BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day

Hack A Day (10 unread)

Spin Peggy, get 3D POV

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 6:59am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We put a temporary ban on posting POV projects after receiving several LED spheres back in May. But we had to lift the injunction after seeing this superb Volumetric 3D POV display by [Wes Faler] and [Don Smith]. Their creative use of several readily available components adds to the alluring setup; the central elements being [...]
Behind the scenes of a 1K graphics demo

Posted: August 8th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Programmer/designer [Steven Wittens] has posted a fantastic write-up on the black art of producing compact demo code, dissecting his own entry in the 1K JavaScript Demo Contest. The goal is to produce the best JavaScript demo that can be expressed in 1024 characters or less and works reliably across all standards-compliant web browsers. [Wittens] details several techniques [...]
Adding a microphone jack to a HAM radio handset

Posted: August 8th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[dajjhman] wrote in to show us how he added a microphone jack to the handset of his Yaesu radio while retaining the DTMF functions. He states that there were some adapters available on the market, but they are non standard and didn’t really fit his needs. The modification itself is pretty simple, especially with his [...]
Chainsaw/flashlight overkill

Posted: August 8th, 2010, 8:19am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Robbtoberfest] has earned our admiration with this crazy chainsaw powered spot light. It looks horribly dangerous, extremely inefficient, and woefully under engineered. We absolutely love it. This could be plucked from a video game or a movie and seems to be one UV bulb away from being the ultimate post apocalyptic zombie vampire Armageddon weapon. [...]
Solar panel charger analysis with Ladyada

Posted: August 7th, 2010, 9:18am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Phillip Torrone], one of the original crew of HackaDay, now working with [LadyAda] tipped us off to this video of her explaining the device they built for configuring the charging circuits to be used with their solar panels. Unlike most of their tutorials, this one is not intended to be a final product sold on [...]
Texas Instruments watch claims it’s a computer mouse

Posted: August 7th, 2010, 6:13am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Jack Toole] and his team [Aaron King] and [Libo He] sent in their computer interface dubbed the Chronos Flying Mouse. The video above explains the concept very thoroughly, but we’ll reiterate some of the highlights here. The project uses a Chronos EZ430 with its accelerometers to wirelessly transmit delta positions of the user’s wrist. Add [...]
Open graphing calculator: Beagleboard + R

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 12:46pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It looks like we missed the boat on this one but just in case you missed it everywhere else on the Internet, last Saturday [Matt Stack] introduced the world to a completely open source calculator. This marries two heartily tested open source projects; the R Project for Statistical Computing and the Beagleboard. The hardware side [...]
Miniscule intervalometer

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Calling this intervalomemter small would be a glaring understatement. It’s tiny enough to fit inside the plastic cover for a 2.5mm jack for use with a Canon DSLR camera. We should point out that the image we put together is a bit misleading. The picture of the jack is version 1 of this circuit and [...]
Dummy loads and heat sinks

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 8:54am MDT by Mike Szczys

In [Dave's] latest episode of the EEVblog he takes a look at constant current dummy loads. These are used to test power supply designs and instead of just chaining resistive loads together every time he’s decided to look into building a tool for the job. What he ends up with is a reliable constant current [...]
Make your own Mindstorm sensors

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 7:29am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Stewart Allen] acquired a Mindstorm kit about a month ago and he’s already building his own sensors for it. He wanted a more accurate range finder with a narrower measurement field than the stock sensor. Mindstorm has the option to communicate with sensors via an I2C bus. [Stewart] set up an ATtiny45 to act as [...]