for one. He already had a couple of inexpensive tablets on hand to play around with. One of them has an HDMI out port, which let him easily push the display onto a 23″ monitor. He knew the tablet was a 4-wire resistive touchscreen, but he didn’t know if other touchscreens with the same number of connectors and be directly swapped and still work. To test this, he cracked open a second tablet device and connected its touchscreen to the first one’s hardware. When he was met with success it was time to source a couple of 23″ touchscreen overlays to test with the external monitor. As you can see in the clip after the break, it works like a charm!
[Peter] was inspired to write about his experiences after seeing the 23″ Android tablet video in
our recent links post
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGu2meJuT4s&w=470] | 32 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "477022",
"author": "brad",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T19:29:06",
"content": "i’ve always felt that bigfoot was left out of the demographic for tablet sales. i can sleep easy now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "477048",
... | 1,760,377,061.572717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/electric-mountain-board-with-glove-control/ | Electric Mountain Board With Glove Control | Brian Benchoff | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"flex sensor",
"glove",
"LiFePO4",
"mountainboard"
] | Last summer, we saw [Andres Guzman]’s electric mountain board tearing around the University of Illinois campus.
He’s back again
, only this time the board isn’t controlled with a PlayStation controller. [Andres] built a wireless glove to control his mountain board.
An Arduino and power supply is mounted to the glove. A 2.4GHz transceiver serves as the comm link between the glove and board. The speed control is handled by
this flex sensor
from Sparkfun. With the flex sensor held between the middle and ring fingers, all [Andres] needs to do to apply power is slightly bend his fingers.
There’s also a number of safety features built into the board. To enable power to the boards motor, there’s a dead man switch on the glove underneath the thumb. If [Andres] were to take a nasty spill, he would release the switch and the board would come to a stop. [Andres] also made sure the board would shut down if the wireless link was interrupted. The build seems pretty safe, even if he is tearing around his campus in the video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686oJ7bNFIU&w=470] | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "476995",
"author": "Charlie",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T18:27:46",
"content": "Next stop… HOVERBOARD!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "476997",
"author": "PJ Allen",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T18:33:24",
"content": "I... | 1,760,377,061.627855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/animated-x-mas-sign/ | Animated X-mas Sign | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"74HC14",
"74hc595",
"christmas",
"LED sign"
] | Sure, it may be two and a half months until Christmas. That doesn’t mean we can’t start
building a few Christmas decorations
. Last year, [RB] over at Embedded Lab made an
animated Christmas sign
using a simple microcontroller setup. This year, [RB] is adding a blinking LED border and doing the entire project with 74xx ICs.
The letters for this year’s sign were recycled from last years’. This time, however, two strings of 12 LEDs are used for the blinking border. The blinking circuitry uses a 74hc14 Schmitt trigger to provide the clock. A pair of 74hc595 shift registers turn each letter on one at a time. The speed is controlled with a small trim pot.
Using ICs to drive a series of lights in a pattern isn’t a new thing – you’d be hard pressed to not find a similar setup in the blinking panels of sci-fi shows of the 60s and 70s. Of course this sign doesn’t compare with what can be done with a
microprocessor
a lot of patience
, it’s still a very nice build. Check out the video after the break to see the X-mas sign in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPSQhY1g5dE&w=470] | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6721603",
"author": "wzhd",
"timestamp": "2024-01-21T12:06:25",
"content": "In case anyone’s interested in what can be achieved a lot of patience, the now dead you-tube video (rmgf60CI_ks) has been captured by the way-back machine, it’s about Christmas lights built by Carson William... | 1,760,377,061.442208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/retrofitting-a-60-year-old-electric-heater/ | Retrofitting A 60-year Old Electric Heater | Mike Nathan | [
"classic hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"ceramic",
"heater",
"retrofit",
"safety"
] | [John] found an old Kenmore electric heater at a junk store one day,
and thought it would look great in his bathroom.
The only problem with the unit is that it was built back in the 1940s/1950s, so it lacked any sort of modern safeguards that you would expect from an indoor heater. There was no on/off switch, no fuse, no thermostat, and no tip switch – though it did have a nice, flammable cloth-covered power cord.
Since [John] wasn’t too keen on burning his house down in the name of staying warm, he decided to retrofit the old unit’s shell with a new ceramic heater. He found a $20 unit that looked like it would fit, so he disassembled both heaters and got to work. The Kenmore’s innards were scrapped, then he gave the unit a nice fresh coat of high-temp paint. The new heater was cut to fit inside the old unit’s shell, controls and safety features intact.
He says that it works very well, and that it looks great in his bathroom. If you’re considering doing something similar, be sure to check out his writeup – it is very thorough and has plenty of details that will help you along the way. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "476931",
"author": "mike bradley",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T16:42:44",
"content": "love it. i like seeing these things. the old looks are great, but sometimes the tech leaves a bit to be desired. so i am all for stuffing new inside old.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,377,061.503409 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/10/22-miles-straight-up-in-90-seconds/ | 22 Miles Straight Up In 90 Seconds | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"rocketry",
"rockets"
] | Those little Estes rockets you built as a kid
just got blown out of the water
.
In response to the
Carmack Prize
to launch an amateur rocket above 100,000 feet, [Derek Deville] and the rest of the Qu8k team launched a 320 pound, 14-foot-long rocket through 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Unlike our little toy rockets from years ago, more than half of the entire rocket is fuel. This isn’t a plastic or salami-powered hybrid rocket, though. It’s an entirely
solid fuel
rocket. The fuel grain is specially made for this rocket in a cylinder-with-fins shape that ensures an even burn through the entire flight.
The payload included 2 timers, an accelerometer, a cosmic ray detector (check out the
Geiger tube
) and 4 GPS units required of the Carmack Prize. The
video from the on-board camera
shows a fantastic flight, only partially obscured by the plastic aeroshroud
that melted
when the rocket was going about Mach 3.
Videos of the entire flight and a ‘highlights’ reel are available after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HTwbpjBUOk&w=470] | 59 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "476836",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T14:05:21",
"content": "Wow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "476842",
"author": "that1guy",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T14:23:42",
"content": "I’m going to imagine ther... | 1,760,377,061.755451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/sustainability-hacks-the-final-word/ | Sustainability Hacks: The Final Word | Jack Buffington | [
"News"
] | [
"sustainability hacks"
] | This theme has been tricky to write for. On one hand, here at Hackaday, we are excited about doing anything that will allow us to not consume as many resources but on the other hand, when you really look closely at things, pretty much everything that we do in our modern lives isn’t sustainable. We can certainly find ways to get by with less but doing without really isn’t an option. The exciting thing about the current state of technology is that things are becoming a lot more efficient so the things that we do every day, such as using a computer require less and less energy. Even our cars, which for nearly 100 years drove around at 25 miles per gallon are starting to slowly require less fuel to get from point A to point B. We have a long way to go but there are signs that we (or our children) might not have to give up a modern life to continue on when coal and oil start to become scarce.
Shown above is an oil lamp made to look like a light bulb created by
Opossum Design
. It is an interesting use of modern technology to create light in a much more sustainable way.
Tomorrow we will be starting a new unofficial theme that will continue for the rest of October. For the past several years, we have been a bit behind the curve about Halloween stuff but we intend to make up for that in a big way. Halloween is one of those holidays that brings out the tinkerer in a lot of us. We would like to show off those projects. Hit us up on
our tip line
. If we like what we see, we will post about your project. We’re expecting a bunch of projects so unlike our prior themes, if we happen to get more than one that we like on a given day, we’ll post more. | 86 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "476320",
"author": "uzerzero",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T20:31:21",
"content": "I’m really tempted to try and make my own lightbulb lamp now…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "476323",
"author": "Tenbob",
"timestamp": "2011... | 1,760,377,062.188777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/an-interview-with-bre-pettis-founder-of-makerbot-industries/ | An Interview With Bre Pettis, Founder Of MakerBot Industries | Jeremy Cook | [
"Interviews"
] | [
"3d printing",
"bre pettis",
"business",
"makerbot"
] | For those of you that don’t know, the Makerbot is a 3D printer created by
Bre Pettis
. It is probably the best-known 3D printer that you can buy at a price point meant for the hobbyist. Although this article doesn’t go into how the MakerBot is made, it focuses instead about the business itself and the man behind it. Bre was a hobbyist maker just like many of our readers, but decided to turn his passion into a successful business.
Although not all businesses are a success, Bre has made quite a start at becoming one. His company now employs 50 people and is currently hiring (like this posting for a
“Web Warrior”
) and has just secured $10 million in venture capital funding! Check out the
full interview
for all the details. It may inspire others to go from “hobby maker” to “professional.”
For other 3D printing-related posts, check out this one about the
RepRap printer
which is capable of replicating itself. For other ways to make your own parts, this
rotomold machine
may be of interest or this semi-DIY
CNC router
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "475742",
"author": "Regulus",
"timestamp": "2011-10-08T21:31:39",
"content": "3D printing represent!Proud owner of a Cupcake, Prusa-Mendel, RepStrap of my design, and a Thing-O-Matic (my very own farm!) here. Bre is an amazing guy, I had the pleasure of meeting him at MakerFaire NY.... | 1,760,377,061.915809 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/diy-amplifier-minder-turns-off-your-stereo-when-you-forget/ | DIY Amplifier Minder Turns Off Your Stereo When You Forget | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ir",
"receiver",
"tube amp"
] | [zmashiah] has a nice Nova tube amplifier in his living room, and he often forgets to turn it off once he’s done listening to music. He feels guilty when this happens, as it not only shortens the lifespan of his stereo, but it’s not exactly the greenest behavior either. Rather than let his receiver idle any longer,
he built a simple device that automatically turns it off when he forgets.
He wired an Arduino to the line level output of the receiver, sampling the audio every two seconds. When five minutes pass without an audio signal, the Arduino sends an IR command to the receiver, turning it off.
He says he’s aware that it might be overkill to use an Arduino for this application, but that he would rather fork out an extra dollar or two instead of spending hours poring over AVR assembly code. While we’re all for efficiency, we can’t exactly argue with that logic – time is money!
[zmashiah] is kind enough to include his schematics as well as the code for his project, so be sure to check it out if you occasionally forget to turn off your IR-enabled appliances. | 23 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "475648",
"author": "Dax",
"timestamp": "2011-10-08T19:33:05",
"content": "You don’t need to “pore over AVR assembly” without an arduino.Just write your stuff in C and replace the boring bits like toggling a pin with a macro.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []... | 1,760,377,061.977015 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/structured-light-3d-scanner/ | Structured Light 3d Scanner | Brian Benchoff | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"pico projector",
"structured light"
] | After futzing around with a cheap pico projector, a webcam and a little bit of software, [Jas Strong] built herself
a 3d scanner
.
In spite of the dozens of
Kinect-based scanner projects
, we’ve seen
structured light
3d scanners before. This method of volumetric scanning projects a series of gradient images onto a subject. A camera captures images of the patterns of light and dark on the model, math happens, and 3d data is spit out of a computer.
[Jas] found a
Microvision SHOWWX
laser pico projector on Woot. The laser in the projector plays a large part in the quality of her 3d models – without a focus, [Jas] can get very accurate depth information up close. A Logitech webcam modified for a tighter focus handles the video capture responsibilities. The software side of things are a few of
these structured light
utilities that [Jas] melded into a single Processing sketch.
The results are pretty remarkable for a
rig
that uses woodworking clamps to hold everything together. [Jas]’
3d model of her cat’s house
looks very good. She’s got a few bugs to work out in her setup, but [Jas]
plans on releasing her work out into the wild very soon. We’ll update this post whenever that happens.
made her code available
here
. The code requires the
ControlP5
and
PeasyCam
libraries. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "475598",
"author": "nrp",
"timestamp": "2011-10-08T18:17:04",
"content": "I started working on a structured light scanner using a SHOWWX as well. I’m planning on replacing the red laser in the projector with an infrared one, with a corresponding filter on the camera. This way, the... | 1,760,377,062.287803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/rf-sniffing-on-the-go/ | RF Sniffing On-the-go | Mike Szczys | [
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"N900",
"next hope",
"nokia",
"packet sniffing",
"python",
"travis goodspeed"
] | It’s been a while since we checked in on [Travis Goodspeed]. His latest post makes
RF sniffing with the Next HOPE badge more portable
by ditching the need to display data on a computer. He’s built on the work he did
at the beginning of the year
, replacing the FTDI chip on the badge with a Bluetooth module. Now he can use his Nokia N900 as a GoodFET terminal to not only display the packets pulled from the air, but the control the badge as well.
Previously, the client running on the computer was communicating with the badge via a serial connection. To get it working on the N900 [Travis] transitioned from using py-serial over to using py-bluez. All of the code changes are available from
the GoodFET repository
.
He’s got a few other tricks planned for this concept. He put in a parts order to add Bluetooth to the Girltech IM-ME. The pretty pink pager has the same radio chip on board, so adding Bluetooth connectivity will allow it to be used in the same way. There are also plans in the works to add a couple other packet sniffing protocols to the bag of tricks, including ZigBee. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "475937",
"author": "KillerBug",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T04:50:06",
"content": "LoL…I love it when people use children’s toys for hacking…he is already using legos and he wants to use a “Pretty Pink Pager”! Great stuff!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,377,062.231834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/burning-man-2011-christopher-schardts-garden-of-rockets/ | Burning Man 2011: Christopher Schardt’s Garden Of Rockets | Jesse Congdon | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"burning man",
"interactive art",
"kinetic sculpture",
"propane"
] | This is one piece I regret to have missed this year at Burning Man, however I certainly heard tales from any one who stumbled across it. [Christopher Shardt]’s Garden of Rockets consists of three kinetic fire art pieces with spinning propane rockets that you can control!
[Christopher] decided to incorporate his Burning Man 2010 project,
4pyre²
, which is a 12 foot pipe with opposing propane fueled rockets on each end. Onlookers can control the amount of propane fed to the rockets and twist the pipe they are attached to causing the whole thing to spin around like an out of control fire hose. Accompanying 4pyre² is
PyreGoRound
, and
Pyroticulation
which are two variants on 4pyre²’s concept of spinning rocket bars. [Christopher] was lucky enough to have his project materials funded by Burning Man, but added three thousand dollars (!) in propane to the mix out of pocket.
Check out a video of the project after the jump, and [Christopher]’s
site
for details and schematics.
[vimeo
http://vimeo.com/27183456%5D
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DTu3qx50Us&w=470] | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "475498",
"author": "derrick",
"timestamp": "2011-10-08T16:07:31",
"content": "someone doesnt know his feeds and speeds for drilling! haha cool concept tho!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "475570",
"author": "Xeracy",
"ti... | 1,760,377,062.328032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/weekly-roundup-10811/ | Weekly Roundup 10/8/11 | Jack Buffington | [
"Weekly Roundup"
] | [
"weekly roundup"
] | In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week.
Our most popular post this week is about a clock modeled after
Lord Vetinari’s clock
in Discworld that ticks at random intervals but keeps accurate time.
Our next most popular post is of a project that takes two 3.5″ floppy drives and uses them to play
the Imperial March from Star Wars
.
Next we have a post about a way to
jam WiFi
by sending out deauthentication packets.
Fourth in our list is a post about some really
interesting turn signals
and other lights that [StarfireMX] created for his car that are chock full of RGB LEDs. This allows them to do all sorts of interesting things other than just blinking.
Finally, we had a post about a robot that has some
really interesting ‘wheels’
that aren’t like anything that we have seen before. They are something between an omniwheel and a tank tread and look like they would be fun to play with. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,062.368232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/sustainability-hacks-wind-turbine-generator/ | Sustainability Hacks: Wind Turbine Generator | Brian Benchoff | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"generator",
"sustainability hacks",
"Wind turbine"
] | With a little bit of thought put into the build, a wind turbine generator can be one of the greenest ways to generate electricity. Wind power doesn’t require a semiconductor fab lab (unlike solar panels) and doesn’t have very many environmental consequences (unlike hydro power). The Tech Junkies
put up a build log of a wind turbine
that ended up being a very easy build.
In the interests of sustainability, The Tech Junkies found an old 1.5 HP DC treadmill motor. After measuring the voltage output when the motor was connected to a lathe, they discovered the power output was very linear. With a little bit of calculations, they realized they needed about 1000 RPM to get 20 Volts out of the motor. The team connected an inverter (it’s always cool seeing a power meter run backwards) and started fabricating the blades.
The team found a wealth of info on blade design on
this site
and following a few guidelines made six blades out of 8″ diameter PVC pipe. An aluminum hub was fabricated and the whole shebang was put on top of a found steel frame.
The Tech Junkies’ build produces 10 Watts of power but they’re looking to increase that to 500 W with the appropriate gearing. A great build that harkens back to
this awesome webpage
about turbine building and living off the grid. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "475393",
"author": "grenadier",
"timestamp": "2011-10-08T13:07:18",
"content": "Too bad wind turbines hardly ever pay themselves off and break all the time.Let’s just build some goddamn thorium reactors and fix this huge mess. We have enough thorium in the US to power us for about 3... | 1,760,377,062.420668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/open-source-sprinkler-controller-keeps-your-lawn-looking-great/ | Open-source Sprinkler Controller Keeps Your Lawn Looking Great | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ethernet",
"open source",
"sprinkler controller"
] | [Ray] wrote in to share a great project he just recently wrapped up,
an open-source sprinkler valve controller.
Built in collaboration with Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief [Chris Anderson], the sprinkler controller is designed to replace the limited commercial sprinkler timers that typically come with a new home sprinkler setup.
Their system greatly expands on the idea of a standard sprinkler timer, adding Ethernet connectivity, web-based scheduling, and 8 separate controllable zones. At the heart of the controller is an ATmega328 running the Arduino bootloader, which means that the system is easily tweakable to fit your specific needs. The controller works off a standard 24V AC sprinkler transformer, which means that the controller can easily act as a drop-in replacement for your existing system.
The pair sells kits through the web site, but you can always simply download the schematics, PCB layout files, and BoM to build one yourself. Whichever path you choose, be sure to swing by [Ray’s] site and take a good look around – there is an incredibly detailed assembly and programming guide there that will be a great resource as you go along.
Continue reading to see a video of the sprinkler controller in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsVwAFS_Ej8&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "476395",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T00:48:00",
"content": "awesome. very nice build.I want to know more about the case!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "476409",
"author": "tantris",
"timestamp": "2011-10-... | 1,760,377,062.476104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/linear-motor-can-be-built-from-trash/ | Linear Motor Can Be Built From Trash | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"linear actuator"
] | [Raul] built a
cheap linear actuator
out of a drawer slide and a surplus flatbed scanner.
A few builds we’ve seen, like the
PCB drill press
or the
horribly inefficient thermostat
, used linear actuators as key components of their builds. These linear actuators are fairly expensive compared to other parts we usually have lying around so going the homebrew route to reduce costs is always a welcome idea.
The first step of [Raul]’s build is to mount a drawer slide to a piece of wood. A stepper motor is attached to one end of the actuator and a timing belt is strung along the length of the assemblage. After a bracket is connected the drawer slide and the belt, you’ve got a very inexpensive linear motor.
In our days of dumpster diving, we can’t count the number of times we’ve passed up on drawer slides in unwanted furniture. Stepper motors, gear trains and timing belts from old ScanJets can be found for pocket change any day of the week. For cheap and accurate linear motion, we couldn’t come up with a build that does better than [Raul]’s. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "476383",
"author": "Microguy",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T00:05:20",
"content": "Need to change the headline to linear actuators not linear motor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "476764",
"author": "David",
"time... | 1,760,377,062.53213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/workbench-overhead-camera-boom-made-from-pvc/ | Workbench Overhead Camera Boom Made From PVC | Mike Nathan | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"HackIt",
"how-to"
] | [
"camera boom",
"PVC",
"workbench"
] | It looks like [Dino] is getting settled into his new digs, and while the moving process has kept him pretty busy, he’s slowly but surely getting his workshop area set up. One thing that he really wanted from his new bench was
a better way to record video
, for both his Hack a Week series as well as broadcasting over Ustream.
He bought a nice little Hi-Def web cam for making videos and set out to build a camera boom for his bench. The boom is constructed mostly from PVC piping along with some other odds and ends for mounting. In the video below, he walks through the construction step by step, making it easy for anyone to follow along and build one of their own.
The boom looks like it works very well, and is a bargain at under $40. It articulates every which way giving him complete coverage of his workbench, and makes it easy to film whatever he’s working on – big or small.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU8boCpj2yY&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "476410",
"author": "PJ Allen",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T01:19:33",
"content": "Dino, I’m sure this is only the beginning.[ Servos, motors, remote control, a “Dino-Jib” — and maybe a lapel pin mic someday, too. (: ]",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,377,062.724914 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/improving-a-cheap-espresso-machine/ | Improving A Cheap Espresso Machine | Brian Benchoff | [
"cooking hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"cooking",
"espresso",
"pressure"
] | For those of us that would like a good cup of coffee but don’t want to put up with the ‘burnt butt’ taste of Starbucks and don’t have a decent coffee shop nearby, we’ve had very few options. Most of us have been made to suffer with an el-cheapo espresso machine. [Joe] sent in a great build that improves these el-cheapo models and brings them up to the quality we would expect from their more expensive brethren.
For the best pull from an espresso machine, the great [
Alton Brown
] says 200° F water must be forced through the grind at around 10
PSI
atm. [Joe]’s espresso machine can’t build up pressure because the heating element is only active when the lever is in the ‘brew’ or ‘froth’ position. To build up pressure in the water reservoir, [Joe] simply added a pressure gauge to the frothing attachment. When the gauge reads the necessary 10 atmospheres, just move the lever over to the ‘brew’ position and enjoy a nice cup of espresso.
[Joe] has already tested the pressure relief valve of his espresso machine. With the gauge in the way, [Joe] can’t make use of his frother, but a secondary valve could easily remedy that. [Joe] hasn’t published his espresso hack anywhere, but he did email us some pics of his build. We’ve embedded them as a slideshow after the break. Check out the pressure gauge on the frothing attachment and the pressure relief valve below.
[slideshow] | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "476304",
"author": "bty",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T20:15:18",
"content": "man those espresso machines are still so darn expensive.nice hack, I’d do almost anything to get a good affordable espresso machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,377,062.835578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/upgrading-an-old-super-scope/ | Upgrading An Old Super Scope | Mike Nathan | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"lipo",
"rechargeable",
"snes",
"super nintendo",
"Super Scope"
] | [Brian Knoll] still uses his Super Nintendo with relative frequency, and he just
can’t get enough Super Scope action.
If you never owned one, the Super Scope can be a ton of fun, but it’s also an incredible battery hog. It eats through AA batteries by the caseful, so [Brian] wanted to make the switch to rechargeable cells. Since NIMH AA batteries just don’t cut it in the Super Scope, he put together a rechargeable solution of his own.
He started off by calculating what sort of battery he would need for 8 hours of game play, then he started work on designing his circuit. The board he built contains both a DC/DC converter to provide the 9V required by the Super Scope, as well as built-in LiPo charger. He had his board made by BatchPCB, and after working through a small production error, he put everything together and gave his revamped scope a shot.
Things worked great, and while he says that he really should have built a low-voltage shutoff into his circuit, he is very happy with the results. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "476278",
"author": "Bryan L",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T19:12:25",
"content": "Is it just me or does it sound like a standard 9v battery would have fixed the problem? Definitely a great solution i just feel like an off the shelf 9v could have supplied plenty of mA and the required 9v... | 1,760,377,062.782339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/09/tinywrench-controls-motors-with-attiny24-chips/ | Tinywrench Controls Motors With ATtiny24 Chips | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ATtiny24",
"h-bridge",
"motor controller"
] | Tinywrench is [Tanjent’s] take on a motor controller board. It aims to
replicate all of the functions that a standalone motor controller chip offers
at as low a cost as possible. Early results are in. It works, and as seen can be assembled for about $8.
The top of the device offers a terminal block for connecting motors, ground, and 24V input. A pin header on the bottom has all the connections you would expect to find with a stepper motor driver board. Looking back on top there’s also a pair of ATtiny24 chips, each with its own trimpot for balancing the constant current output. Hiding on the underside of the board are two H-bridges built using high and low-side MOSFETs along with some diodes for protection, and various passive components for driving them.
As it stands, each of those H-bridges can handle around 9 amps which should be more than enough for projects with small motors. [Tanjent] mentions that one of the main advantages of working with this instead of a single motor-driver chip is that if you fry one of the MOSFETs you can replace it instead of trashing the entire board. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "476190",
"author": "Sporkx6",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T16:15:41",
"content": "This is a very cool design. I love the low-cost/simplistic standpoint. It looks great.I have contemplated making motor drivers with a ARM Cortex 3 driving a pair of H-Bridges. The using I²C, you can contro... | 1,760,377,063.023234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/10/08/the-zigroller-balance-bot/ | The Zigroller Balance Bot | Jeremy Cook | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"balance bot",
"zigbee",
"Zigduino"
] | The
Zigroller
is a Zigbee remote-controlled balance bot. Although balance bots have been featured on [HAD] before, the Zigroller appears to be well-built and the project is well documented. Besides a section on hardware, the software for this build is
documented here
. The theory behind a balancing bot like this is given in this
[MIT] paper
if you’d like some more background.
The roller itself was conceived as a project for a UW class this summer. The class was about control theory, so the electronics and mechanical setup was copied off of the
[ArduRoller]
project. In order to keep this project from influencing the control code of this ‘bot, it’s claimed that the code was not looked at while writing the new software. The process for building the remote control assembly is nicely documented and is an original creation for this project. Check out a video of it in action after the break!
[flickr video=6219029434 secret=666576238d w=400 h=225]
For another balance ‘bot, check out
this one
based on a 555 timer. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "475882",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2011-10-09T01:44:33",
"content": "Take off every ‘ZIG’!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "476735",
"author": "spiderwebby",
"timestamp": "2011-10-10T10:43:54",
... | 1,760,377,063.067005 |
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