url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/usb-stick-propeller-development-board/ | USB Stick Propeller Development Board | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ftdi",
"p8x32a",
"propeller"
] | [Parker Dillmann] is nearing
the end of the prototyping process for his Propeller development board
. He wanted a tool that let him work on projects without the need for a bunch of equipment, while still maintaining the ability to extend the hardware when necessary.
His last dev board
used a large piece of protoboard to host through hole components including the Propeller chip, 3.3V and 5V regultors, an SD card reader, and female pin headers. This version migrates to a PCB from a fab house and mostly surface mount components.
He decided to use a USB-stick design having been happy with some of TI’s prototyping tools. The Parallax branded development boards use an FTDI 232RL chip for easy programming and that’s what he’s gone with as well. A P8X32A chip in the QFP package was chosen for easier soldering than the smaller QFN option. There’s also a 64kb EEPROM on board to give you plenty of room for your SPIN programs. All the pins are broken out to DIL female headers and there’s a power header on the end opposite the USB plug. [Parker] plans to do a bit of testing to make sure there’s no problems with signal routing below the 5Mhz crystal footprint. This run of prototypes came from the Seeed Studios Fusion PCB servcie–he got more than 10 boards for a total of $13… that’s almost unbelievable. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "462846",
"author": "Parker Dillman",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T19:19:33",
"content": "It’s alright…I guess",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "462903",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T20:45:35",
"content": "Th... | 1,760,377,076.120092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/add-some-led-enhancement-to-your-netbook-lid/ | Add Some LED Enhancement To Your Netbook Lid | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"acer aspire one",
"netbook",
"Teensy"
] | [Mathieu] needed to open up his Acer Aspire One to do a hard drive replacement and decided to add a bit of pizzazz while he was in there. The image above is the lid of the
netbook adorned with RGB LEDs and a spray painted stencil
.
He previously purchased a set of surface mount RGB packages on eBay and thought that they were perfect for this hack. after removing the case he found that by using a flex PCB he would be able to fit the LEDs inside, and pass the connections through to the main computer housing. The leads connect to a Teensy board, which is held in place with a liberal application of hot glue. [Mathieu] removed the USB connector and soldered jumper wires to one of the computers ports. In the video after the break you can see that he uses the programming software to write some code to the Teensy, driving the LEDs. We’d like to see it set to listen for serial communications and react accordingly. That way you could use it for notifications, as an audio VU meter, to track torrent progress, etc.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Rva1s6eKE&w=470] | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "462900",
"author": "0x4368726973",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T20:31:16",
"content": "@anyonePerhaps, considering a microcontroller is actually being interfaced via the USB port, it is an interesting idea to add some IO functionality to the laptop. It would be even more interesting to ... | 1,760,377,076.167296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/flip-off-your-alarm-clock/ | Flip Off Your Alarm Clock! | Mike Nathan | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"FlipClock",
"gps",
"propeller"
] | [Corbin] hates fumbling around in the dark with his alarm blaring, looking for the off switch. He was so annoyed with regular alarm clocks that he decided to
build his own simpler timepiece.
The FlipClock resides in a simple black plastic case lacking any buttons whatsoever. When the alarm goes off, all one needs to do is flip the clock over to disable it. The digits automatically right themselves using an accelerometer to detect when the clock has been turned upside down, and an indicator LED lets you know that the alarm has been turned off.
The clock is based around a Propeller chip, which manages all of the clock’s operations. Instead of using a real time clock IC, [Corbin] is using a GPS module to keep accurate time, something we don’t recall seeing in an alarm clock before. That’s a good thing though, since there are no buttons with which to set the clock. In fact, there are no buttons to set the alarm either – the clock is configured to sound the alarm at the same time each day.
While this clock would certainly be too dangerous for a chronic snooze button abuser like myself, it’s an interesting concept nonetheless!
Check out the video below to see the FlipClock in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ3GjYTnEAE&w=470] | 33 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "462718",
"author": "oGMo",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T15:08:37",
"content": "Cool, but I was expecting some sort of Kinect-based hack allowing one to turn off one’s alarm via certain specific hand motions especially suited to addressing one’s alarm. The IR cam would even let it work ... | 1,760,377,076.494643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/interfacing-with-a-ps2-keyboard/ | Interfacing With A PS/2 Keyboard | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"led",
"ps2"
] | Anyone reading this post has undoubtedly used a keyboard. How they work, however, is a bit more complicated than “one button, one input.” [PyroElectro] has a
great tutorial
about building a PS/2 keyboard interface with a 7-segment LED display (video after the break). The tutorial also includes quite a bit of theory behind it.
The system displayed below uses a PIC controller to display the letter or number pressed. A schematic of the whole project
is given here
as well as a detailed
bill of materials
.
As for how the PS/2 keyboard works, each
keystroke is encoded
into a binary number or “scan code”. Most of these codes are 8-bit, but some special symbols use a longer code. Although the article doesn’t fully address it, a very similar method can be used to send data back to the keyboard for such purposes as tuning on a “capslock” or “numlock” key. Although turning on a light is fun, we could see this being used as an expedient method to control a relay for automation purposes.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2c2NXV7gD0&w=470&h=315%5D | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "462700",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T14:12:26",
"content": "Anyone reading this post has undoubtedly used a keyboard.Hahahah, good one!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "462726",
"author": "_glytch",
"tim... | 1,760,377,076.427937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/attiny-hacks-infrared-guidance-and-navigation/ | ATtiny Hacks: Infrared Guidance And Navigation | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"attiny hacks",
"attny13",
"infrared",
"remote control"
] | After [trandi] got his hands on a cheap R/C helicopter he realized the difficulties in actually flying a remote control helicopter. Instead of giving up, he decided to
reverse-engineer the infrared protocol
and then build a decoder around an ATtiny that would send commands to another microcontroller using a serial connection.
The remote’s communications protocol was decoded with the help of a Freeduino and an IR remote analysis sketch [trandi] found on the
Arduino website
. After importing the data into Gnuplot, there was enough data to write a sketch in Processing to visualize the infrared pulses.
After figuring out the protocol of his remote control, [trandi]
built a tiny circuit
to decrypt the IR commands and send them over a serial link to another microcontroller. The ATtiny45-based build doesn’t take up very much space on the perfboard making it very easy to mount on any robot of his choosing. He ended up
connecting it to a Lego NTX brick
allowing him to use the helicopter remote with any Lego build he can dream up.
[trandi] invested a lot of work around a cheap remote control; if the remote broke, all would be for naught. This was remedied with an
IR beacon
that replicates the function of the remote. The beacon is based on an ATtiny13 and can serve as a stand-alone beacon for autonomous robots or can accept serial commands from a computer. Not a bad build if you ask us. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "462675",
"author": "Thatcher",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T13:09:26",
"content": "Hmmm…. Swarm bot helicopters come to mind. Or integrate it with a camera and have a computer control its flight… Very cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment... | 1,760,377,076.253963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/bluetooth-communications-for-android-devices-via-processing/ | Bluetooth Communications For Android Devices Via Processing | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"processing"
] | [Oscar] shows us how to use
a Processing sketch for Android to communicate with Bluetooth devices
(
translated
). It turns out this is easier than you might think. Processing and Android are both closely related to Java, and you can just import the Android libraries that deal with Bluetooth within the Processing sketch. That makes it easy to enable the Bluetooth modem when the sketch is launched, and manages connecting with devices as well as sending and receiving data.
For this example [Oscar] is using an Arduino with a Bluetooth module as a test device. His sketch first shows what devices are available, then connects to the one you select from the list. The 11 lines of Arduino code transmit a value via the serial port, and listens back for a command to toggle the LED on pin 13. [Oscar] takes time in his tutorial to show us how each step of the Processing sketch is assembled, instead of only posting the finished code.
[Thanks Sara] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "464913",
"author": "MobileWill",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T23:06:12",
"content": "This will be good for some Robot fun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "464975",
"author": "fronzbot",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T02:04:16",
... | 1,760,377,076.212166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/python-on-a-microcontroller/ | Python On A Microcontroller | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"Leaf",
"maple",
"maple native",
"PyMite",
"python"
] | The team at LeafLabs was looking for something cool to do with their new ARM development board. [AJ] asked if anyone had ever played around with Python, so [Dave] cooked up an implementation of
PyMite and put it on a Maple board
. While the writeup is only about blinking a LED with a microcontroller, they’re doing it with Python, interactively, and at runtime.
The build uses the
Maple Native
board the team is developing. The board has a 32-bit ARM chip with 1 Meg of RAM – more than enough horsepower to run
PyMite
. The tutorial for putting PyMite on a Maple
is up on the LeafLabs wiki
.
PyMite is theoretically able to control every pin on the Maple Native and do just about everything a regular Python distro can do. The LeafLabs team is still working on the necessary libraries for their board (although we don’t see anything on the
Google code
page), so right now only blinking the LED is supported. Still, it’s pretty cool to have Python in your pocket. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "464827",
"author": "Marti Bolivar",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T20:30:55",
"content": "Hi Brian,Marti from LeafLabs here. Just a quick correction — while the Maple Native has 64 KB of on-chip RAM, it also has a 1 MB external SRAM chip built-in. The libraries are configured to work wi... | 1,760,377,076.548712 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/barebones-pic-rfid-tag/ | Barebones PIC RFID Tag | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"12f683",
"inductor",
"pic",
"rfid tag"
] | An inductor and 8-pin microcontroller are all that make up
this barebones RFID tag
. You might have done a double-take when first seeing the image above. After all, there’s nothing hooked up to the power and ground pins on the chip. As [Ramiro Pareja] explains in his post, the power is actually supplied via the I/O pins to which the inductor is soldered. It seems that each I/O pin has a parasite capacitor and a pair of clamping diodes inside the chip. When the AC current that is induced by the magnetic field of the RFID reader hits those pins, the capacitors charge and the clamping diodes form a bridge rectifier. This results in power being injected into the chip, which turns around and sends the RFID code back through the inductor.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this concept. We featured a hack that is exactly the same except
it used an AVR chip
. This one uses a PIC 12F683 but should work with just about any 12F or 16F model. The code is written in Assembly and shouldn’t need any changes for different hardware. [Ramiro] does talk a bit about adding a decoupling capacitor to Vss and Vdd, as well as a tuning capacitor to the two I/O pins used above to help make the device a little more robust. But, as you can see in the video after the break, it works just fine without them.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiHc_hI5NAw&w=470]
[Thanks Conundrum] | 34 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "464782",
"author": "NatureTM",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T19:21:59",
"content": "really!?!?!? wow.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "464788",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T19:40:39",
"content": "I wonder ... | 1,760,377,076.322209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/voxel-shield-makes-driving-led-cubes-easy/ | Voxel Shield Makes Driving LED Cubes Easy | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"LED cube",
"Voxel Shield"
] | An Arduino can handle running a small LED cube on its own, but if you’re planning on building something big, eventually you are going to run out of pins. For something like an 8x8x8 cube, odds are you will have to turn to shift registers to get the job done. While you could design a breakout board full of shift registers on your own, [Connor] has done the work for you and produced an
easy to use Arduino LED cube shield.
He calls his creation the Voxel Shield, and it incorporates 9 SN74LS595N shift registers and an external power plug for all of your LED cube needs. The shield can handle addressing up to 512 LEDs, making it an easy way to drive an 8x8x8 cube or even a 64×8 LED matrix.
It’s a nice clean and compact way to drive a large number of LEDs, so if you have the need, be sure to swing by his site – he has made his schematics and board layout files available to all comers.
[Thanks, Thomas] | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "464754",
"author": "Tweeks",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T18:30:16",
"content": "If you want something a bit more OTS.. check out sure electronics:http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=1095One of my user group’s guys has made some pretty cool stuff from them:http://xcssa.org/photo... | 1,760,377,076.379078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/capacitive-sensing-tutorial/ | Capacitive Sensing Tutorial | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"74xx",
"capacitive sensing",
"logic chips",
"TouchPad"
] | [Bertho]’s submission for the 74xx logic contest is really impressive. He designed a capacitive sensing touchpad
using only 74xx and 40xx logic chips
. We’re impressed with the build and his writeup is one of the best resources we’ve ever seen for capacitive sensing.
There are two ways to go about designing a capacitive touchpad. The first option is put a voltage through an
RC circuit
. Measure the voltage-time curve, and you have a measure of the capacitance of the circuit. The second method is setting up an RC circuit to change polarity after a threshold for C has been reached. Microprocessors only use one of these methods (AVR uses the first, PIC uses the second), but [Bertho] decided to implement both methods for unknown reasons we still respect.
The circuit [Bertho] designed has a 30MHz clock using only 74xx logic chips, an amazing feat in itself. An 8×8 channel panel
was fabricated
and the whole build connects to a computer over RS-232.
The finished build is good enough has 64 points of resolution and is able to detect proximity very well. The touchpad is even able to recognize when a pen is placed on the panel. Check out the video after the break for the walk through and demo of this amazing build.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-tAlHUfbPo&w=470] | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "464730",
"author": "Benjamin Brown",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T17:13:15",
"content": "I wonder what the intentions are for this project, because I will use the info from this for robot skin. Cheap, affordable robot skin that can sense touch. Very nice, Very nice indeed.",
"paren... | 1,760,377,076.597491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/the-water-calligraphy-tricycle/ | The Water Calligraphy Tricycle | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"printer",
"tricycle",
"water"
] | Many westerners visiting or living in China may observe the art of “water calligraphy” and some may even try to imitate it. However, media artist [Nicholas Hanna] decided to take a totally new approach and make
his own water painting machine
.
Someone less creative would have devised some imitation of a human, but [Nicholas] decided to totally rethink the process in the form of a tricycle. Using 16 PC-controlled water solenoids, this tricycle is turned into a sort of moving dot matrix printer. It doesn’t have the same sort of grace that the traditional Chinese art does, but it’s quite a bit faster, so if you want to get your message out, this might have some practical applications.
The post doesn’t go into the electronics, but the video after the break includes some close-ups and video of [Nicholas] assembling the device. If you happen to be in china, his tricycle is part of an event for “Beijing Design Week” at the Northern Electric Relay Factory until October 3rd.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbRTnVnbS94&w=470&h=315%5D | 12 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "464680",
"author": "Curtis",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T15:23:58",
"content": "Wish I knew what he was writing. Cool toy though good work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "464685",
"author": "medix",
"timestamp": "2011-09-2... | 1,760,377,076.779838 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/over-the-air-fm-radio-gains-internet-control/ | Over-the-air FM Radio Gains Internet Control | Mike Szczys | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"fm radio",
"parallax",
"spinnarette",
"web server"
] | [Old bit collector] is
giving up control of his radio dial to the Internet
. He combined a couple of Parallax products which now allow him to tune, adjust volume, and toggle the power for an FM radio receiver.
The setup is pretty simple.
An FM receiver module
is mounted in the breadboard seen above which helps to break out its control pins. Those are connected to a Parallax Spinnarette web server board. It’s auxiliary I/O pins are controlled via a web interface that he set up and plans to operate with the browser on his Android phone. But as you can see after the break, any web browser works as long as you know the correct address.
This is pretty good if you’re on a quest to make everything controllable from your smart phone. But we would love to use the concept to make our own streaming radio. You’d be able to tune in to all of your local stations from anywhere in the world.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpsqXStFFO4&w=470] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "464636",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T14:23:03",
"content": "Why not make a full internet radio?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "464667",
"author": "Jeff Ledger",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T15:02:22",
"... | 1,760,377,076.727391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/announcing-our-next-theme-sustainability-hacks/ | Announcing Our Next Theme – Sustainability Hacks | Jack Buffington | [
"News"
] | [] | Our last theme, ATtiny hacks, received a really good response but it is time to move on. Today we are announcing our next theme, which will be Sustainability Hacks. In this theme we will be showing projects that allow us to have a lighter footprint. This could be things like projects that run on renewable resources, projects that control systems that allow us to use less energy such as an automated fan to preempt the need for more aggressive cooling. We are also interested in showing projects that push power consumption to the limit. Like our other themes, we need your help for this to be successful. If you have a project that you think we might be interested in, please let us know on
our tip line
.
As food for thought, driving is simply part of life for most of us. There are ways to make it have less impact on the earth though. One example of this that isn’t seen very often these days but will probably become more commonplace as fuel prices go up is boat-tailing. This is the process of reshaping the rear of a vehicle to make it more aerodynamic. You can catch a video after the break that makes up for its lack of sound with a pretty good run down on their process. | 32 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "464634",
"author": "The Phantom",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T14:17:24",
"content": "Given all the revelations about gross scientific misconduct in Climatology and the Solyndra scandal, not to mention that European and British (and Canadian!) wind farms have turned out to be a complete... | 1,760,377,077.242074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/26/how-to-decode-ir-remote-control-signals-with-your-pickit-2/ | How To Decode IR Remote Control Signals With Your PICkit 2 | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ir",
"PICkit 2",
"remote control"
] | [SpiralBrain] needed to figure out the coding scheme used by an IR remote control so that he could use it with his own project. He built
an IR receiver board for the PICkit 2
and figured out how to use some of the Microchip software to measure the timing of the incoming signal.
The hardware’s dead simple; a 38 kHz IR receiver does the heavy lifting by filtering out errant infrared light. When it does detect a signal with the correct frequency the output pin drives the base of a transistor to toggle the input pin on the PICkit 2. The breakout board has a pin header which makes it a snap to detach and store for later use. The PICkit 2 Logic Tool software captures this input, by setting the correct pin as a trigger and choosing a 10 kHz sample rate.
As we discussed in
our PIC programming with Linux tutorial
, the PICkit 2 really is far superior to its replacement, the PICkit 3. [SpiralBrain] mentions that it is more versatile than the newer version but doesn’t go so far as to tell us whether you can use this hardware with the PICkit 3 or not. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "464592",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-26T12:45:40",
"content": "I forget about this tool sometimes. It’s a great addition to the programmer.Never thought about it as IR decoder as of yet… Good idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,377,077.293687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/25/improvised-metal-lathe/ | Improvised Metal Lathe | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"improvised",
"lathe"
] | [McKGyver] needed a few parts manufactured. Instead of going the normal route – finding friends with machine tools or paying a machine shop,
he improvised a rudimentary metal lathe
.
As
much
as
we
love
3D printers
, they’re not the be-all, end-all solution for everything. Sometimes, you need to get a little dirty and do it the old-fashioned way. [McKGyver] needed a way to produce aluminum shaft couplers to join stepper motors to lead screws. A 1940s grinding wheel was used for the headstock. Since [McKGyver] only needed couplers of one size, he made a jig out of wood to attach the aluminum blanks to the spindle. A drill and a focuser from a photographic enlarger makes up the tailstock of the improvised lathe. The use of a camera focuser is pretty clever. Unless the equipment has been damaged, it’s guaranteed to move in a straight line. A small laser was used to align the drill.
The finished couplers were concentric to 0.005″. A ‘passable precision’ for his application, and a clever build that doesn’t involve
moving a thousand pound South Bend lathe
. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "464021",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T20:34:37",
"content": "Instead of drilling two different holes in the coupler and still end up with a rigid coupling, he could have drilled the needed hole right into the lead screw. Attach with epoxy (after cleaning out the cutti... | 1,760,377,077.389552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/25/snes-gamepad-coversion-to-usb/ | SNES Gamepad Coversion To USB | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"emulator",
"gamepad",
"keyboard",
"snes",
"usb"
] | [Kekszumquadrat] wanted to use a classic controller to play emulator games on his Android tablet so he set out to convert an SNES gamepad to connect via USB. He found an old USB keyboard at a yard sale for about 3 Euros. He knew that the emulator he prefers has the option of remapping all the inputs to keyboard keys which means a USB keyboard has all of the electronics he would need to pull this off.
Once he had separated the keyboard circuitry from the case [Kekszumquadrat] plugged it into his Linux box and used Xev to establish how the keyboard matrix is set up. Xev is a common package that opens up an active window on the X desktop. When run from command line, any events that happen to the window will be echoed along with verbose data about that event. When it comes to keypresses, you’ll get the keycode you need. He simply shorted columns and rows until he found the desired mapping, then it was on to soldering.
The SNES controllers are very simple devices. As we’ve seen
with previous projects
, they use a serial-to-parallel shift register to gather button data and send it to the console. [Kekszumquadrat] simply soldered between button traces and keyboard matrix contacts. Once he finished, the keyboard parts were tucked inside of the controller case and he’s left with a USB controller that appears to be unaltered. | 24 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "463978",
"author": "draft",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T19:15:58",
"content": "Okay.. cool. No link or even a video?I have an Archos 43 and would love to do this; I just need to find a USB host cable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,377,077.595815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/25/arduino-heart-rate-monitor/ | Arduino Heart Rate Monitor | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"chest strap",
"heartrate",
"monitor",
"polar"
] | [Wolf] had a Polar brand exercise watch that wirelessly monitored a chest strap that sends it heart rate data. It sounds like there’s some way to transfer data from the watch to a computer, but it’s only meant for use with Polar’s website. He wanted to do a little more with the equipment so he ditched the watch and
built an Arduino-based heart rate monitor
.
He’s still using the chest strap and was happy to find that
SparkFun sells an OEM receiver for it
. Just add a 32.768 kHz clock crystal and an optional antenna wire and you’re up and running. Once the receiver finds a transmitting chest strap, it will pulse an output pin with each beat of the heart. [Wolf] used the D2 pin of an Arduino Uno to connect to the receiver because this pin corresponds to one of the ATmega’s external interrupts. A rolling average of five inputs are used to help smooth the display data, which is shown on the 2.8″ LCD screen seen above. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "463926",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T18:25:48",
"content": "ooh pretty",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "463927",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T18:29:05",
"content": "Re... | 1,760,377,077.431108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/25/working-with-the-%c2%b5oled-128-g1-display/ | Working With The µOLED-128-G1 Display | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"4d systems",
"oled",
"oled-128-g1"
] | If you’re not already familiar with the 4D Systems µOLED-128-G1 display, [Gary] put together
a project that shows some of the features it offers
. This is a smart display, having its own onboard microcontroller and a microSD slot. The SD card stores image and video data, while the microcontroller takes care of displaying them based on simple serial commands it receives. This means you can hook it up to a computer or microcontroller and show still or animated sequences with minimal programming effort. We’ve embedded a video after the break, or you can look in on this
slot machine project
from last year that used the same module.
[Gary] is using a PIC microcontroller programmed with PIC Basic Pro. But most of the work is done with a 4D Systems program called Graphics Composer. You build out the images and animations you want to see on the screen, which are then formatted for the display and written to the SD card. [Gary] mentions that the card is not written using a traditional filesystem, so if you know of another way to write data to and from this card we’d love to hear about it in the comments. The image editing software will also spit out the serial commands necessary to pull your freshly minted graphics up on the display.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tagVOV9EE8&w=470] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "463894",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T17:20:27",
"content": "If someone were to reverse engineer how the files are saved to the sd card. It presumably wouldn’t be too hard to have some external memory on the micro controller and trick it into reading that instead. (o... | 1,760,377,077.478378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/25/discrete-logic-driving-game-development/ | Discrete Logic Driving Game Development | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"7400",
"discrete",
"driving",
"logic",
"racer"
] | [Caleb] is hard at work on
a driving game based on 7400 series logic chips
. This will be his entry in the
Open 7400 Logic Competition
, and it really outlines why this contest is especially tricky.
The concept behind the game is quite simple. You’re the driver of a car (the red dot at the bottom of the display square seen above) and need to navigate the curves in the road as you drive along. It’s the same game as we saw
played on receipt paper
back in June. [Caleb’s] using and LED matrix as the display, and we’re confident that if we grabbed our favorite microcontroller we could have this up and running on an 8×8 bi-color display in an afternoon. But doing it without the crutch of a programmable chip really brings out the clever engineer inside of you.
The circuit seen above is a
Logisim
proof-of-concept that [Caleb] went on to
test on the breadboard
. He thought he had everything figured out until he realized that his Data Flip-Flops were very occasionally not powering up in the same state as he predicted. Don’t worry, he found
a solution to the problem
. But we can’t wait to see what other hurdles he encounters as he pushes on toward completing the project. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "464031",
"author": "NewCommenter1283",
"timestamp": "2011-09-25T20:54:47",
"content": "thats possible with 7400’s ?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!? wowgoes to show you that you can do cool stuff without all those smart-a*s computers/uC’s ;)screw fuse settings, this guy’s got a LOGICal solution! lo... | 1,760,377,077.336473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/arduino-boards-control-cheap-clockworks-via-coil-injection/ | Arduino Boards Control Cheap Clockworks Via Coil Injection | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clockwork",
"coil",
"electromagnet",
"stepper motor"
] | Here’s a couple of clocks that use Arduino boards to control inexpensive clockworks. The concept is quite simple, and perhaps best outlined by [Matt Mets’]
article on the subject
. As it turns out, these clockworks are driven by a coil, forming a device that is quite similar to a stepper motor. If you solder a wire onto each end of the electromagnetic coil and hook those to a microcontroller, you can alter the speed at which the clock ticks. Just drive one pin high and the other low, then reverse the polarity for the next tick.
The clock you see on the right
(
translated
) is a store-bought cheapy. The Arduino barely visible at the bottom of the image is sending pulses once every second. But as you can see in the video after the break, holding down a button will fast-forward through time. [Sodanam] posted his code as well as pictures of the hardware hack itself.
To the left is a horse of a different color. It’s a
clock modeled after the Weasley household clock
from the Harry Potter books. The clockwork trick is the same, but the Arduino uses GPS data and NOAA weather information to set the status.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpxrngdSTZk&w=470]
[Thanks Infernoz and Michael] | 23 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "465619",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T17:05:13",
"content": "I should mention the processing is done on the computer and pulses are sent out to the Arduino. I’m working on some better google lattiude code as reverse geo coding isnt all that its cracked up to be.",
... | 1,760,377,077.538007 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/turn-your-wireless-keyboard-into-a-mame-controller/ | Turn Your Wireless Keyboard Into A MAME Controller! | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arcade",
"encoder",
"mame",
"wireless keyboard"
] | For those of you that have a wireless keyboard laying around, you might be tempted to turn it into something else, like a
wireless MAME controller
. For those not familiar with it,
MAME
stands for “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator” and is generally used to run older arcade games on a computer.
Encoders are available for this purpose, however, intending to save some money, and having an unused wireless keyboard, I decided to try to make one myself. As far as I know there are no wireless encoders available for this purpose, so that was part of the motivation for trying this.
In this post I go over my
mechanical design
for the cabinet as well as the
electrical process
of going from keyboard to MAME controller. I did eventually get the thing working, but if more than a couple buttons were pressed simultaneously, some presses were omitted. The conclusion I eventually came to was that it was better to use
an encoder
to control everything. Not wireless, but much more reliable. If I absolutely needed a wireless controller in the future, I would think modding an actual wireless controller (or two) in a similar manner would have worked better for my purposes. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "465582",
"author": "DanAdamKOF",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T16:09:51",
"content": "Here’s someone that used an encoder wirelessly in their joystick build:http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/wireless-upcb.55587/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,377,077.694301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/diy-breadboard-modules-for-easy-prototyping/ | DIY Breadboard Modules For Easy Prototyping | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"breakout board",
"module",
"prototyping"
] | [Rajendra] got tired of building the same basic circuits time and again on the breadboard. He decided to build some simple, modular circuits on protoboard and make them easy to interface with the breadboard. As you can see, he ended up with
seven modules that make prototyping faster and easier
.
At first glance some might not seem all that beneficial. For instance, making a board for an 18-pin PIC microcontroller into a single-in-line form factor would seem like you’re actually wasting breadboard space when compared to the DIL package of the chip. But consider that the oscillator and its capacitors, reset button, and programming header are also on the breakout board and will not have to be built in place. There are also several I/O boards, one with five buttons, another with an LED bar graph, and a set of LEDs with a SIL resistor package on-board. These modules can be plugged into a breadboard and wired up with jumper wires, or connected directly to the same rows as the microcontroller module. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "465601",
"author": "Mulvane",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T16:43:42",
"content": "I’ve done the same thing, especially with a combination of LED projects and microcontrollers. I started with arduino but the lack of breadboarding was infuriating. This is a lot cleaner than any of the wor... | 1,760,377,077.647187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/attiny-hacks-two-dice-one-6-pin-uc/ | Two Dice, One 8-pin UC | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny13",
"charlieplexing",
"dice",
"die",
"pip"
] | [Mike Shegedin] makes full use of an 8-pin microcontroller with this
ATtiny13-based dice project
. With a maximum of six I/O pins (that includes using the reset pin as I/O) he needed a couple of tricks in order to drive 14 LEDs and use a momentary push button for user input. We’re certainly familiar with the concepts here, but it still took quite a while to figure out what is going on with the schematic that [Mike] posted.
You’ve probably already guessed that he’s using Charlieplexing to drive more LEDs than he has pins. But when we started looking at the layout we thought he had drawn the schematic wrong, because there are six pairs of LEDs where the two diodes in each pair a
not
reverse biased, but hooked up in parallel. That, plus the fact that his battery is hooked up backwards. After several minutes of study the light bulb finally clicked on. Dice add pips (the dots on each side of a die) in pairs with the exception of the center pip. That means that you only need to control four total lines for each die (three pairs plus the center pip). There’s two ways to handle this, you could use four rows and two columns with traditional multiplexing, or you can reverse bias the two sets of LEDs for each die and use Charlieplexing. The former is a bit easier to program, the latter saves you one I/O pin and meant that [Mike] didn’t need to use the reset pin as I/O.
This is a clever addition to the collection of dice projects we’ve seen like
the battery-less die
, and
the ATtiny2313 powered dice
. | 14 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "465566",
"author": "malagas",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T15:49:48",
"content": "Nice to play monopoly :P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "465593",
"author": "Rob Wentworth",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T16:35:11",
"content"... | 1,760,377,077.821753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/building-a-battery-powered-motion-alarm/ | Building A Battery-powered Motion Alarm | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"alarm",
"attiny85",
"motion sensor",
"pir",
"sleep mode"
] | [Brad] was asked by his Sister to design a motion-based alarm that would help her catch her son sneaking out of the house at night. Obviously this didn’t need to be a long-term installation so he decided to throw something together that is only active at night and can be battery-powered. What he came up with is
a light-sensitive motion sensor that uses very little power
.
He knew that an Arduino would be overkill, and decided to try his hand at using the Arduino to develop code for an ATtiny85. It has an external interrupt pin connected to the output of the PIR module, which triggers action when motion is detected. The first thing it does is to check the photoresistor via the ADC. If light levels are low enough, the buzzer will be sounded. [Brad] measured the current consumption of his circuit and was not happy to find it draws about 2.5 mA at idle. He spent some time teaching himself about the sleep functions of the AVR chips and was able reduce that to about 500-600 uA when in sleep mode. Now all he has to do is find a nice place behind the house to mount the alarm and there’ll be no more sneaking around at night.
If you’re trying to keep a tight leash on your own kids you could always
make them punch the time clock
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "465503",
"author": "Jarek",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T14:17:05",
"content": "in b4 questioning moral integrity of this hack and proposing alternative parenting strategiesI have a similar setup to catch when my landlord has been doing ‘repairs’ around the apartments. Connected with a ... | 1,760,377,078.416019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/sustainability-hack-wind-turbine-battery-charger/ | Sustainability Hack: Wind Turbine Battery Charger | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"PVC",
"stepper motor",
"Wind turbine"
] | Hit your parts bin and set aside an afternoon to
build a wind turbine that recharges batteries
. You can see two AA batteries hanging off the side of this small generator. You only need a few parts to make this happen, and chances are you have them sitting in your junk bin already.
The generator itself is a small stepper motor which can be pulled from a floppy disk drive or a scanner. The blade is cut from a single piece of 3.5″ (90mm) PVC pipe, with another piece of smaller-diameter pipe serving as the body of the turbine. The tail-fin makes sure it’s always pointing into the wind and was made from some plywood. As the blade spins, a current is induced on the control pins of the stepper motor. By building a pair of bridge rectifiers and using an RC filter you’ll get the most out of the generated current.
This turbine can charge a pair of NiCad batteries in about 10 hours, but it might be worth developing some smart circuitry to manage charging. If it were able to choose between a dedicated storage battery and the on-board battery holder you could put all of the wind energy to good use.
[Thanks Michael] | 16 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "465525",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T14:48:13",
"content": "http://otherpower.com/Gobs more wind turbine designs that do more than charge a couple of AA batteries.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "465612",
... | 1,760,377,078.31192 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/27/toilet-paper-printer-made-from-scrap-parts/ | Toilet Paper Printer Made From Scrap Parts | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"salvage",
"scrap"
] | Some of our favorite hacks are those made with scrap materials, so we were delighted to see a contest being held by the German technology magazine c’t which focuses on using salvaged components. “Mach flott den Schrott” is the name of the competition, which loosely translates to “Make fast the scrap”.
German builder [Mario Lukas’]
entry into the contest
(
Google Translation
) is definitely unique, and certainly fits within the theme. He built a toilet paper printer that uses a bunch of recycled components to write anything he desires on a roll of the soft white stuff. His blog walks through the build details, including a bill of materials for all of the scrap bits he used to put it together. Several CD-ROM drives, printers, and even inline skates donated some components to the printer, while an Arduino controls the entire printing process.
Though [Mario] is using RSS and Twitter feeds as a data source for his toilet-side scribe, we imagine it will only be a matter of time before advertising companies seize upon this sort of technology to create personalized advertisements geared towards a decidedly captive audience.
Continue reading to see a quick video of his toilet paper printer in action.
[via
Make
]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qa-78bxgMM&w=470] | 18 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "465361",
"author": "Pete S",
"timestamp": "2011-09-27T11:16:57",
"content": "Great idea and build!I’m not from Germany but I think your translation is wrong. A loose translation would be “make something fancy of the scrap” or perhaps “make something working of the scrap”.",
"par... | 1,760,377,078.366885 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/large-scale-tetris-game-controlled-with-ddr-pads/ | Large Scale Tetris Game Controlled With DDR Pads | Mike Nathan | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"ddr",
"leds",
"tetris",
"video games"
] | Even though Tetris came to the US 25 long years ago,
it never fails to entertain.
Whatever it is that gives the game such lasting power is a mystery to us, but we’re always interested in seeing fresh takes on the classic game.
MIT students [Leah Alpert] and [Russell Cohen] tweaked Tetris a bit to get players off the couch and literally thinking on their feet. The game boards were constructed using RGB LEDs installed in laser-cut acrylic tubes, arranged in a pair of large 6 foot tall floor standing matrices.
Game play progresses as you would expect, with two players battling head to head to achieve the high score, while simultaneously sabotaging their opponent. Instead of controllers however, each player stands on a Dance Dance Revolution mat, manipulating their game pieces with their feet.
While the DDR pads aren’t exactly a Kinect controller, we have no doubt that playing Tetris this way is incredibly fun – we would certainly install a pair of these boards in our game room without a second thought.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAZdgTVhzsI&w=470] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "462641",
"author": "atomsoft",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T11:57:28",
"content": "So Cool! Would be better if the LEDs where better aligned and diffused. But great!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "462679",
"author": "Andy Goth"... | 1,760,377,078.153323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/23/attiny-hacks-serialcouple-a-standalone-thermocouple-adc-board-with-serial-out/ | ATtiny Hacks: SerialCouple – A Standalone Thermocouple ADC Board With Serial Out | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"attiny",
"thermocouple"
] | Since we are in the midst of featuring a wide assortment of ATtiny hacks, [Kenneth] wrote in to share a project he has been developing over the last few months,
the SerialCouple.
Most all development platforms have the ability to function as an analog to digital converter, but you don’t always need a full-featured board when all you require is serial output for your computer. With his SerialCouple board, [Kenneth] is trying to take some complexity out of the process by building a standalone thermocouple ADC board. The SerialCouple is designed to take analog readings from a thermocouple, converting them to digital values that can be sent to any device over a serial connection. The grunt work is done by a Maxim MAX31855 chip, which converts the thermocouple’s analog data to digital temperature readings. The digital representation of the temperature is then retrieved by the on-board ATtiny2313, which sends the data out the serial port.
If a standalone thermocouple ADC board is something you’ve been looking for, be sure to swing by his site to take a look at his code and schematics.
Continue reading to see a short video demo that explains how the SerialCouple works.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y5MDVV93To&w=470] | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "462895",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2011-09-23T20:25:51",
"content": "so instead of cheip opamp and + atmega8 he chose to use $10 Maxim MAX31855? (yes, its $10 or more with shipping)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "462932",... | 1,760,377,078.199046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/burning-man-2011-duane-flatmos-el-pulpo-mecanico/ | Burning Man 2011: Duane Flatmo’s El Pulpo Mecanico | Jesse Congdon | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"art car",
"burning man",
"fire cannons",
"octopus"
] | I had a lot of fun at Burning Man 2011, from the sculpture to the crazy art to the insane kinetic vehicles, the whole experience was something completely out of this world. With near 50,000 people out there in the Nevada desert it is impossible to see and experience everything the festival has to offer. I am positive there are several mind blowing sculptures or vehicles that I simply missed. That said, I have yet to hear a single conversation about Burning Man 2011 that does not at least mention [Duane Flatmo]’s
El Pulpo Mechanico
.
[Duane] and his buddies [Steve] and [Jerry] built this behemoth out of mostly recycled parts, giving it this industrial rusty (some would say steampunk) facade. Inside a steel structure supports a three-faced head and eight moving tentacles. The entire structure is animated thanks to a rotating cam in the center of the octopus. On this cam several loops of corrugated tubing push out levers attached to the eight fire belching tentacles. Towards the top of the head there are additional cams that animate the eyes and mouth.
Four 420# propane tanks provide fuel to the 10 fire cannons located in each tentacle and the top of El Pulpo’s head. The four feed tanks sit on each side of the cab submerged in custom built water tanks, which are kept nice and warm thanks to a propane-fueled on demand water heater. A typical fire cannon setup (source, regulator, expansion tank, valve, pilot light) is prone to freezing all of its lines and running liquid throughout the system. Running liquid through your fire cannon really puts a damper on the pressure of the system which directly affects the size of the flames output. El Pulpo’s system eliminates the danger of freezing through large hoses and a heated water tanks. Thanks to all this the octopus can, and did, continually belch out 18 foot flames.
The pilot lights can also be re-ignited thanks to an old fluorescent transformer stashed away in a wooden box near the operator, high voltage cables accompany the propane feed lines to sparkers located near each pilot. In case that fails as well [Flatmo]’s crew also carries a small propane torch taped to a stick.
During the course of the week the team over came several issues with the whole rig, it was fun seeing the guys climbing around the structure like some kind of advanced jungle gym (or a scene from Robot Jox). The truck base (some kind of old ford F-100) died an untimely early death. The rig had to be towed around the playa by a separate vehicle (often a minivan).
Check a video of the cute miniature El Pulpo below, as well as a video of its bigger brother. Also if you missed it check out [Flatmo]’s
website
and flickr stream (the build starts around
page 6
).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh0IAXIF15Q&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMfzFIERJIg&w=470] | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "462075",
"author": "Bubba Gump",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T22:21:00",
"content": "I’ve seen enough Hentai to know where this is going…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "462100",
"author": "Gabriel",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22... | 1,760,377,078.242789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/why-wasnt-this-magnetic-cello-made-in-the-70s/ | Why Wasn’t This Magnetic Cello Made In The 70’s? | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"cello",
"Musical",
"ribbon sensor",
"synth"
] | [magnetovore] made himself an
electronic cello
. Instead of pulling a few cello samples off of an SD card, he did it the old school analog way. The finished build is really impressive and leaves us wondering why we haven’t seen anything like this before.
[magnetovore] uses a permanent magnet to play each ‘string’. A lot of details are in
this post
and [magnetovore]’s
provisional patent
(PDF warning). From what we can gather, each string is a resistive ribbon sensor connected to a voltage controlled oscillator. The output of the VCO is sent to a variable gain amplifier that is controlled by a coil of wire and the magnetic ‘bow’.
From the video (after the break), [magnetovore] already has an amazing reproduction of the cello sound. It’s a bit electronic on the lowest parts of the C string, but with a little bit of processing it could definitely pass for an acoustic instrument. We’re left wondering why we haven’t seen anything like this cello before. VCOs and VGAs were the bread and butter of the old Moogs and even the ancient
ondes martenot
. Ribbon controllers were being attached to electronic instruments back in
the 50’s
, so we’re really at a loss on why a magnetic cello is new to us. If any Hack A Day readers have seen anything like this before, leave a message in the comments.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBjeKJ98pEk&w=470] | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "462040",
"author": "vonskippy",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T21:31:51",
"content": "Neat.There’s a lot of interaction between the bow and the strings (then simply “sawing” across them – i.e. pressure, angle, angle of attack, tapping, etc), wonder how he’s going to create that.",
"pa... | 1,760,377,078.579253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/tracking-commercial-aircraft-with-salvaged-electronics/ | Tracking Commercial Aircraft With Salvaged Electronics | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ads-b",
"aircraft",
"satellite"
] | Early last year, [Edward] started work on an
aircraft tracking system
using components from old electronics he had sitting around the house. As you may or may not know, most modern aircraft continuously broadcast their current position over the 1090MHz band using the ADS-B protocol. [Edward] found that his old satellite receiver module was able to pick up the signals without too much trouble, and was more than happy to share how he did it.
The whole project cost him just under 5 Euros and requires the aforementioned satellite tuner as well as an ATMega48 microcontroller to decode the ADS-B messages. When the receiver is hooked up to a nice aerial and preamp he can listen in on planes within a 200km radius, but even with a simple piece of wire, he can locate aircraft up to 25 km away.
Raw ADS-B data isn’t terribly useful, so [Edward] put together a small application that plots nearby aircraft on a map for him. We imagine that it wouldn’t be too incredibly difficult to do the same sort of thing with the Google Maps API as well.
If you’re interested in putting together an aircraft tracking receiver of your own, be sure to swing by his site – he has a ton of useful information that will likely be a huge help along the way.
[Thanks, David] | 56 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "461983",
"author": "Gert",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T20:04:51",
"content": "Wauw, so add this to the missile guiding system et voila.Tool of terror?Or just use it with a XY steered laser to “blind” the pilots.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,377,078.669681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/beginner-concepts-a-quartet-of-videos-on-inductors/ | Beginner Concepts: A Quartet Of Videos On Inductors | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"beginner concepts",
"flyback diode",
"inductor"
] | Inductors can be found in many of the devices you use every day, but if you’ve been working only with DC in your projects there’s a good chance you’ve never needed to know anything about them. Now’s your chance to
pick up on the basics with this video tutorial series
. [Afroman] put together four short videos that we’ve embedded after the break. Set aside fifteen minutes to watch them; you’ll be glad you did.
The first in the series starts out by explaining that an inductor is a coil of wire that serves a similar function as a capacitor with one major difference. A capacitor stores voltage, while an inductor stores current. In the second video, [Afroman] hooks up some inductors to a square-wave generator, then measures the resulting current characteristics using an oscilloscope. He shows the difference between inductor core material (air core versus ferrite core) and illustrates the properties that make inductors so useful as filters. The third video covers filtering circuits, and the fourth is the best explanation of why you need a flyback diode when driving a motor (an inductive load) that we’ve seen yet.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgwXkUt3XxQ&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSMGnmQApA0&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jRl_XtyRCo&w=470] | 18 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "461959",
"author": "Fritoeata",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T19:17:16",
"content": "Quartet?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "461960",
"author": "jordan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T19:17:43",
"content": "afroman’s videos a... | 1,760,377,079.053038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/retro-gaming-wall-art-its-playable/ | Retro-gaming Wall Art; It’s Playable! | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"retro"
] | Here’s a wall hanging for the reception area that
let’s your customers play retro games while they wait
. To give you some sense of scale, the buttons to the right (labeled Start/Jump but we would call them A and B) are
arcade buttons
larger than traditional arcade buttons. The screen itself is a Samsung widescreen computer monitor — we’d wager that it’s
a 16″ model
but we’re just guessing. It’s held in the wooden frame by a piece of angle bracket.
This is the product of a hack we looked at in June where
an Arduino was used to control digitized retro LCD games
. The same hardware is used, monitoring the buttons with the Arduino and using a Python script to translate them to keypresses on a computer. That means this isn’t a standalone, but needs a computer to run the game and feed the LCD monitor. Still, we love the look of it and hold out hope that this will someday migrate to FPGA control (they have not problem
driving LCD screens
) with selectable games. | 15 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "461842",
"author": "DanAdamKOF",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T15:25:45",
"content": "Those aren’t arcade buttons, they look like a custom job.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "461843",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"time... | 1,760,377,078.721971 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/attiny-hacks-diy-high-speed-photography-led-lighting-rig/ | ATtiny Hacks: DIY High-speed Photography LED Lighting Rig | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"digital cameras hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"cree",
"high speed photography",
"led",
"piezo"
] | [Tom] wanted to try his hand at high-speed photography and needed some equipment to get things rolling. Not wanting to spend a ton of money on a lighting rig or trigger mechanism, he decided to build his own. In a
three
part
series
on his blog, he details the construction and testing of his high-speed setup along with the improvements and lessons learned along the way.
His adventures started out with a small off-brand Cree LED clone and an ATiny15L that was collecting dust in his workshop. He built a simple circuit that would trigger the LED to light his subject, which in [Tom’s] case was a bowl of milk. Rather than using a motion or sound trigger, he opted to mount a small piezo to the bottom bowl, firing the LED any time a droplet hits the bowl’s surface.
The pictures he took were decent, but he knew he could get better results. He purchased a new, more powerful Cree LED, and wrote a small terminal program that allows him to tweak his flash parameters using his laptop. The results he gets now are far better – in fact, he has
a whole gallery
of pictures you can check out.
If you want to delve into high-speed photography as well, all of the schematics and code can be found on his blog. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "461776",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T13:32:37",
"content": "Maybe it’s just me, but I find the pictures rather dark.Still a low cost would be to use cheap flashes, maybe old flashes bought at low price. I’ve seen this done with single use camera flashes(many of them... | 1,760,377,078.768909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/22/diy-rfid-shielded-wallet-keeps-data-thieves-at-bay/ | DIY RFID Shielded Wallet Keeps Data Thieves At Bay | Mike Nathan | [
"Lifehacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"rfid",
"shielding",
"silver epoxy",
"wallet"
] | [Serge] was in search of a new wallet, but he was concerned about ne’er do wells with RFID readers stealing his data. He could have gone out to the store and plunked down $20-$30 for a shielded walled, but where’s the fun in that?
Instead, he decided to make his own.
Using Kevlar-Nomex fabric, he laid out the general structure for his wallet. This ultra-strong fabric has a breaking strength of 500lbs, but blocking RF isn’t exactly its forte. To provide some electromagnetic shielding, [Serge] added a nice uniform layer of silver epoxy to the Kevlar, which carries an added bonus of strengthening the material. He fired up the sewing machine, adding a nylon strip to the exterior of the wallet for reinforcement, then he worked on forming the bill pouch and card holders.
The final result is a plain yet incredibly rugged wallet that’s sure to keep his various RFID-enabled cards safe. We really dig how unassuming the wallet is – no flash, all function. Nice job, we’ll take one! | 39 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "461710",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T11:05:26",
"content": "rf and fire safe",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "461716",
"author": "KillerBug",
"timestamp": "2011-09-22T11:20:59",
"content": "I went a sli... | 1,760,377,078.848393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/laser-cut-clock-reminds-us-of-a-spirograph/ | Laser Cut Clock Reminds Us Of A Spirograph | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"chronodot",
"freeduino",
"spirograph"
] | [Brian] from Louisville’s LVL1 hackerspace sent in
this laser cut gear clock
that’s almost unlike any other clock we’ve seen before. [Brian] also put up
a wonderful Instructable
for his build.
Since LVL1 got
a better laser cutter
a lot of neat projects have been
piling up
. [Brian] based his clock around two cheap stepper motors driven by a freeduino. A chronodot was used to keep accurate time. Making the gears, though, presented a few problems. While
prototyping
the gear clock face, it was apparent that the numbers should be oriented along a line coming from the center of the gear. The prototype also used 100 teeth and that didn’t translate well into a clock design. [Brian] designed the minute gear with 60 teeth, and the hour gear with 144 teeth so that each tooth would equal 5 minutes.
[Brian]’s clock is functionally similar to
this $2500 gem
, and certainly much less expensive even after the cost of the laser cutter is taken into account. Of course, the Spirograph clock keeps track of minutes so it may be worth upwards of $5k. | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "461415",
"author": "macegr",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T23:59:15",
"content": "I saw this the other day and realized that, with the right gearing calculation and combination of stepper motor and a simple stepper IC, the Arduino wouldn’t be needed at all.You could use the 1pps output o... | 1,760,377,079.253056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/modifying-dd-wrts-protected-gui/ | Modifying DD-WRT’s Protected GUI | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"DD-WRT",
"firmware",
"gui"
] | [Craig] is always keeping busy by deconstructing and poking around in various firmware images. This time around he has taken on the task of
modifying the DD-WRT package
, a popular replacement firmware for SOHO routers.
While the firmware is released under the GPL, [Craig] cites that it’s pretty difficult to build from source. Instead, he says that the typical course of action is to extract files from the firmware image, alter them, then reconstruct the image. This works for most things, but the DD-WRT GUI files are protected in order to prevent modification.
Since the phrase “you are not allowed to do that” doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, [Craig] set out to see if he could make his way around the protections and change the GUI code. It took quite a bit of digging around using IDA Pro and readelf, but he was eventually able to extract, tweak, then reinsert individual pages back into the firmware image.
The process is pretty time consuming, so he put together a tool called webdecomp that automates the extraction and rebuilding of DD-WRT’s web page file. If you’re interested in rocking a custom Hackaday-branded router interface like the one shown above, be sure to swing by his site and grab a copy of webdecomp. | 29 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "461331",
"author": "hrobotix",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T22:02:22",
"content": "Why would they keep you from modifying the web interface?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "461338",
"author": "phisrow",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,377,079.319274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/video-eagle-cad-layout/ | Video: Eagle CAD Layout | Jack Buffington | [
"News",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"eagle cad",
"layout",
"tutorial",
"video"
] | This week’s video is the last in a series of videos where we show how to use Eagle CAD. Today we will look a the Layout portion of the program and will create a circuit board from the schematic that we created previously. We start by creating a layout file and then moving all of the parts to appropriate places on the circuit board. After that, [Jack] shows how to route the traces. Along the way, he talks about the tools that he is using and various ways to use them. The end result is a prototyping board for the PIC18F44J11.
Like the others, this video is fairly long at 29 minutes, so make sure to have some time dedicated towards watching it if you do.
In next week’s video, we will be showing this board as it arrived to us from a manufacturer and will do a tutorial on how to solder.
If you have missed our previous videos, you can find them here:
Schematic part I
Schematic and Custom part creation
CAM Processor
We have also created many supplemental videos explaining how to use many of the tools in the tool palettes. You can find them on
our Youtube channel
:
Check out the video after the break! | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "461267",
"author": "Willrandship",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T19:59:35",
"content": "Why not use the gEDA package? It’s free, and works on linux. It also supports automatically generating a pcb based on a schematic, which you will want to tweak, but it’s a lot faster!",
"parent_id... | 1,760,377,079.382787 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/build-cheap-panning-camera-mounts-for-time-lapse-photography/ | Build Cheap Panning Camera Mounts For Time Lapse Photography | Mike Nathan | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"cameras",
"ikea",
"panning rig",
"time-lapse"
] | Panning time lapse photographs always look pretty cool, but there’s that whole “making a panning time lapse” rig that gets in the way of all the fun. [Getawaymoments] put together a tutorial quite a while ago showing how to use Ikea egg timers as cheap and dispensable panning units, and has
updated his instructions with a pair of refreshed designs.
He stumbled upon two new egg timers at Ikea, the Stam and Ordning, which sell for $1.99 and $5.99 respectively. The Stam is a small plastic model that can be fitted with a set screw, to which most cameras can be mounted. A small bushing can also be installed in the timer’s plastic base, allowing it to be mounted on any standard tripod.
The Ordning is a beefier unit capable of withstanding more abuse than its plastic brethren, hence the larger price tag. A few minutes on the drill press makes room for a metal bushing, allowing the Ordning to be installed on any tripod as well.
The hack isn’t high tech, but we’re impressed
with the results
he was able to get with these simple kitchen timers. For the cost and time required to build them, they are sure to give most other panning rigs a run for the money.
Continue reading to see a short instructional video demonstrating how to build one of your own.
[via
Make
]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpMvIu4U3Tk&w=470] | 24 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "461134",
"author": "silent254",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T16:22:22",
"content": "Ingenious!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "461159",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T16:53:50",
"content": "it’s one o... | 1,760,377,079.124453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/air-wick-odor-detect-teardown/ | Air Wick Odor Detect Teardown | Mike Nathan | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"air wick",
"odor detect",
"teardown",
"VOC"
] | [Hunter’s] wife came home from her latest extreme couponing session with a handful of free Air Wick Odor Detect air fresheners, and since they had so many of the things sitting around, he was compelled to take one apart
to see what makes them tick.
The casing was secured with melted snap tabs which had to be cut, making disassembly a one-way street. Once opened, he found a trio of white label AA cells and an ARNIE COMPACT3 ISS.4 controller board, complete with an epoxy-sealed microcontroller. A similarly branded sensor board was attached to the controller, and he spotted a solenoid with a built-in nozzle for spraying air freshener as well.
The sensor board piqued his curiosity the most, and after some research he’s pretty sure that the Air Wick uses an Applied Sensor VOC air quality module to get the job done. The tiny sensor uses a special substrate containing electrodes, which measure the resistance of the sensing layer while it is heated to upwards of 400° C. A change in resistance lets the air freshener know that it’s time to handle the odoriferous emanations floating about.
Thanks to [Hunter] for taking the time to tear the Air Wick down and letting us know what’s inside! | 40 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "461119",
"author": "karl",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T15:37:11",
"content": "I love the term “human bio-effluence” in one of the documents he references about the sensor chip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "461128",
"author":... | 1,760,377,079.201389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/a-solar-powered-automatic-chicken-coop/ | A Solar-Powered Automatic Chicken Coop | Jeremy Cook | [
"green hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"chicken coop",
"msp430",
"solar power"
] | Although we’ve featured many chicken-related hacks here, this
chicken coop
features a solar-powered door to save one from having to open up the coop in the morning. As [chrisatronics] puts it “keeping chickens has one major drawback: You have to get up with them in the early morning and open the door at the coop. Everyday. Including Sundays and holidays.” This would help explain why so many people seem to be hacking their coops.
Solar power may be an interesting idea in itself, but when coupled with the fact that a chicken coop isn’t necessarily near a power supply, this becomes a very expedient solution. Controlling the setup is a MSP430 microcontroller (programming
featured here
for Linux) with a salvaged windshield wiper gearmotor. [Chrisatronics] did a great job writing this hack up, so if you want to try this yourself, make sure to check out
the article
.
Also, don’t forget to check out the video after the break for the ‘coop in action!
[vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/21311082
w=470&h=300]
For another way to open your coop in the morning, check out
this hack.
Or combine it with a
methane generator
, and you’ll be on your way to energy independence in no time!
via
[430h.com] | 21 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "461094",
"author": "Fritoeata",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T14:09:00",
"content": "i knowhttp://www.tideals.comhave their “solar energy harvesting” msp430 pack for only $75… i wonder how much,if any, this would save on the cost?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,377,079.485848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/21/attiny-hacks-attiny-controlled-4x4x4-led-cube-has-a-unique-design/ | ATtiny Hacks: ATtiny-controlled 4x4x4 LED Cube Has A Unique Design | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ATtiny24",
"charlieplexing",
"LED cube",
"transistors"
] | [Tom] recently started experimenting with Charlieplexing, and wrote in to share
the 4x4x4 cube he built with an ATtiny24.
Similar to
this minimalist 4x4x4 LED cube we featured the other day
, [Tom’s] version attempts to use the least pins possible to drive the LEDs, but in a different manner.
[Tom] didn’t want to sacrifice brightness, so he decided that the LEDs would have a 1/8 duty cycle. The problem is that the ATtiny’s I/O ports can’t support that kind of current so he needed a different means of driving the LEDs. Rather than employ any sort of shift register to control the LEDs, he opted to exclusively use transistors as he had done in previous projects.
For his Charlieplexed cube to use a total of 9 I/O pins he had to get creative with his design. He broke each level of the structure into two non-connected groups of LEDs, utilizing diagonal interconnects to get everything wired up properly.
It seems to work quite nicely as you can see in the video below. While it uses two more I/O lines than the other ATtiny cube we featured recently, we love the simple, shift register-less design.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUH2AruYhhw&w=470] | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "461076",
"author": "Anon",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T13:25:45",
"content": "seeing all these cubes, and having all this time gives me the sudden urge to try my hand at building one, but with no experience in ic’s idk how well it will go",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,377,079.426428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/roland-808-synced-to-midi/ | Roland 808 Synced To MIDI | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"808",
"attiny2313",
"dinsync",
"midi",
"roland"
] | Reading this week’s ATtiny-themed builds, [Thomas] was reminded one of his coolest builds. His
midi808
project used an ATtiny2313 to sync a vintage Roland 808 drum machine to his Logic workstation.
Even though MIDI had been around for a few years when 808s were being made, the CPU in the 808 isn’t exactly up to the task of handling MIDI. Instead, the 808 used an interface known as
DIN Sync
that was designed to keep 808s, 707s, and 303s in time with each other. MIDI to DIN Sync boxes
do
did exist, but even the auxiliary equipment to use an 808 is getting hard to find.
The build takes a MIDI signal and passes it through an opto-isolator per the MIDI spec. The microcontroller reads the MIDI signal and passes it out through the DIN Sync port. The DIN Sync protocol is only 24 pulses per quarter note output with TTL voltages, and the
project code
is easy enough to follow. It’s a nice build for one of the greatest drum machines ever made. Listen to a track [Thomas] made with his new setup after the break.
[soundcloud url =”
http://soundcloud.com/user8245903/midi808″%5D | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "460697",
"author": "dave",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T22:28:44",
"content": "Cool project. Funny how the track starts out sounding like a Sir Mix-a-lot track. I think I just had a ‘Posse on Broadway’ flashback.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,377,079.619067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/3d-printable-laser-cutter/ | 3D-printable Laser Cutter | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"laser cutter"
] | [peter] send in a
reprappable laser cutter
that he’s been working on. Even though he’s still having some problems with the accuracy of the beam over the entire square meter bed, it’s still an amazing build.
The build
started off
with a bunch of t-slot aluminum extrusions. After taking delivery of
an absurdly large package
containing a CO2 laser tube, [peter] started working on attaching motors to the axes.
The optics
travel the solid rods on pillow block bearings driven by the age-old stepper motor & timing belt drive.
The 1-square-meter of cut area on this machine is enormous for a homebrew laser cutter. [peter] discovered that once the necessary components are in place, it’s really how much aluminum you’d like to buy that becomes the limiting factor for the cut area. [peter] put the files for the 3D-printed carriages, brackets and mounts
up on Thingiverse
in the hopes his design can be improved by others. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "460677",
"author": "Chris Muncy",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T21:39:45",
"content": "I bet if you got some of Barts upcoming makerslide rails it would solve your sagging problem.http://makerslide.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,377,079.675621 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/dino-builds-a-simple-non-contact-voltage-detector/ | [Dino] Builds A Simple Non-contact Voltage Detector | Mike Nathan | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hack a week",
"NPN transistors",
"voltage detector"
] | [Dino] is back with another installment of his Hack a Week series, and in this episode he is taking on what he promises will be the last transistor-based project – at least for a little while.
In the video embedded below, he shows off
a homemade voltage detector circuit
that he constructed using a trio of BC547 NPN transistors. The circuit is pretty simple though very useful all the same. At one end, the device has a small copper strip, which is connected to the base of the first transistor. The emitter of that transistor is daisy chained to the base of the second transistor and so on, until reaching the indicator LED.
As noted by one of [Dino’s] viewers, the circuit functions as follows:
“The front end copper strip forms one side of a capacitor, and then when you bring it near a voltage potential a super tiny current flows between air dielectric of the “cap”. This is mega amplified with the high gain BC547′s and viola, the LED lights up.”
Since the small bit of current is amplified many times over, the LED lights up even when very small voltages are present. While we might not necessarily trust our lives to [Dino’s] voltage detector, we’re sure it would come in handy now and again.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGDFBl5iz8#!&w=470] | 30 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "460640",
"author": "Doc Oct",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T20:06:15",
"content": "It’s hilarious that this article is on a site called “hack a week”. Someone should start a “hack a month” site, and link it to this article here.What would the signal at the diode look like if you hooked u... | 1,760,377,079.743355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/lxardoscope-is-a-linuxarduino-oscilloscope/ | Lxardoscope Is A Linux+Arduino Oscilloscope | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"oscilloscope"
] | [Privatier] wrote in to let us know about lxardoscope, his project that lets you
use an Arduino as hardware input for a Linux-based oscilloscope display
. This implementation offers two channels with about 3000 samples per second from each. He touts some of the GUI options like vertical resolution between 2mV and 10V per division. That part kind of stumps us because we don’t see how a measurement of 10V (or more) can be taken using the schematic included. But you’re comprehension may surpass ours so do take a look yourself.
He is using an Arduino Uno for his testing. But to get around some issues he’s experienced with other USB-based solutions he implemented a serial port connection instead. You’ll need to remove the ATmega chip from the Arduino board after flashing the code to it, and then build a circuit around it which includes a power source where -2.5V is ground and 2.5V is VCC. All in all, you’ll need a 16 Mhz crystal, HEF4069 hex inverter, ATmega8-family microcontroller, and a few passive components to build this on a breadboard. | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "460530",
"author": "Dan J.",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T18:09:24",
"content": "For the 10V+ measurements, is it possible he’s using the equivalent of a 10x probe? Should be relatively simple to set up a voltage divider and then amplify the signal back to its original magnitude in sof... | 1,760,377,079.809575 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/pic-lc-meter-improvements-add-li-ion-battery-and-charging-circuitry/ | PIC LC Meter Improvements Add Li-Ion Battery And Charging Circuitry | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"capacitance",
"inductance",
"lc meter",
"max1811",
"pic",
"tps61222"
] | [Trax] needed an LC meter and decided to use a tried-and-true design to build his own. The only problem was that he didn’t want to be tied to a bench supply or power outlet, which meant a bit of auxiliary design was in order. What he came up with is
the battery-powered LC meter you see above
.
The core of the
original [Phil Rice] design
remains the same, with slight modifications to drive a different model of character LCD. The code is mostly unchanged, but some calibration routines became necessary after [Marko] noticed bugs in the behavior after power cycling. Now the device will perform what amounts to a hardware reset about 700ms after powering on or changing between inductance and capacitance measuring functions. The project box is quite small, and to get everything to fit [Marko] sourced the Lithium Ion battery from a Bluetooth headset. He needs 5V for the LCD screen so he used a TPS61222 boost converter. To top off the battery he’s included a MAX1811 single-cell Li-ion charger, which has a couple of status LEDs visible through the case as seen above.
[Thanks Marko] | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "460511",
"author": "what",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T17:17:09",
"content": "So WTF is an LC meter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "460867",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2011-09-21T04:51:33",
"content"... | 1,760,377,079.906499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/laser-light-show-comes-to-life-from-the-junk-bin/ | Laser Light Show Comes To Life From The Junk Bin | Mike Szczys | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"diode",
"dvd",
"light show",
"mirror"
] | In a project that only spanned about three weeks [Lars]
built this laser light show projector
using parts scavenged from his junk bin. We’ve seen the concept many times before, all you need is a laser source and two mirrors mounted on a spinning bases. The laser diode for this project was pulled from a recordable DVD player. That beam passes through the optics from a laser printer to give it the focus necessary to get a good projected image.
[Lars] played around with the mirror angles until he achieved just the right look. The first mirror is mounted about 4 degrees from being flat with its motorized base; the second is off by about 6 degrees. This introduces slight oscillation in the beam direction when the motors are spinning. By adjusting the speed of each motor you get different patterns. Adjustments are happening completely at random thanks to the BasicStamp2 microcontroller which hadn’t been used in years. Fifteen lines of code were all it took.
Want a laser that’s not controlled at random? Check out
this addressable galvanometer-based show
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "460620",
"author": "Regiscruzbr",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T19:30:14",
"content": "I like the way how he made the housing, he also should have done a video to show it working.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "460644",
"autho... | 1,760,377,079.95123 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/adding-an-external-audio-input-to-the-sansa-clip/ | Adding An External Audio Input To The Sansa Clip+ | Mike Nathan | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"external mic",
"input",
"sansa"
] | Workshop 88 member [Jim] got his hands on a couple of SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 recorder/players from Woot, and was anxious
to see what he could do with them.
The first order of business was to install RockBox, an open source hardware package built for a wide range of MP3 players. He was impressed with how robust the firmware was, though he thought the Sansa’s built-in microphone could use a bit of upgrading. Acting on a tip from a fellow square dance enthusiast, he disassembled one to see how he might add an external audio input.
He pried the existing mic apart, and desoldered it from the motherboard, installing a small capacitor and resistor in its place. He extended some wires through the case, then powered up the unit to make sure it was still alive and well. Since things still looked good, [Jim] put some audio on the Sansa’s new inputs and sure enough it recorded the audio without a hitch.
He says that his initial guesses for the capacitor and resistor values were pretty decent, though with a bit of tweaking he should be able to get exactly the recording levels he was looking for. Not bad for a $20 audio recorder! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "460665",
"author": "George Graves",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T21:06:08",
"content": "Why add a capacitor and resistor? Doesn’t that make a filter? Wouldn’t that be blocking some frequencies?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "46... | 1,760,377,079.859966 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/attiny-hacks-bees-an-electronic-scale-to-see-who-brings-in-more-honey/ | ATtiny Hacks: BEES! An Electronic Scale To See Who Brings In More Honey. | Nick Schulze | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"AVR",
"beehive",
"bees",
"DataLogging",
"scale"
] | [MakingThingsWork] wanted an accurate way to keep track of the
weight of his beehive
, so he decided to build himself a data logging electronic scale. First he ripped the strain gauges from an old electronic scale which he then fitted to his home made beehive base. He then went about designing and building the control board which is based about the Attiny 85 (if you hadn’t guessed by the banner). An instrumentation amplifier was used to amplify the signal from the strain gauge, which is then read by the ADC on the Attiny. It looks like he had some trouble getting consistent results from the scale, so to eliminate the error caused by temperature variations he set up a fixed voltage divider for reference. With this setup the scale can produce results at +/- 0.5lb accuracy, sounds just fine for a system that cost less than $50. The V-usb project software has been used to connect the scale to his PC which he uses to collect and graph the data. All in all a very neat project and by the looks of it, some very productive bees. | 19 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "460224",
"author": "elektrophreak",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T13:09:45",
"content": "thanks for this post, really!I’ve been planning on making this bee-hive-scale for a friend of mine and this will help speed up the process!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,377,080.276159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/20/8-breadboard-hacks-to-make-life-easier/ | 8 Breadboard Hacks To Make Life Easier | Kevin Dady | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard hacks"
] | If you like messing around with electronics, one of the best tools you can have on hand is a solderless breaboard. These handy little chunks of plastic just let you “plug n play” so you can quickly develop a circuit before committing it to solder and fiberglass. Handy as they are, they do have their downsides such as: stuff not fitting, split up power rails, running out of jumpers or just taming what can quickly become a birds nest of a mess.
Luckily the folks over at [Proto Stack] have published a handy article giving us
8 Breadboard Hacks
. While anyone that has used breadboads for any length of time will have probably figured most of these out, its still good knowledge for any newcomers to the sometimes aggravating world of plastic and jumpers.
Also we know there are more hacks you can do to make your lives easier and would love to hear them in the comments. | 39 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "460170",
"author": "mankmanger",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T11:34:35",
"content": "Site overloaded?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "460179",
"author": "Brian Cribbs",
"timestamp": "2011-09-20T11:49:33",
"content": "Eit... | 1,760,377,082.14394 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/things-to-do-with-your-laptop-batteries-when-theyre-dead/ | Things To Do With Your Laptop Batteries When They’re Dead | Mike Nathan | [
"laptops hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"18650",
"batteries",
"cells",
"laptop",
"reuse"
] | [Roy] over at GeekDad had a dead laptop battery on his hands, and decided he would disassemble it to see
what useful things he could do
with the cells inside. He mentions in his article that even though your laptop might be convinced that its battery is toast, more often than not just one or two cells are damaged. This may not be news to all of our readers, but is worth pointing out to those who might not be aware.
With the bad cells separated from the good, [Roy] thought up a couple of different uses for his newly acquired batteries. His initial idea was to power an LED flashlight that was made to run on the 18650 cells he recovered from his laptop – not a stretch of the imagination, but definitely useful. The second use he came up with was to pair two of the cells together in order to simultaneously power an Arduino and some small Lego motors.
[Roy] lays out all of the standard caveats you would expect regarding the care and feeding of the lithium cells, and even suggests rebuilding the laptop battery as an option for the more skilled members of his audience.
Now we understand that dismantling and re-using old laptop cells is not necessarily groundbreaking, but it’s definitely something that’s worth a bit of discussion. [Roy] admits that his two ideas fall far short of the “18650 Things” his article title suggests, so how about adding a few of your own?
If you have stripped down some laptop batteries to salvage the cells, let us know what you did with them in the comments – we would be interested in hearing about it. | 65 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "459634",
"author": "sp00nix",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T22:16:26",
"content": "Heh, i already have over 100 18650 cells from all the old laptop batteries at work. I bought a 3w Cree flashlight from ebay that holds these cells. Light for days.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,082.463678 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/space-camera-streams-data-during-flight/ | Space Camera Streams Data During Flight | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"balloon",
"beagleboard",
"GPRS",
"gps",
"space"
] | Take the risk of not recovering your hardware out of a near-space camera launch by streaming the data during flight. [Tim Zaman] is part of a team that developed the rig seen above.
It sent 119 image back during the recent balloon launch
. This included transmissions from as high as 36 kilometers.
The main hardware included a BeagleBoard with connected Webcam housed in a Styrofoam cooler for thermal protection. Pair that with a GPS module for location tracking, and a GPRS module for data transmission and you’re in business.
But that’s not all that went up. The team built a backup hardware module in case the primary failed. This one also had a GPS and GPRS radio, but was driven by an Arduino.
The radio connection made it easy to recover the hardware. GPS data led the team directly to the landing site. The package came to rest on the roof of a building, but we guess that’s more convenient than getting snagged at the top of a huge tree.
Don’t miss the hardware detail video that we’ve embedded after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jlkxkstruI&w=470] | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "459600",
"author": "aztraph",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T21:14:22",
"content": "awesome edit on the sound effects",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "459652",
"author": "HackJack",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T23:01:25",
"cont... | 1,760,377,082.067522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/motorized-blinds-put-control-at-your-fingertips/ | Motorized Blinds Put Control At Your Fingertips | Mike Nathan | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"remote control",
"servo"
] | While [Bremster] likes the view from his office window, he often needs to get up and adjust the blinds several times throughout the day in order to keep the glare from killing his eyes. Like any other enterprising hacker, he decided that constantly adjusting them was too repetitive, and that
he could automate the process with electronics.
He thought that RC car servos would be a great choice to control the blinds, since they are cheap and the geared drive system offers a lot of torque at low speeds. After modifying the servos to enable continuous rotation, he set off to the hardware store in search of a way to mount them to the blinds’ looped cords.
After mounting some nylon spacers with rubber grommets on the servo arms, he installed them into a set of brackets he built and gave the blinds a spin. Now, he can easily control his blinds from the comfort of his desk with the simple flick of a switch – that’s the kind of
laziness
ingenuity we can respect!
Continue reading to see a quick video of his motorized blinds in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVttSUm2Cfg&w=470] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "459580",
"author": "bogdan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T20:41:15",
"content": "this is just like one of my abandoned projects: the modified servo, the mechanical connection…except i wanted to use a tiny micro and ir control and mske the whole thing battery powered. great build! simple... | 1,760,377,082.009558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/easily-movable-rfid-door-lock-is-great-for-dorm-rooms/ | Easily Movable RFID Door Lock Is Great For Dorm Rooms | Mike Nathan | [
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"door lock",
"rfid",
"servo"
] | One of the first things that [Eric] hacked together when he got to college was
an RFID door locking system.
He found that he was often in a rush to get in and out of his dorm room, and that using a simple wireless key was a great way to streamline his days.
Over the years, he has refined his design, and while his original prototype was functional, it was a bit rough around the edges. In the video posted on his site, he thoroughly explains how his system was built, and shows off the revisions he has made over time. One key consideration when building this system was the fact that the installation had to be non-permanent. Since schools typically frown on physically altering your rooms, he found a non-intrusive means to mount his system in the way of zip ties and foam board.
His RFID door lock looks to work quite nicely, and we especially like the inclusion of the reed switch to ensure that the system knows if the door has been opened or not. If you have about half an hour to spare and are interested in building an RFID entry system of your own, be sure to check out [Eric’s] video below for all the details.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/29131384 w=470] | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "459498",
"author": "brad",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T19:13:48",
"content": "“one key consideration”ha. i see what you did there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "459530",
"author": "insapio",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T19:58... | 1,760,377,082.24074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/arduino-releases-new-products-help-them-develop-arm-based-arduino/ | Arduino Releases New Products; Help Them Develop ARM-based Arduino | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"cortex m-3",
"ide",
"usb"
] | The Arduino folks took advantage of Maker Faire New York to
announce their new line of products
. There’s several interesting new additions to their product line.
They’ve got a WiFi shield in the works that utilizes a module from H&D Wireless in conjunction with an AVR32 processor to take the workload off of the ATmega chip on the Arduino board. It even has room for you to run your own code on the shield’s processor.
Notable (but of less interest to us) is the 1.0 release of the IDE and the development of a new low-cost board. That hardware is intended to make USB device development easier for those already familiar with the Arduino platform.
But the big news that caught our eye is the announcement of an ARM Cortex-M3 Arduino called the Due (we already wish that had been named something different just for search term contrast to the Duemilanova). The hardware hasn’t been finalized yet, although you can see a prototype in the picture above. They want community input on the final touches, so get in there and give them a hand!
[Thanks Insapio and Tom] | 41 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "459453",
"author": "Mudo",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T18:05:33",
"content": "ARMduino would be better name…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "459458",
"author": "charliex",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T18:10:37",
"content": ... | 1,760,377,082.537681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/using-classic-game-controllers-with-a-wii/ | Using Classic Game Controllers With A Wii | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Wii Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"genesis",
"master system",
"nes",
"playstation",
"psx",
"snes",
"wii"
] | [Bruno]’s
Wii RetroPad Adapter
was sent into the tip line, and we’re loving the possibility of using Playstation 2, Genesis, NES and SNES controllers with our Wii.
While
there are commercial solutions
that connect an NES or SNES controller to a Wii, everything connects to the GameCube port and there is no adapter for Sega or Playstation controllers. For his build, [Bruno] used an ATmega168 to read data from the classic controllers and translate that to the Wiimote
I2C bus
. Think of it as a new
classic controller
with the same form factor your 8-year-old self knew and loved.
The schematic
for the build is very simple and [Bruno]
has all the software out in the open
. Even the PCB
is single sided
and looks like it would be a great candidate for a homebrew PCB. There’s no indication [Bruno] is trying to monetize his creation, so he’s either doing right, or so very wrong. Check out the Dualshock 2/Mario 3 demo of this board after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TAdNzE4t8&w=470] | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "459401",
"author": "gregg benjamin",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T16:04:36",
"content": "actually there is a playstation controller adapter for gamecube, which also works on ebay, there are bout $8 on ebay,google is your friend",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,377,081.956398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/toaster-oven-forgoes-pop-tarts-reflows-solder/ | Toaster Oven Forgoes Pop-Tarts, Reflows Solder | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"reflow",
"smd"
] | For SMD work, solder paste and a heat gun is great. Heat guns aren’t the cheapest thing, so [Karel] decided to make
cheap reflow oven
out of a toaster oven. With a PCB taken from a laminator temperature control board, the build was fairly successful, so [Karel] decided to
add a thermistor
to his oven.
There was a problem with placing this thermistor near the board: solder melts in a reflow oven, so [Karel] needed to figure how to connect the thermistor to the control board outside the oven. The solution was crimping thin copper tubing to the thermistor leads and passing that tube through the wall of the oven. Epoxy was used to avoid an electrical short. A low tech solution, but very effective. After applying some solder paste and going in the oven,
this board
looks very clean. There are a few solder bridges, but nothing a wick can’t take care of.
[Karel] is now
working on an update to the temperature controller
that controls the oven over a serial connection. Check out the video of a few temperature cycles after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynSdYVyKj8&w=470] | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "459356",
"author": "Brett W. (FightCube.com)",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T15:33:46",
"content": "This is a common problem with thermocouples as well, which you could use if you get the high temp kind. You need to twist the two wires together and then weld the tip using high current.O... | 1,760,377,082.194054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/19/attiny-hacks-reading-from-a-motorcycles-j1850-data-bus/ | ATtiny Hacks: Reading From A Motorcycle’s J1850 Data Bus | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"attiny4313",
"J1850",
"motorcycle"
] | [TZ] has been using ATtiny microcontrollers to read and pass along data from his Harley Davidson motorcycle. The image you see above is
using an ATtiny 4313 to read data from the J1850 bus
.
The
J1850 protocol
is an older standard which may not be available in newer vehicles. But if your vehicle has it, you may be able to tap into the bus through an ODB-II connector. [TZ] is decoding the data with the 4313, then using an inexpensive Bluetooth module to send the information to an Android tablet. Fortunately, someone has already written a nice GUI to display the speed and tachometer.
This isn’t the only approach to data harvesting with an ATtiny chip that he’s explored. There’s a second video after the break that shows a much more complicated setup. It still harvests the J1850 data in the same way, but also uses additional I2C sensors and an embedded ARM board to gather GPS data. Everything is pushed to his smart phone, which displays current gear, RPM, speed, engine temperature, fuel level, and GPS information via a WiFi connection.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3BzX0D8vuc&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td34w0LIyOU&w=470] | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "459270",
"author": "jc",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T13:33:32",
"content": "See, now *this* is HaD material!Good stuff, good stuff…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "459327",
"author": "Jakob",
"timestamp": "2011-09-19T14:25:... | 1,760,377,081.905479 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/robotic-disco-floor-is-a-mobile-party/ | Robotic Disco Floor Is A Mobile Party | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"disco floor",
"dragoncon",
"robot",
"stripper pole"
] | [Chris Williamson] designed the
Rave Rover
, a mobile disco floor with integrated stripper pole for this year’s DragonCon.
[Chris] started building combat robots back in 2000 for Battlebots and Robot Wars and cofounded the South Eastern Combat Robot league. He’s a lover and not a fighter, so for the
DragonCon robotics track
[Chris] built his mobile dance party. He
put up an Instructable
of his build and some of the features are really clever. Whenever the dance floor is being ‘used’, pneumatic cylinders lower the disco floor so it rests directly on the ground. A good idea, especially considering what we imagine happens on the Rave Rover.
For the light-up disco floor, [Chris] cut
black ABS sheets on a CNC router
and installed RGB LED modules controlled by an Arduino. The floor can display low-res animations, but
random patterns
look just a cool.
The Rave Rover was designed and built over a one month span to get ready in time for DragonCon. The build was a little hurried but the quality is still there. Check out video of the Rave Rover at DragonCon after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owidDIIObik&w=470] | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "458641",
"author": "rasz",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T20:22:23",
"content": "Isnt dragoncon the one with one of the top dudes convicted for child molestation? Mobile Strip poles is indeed what they need.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,377,082.290223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/hackaday-birday-cake/ | Hackaday Birthday Cake! | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"art",
"cake"
] | [Alex], aka [Grovenstien] turned 30 this weekend. After a conversation with his sister, where she asked: “what was that website with the skull that you always look at?”, he thought maybe he’d get a sticker or a shirt. She surprised him with this totally awesome birthday cake! There really aren’t any build details, but you can pretty much see that it has LEDs for eyes as well as some crazy sparkler effects going on as well. What we’re particularly impressed with is the fact that everything was hand cut, even that crisp text at the bottom. Happy Birthday [Grovenstien] and awesome job big sister!
check out the rest of the pictures after the break. | 27 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "458603",
"author": "Paul Granis",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T19:16:36",
"content": "Happy BIRday to everyone!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "458606",
"author": "cafeine",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T19:20:59",
"content":... | 1,760,377,082.600716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/broken-xbox-360-converted-into-an-arcade-controller/ | Broken Xbox 360 Converted Into An Arcade Controller | Mike Nathan | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"arcade",
"controller",
"xbox 360"
] | Like many Xbox 360s out there, [Aaron’s] console succumbed to the dreaded three red lights of death. Since it seemed to be unrepairable, there wasn’t a lot that could be done with it other than throw it out. Rather than be wasteful however, [Aaron]
thought of a great way to reuse the console’s outer shell.
He’s a big fan of fighting games, and as everyone knows, this genre is best played with an arcade-style controller. The 360’s shell seemed to be just about the right size, so he gutted it and got busy constructing his own arcade controller. With the console cleared out, he installed all of his arcade bits, wiring them to a stripped third-party Xbox controller.
He installed a four port USB hub to the front of the console, enabling use of the 360’s USB ports, and rewired the power button to trigger the Xbox Guide button. A shiny coat of paint later, and he was ready to play.
Keep reading to see a short video of [Aaron’s] arcade stick in action, and check out
the picture gallery he put together
of the controller’s construction.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i8GIZNch-0&w=470] | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "458646",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T20:33:40",
"content": "And people thought the first XBox controller was huge…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "459428",
"author": "TRex",
"timestamp": "2011-09... | 1,760,377,082.655117 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/mechatron-industrial-looking-security-bot/ | Mechatron, Industrial Looking Security Bot | Caleb Kraft | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"airsoft",
"tank"
] | This little beast is named Mechatron.
Built by a father/daughter team called Beatty Robotics
, the goal was to build something “retro-futuristic, tough, and industrial”. We think they definitely pulled off some of their goals here. Weighing in at nearly 50 pounds, Mechatron is still very agile, as you can see in the video below. He can fire his gun, which uses brass or plastic bullets, at a rate of nearly 1,000 rounds per minute while traveling in any direction thanks to the use of the mechanum wheels. 8 range finding sonar sensors, a laser and a turret that rotates 360 degrees will make sure you don’t elude Mechatron’s watchful eye… and shooting. While we were initially debating how they could make the Mechatron look more reto-futuristic, we all agreed that the lights in the video helped a lot. Maybe a curvy body piece could help too, depending on what era they were hoping to achieve.
[via
buildlounge
]
[vimeo
http://vimeo.com/28464141%5D | 27 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "458560",
"author": "Bigdeal",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T17:26:02",
"content": "This is so, cool! I really want one to guard my appartment while I’m gone… would definitely be super-effective against robbers!Now, one little concern: if you live in an appartment, your downstairs neighbo... | 1,760,377,082.764364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/schauble-jr-aims-to-take-away-your-privacy/ | Schäuble Jr Aims To Take Away Your Privacy! | Jeremy Cook | [
"digital audio hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"array",
"camera",
"microphone",
"servo"
] | [Mnt] wrote in to tell us about this
360 degree array of cameras
featured on
[Codeninja]
. This has to be one of the most impressive arrays of cameras and sound equipment that we’ve seen at Hack a day.
The array is capable of 360 degree x 140 degree panoramic views using the 9 cameras arranged in a circle around the base. Impressive in itself, these cameras are all capable of both pan and tilt rotation via and Arduino-controlled servo setup. It also has a native 360 degree camera mounted on top of everything for calibration purposes and IR-LED illumination capabilities.
On top of all of this, the camera array also features audio capability with a 9-microphone setup, presumably one for each camera. This, coupled with piezoelectric speakers should provide for echolocation capability. Although jokingly called the “Schäuble Jr.” after a German politician, we’re not sure of the true purpose for this “sensor array.” We can only hope that it will be used for good. A very impressive build, it will be interesting to see what comes of it. | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "458523",
"author": "Simonious",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T16:43:51",
"content": "Would it be possible/desirable to do something like this?http://hackaday.com/2011/06/16/360-degree-photography-uses-very-easy-post-processing/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,377,082.702372 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/18/attiny-hacks-2313-driving-a-4x4x4-led-cube/ | ATtiny Hacks: 2313 Driving A 4x4x4 LED Cube | Mike Szczys | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"attiny2313",
"LED cube",
"shift register"
] | [Kirill] wrote in to share his ATtiny hack,
a 4x4x LED cube
. The 64 LED display is a great choice to fully utilize the hardware he chose. It’s multiplexed by level. Each of the four levels are wired with common cathodes, switched by a 2N3904 transistor. The anodes are driven by two 595 shift registers, providing a total of 16 addressable pins which matches the 4×4 grid perfectly. All said and done it only takes seven of the ATtiny2313’s pins to drive the display. This is one pin more than the chip’s smaller cousins like the ATtiny85 can provide. But, this chip does include a UART which means the project could potentially be modified to receive animation instructions from a computer or other device.
You may have noticed the USB port in the image above. This is serving as a source for regulated power in lieu of having its own voltage regulation hardware and is not used for data at all. Check out the animations that [Kirill] uses on the display by watching the video after the break. You’ll find a link to the source code there as well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4na-kO2q1Q&w=470]
Here’s a link to [Kirill’s] source code:
http://www.mediafire.com/?c47p92t0rl3z90p | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "458470",
"author": "insapio",
"timestamp": "2011-09-18T13:33:40",
"content": "Inb4 not a hack! I really like the way this is put together; quite simply. I’d love to know how the animations are written; whether theyre hard coded, or calculated on the fly.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,377,083.126831 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/17/stoplight-indicator-system-signals-when-your-servers-are-in-distress/ | Stoplight Indicator System Signals When Your Servers Are In Distress | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"notification",
"stoplight"
] | At [mkanoap’s] office, they have a software package that monitors their various servers’ health, but they wanted
a separate indicator to display the status
of their most critical systems. They put together a simple list of criteria for their display, including the ability to view the status without a computer, and that it share the same red/yellow/green indicators that their monitoring software utilizes. With those needs in mind (and a few hundred dollars to spare), [mkanoap] and crew rushed out to buy a stoplight, then got to building.
Their status system is self-contained, utilizing an Arduino and Ethernet shield to control the stoplight. The Arduino was programmed to act as a web server, and responds to GET requests by toggling any of the three mains-powered lamps using relays. [mkanoap] then created a handful of scripts that check the status of the critical servers every 5 minutes, updating the stoplight accordingly. The whole setup was tucked neatly inside the light’s housing, before being mounted on the wall in their office.
[mkanoap] says that the reaction to the stoplight as been great, though they had to install dimmer bulbs so those people sitting near it were not blinded. His writeup is incredibly detailed should anyone want to construct one of their own, and who wouldn’t? | 34 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "457679",
"author": "mark",
"timestamp": "2011-09-17T16:47:55",
"content": "Could anyone in the company send get commands to the stoplight to mess with their IT department?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "457690",
"auth... | 1,760,377,083.234016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/17/weekly-roundup-91711/ | Weekly Roundup 9/17/11 | Jack Buffington | [
"News"
] | [] | In case you missed them, here are our most popular posts from the past week.
Our most popular post from the past week was one where we show a project where [Linas]
built his own CT scanner
and then used those scans to create 3D models.
Our next most popular post was an Engine Hack from the previous theme where [Mike] built
a jet out of pipe fittings and motorcycle parts
.
Next up is a post that will be of interest to folks who like their privacy.
This post
shows a project that simulates a trip wire using a laser beam. The end result is the same though. Cross the beam, hear it scream.
Our forth most popular post was one about a
robot that can climb walls
and then parachute back down to do it again… provided that it has a team of students ready to catch it on a tarp at the bottom.
Finally, we have a post that describes
how to create a circuit board out of a piece of glass
. The author is using it for a touch-sensitive button interface. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,083.166074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/17/attiny-hacks-simple-usb-temperature-probe/ | ATtiny Hacks: Simple USB Temperature Probe | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny45",
"ruby",
"temperature probe",
"usb"
] | [Dan’s] office is awfully hot, but he needed some real temperature numbers that he could show the building management office to justify opening a maintenance ticket. He had seen some simple temperature probe examples online, and decided to
build his own using a small AVR chip.
Based off a similar temperature monitoring example called EasyLogger, his temperature probe uses an LM34 temperature sensor, which is wired to an ATtiny45. The ATtiny communicates with his computer using the Ruby-USB library in conjunction with a bit of Ruby code he put together. Once the data is obtained, all of the temperature measurements are logged and graphed using RubyRRDTool.
As you can see by in the image above, his office is far hotter than it should be, so we’re pretty sure he’s happy to have actual measurements to back up his claims.
If you are looking to make a small temperature probe of your own, his code, schematics, and links to all of the tools he used in the project are available on his site. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "457566",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2011-09-17T13:44:48",
"content": "Interesting graph. If you mentally fill-in the missing data, it looks like Dan’s office temperature spikes up each day for 5 days in a row, then it stays cool for two days, and then repeats.If it was due to ... | 1,760,377,083.277716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/build-your-own-ct-scanner/ | Build Your Own CT Scanner | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"ct scanner",
"medical",
"xray"
] | [Linas] built himself an x-ray generator for a scholarship contest. We assume this wasn’t enough of a challenge for [Linas] because after the x-ray generator was done,
he used his project to model objects in 3D
(
Google Translate link
). It’s an amazing build, leaving us feeling sorry for the guy that came in second place to the home-made CT scanner.
The theory behind a CT scanner is fairly simple –
take a series of x-rays of an object around an axis of rotation
. From there, it’s a fairly simple matter to digitize the x-ray images to produce a 3D model. The hard part is building the x-ray generator. [Linas] used directional x-ray tubes, a few power supplies and from what we can gather x-ray film instead of a CCD sensor. The film was scanned into a computer and reassembled to get a 3D image.
[Linas] doesn’t seem too keen on giving away the schematics for his build to any old joker on the Internet because of the high voltage and radiation components of his build. Still, it’s an amazing build.
Check out the YouTube demo of [Linas]’s CT scanner imaging an old computer mouse and a reconstruction of the same data done in MATLAB after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78M8du7o4iQ&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5n6oSAmaGs&w=470] | 29 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "455924",
"author": "Elias",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T15:16:38",
"content": "Wow, just wow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "455982",
"author": "Delmar",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T16:23:31",
"content": "Th... | 1,760,377,083.405237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/microchip-puts-up-two-1000-prizes-for-usb-and-tcpip-stacks/ | Microchip Puts Up Two $1000 Prizes For USB And TCP/IP Stacks! | Jack Buffington | [
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [
"contest",
"microchip",
"tcpip",
"usb"
] | A couple of weeks ago we put up a post titled
Addressing Microchip’s open source problem
where we talked about some of their shortcomings as far as open source code goes, specifically the TCP/IP stack and the USB stack. The comments were predictably fairly negative. The interesting part here is that Microchip actually listened. If you read through all of the comments, you will get a bit of an inside look at what is going on internally at Microchip. At the very end, [Marc] from Microchip left a couple of comments outlining a pair of prizes for independently ported stacks for TCP/IP and USB. Microchip can’t fully open the ones that they have because of legal reasons so they need the help of the development community and they are putting up $1000 for each one to prove that they are serious. If you follow
this link
you will arrive at a page outlining the rules for the contest.
The gauntlet has been dropped! Do you have chops to pull this off and earn yourself a cool $1000? | 37 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "455890",
"author": "Pup",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T14:30:25",
"content": "You don’t drop a gauntlett, you throw it to the grouuuuunndddd!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455903",
"author": "st2000",
"timestamp": "2011... | 1,760,377,083.893656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/attiny-hacks-an-audio-alert-for-cell-phones-accidentally-left-on-vibrate/ | ATtiny Hacks: An Audio Alert For Cell Phones Accidentally Left On Vibrate | Mike Nathan | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"alert",
"attiny85",
"cell phone",
"piezo"
] | [John Thomson] usually keeps his phone on vibrate when it’s in his pocket, and he often forgets to turn the ringer back on when setting it down to charge. This typically results in a bunch of missed calls in the meantime, so he
had to devise a way to counteract his forgetfulness.
You might remember [John] from
the Santa-pede contest
we held last December. He wanted to try his hand at yet another competition, the
Avnet Dog Days of Summer contest
, so he scrambled to come up with a quick fix for his situation. He concocted a simple circuit based on [ChaN’s] design for a
“Simple SD Audio Player with an 8-pin IC”
that would alert him to incoming calls, even when his phone was on vibrate.
[John] used an ATtiny85, just as [ChaN] did, adding a speaker for sound output and a piezo sensor to detect his phone’s vibrations. When the piezo senses a bit of motion, the audio player kicks in, blaring a series of sounds that are sure to get [John’s] attention. | 31 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "455840",
"author": "davidk",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T13:13:55",
"content": "(i’m pretty inexperienced, and can’t call myself a “maker”) great idea, but would it not be more intuitive to have just made something which would make a noise from the cell signal? Ie: sometimes when my ph... | 1,760,377,083.341251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/record-sound-without-a-microcontroller/ | Record Sound Without A Microcontroller | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"4000",
"analog",
"audio recorder",
"sram"
] | For his A-level electronic course work, [Andrew] decided to build
a digital sound recorder that doesn’t use a microcontroller
.
[Andrew]’s build captures audio from an on board microphone at 8000 samples/second. The audio is digitized into 8-bit sound data and sent to an SRAM. The recording and playback functions are controlled entirely by 4000-series logic chips. He admits the sound quality is pretty poor; this is mostly due to the 8kHz sample rate.
In some circles
, though, a terrible sample rate is seen as being pretty cool so we’re not going to say [Andrew]’s build is useless.
There’s some pretty smart design choices in [Andrew]’s build, like a cut off filter on the microphone set at 4000 Hz (the Nyquist frequency of his system). For the recording medium, he used an SRAM that can hold about half a megabyte of data. At 8000 samples/second, [Andrew]’s build can store a little more than 60 seconds of audio. The build may not be
a logic chip computer
, but there’s not any question in our mind that [Andrew] learned something. Check out [Andrew]’s 66-page coursework report
here
(PDF warning). | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "455802",
"author": "dmcbeing",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T11:40:46",
"content": "Very nice project, and the schematic is a work of art ( in my eyes at least ).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455804",
"author": "The Cageybee",... | 1,760,377,083.457157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/adding-a-little-polish-to-your-cellphone-charging-setup/ | Adding A Little Polish To Your Cellphone Charging Setup | Mike Szczys | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"charging",
"digital picture frame",
"ikea"
] | Cable management can really be an eyesore, but a little creative camouflage and you can have
a cellphone charging station that also serves as decoration
.
[Kitesurfer] wanted to use one of the cubbyholes in his new Ikea book shelf for charging but wasn’t keen on the rat’s nest of wires that would go along with it. Also not wanting to take on
the challenge of wireless charging
he hit the As-Is section of the home furnishing giant and grabbed a leftover board that matched the same finish as the cabinetry. It now serves as a false-back for the charging center behind which a power strip and wall-warts hide.
This covers up the problem, but a blank white box filled with the business end of the charging wires isn’t a whole to better. As with a magic show, the trick is in redirection. [Kitesurfer] cut a hole in the false-back and added the guts of a digital picture frame. Right now he’s got it scrolling through different charging icons, but it’s easy enough to change up the slide-show if he gets tired of them. We’d love to see a subsequent hack that lets the picture frame access the photos on your phone via Bluetooth. | 18 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "455431",
"author": "Sprite_tm",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T22:38:03",
"content": "Maybe even better to monitor the currents going to the various chargers. If the battery gets fuller, the current usually tapers off and you can display a graphic that reflects that, so when you walk past... | 1,760,377,083.614766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/amp-hour-interviews-joe-grand/ | Amp Hour Interviews [Joe Grand] | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"amp hour",
"defcon",
"joe grand",
"prototype this"
] | The Amp Hour, a podcast of electronics enthusiasts and professionals alike, just did
an epic interview with [Joe Grand]
. Along with hosts [Chris Gammell] and [Dave Jones], the discussion runs the gamut of points of interest in the hardware hacking world. The first vignette explores the rise, run, and fall of
Prototype This
,
an engineering-centric TV show that [Joe] did
along with a group of various engineers for the Discover Channel. He politely discusses some of the goods and bads of the TV business and how that affected the team’s ability to go into great detail about the projects they were building.
From there the guys discuss the development of Hackerspaces through the years. [Joe] has some concerns about the injection of corporate sponsorships in these DIY spaces and what that may mean in the long run. He then talks about the impending release of his 3-year-long laser range-finder project (we’ve seen
a project using a prototype of this sensor
). The show is rounded out with discussions about hardware fab houses that [Joe] uses and has used over the years for projects like the Defcon Badges (we loved his
Defcon 18 badges
).
It’s a great episode so download a copy and set aside about an hour to listen to the whole show. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "455383",
"author": "pt",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T21:17:37",
"content": "this is a great interview.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455403",
"author": "george graves",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T21:48:55",
"content": "... | 1,760,377,083.655365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/cheapstat-an-open-source-potentiostat/ | CheapStat: An Open-source Potentiostat | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"cheapstat",
"java",
"potentiostat",
"usb",
"xmega"
] | A commercial potentiostat can cost several thousand dollars, but the
CheapStat is an open source project that makes it possible to build your own
at a tiny fraction of that cost. It is possible to build one for less than $80, breaking down the cost barrier faced by many labs that would like to have this test hardware.
A potentiostat is used to measure electrochemical properties. To give you a few examples of what it can do, the hardware can measure arsenic levels in water, Vitamin C concentration in orange juice, Acetaminophen concentrations in over-the-counter medications, and a bunch of other less easily explained tests having to do with chemical compounds and DNA.
The device makes use of an Atmel XMEGA microcontroller and connects to a computer via USB. A Java program grabs that data from the hardware displaying test results on your choice of computer platforms. If you’re looking for all the gory details you won’t be disappointed by
their journal paper
. | 12 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "455387",
"author": "SuperNuRd",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T21:23:55",
"content": "mmmmmmmm NOM NOM NOM NOM Dank u vary much now eye can bye kookies wit my saevd monies",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455452",
"author": "Chris"... | 1,760,377,083.706152 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/grow-your-own-fresh-salad-year-round-with-this-cheap-hydroponic-setup/ | Grow Your Own Fresh Salad Year Round With This Cheap Hydroponic Setup | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"aquarium pump",
"foam",
"hydroponics"
] | With fall approaching you might think about moving your gardening inside. [Jared] used cheap and readily available materials to
make these salad-green trays
. When used with his grow lights and tent (which he built during a different project) he was able go from seed to salad-bowl in just four weeks.
A pair of plastic storage bins act as the base, keeping the water right where it should be. Some holes cut into a piece of solid foam insulation holds a set of plastic pots in place, allowing the water to leech into the Rockwool that holds each plant in lieu of soil. To aerate the water [Jared] grabbed a cheap aquarium pump, splitting the output into several different branches. Each has its own check valve to ensure that a pump failure doesn’t let the water find its way out of the plastic tube. A set of bubble stones breaks up the output, helping to mix it with the water.
This isn’t quite as easy to pull off if you don’t already have a grow light. But you can always make it worth the investment if you decide to start next summer’s garden from seed. Or perhaps you can try to make your own using a varation of
this shop lighting hack
.
[Thanks Jayson] | 53 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "457160",
"author": "John Boxall",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T23:36:53",
"content": "You don’t win friends with salad…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "457162",
"author": "MikrySoft",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T23:41:41",
... | 1,760,377,084.121627 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/recreating-the-mac-plus-with-an-fpga/ | Recreating The Mac Plus With An FPGA | Mike Nathan | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"fpga",
"mac",
"PlusToo"
] | [Steve] over at Big Mess O’ Wires
has never been so happy to see the “Sad Mac” icon.
A little over a month ago, he decided to take on the task of
building his own Mac clone
using modern technology. Not to be confused with Mac emulation on modern hardware, he is attempting to build a true Mac clone using an FPGA that is functionally identical to the original.
He is calling his creation the “PlusToo”, with the goal of producing a modern version of the Macintosh Plus. The Plus shares a good amount of hardware with its other original Mac brethren, allowing him to replicate any of the other machines such as the Mac 128K, with a few simple configuration changes.
Building this clone is an incredible undertaking, and it’s a lot of fun to watch the construction progress bit by bit. [Steve] has been diligently working for a little over a month now, recently getting the clone to run 68000 code from the Mac ROM, resulting in the Sad Mac image you see above. While the logo has been dreaded among Mac users for years, it signals to [Steve] that things are coming along nicely. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "457097",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T21:21:26",
"content": "I’m always happy to see another FPGA replica. More powere to [Steve].",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "457098",
"author": "Eric W",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,377,084.040409 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/motorized-coop-door-lets-the-chickens-out-for-you/ | Motorized Coop Door Lets The Chickens Out For You | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"chicken coop",
"door",
"reed switch"
] | [Larry] and [Carol] just upgraded the coop to make their lives easier, and to help keep the chickens happy. The image above is a chicken’s-eye-view of
the newly installed automatic door
. It’s a guillotine design that uses the weight of the aluminum plate door to make sure predators can’t get in at night. This is much easier to fabricate than
a locking coop door
would have been. Some leftover aluminum channel guides the door on either side, with a spool above it to wind up some rope, thereby lifting the door.
You can see the belt-drive motor is also mounted inside, out of the element. To the right of the image you can just make out a plastic food container. This protects the electronics from the elements. Inside you’ll find an H-bridge to drive the motor, a real-time-clock to make sure the schedule is well-timed, and an Arduino. There are a couple of reed switches which let the microcontroller sense the position of the door.
After the break you can see a demonstration video, as well as a slide show with build details. The motor is pretty quiet and, although it spooks the chicken in the demo just a bit, we’d be they’ll be used to it in no time.
Door in operation:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycs97tleOkM&w=470]
Build details:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHy6prdYczc&w=470]
[via
Sector67
] | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "457061",
"author": "Joel",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T20:30:22",
"content": "Why are there only two doors on a chicken coop?………Because if it had four, it would be a chicken sedan!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "457073",
"auth... | 1,760,377,084.185926 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/swap-o-matic-an-automat-with-recycling-in-mind/ | Swap-O-Matic: An Automat With Recycling In Mind | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackerspaces",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"automat",
"recycling",
"swap-o-matic",
"upcycling"
] | The
Swap-O-Matic
is vending machine built for recycling, not consuming. Instead of feeding money into the machine, you can get an item out of the machine by swapping it for something you don’t need anymore. It’s a great concept with a great retro design, probably influenced by the age of
the automat
.
[Lina Fenequito] and [Rick Cassidy] built the Swap-O-Matic around the time [Lina] was getting her MFA. The build
was in Wired
in 2005, but the project has been updated since then and has a new home at
LaunchPad
in Brooklyn, NY. The
first version
used a separate computer next to the machine that gave out combinations to locks on the doors. It looks like the new version has been improved with an integrated touchscreen and computer-activated locks leaving [Lina] and [Rick] with a very clean build.
It’s a great idea if you have a relatively homogeneous population with similar interests, so we expect to see some of these popping up at a few hackerspaces. Check out the Swap-O-Matic promo video after the break.
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/14993012] | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "457033",
"author": "t&p",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T19:25:14",
"content": "Save the earth… no.You save the earth by recycling disposable plastic, CCFLs, and the like.It’s more like a micro thrift store with just the junk. It also requires trust. People as a whole are untrustworthy.... | 1,760,377,083.987615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/spdif-passthrough-lets-you-digitally-manipulate-the-audio/ | SPDIF Passthrough Lets You Digitally Manipulate The Audio | Mike Szczys | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"fpga",
"spdif"
] | [Mike Field] took what he had learned with a few past projects and combined them to make this
FPGA-based SPDIF audio pass-through
. In order to get the SPDIF signal ready for the FPGA he needed a few components to use for level conversion. Once everything was connected he used a first in first out (FIFO) buffer to ensure that the outgoing bitrate is the same as the input, while still allowing enough time for the FPGA to do some digital manipulation.
This reminds us of
the NeTV
, which is an HDMI pass-through device. That one allows you to overlay your own video information to any TV that has an HDMI port. This would allow you patch into any audio system that’s using SPDIF, letting you inject your own audio, such as a paging system in a public lobby, or the ringing of a phone when you get a call, or to create your own sounds.
We like his overhand knot cable management system to keep those jumper wires from becoming too much of a mess on the breadboard. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "457003",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T18:19:26",
"content": "i’d love to have an SPDIF based audio compressor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "457042",
"author": "MpegMaster",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T19:47:... | 1,760,377,083.93671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/jgpx-keeps-the-bachelor-party-moving-in-the-right-direction-regardless-of-bac/ | JGPX Keeps The Bachelor Party Moving In The Right Direction, Regardless Of BAC | Mike Nathan | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"jGPX",
"navigation"
] | [Davy] and his friend [Chris] were tasked with putting together a bachelor party for their friend [J], and
had a little more in mind
than the standard drunken revelry. To earn the privilege of partying his brains out, they decided that [J] would have to fulfill a series of tasks and challenges before joining up with the rest of his friends for the evening’s events. [Davy] didn’t specify what these tasks were, lest he spoil the surprise, but he did let us in on a little device that he and [Chris] built to help guide the bachelor through his day.
They were a bit worried that the bachelor would get sidetracked during his journey if he happened to imbibe along the way, so they built a device called jGPX that would ensure [J] stayed on track and on time. jGPX is a custom GPS navigator consisting of an Arduino, a GPS module with built-in antenna, and a compass. The pair created a set of routes in Google Earth, exporting the data to KML for interpretation by their device. The jGPX is meant to guide [J] along via a small LCD screen that shows him the distance to his target as well as the proper direction of travel to get there.
It looks like [J’s] friends put a lot of effort into his party, and although there are no details as to how things went, we’re sure it was a blast! | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "456956",
"author": "sariel",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T17:15:26",
"content": "“although there are no details as to how things went, we’re sure it was a blast!”that’s because what happens at a bachelors party, stays at the party. please refrain from dead hooker jokes… ^_^",
"pare... | 1,760,377,084.22916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/burning-man-2011-peter-hudsons-charon-strobe-sculpture/ | Burning Man 2011: Peter Hudson’s Charon Strobe Sculpture | Jesse Congdon | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"burning man",
"interactive art",
"stop motion",
"strobe"
] | Here at Hackaday the only thing we like better than giant whirling artistic desert based contraptions are
interactive
giant whirling artistic desert based contraptions. [Peter Hudston]’s
Charon
is no exception. Known for his
strobe sculptures
[Peter] has returned from a two year hiatus with possibly one of the craziest and nightmarish sculptures found on the deep playa. The work features a gigantic spinning wheel that has posed human skeletons mounted on it’s inner edge. Onlookers can pull a series of 6 rope pairs which cause the wheel to rotate rapidly. When the rope pullers are coordinated enough to get the wheel spinning at the right speed, a strobe is activated revealing the skeleton’s animation.
I wandered over to this thing one night after hearing the local buzz about the piece. The towering wheel was spinning away as the rope pullers of the moment tried desperately to get the strobe to activate, every couple of minutes or so somebody would try and coordinate the pulling only to confuse things. From my perspective it seemed to be very difficult to get the right speed, and the pullers had to yank the rope practically to the ground. During the short time I was watching the piece (jaw to the floor) the strobe activated once or twice and honestly it was completely worth the effort. To see what this monster looks like in action check out the video after the jump.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff6KEOMo15g&w=470] | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "456863",
"author": "Michael L.",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T14:20:33",
"content": "When you said “human skeletons” I thought you meant real ones. I have to admit the animation was pretty impressive and would fit into a haunted house (if it would actually fit into the building). The on... | 1,760,377,084.287806 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/16/attiny-hacks-roll-2d6-with-an-attiny/ | ATtiny Hacks: Roll 2d6 With An ATtiny | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"2d6",
"attiny hacks",
"attiny26",
"dice",
"electronic dice"
] | A pair of 6-sided electric dice
(original in Dutch,
here’s
the Google Translate link) was sent in on the tip line for our ATtiny hacks theme. We really appreciate the simplicity of the circuit; it really shows how the complexity of discrete components can be cut down with a simple microcontroller.
The circuit is very simple – An ATtiny26 serves as the core of the project. Fourteen LEDs are connected to fourteen pins on the micro. The tiny26 might be a bit overkill. With
Charlieplexing
, we suspect this build could have been completed with an 8-pin micro like an ATtiny25. The code for the build (written in BASIC with
BASCOM-AVR
), board files and schematics have all been posted.
We’ve seen a few electronic dice builds before.
this build
uses an ATmega328 in a hugely overwrought circuit. Compared to
what can be done with a 555
, the ATtiny26 build provides a very nice middle ground.
Thanks [Roeland] for sending this in. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "456850",
"author": "Andrew Smith",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T14:01:26",
"content": "The PIC microcontroller: Your personal Introduction by John Morton. Does this using a PIC12F508 which only provides 6 i/o pins (well 5 i/o and 1 input only).Here is an extract from the project.http://... | 1,760,377,084.384043 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/steerable-bristlebot-via-ir-control/ | Steerable Bristlebot Via IR Control | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"attiny45",
"bristlebot",
"nimh",
"pager motor",
"vibration"
] | Looking at the size of this bristlebot the first thing we wondered is where’s the battery? All we know is that it’s a rechargeable NiMH and it must be hiding under that tiny circuit board. But [Naghi Sotoudeh] didn’t just build a mindless device that jiggles its way across a table. This
vibrating robot is controllable with an infrared remote control
. It uses an ATtiny45 microcontroller to monitor an IR receiver for user input. An RC5 compatible television remote control lets you send commands, driving the tiny form factor in more ways than we thought possible. Check out the video after the break to see how well the two vibrating motors work at propelling the device. They’re driven using a PWM signal with makes for better control, but it doesn’t look like there’s any protection circuitry which raises concern for the longevity of the uC.
This build was featured in
a larger post over at Hizook
which details the history of vibrating robots. It’s not technically a bristlebot since it doesn’t ride on top of a brush, but the concept is the same. You could give your miniature fabrication skills a try in order to replicate this, or you can
build a much larger version that is also steerable
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izpn93gEzDQ&w=470] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "456457",
"author": "Nova",
"timestamp": "2011-09-16T03:12:07",
"content": "I’m fairly certain that the ‘bot it sitting on-top of its battery and there aren’t any bristles actually beneath it. So it’s really more of a “sans bristle bot”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,377,084.327378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/hackaday-links-september-15-2011/ | Hackaday Links: September 15, 2011 | Brian Benchoff | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"links",
"rocker-bogie",
"soldering iron",
"wi-fi",
"wi-fi cracking"
] | Open-source Mars rover
[Seth King] wasn’t satisfied with current robotics platforms that don’t work well outdoors. He started the
Open Rover Kickstarter
with the end goal of having a 6-wheel robot with a rocker-bogie suspension just like the Mars landers. We’re sure it’ll be an interesting platform.
Adding a Flash to a key fob video camera
[doctormord] picked up a key fob “spycam” and was surprised that there wasn’t any onboard illumination. Then again, that would probably defeat the purpose of the “spycam.”
A transistor, LED and resistor later
(
translation
), he had a camera with a light.
Pics here
.
Automated WEP cracking
This is a video
of [Elliott] using his
autocrack script
to crack a WEP wi-fi network. It took [Elliott] less than a minute to crack a network he set up. Lesson: don’t use WEP.
Adding wi-fi to a laptop the fast way
This laptop used to have a broken Mini-PCIe wi-fi adapter. [Mikko] fixed the wireless by taking out the old card and hooking up a USB wi-fi adapter. He soldered the USB leads directly to the back of an internal USB port and used hot glue “to prevent bad things from happening.” A very easy, fast, and cheap way of fixing a broken wireless adapter.
Han Solo’s soldering iron
When [Craig] was 15, he broke the Bakelite casing of his father’s soldering iron. Being a good son,
he fixed it by gutting his original Star Wars Han Solo blaster
. Nice, but not as great as
Starsong from My Little Pony
. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "456197",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T21:07:58",
"content": "So rather than replace the broken WiFi card, he cobbled in a USB WiFi adapter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "456271",
"author": "miked",
... | 1,760,377,084.46555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/have-you-got-what-it-takes-to-code-android-apps-using-assembly/ | Have You Got What It Takes To Code Android Apps Using Assembly? | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"assembly",
"linux"
] | Do you have a rooted Android device and a computer running Linux? If so, you’re already on your way to
coding for Android in Assembly
. Android devices use ARM processors, and [Vikram] makes the argument that ARM provides the least-complicated Assembly platform, making it a great choice for those new to Assembly programming. We think his eight-part tutorial does a great job of introducing the language and explaining how to get the development tools up and running. You’ll need to know some basic programming concepts, but from what we saw you don’t need any prior experience with ARM or Android.
So why learn Assembly at all? We took a stab at Assembly for AVR a few months ago and
really learned a lot about the hardware
that we just never needed to know writing in C. It’s a great way to optimise functions that waste too much time because of quirks with higher-level language compilers. That means you don’t need to write your entire application in Assembly. You can simply use it to streamline hairy parts of your code, then include those Assembly files at compile time. | 31 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "456181",
"author": "Isotope",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T20:45:43",
"content": "If you’re coding in ASM, you’re not writing an Android app anymore…unless I’m missing something?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "456565",
"a... | 1,760,377,084.573865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/solar-powered-reprap-prints-even-when-the-power-is-out/ | Solar-powered RepRap Prints Even When The Power Is Out | Mike Nathan | [
"cnc hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"RAMPS",
"reprap",
"solar"
] | [Mark] wrote in to share a little creation that he is calling
the first solar-powered 3D printer in existence.
While we
can’t say that we totally agree with him
on that title, we will give him the benefit of the doubt that this is the first solar-powered RepRap we have seen thus far.
You might remember [Mark]
from his previous exploits
, but rest assured that there’s little possibility of anyone losing an eye with this one. He has taken his RepRap outdoors, and with the help of a solar panel plus a few batteries from Harbor Freight, he has the world’s first solar-powered RepRap*.
The trick behind keeping the RepRap running for such a long time with the sun as its only power source lies in the RAMPS board [Mark] uses. He has the 1.3 revision of the shield, which enables him to print objects loaded from an SD card rather than requiring a computer to be connected at all times.
So, if you happen to need the ability to print 3D objects where an extension cord cannot possibly reach, check out [Mark’s] setup and get to building!
* Maybe. Perhaps.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzo-M5c_73Y&w=470] | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "456069",
"author": "andrew",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T18:06:07",
"content": "Wow, those are pretty big spools of material. Is that typical?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "456139",
"author": "Anthony",
"timesta... | 1,760,377,084.723217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/an-open-source-rotational-casting-machine/ | An Open-Source Rotational Casting Machine | Jeremy Cook | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"casting",
"rotational molding",
"smartCaster"
] | [Aurelio] wrote in to tell us about the
smartCaster
, an “Open source automatic roto-casting machine.” For those of you not familiar with roto-casting, or
rotational molding
, it’s a process whereby something to be formed is placed into a mold and then melted while spinning. This item is often plastic, but it can be another material such as plaster of Paris or even chocolate.
Naturally, having something made using this process is generally very expensive and generally requires a high volume of parts to be made. The smartCaster Kickstarter project aims to change this. Although in the prototype stage currently, [Aurelio] claims to need only $1571 to finish his project and make it ready for the prospective at-home rotational molder.
Although it’s a much different tool than we see here most of the time, for the right project (custom Easter Bunnies anyone?) it could be quite useful. Check out a video of the prototype in action after the break.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiRvhQlHdC8&w=470&h=345%5D | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "456035",
"author": "Sprite_tm",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T17:17:05",
"content": "I’m a bit ignorant about what needs to be done to get a successful rotational cast, but what I see here is two motors, a few planks, some stuff to get power over a rotating axis and an Arduino. Maybe I’m... | 1,760,377,084.788907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/15/karate-chop-is-simon-without-all-the-touching/ | Karate Chop Is Simon Without All The Touching | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"16f1827",
"pic",
"simon"
] | [Alan Parekh] and his daughter [Alexis] just premiered their entry in the Avnet Dog Days of Summer contest. It’s a game called Karate Chop that is basically
an electronic Simon Says
. The video after the break shows a demonstration of the device. When switched on it’ll play a little tune and start cycling the LEDs on the front of the case. Players interact by breaking the infrared beams in the two cutouts on either side of the case. You need to keep your hand flat to do this, which is where the name comes from. There are four different game modes which are selected at the start of the game. There are two difficulty levels of a Simon Says game which shows the player a pattern in light and sound, then watches for the user to repeat that pattern back. The other mode that [Alexis] demonstrates is a reflex game which requires the player to quickly react to randomly illuminated LEDs.
The circuit is built on a breadboard hiding behind the front bezel and uses a PIC 16F1827 microcontroller to drive the game. The case itself is made from laser cut MDF and plywood. We’re not sure how much time [Alan] spent on the case, but we think it looks wonderful. If you’re planning to participate in
the contest
you better get rolling, the entry deadline is tomorrow.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKPGgGRFhdk&w=470] | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "455968",
"author": "DiRWiN",
"timestamp": "2011-09-15T16:07:53",
"content": "I want to see someone do this with actually hacking a Simon instead of from scratch…seems like it would be easier",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "45599... | 1,760,377,084.83283 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/video-eagle-cads-cam-processor/ | Video – Eagle CAD’s CAM Processor | Jack Buffington | [
"News",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"cam",
"eagle",
"eagle cad",
"video"
] | Here is the next installment in our series of Eagle CAD videos. In this video we skip ahead a bit and show off the CAM processor that you use to create the files necessary to have your circuit boards be manufactured. After watching this video, you will know how create a new CAM program, load a circuit board into the CAM processor, tell it where to save your files, and actually use it to create the files.
We’re skipping ahead today because of a screw up on our part. We meant to show the layout portion of the program today but edited the wrong video… We’ll show layout next week. After that, we will show the completed circuit board and solder the parts onto it.
If you are itching for some Eagle CAD layout info, you may be interested in some supplementary videos that we have uploaded to
our Youtube channel
. In those videos, we show how to use the most important features in the layout portion of the Eagle CAD.
Have you missed the previous videos? Here are some links to them:
Schematic and the beginning of a custom part:
[click here]
More custom part stuff:
[click here]
Video is after the break:
http://youtu.be/yJQUImv-gq8 | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "455324",
"author": "chippy",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T19:20:05",
"content": "I needed this a few days ago! oh well.Btw there isn’t any good online tutorials for doing more than 4 layers, I ended up figure it out on my own after trial and error.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,377,084.873853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/making-better-cnc-halftone-pictures/ | Making Better CNC Halftone Pictures | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"gray-scott",
"halftone",
"reaction-diffusion"
] | [Jason] was
messing around with CNC machines
and came up with
his own
halftone CNC picture that might be an improvement over previous attempts we’ve seen.
[Jason] was inspired by
this Hack a Day post
that converted a image halftone like the default Photoshop plugin or
the rasterbator
. The results were very nice, but once a user on the JoesCNC forum asked how he could make
these ‘Mirage’ CNC picture panels
, [Jason] knew what he had to do.
He immediately recognized the algorithm that generated the Mirage panels as based on the
Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion
algorithm. With this algorithm, dark areas look a little like fingerprints, meaning the toolhead of the CNC router can cut on the X and Y axes instead of a simple hole pattern with a traditional halftone. After a little bit of coding, [Jason] had an app that converted an image to a reaction-diffusion halftone which can then be converted to vectors and sent to a router.
It’s a very neat build and we imagine that [Jason]’s pictures would cost a bit less than the commercial panels. Check out the video after the break to see the fabrication process.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoJDTPRqI6o&w=470] | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "455290",
"author": "ds2ktj",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T18:05:06",
"content": "Very cool stuff. Any idea if the author has a website or code that he might share?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455313",
"author": "JasonDorie"... | 1,760,377,084.940689 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/quadcopter-stabilization-system-using-wii-motion-plus/ | Quadcopter Stabilization System Using Wii Motion Plus | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"Autopilot",
"gyroscope",
"IMU",
"wii motion plus"
] | If you’re contemplating a quadcopter build here’s a way to add stabilization hardware without breaking the bank. The
BaronPilot project uses an Arduino and a Wii Motion Plus
module to ensure an even keel for your flying projects. The hardware inside of the Motion Plus includes two gyroscopes, which the BaronPilot monitors for changes in your flying rig’s orientation. The project serves as a co-pilot by differentiating between movements caused by the remote control, and changes due to wind or other outside factors (like hitting the quadcopter with a stick as seen in the video after the break). It should all translate to less chance of crashing due to operator error.
You can pick up a Motion Plus for less than twenty dollars, a deal when compared to
the IMU boards that we usually see in quadcopter builds
which usually run more than twice that amount. It’s an I2C device which makes it
easy to hook up to just about anything
. This project has native support for Teensy, Arduino Nano, and Arduino clones using an ATmega328 chip. But the portability of the Arduino platform should make it easy to tweak the code for use with just about any microprocessor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9vyUCx3qwY&w=470]
[Thanks Ferrara] | 15 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "455233",
"author": "FlyTexas",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T16:41:07",
"content": "Been done – MultiWii opter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455255",
"author": "gompf",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T17:02:20",
"content": "S... | 1,760,377,085.099431 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/keeping-simple-childrens-toys-interesting-with-small-modifications/ | Keeping Simple Children’s Toys Interesting With Small Modifications | Mike Nathan | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"leds",
"slot cars",
"toys"
] | [Jaroslav] was racing slot cars with his son not too long ago, but like many of us discovered in our youth, driving cars around a small oval track can get dull after awhile. Rather than buy more track sections,
he decided to fiddle with their cars a bit
to make racing them a little more exciting.
After removing the top of his slot car, [Jaroslav] found that it cruised around corners with ease, giving him a distinct advantage over his son. He did the same with his son’s car to level the playing field, then he decided to add a few extra LEDs to make driving around the small track more lively.
Now, this obviously isn’t the most advanced of modifications, but it is a great example of extending the useful life of a toy by using cheap, easy to access components. We think that it would be reasonable to add even more features to the cars/track such as speed-dependent lighting or lap counters without changing the car dynamics all that much.
Any thoughts or suggestions to help [Jaroslav] soup up his kid’s race track even more? Share them with us in the comments. | 20 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "455196",
"author": "enystrom8734",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T15:19:19",
"content": "I have one of those mini slot car tracks too, cheaply at a thrift store :DMade a digital track counter with and atmega out of the mechanical one that it included. Tracked times, and had ready set go l... | 1,760,377,085.046768 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/a-laser-cutter-challenge/ | A Laser Cutter Challenge | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"cnc",
"laser cutter",
"perfboard"
] | When the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 was discussing the purchase of a new laser cutter, a member said, “I could build one before you get around to buying one.” The gauntlet was thrown down, a challenge was set, and the race was on to build a
tiny laser cutter
before the hackerspace took delivery of their new laser cutter.
The mechanical aspect of the build is fairly simple. The X axis is simply a stepper motor, threaded rod and laser module mounted on a carriage. This carriage moves along the Y axis with the help of two stepper motors for either side. Everything was mounted on more perfboard than reason would suggest.
For the electronics of the project, three motor drivers were made with a few logic chips and the laser firing relay was stolen from test equipment developed for LVL1’s
trans-Atlantic balloon build
. Motor and laser control was handled by an Arduino to keep the build simple because the contest was over after the first laser was finished cutting a square.
LVL1 is now working on a second version of the winner of the laser cutter challenge. They’re planning on a touchscreen interface that will cut a plastic blank about the size of a credit card. We can’t wait to see the results of that build. | 14 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "455150",
"author": "Bogdan",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T14:08:59",
"content": "the link is missing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455152",
"author": "Armando",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T14:12:51",
"content": "you misse... | 1,760,377,084.992691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/attiny-hacks-look-ma-no-batteries/ | ATtiny Hacks: Look Ma, No Batteries! | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny13",
"dice",
"die",
"faraday",
"induction"
] | [Gadre] built his own ATtiny project without using any batteries. It’s an electronic Dice (or die if you’re being critical) which uses
induction to charge a storage capacitor to act as the power source
. The voltage generator is made from a tube of Perspex which houses a set of rare-earth magnets. At the enter of the tube [Gadre] machined a channel wich accepts about 1500 windings of 30 AWG magnet wire. When someone shakes the tube back and forth the magnet passes the wire, inducing a current. The product is stored in a 4700 uF capacitor, which feeds a boost converter to power the rest of the circuit.
The ATtiny13V that controls the circuit is running its internal RC oscillator at 128 kHz, the lowest setting possible in order to minimize power consumption. After a good shake the user can press a button to roll the die, which is then displayed for several seconds on a group of seven LEDs. See for yourself in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOUamO67uk&w=470] | 30 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "455108",
"author": "Pup",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T13:14:18",
"content": "I’d love to see a smaller, more elegant d20 version of this. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "455110",
"author": "Roboman2444",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,377,085.164151 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/14/upverter-its-like-github-for-hardware/ | Upverter: It’s Like Github For Hardware | Brian Benchoff | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"upverter"
] | If there’s one thing we’ve noticed about hardware hackery and electronics project, it’s that all the resources to build a project are scattered about the Internet on forums, blogs (heh), and personal web pages. Enter
Upverter
. The fellows who started Upverter had the same observation, and after some
Y Combinator funding
, launched what they hope to be “The Github of electronics” and the “Google Docs of hardware design.”
Upverter has the features we would expect – forking, versioning, and integration with Github for a project’s code. Already there’s a few cool projects, like a
PIC programmer
, a
TV-B-Gone
, and a tiny version of
Conway’s Game Of Life
.
We’re not ready to wave the banner of an Upverter fanboy quite yet. There’s quite a number of components available in the schematic editor, but from
our experience
the component library could use some refinement both by weeding out duplicates and increasing the number of parts. We’d also like to put a zoom control for the schematic view on our wish list. Upverter doesn’t have a PCB editor either, but from
this post from a VC rag
, the team is working on one. While this is really just nitpicking – Upverter launched less than 24 hours ago – we’ll be happy to see the some projects roll in on the tip line that are hosted on Upverter.
EDIT:
link to the Google cache
, because we probably Slashdotted it.
It’s up for now. | 39 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "455044",
"author": "YT2095",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T11:09:55",
"content": "502 Bad Gatewaynginx/1.0.4",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "455046",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2011-09-14T11:16:51",
"co... | 1,760,377,085.302486 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/13/motion-detecting-window-closers-keep-train-noise-at-bay/ | Motion Detecting Window Closers Keep Train Noise At Bay | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"h-bridge",
"linear actuator",
"motion detector",
"train"
] | [Ed Rogers] has the unfortunate privilege of living right next to a set of train tracks, and as a man who holds his sleep in high regard, he needed to
find a way to keep the noise in his bedroom to a minimum.
To combat the sound of passing trains, he built himself a system that automatically closes his windows when a train passes by his apartment.
The setup relies on a web cam, which uses motion-sensing software to detect a passing train. The video is analyzed by a computer in his room which passes a message to an Arduino when a train is near. The Arduino then sends a pair of window mounted linear actuators into action, slowly (and quietly) shutting his windows.
The linear actuators move pretty slowly as you can see in the video below, but we doubt that matters. Since it looks like [Ed] lives in a slow zone, it likely takes quite a bit of time for a freight train to pass, making the 40-second closing period more than reasonable.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBhF_qfG4Qc&w=470] | 57 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "454710",
"author": "Hackerspacer",
"timestamp": "2011-09-13T23:07:04",
"content": "Pneumatic cylinders with dampers would be much faster but I still question how a window being closed truly blocks low frequency sounds such as a freight train would generate. My guess is not too much.... | 1,760,377,085.392392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/13/transformer-based-psu-repair/ | Transformer-based PSU Repair | Mike Szczys | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"fuse",
"hd radio",
"sangean",
"transformer"
] | Repairing someone else’s design mistakes is much more difficult than starting from scratch. So whenever we come across someone who’s good at this type of trouble-shooting we pay attention. [Jim] had a Sangean HDR-1 in his home. It’s a tabletop HD radio that stopped powering up for some reason. He cracked it open and
got to the bottom of the problem
.
The first order of business is disassembly, which isn’t too hard with this model. With multimeter in hand he started probing the transformer and found that the contacts for the primary are an open circuit; signaling a problem. There’s no inline fuse for protection, and further study of the secondary winding let him to discover the use of 1N5817 diodes. These are underrated parts for this particular transformer. He replaced them with 1N4003 diodes to bring the device in spec. But there was still the issue of fuse protections. A bit of circuit free-forming allowed him add a fuse and varistor by soldering the directly to the transformer’s contacts.
Why stop there? While [Jim] had the case open he also swapped out the low-end op-amp and a few electrolytic capacitors to improve the sound quality of the radio. Op-amp replacement seems to be
a popular way to improve the sound from HD radios
. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "454678",
"author": "MobileWill",
"timestamp": "2011-09-13T22:13:04",
"content": "Nice! I got a 32in TV for free that I need to open up the PSU and see what is going on. I am fairly positive a fixed PSU will make it work again.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,377,085.556236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/13/get-the-lead-out-of-the-arduino-compile-process/ | Get The Lead Out Of The Arduino Compile Process | Mike Szczys | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"Arduion",
"compile",
"ide"
] | Relief is here from long compile times when developing firmware for your Arduino project. [Paul] was puzzled by the fact that every file used in a sketch is fully recompiled every time you hit upload–even if that file didn’t change. To make things more confusing, this behavior isn’t consistent across all Arduino compatible hardware. The Teensy has an additional feature not seen when working with other hardware boards in that it reuses previously compiled code if nothing has changed. It even tells you which files are being reused, as shown in the image above.
After the break we’ve embedded [Paul’s] video that walks us through the process of
editing the Arduino IDE to reuse previously compiled files
. It’s a one-liner addition to the boards.txt file. For example, if you’re working with the Arduino Uno all that needs to be added is ‘uno.build.dependency=true’. [Paul] had previously submitted a patch to roll this into the Arduino IDE source code, but it was not accepted citing a need for more testing. He’s asking for help with that testing and wants you to post your thoughts, or any bug information, on the new
issue he’s opened regarding this feature
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dBF1ypQupM&w=470] | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "454654",
"author": "owen_b",
"timestamp": "2011-09-13T21:27:21",
"content": "Wow its like a … makefile",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "454660",
"author": "gp",
"timestamp": "2011-09-13T21:43:54",
"content": "this is ... | 1,760,377,085.499059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2011/09/13/android-phone-serves-as-arduino-terminal/ | Android Phone Serves As Arduino Terminal | Mike Szczys | [
"Android Hacks",
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"adk",
"terminal",
"usb host shield"
] | Looking to use his Arduino when on-the-go, [Oleg] has been working on a way to
use the Android ADK terminal emulator with the Arduino
. The Android side uses ADK features along with a custom application. [Oleg] received help from his friend [Victor] when developing the program for Android (you can check out our own
Android Development tutorials
if you’re interested in learning how this is done). The .apk file is available for download, but they’re waiting to release the source code until they can clean it up and get some of the gnarly bugs out of the beta version.
A USB host shield for the Arduino is needed to connect to an Android hand set. You’ll be able to send and receive strings via the terminal, with support for carriage return and life feed characters. Unfortunately this doesn’t allow you to change, compile, or write sketches to the Arduino. But it might come in very handy when trouble shooting a project when a computer is not around, or just for using an Android phone as an output. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "454620",
"author": "Steve-O-Rama",
"timestamp": "2011-09-13T20:42:56",
"content": "This gives me wood, and I’m not even a tArduino fan. Love Android, Atmel uCs, and open-source stuff though. :) I see some rather large potentials in this project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,377,085.438449 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.