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Another mini KeepOn?

Posted: October 31st, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Eustice Scrubb] has posted some videos and pictures of a robotic “eye stalk” that he’s building. It looks like the final version is using 3 servos in an arrangement like tendons through a slinky jr. The ping-pong ball on the top has a BlinkM inside it. You can see a video after the break that [...]

Name that thing

Posted: October 31st, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Alan] over at HackedGadgets.com has been doing a “Name the Thing” contest where he occasionally posts an image and people try to figure out what it is. We’ve seen similar posts on some other web sites too. We usually don’t post them here because they’re not only not a hack, they’re usually not even projects. This one, [...]

Broken TV brought to life in LEGO body

Posted: October 31st, 2009, 8:15am MDT by Mike Szczys

After letting it sit around for about 3 years, [Blake] decided it was time to fix his broken 15″ television. A little trouble shooting showed the problem was with the inverter. The backlight would come on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, then repeat. By freeing the Magnavox 15MF400T from its metal [...]

XBMC running on ARM

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 3:34pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The XBMC team has posted a teaser showing the current state of the ARM port of this popular open source media software. We’ve embedded it after the break where you can see the package boot up and playback HD video. In it we see that the system is decoding the signal well, but image rendering [...]

Time-lapse courtesy of Arduino

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ross] put together a small package for use with time-lapse photography. The Nikon camera he’s using can snap a picture when it receives an IR command. [Ross'] solution connects an IR LED to an Arduino to generate this signal. The delay between frames is set with a potentiometer that is read in through the ADC. [...]

Processor built with Transistor-Transistor Logic

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 12:02pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Donn] wanted know exactly what is going on inside of a processor so naturally he built a CPU out of TTL components. He had previously built a couple of versions of a computer based on the Z80 processor. Using the troubleshooting skills he learned and a second-hand textbook, he set to work using 74LS series [...]

How to create TrueType from an image

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Viacheslav] wanted his virtual terminal to have the look of a DEC VT220. He was unable to find a font set that looked just right so he set out to make his own TrueType font. He managed to find a sample image of the glyphs that the VT220 used as fonts. Using a collection of [...]

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Arduino “python” integration

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

[Cyberspice] informs us she likes snakes. Hey, who doesn’t? She’ll soon be adopting a lovely ball python and wanted to keep close tabs on the sensitive creature’s environment. To that end she assembled a network-enabled vivarium monitoring system based on Adafruit’s Boarduino (a minimalist Arduino clone), a TMP36 analog temperature sensor, Saelig’s WIZ810MJ Ethernet interface, and a common LCD screen. The [...]

Single servo robot

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Guilherme Martins] rose to a challenge to build a robot with a single servo. His robot is a puppet controller, called talkie walkie. In real time, it will move its mouth to the sound of what you are saying. For those really curious, he’s speaking Portuguese and he roughly says “Hi, how’s it going”. He’s using an [...]

AIDA the dashboard bot

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 8:15am MDT by Caleb Kraft

In an attempt to create more interaction with our vehicles, researchers have created AIDA. AIDA is basically a car computer and GPS that has some well designed personification. That cute little face will learn your daily habits and schedules and make recommendations to keep you out of traffic. We really like the idea, and the [...]

Cheating RockBand (again)

Posted: October 30th, 2009, 7:16am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Sure making a robot that plays the game RockBand for you seems a little cheap at first, but no human can possibly hit that 30 triplet note straight ending in a button mashing contest. To finally get his high score [Joe] made a setup to play the game for him, on the iPhone. We’ve seen [...]

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Today is the official release of the latest version of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux-based operating system. Someone mentioned that there had been a new release of the Windows OS recently and if you’re thinking of going with that one, we feel you should a least give Ubuntu a try. Now in its 11th official [...]

Linux iPhone sync draws near

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Emuboy] lets us know about some software advances that will make iPhone and iPod Touch syncing possible under Linux. Apple made big changes to how the iPhone syncs compared to legacy iPods. Locking out all communications other than through iTunes was surely part of their motivation. This has left Linux users out in the cold [...]

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Read about trash-hackers… for free

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 11:17am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Cory Doctorow] has published a novel about the near future and a couple of hackers who can make anything from the stuff lying around. We like a good sci-fi novel, and have no shortage of recommendations (go read Snow Crash) for those who need them. We’re adding ‘Makers’ to our must read list. Not only is [...]

Halloween props: Techy Jack-o-lanterns

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Halloween is this weekend. If you still have some time and parts available, you might be looking to spice up your Jack-o-lantern. We’ve found a few projects that we thought might be nice to share. None of them would merit a post on their own, so we thought we would just round them up and [...]

Keepon, eat your heart out

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Ruyck] sent us this video of his mini Keepon robot. For those who haven’t been initiated, Keepon is a very emotive, and extremely expensive, dancing robot. He is deceptively simple looking, but as you can see in [Ruyck]’s version, it is fairly complex. [Ruyck] has used a mini RC collective pitch helicopter assembly for the [...]

libTISCH 1.0 released

Posted: October 29th, 2009, 7:58am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Florian] is proud to announce libTISCH 1.0 is finally ready for release. We told you about libTISCH just under a year ago and how it is a multitouch framework that factors more on the software side of things, instead of hardware for multitouch interfaces. A lot has changed including more widgets, more gestures, more hardware [...]

Upgraded Atari 1024STf

Posted: October 28th, 2009, 12:18pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Gerritt] wanted to give his crippled Atari 1024 STf a new purpose in life. He cracked it open and set to work filling it with some modern components. The keyboard from the nearly 25-year-old dinosaur doesn’t have all the keys we’re used to, nor did they all work, so he replaced the original with a [...]

Xerox ink will print circuits

Posted: October 28th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Xerox has announced a breakthrough in printable circuits. They’ve developed a conductive ink called “silver bullet” that can be printed on many different types of substrate to create circuits. The key part of the new ink is its lower melting point. Plastic film substrate melts at 150 degrees Celsius but the ink is liquid [...]

Mr. Wake, wakes up and runs

Posted: October 28th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[isotope] must really hate himself. He has built a torture device of pure evil. Mr. Wake, his alarm clock robot, should be considered a torture device. This cute looking little bot, with its bright and colorful clock and neat plastic tube frame is an alarm clock. As soon as it’s alarm goes off, Mr. Wake [...]

Hot off the presses its Android 2.0 SDK.

Posted: October 28th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Today Google released the Android 2.0 SDK, allowing developers to begin writing for their latest cell phone platform. Unlike programming for Apple’s iPhone or Touch, however, there isn’t as much documentation on the installation and setup process. AndroidandMe steps in at this point for all those that have gone a muck by writing a very [...]

Headpiece Jabbing for Smiles

Posted: October 28th, 2009, 7:10am MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Lauren] has created a facial conditioning device dubbed the Happiness Hat. The hat measures a sensor at the wearer’s cheek to determine if the wearer is smiling. When the hat does detects the wearer is not smiling, it activates a servo that prods the wearer. This project is fairly unique in that it provides haptic [...]

CNC used to make 3D video using one camera

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Gabriel] is making 3D movies using only one camera. This should be impossible because true 3D needs to be stereoscopic, with images from different perspectives for each eye. He’s worked this out by mounting the camera on a CNC gantry and programming it to make two passes along slightly different paths. He’s plotting the camera [...]

Football Hero

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by James Munns

For Kasabian’s new single Underdog, they decided to do something original. After dreaming up a Guitar Hero style controller powered by soccer football players, they set out to make it happen. Using 5 wall mounted pressure sensors connected to a microcontroller, they hooked up the rig to a computer running Frets on Fire (an open [...]

These midi controllers stink!

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Well, maybe saying it stinks is too harsh. But if you build a midi controller out of an old pair of skate shoes you can be certain that they smell. [Thobson] put odor issues aside and added four force sensitive resistors to his shoes (one in each heel and one under the ball of each [...]

Piecax the Poltergeist reinvents the Knock Block

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[AndyGadget] built a haunted box as part of his Halloween preparations. This follows in the footsteps of the Knock Block we saw earlier this month but makes several hardware changes. He’s replaced the solenoid with a DC motor that rotates an arm to do the knocking. He’s avoided any CNC work by using a softwood [...]

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BigDog’s bipedal brother

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Boston Dynamics is at it again. This time, they’ve created a creepy biped with a natural gait. It may look very similar to BigDog, because it really is almost the same system. Named PETMAN, this biped system is being designed to help test chemical protection suits. This bot can stress the suit by walking, running, [...]

Digital tuner reverse engineering

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet] tipped us off about some reverse engineering of the HVR-1600, an analog and digital television encoder/tuner. The project was spawned when [Devin] noticed his Hauppauge HVR-1600 didn’t tune channels in Linux quite as well as it did in Windows. He had a hunch this was due to improper initialization settings for [...]

Parts: ChronoDot RTC Module (DS3231)

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by James Munns

Macetech’s ChronoDot is a Real Time Clock module for projects requiring highly accurate time keeping and measurement. The ChronoDot uses the DS3231 chip, which features a TCXO to compensate for variations in temperature which affect normal oscillators, like the ones in most microcontrollers. The DS3231 uses simple I2C commands and registers for storing and retrieving [...]

Head-mounted computer with spit, bailing wire

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

Oh, for crying out loud! While we were all giddy reporting on yesterday’s wonderfully done head-mounted computer, [Andrew Lim] of recombu.com comes along and essentially does the same thing with an HTC Magic handset and three dollars worth of Harbor Freight crap. Linux kernel, WiFi, accelerometer, the whole nine yards. Consider our collective ass handed [...]

Remote controlled claw of doom

Posted: October 27th, 2009, 7:43am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Robotic claws are awesome, period. [Jeremy's] Remotely controlled robotic claw, thats just a whole new level of cool – even if the intention is to just pick up blocks. The setup is simple enough, a Parallax Propeller controls the whole system by first polling a web server for changes in variables that the user has [...]

inPulse watch gets BlackBerry data via Bluetooth

Posted: October 26th, 2009, 5:22pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Eric] just told us about the watch he developed that displays info from a BlackBerry via Bluetooth. The watch displays updates, message alerts, incoming call information, and… tells time. Setup and control is handled with the BlackBerry keypad. The device is charged with a micro-USB connection and will last for about four days without a [...]

Head-mounted computer with Linux, WiFi

Posted: October 26th, 2009, 4:20pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Most wearable computers we’ve seen feature a head-mounted display tethered to a small PC system in a backpack or worn on a belt. Here’s a slick little system that does away with the cord, fitting the entire system in the glasses. [Pascal Brisset’s] WXHMD is based on the tiny Gumstix Overo Fire computer-on-module which features a beefy, 3D-capable OMAP [...]

How to overlay images by using Greasemonkey

Posted: October 26th, 2009, 11:39am MDT by Mike Szczys

Today we’re going to take a look at writing scripts for the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. This add-on allows us to use JavaScript to make changes to the way webpages are displayed on our browser. These changes can only be seen by a copy of Firefox that is running a particular script. As an example, [...]

Halloween props: Servo eyes

Posted: October 26th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

If you’re wanting to spice up a Jack-o-lantern, why not give it some spooky eyes that will look around? [todbot] shows us how to set this up using an Arduino and 3 servos. His rig uses a hobby servo to control the entire head’s orientation and a smaller servo for each eye’s movement. Their motion [...]

Halloween props: Alien Costume

Posted: October 26th, 2009, 8:19am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[creatrope] sent in this slick Alien costume that he made for his son. The costume does look decent, but not professional. For something tossed together from parts around the house, it looks fantastic. The real kicker, is the fact that it has the retractable inner mouth. The retractable mechanism is constructed from Legos and extends [...]

Extended IR input

Posted: October 25th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’re not sure why [Roteno] prefers to have his TV and cable boxes not face him when he’s sitting on the couch, but to each their own. You may already see many problems with this setup: discoloration from LCD viewing angle, difficulty playing Wii, oh and most importantly – not being able to change the [...]

DIY plotter with laser

Posted: October 25th, 2009, 12:44pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Viacheslav] built a plotter that is fast and accurate. He wanted to take it one step further and added a laser in place of the pen. The 300 mW unit does a nice job of wood-burning any pattern sent to it, but isn’t strong enough to serve as a laser cutter for anything other than [...]

Double sided surface mount PCB population

Posted: October 25th, 2009, 11:39am MDT by Mike Szczys

Above is a video detailing one method for populating a two sided surface mount PCB. We covered using a stencil to apply solder paste for a PCB a few weeks ago. In the comments there was a debate about the virtue of using stencils as well as a question about how two sided boards are [...]

Halloween Props: Pie of Sauron

Posted: October 25th, 2009, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Richard] combined creative carving with vacuum tube electronics for a unique pumpkin offering. He used the stencil-and-cut method of carving, making use of an inexpensive carving kit for great results. He salvaged an LED module from a flashlight to provide the internal illumination, but it’s the center feature that we like the best. [Richard's] used [...]

Use iPhone to run yourself over

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 3:04pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The Spirit of Berlin team has developed an iPhone app to remotely control a minivan. They didn’t have to do much to the vehicle to get this working because the platform was developed for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. The iPhone connects with the driving circuitry via WiFi and offers a gas button, a brake [...]

Desktop Decepticon repurposes cell phone

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 12:51pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve got a few old cell phones sitting around and apart from salvaging the LCD screen we’re not quite sure what to do with them. [Gingerpete50] turned his into a desktop Decepticon figurine. This masterpiece is a delightful conversation piece and when he’s tired of it decorating his cubicle, we’re sure there will be plenty [...]

Vodaphone ringtone music commercial

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

When we first saw Vodaphone’s ringtone commercial where 1000 cell phones perform a section of the William Tell overture, we just assumed it was some slick video editing, not to be taken seriously. Apparently, we were wrong. They actually did this. They actually sent text messages to all the phones in correct timing to play [...]

Halloween prop: glowing spooky eyes

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Would you like some spooky glowing eyes that light up and play a sound when someone gets near? This circuit makes it pretty simple. It uses a single phototransistor to detect someones presence. Instead of having a preset threshold that needs to be met, it simply triggers any time there is a sufficient change in [...]

(the) Best Robotics competition

Posted: October 24th, 2009, 7:10am MDT by Jakob Griffith

If you give a mouse a cookie, he will ask for a glass of milk. If you give a team of geeks a box full of parts ranging from aluminum to plywood to motors to RF interfaces, they will build a robot. Introducing Best Robotics, a volunteer group that gives schools a box of hardware [...]

Halloween props: Skeleton springs from coffin

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tony's] trying to scare the kids again this Halloween. This year’s creation is a skeleton that springs up from a coffin. His creepy coffin is built from plywood and in the classic style it gets narrower at each end. Inside, there’s a full-sized rubber skeleton affixed to a 2×4. Pneumatic rams are used to lift [...]

SparkFun gets a cease and Desist

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 1:30pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Nate] over at SparkFun Electronics has posted a cease and desist letter he received from SPARC industries. Apparently their legal department feels that his name is close enough to theirs to ignite a legal battle. They are demanding that he transfer his domain to them immediately to extinguish the flames. This all seems a bit [...]

Poddwatt: Tube amp with mp3 in mind

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 1:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Bruce] has designed a push-pull tube amp that has enough gain to connect to a portable audio player. The design is closely related to his OddWatt offering from a few years ago. The new amp has many redesigned circuits and the new hardware choices drop the price tag of the parts by about $50. This little [...]

Make your own SNES games with developer cartridge

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 9:34am MDT by Mike Szczys

Have you always wished that you could develop games for the Super Nintendo but couldn’t because you were only 4 years old when it was released in 1990? Here’s a second chance. [Max] and his team have created a SNES developer’s cartridge that allows you to load your own code, run it on the SNES, [...]

Hot air pencil for under $20

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 8:08am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a project from back in 2001 that might be of interest to some of you. It is a guide on how to build your own hot air pencil for SMD soldering. He is using a super cheap 45W soldering iron from “the shack” combined with a pump type desoldering tool and an aquarium pump. [...]

Psystar taunts Apple a second time

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 7:05am MDT by Phil Burgess

As if bankruptcy shenanigans and an unresolved exchange of lawsuits with Apple weren’t enough, Mac clone maker Psystar is really swatting the beehive now with the release of Rebel EFI, a $50 software package that promises a straightforward installation of Mac OS X on a variety of commodity x86 systems. Setting up one’s own “Hackintosh” system has traditionally [...]

Unreasonably bright bike light apparently hunts deer

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jukka] wanted a bike light that wasn’t afraid to go into the woods during the dark winter. He put together a lamp that uses eight 3 Watt LEDs to pump out 1680 lumens (english translation). The high power LEDs were mounted on a large aluminum heat sink and use lenses to optimize the beam of [...]

Drone Lab brings the excitement of Hypnotoad home

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Peter] tipped us off about his new synthesizer kit, Drone Lab. It has the things we look for a synthesizer: knobs, inputs, switches, wacky sounds. You can get your soldering on with the kit version, or buy these pre-built. Peter bills this as an open source kit but we didn’t see board artwork, just a [...]

Driving USB peripherals with Arduino

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 11:44am MDT by Mike Szczys

Circuits@Home have managed to host a USB keyboard with an Arduino and display the keyboard inputs on a character LCD. This uses the USB host shield we covered in August. That host shield includes a MAX3421 which is used here to drive the character LCD. The control code for the keyboard ends up being fairly simple. [...]

Score online with robot soccer

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 10:49am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Erik] and [Heni] have been using soccer as a way to improve code development techniques in robotics. Their soccer playing robots won first prize in the development competition at the 2007 RoboCup competition. They are using a teaching method they call Kinesthetic Bootstrapping to program the motions of the Bioloid robotic platform. The robots are [...]

Magic Mouse and MacBook teardowns

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

The folks at iFixit must hold some kind of record for fastest-voided warranty. It’s been less than 48 hours since Apple unleashed a torrent of new computers and peripherals, and they’ve already set upon the new wares like a pack of ravenous, spudger-wielding Velociraptors, photoblogging the splayed entrails for our edutainment. The refreshed MacBook holds few surprises, resembling [...]

Gear clock

Posted: October 22nd, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Analog clocks now a days get no respect. Everyone is digital this, or binary that, and we admit it is nice to look over and see the time promptly displayed. But there’s something about the quiet ticking and ominous feeling you get when around a large intricate clock that you know some serious time has [...]

Hackable Geiger Counter

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Aaron] A.K.A. [A1ronzo] at SparkFun has put together a hackable USB Geiger Counter. In his tutorial, he gets the Geiger counter to work as a random number generator. Later, he analyzes and discusses how well it works as a random number generator. In the past, we have seen a number of radiation detectors hacks such [...]

Bluetooth cartridge for Nintendo DS

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve received tips from a few different people about a new Bluetooth module that connects as a game cartridge for the Nintendo DS. This is a homebrew solution and not an official Nintendo add-on. The cartridge houses an ATmega168 microcontroller which provides the interface between the DS and a Roving Networks RN-41 bluetooth module. They’ve provided [...]

War monument hacking

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 1:09pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Timo] tipped us off about a War Monument that has been… upgraded. The story starts when a monument was erected in Cherkassy, Ukraine to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice that was made by Russian soldiers during World War II. The huge statue and expansive plaza were capped off by an eternal flame. Unfortunately, when the Soviet [...]

Mind control via serial port

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Zibri] found a very simple method for using brain waves as a controller via a DB9 serial port. He’s using Uncle Milton’s Force Trainer which we saw yesterday in the brain controlled Arduino. In that project the Arduino tapped into the LEDs and interfaced those signals with a computer via USB. This time the connection [...]

Skii bot

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Bojan Nemec] has come up with a robot that can ski better than us. Not that skiing better than us is a hugely lofty goal. The bot is capable of skiing using standard, off the shelf skis. It has a dual computing system. One system only does steering and balance while the other does all the vision [...]

Yahoo hires strippers for hackers

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Yahoo has issued a public apology for an event that occurred at their recent Hack Day in Taiwan. Apparently they hired strippers for the event, two years in a row. The girls did their usual bump and grind all over some poor hackers. Poor guys. While there is a part of us that says, “what [...]

Industrial robots producing art

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here is an interesting project that should spark some good discussion. Artaic is a company that is using industrial robots to produce mosaics. They are then selling these mosaics as fine art. As you can see, some of the examples are quite nice looking. However, we have to wonder what the draw is to own [...]

Bouncy iPhone controlled dance lights

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[John Boiles] introduces us to dimlet, his portable network controlled light dimmer. Inside the box is a fonera 2100 router that is running openWRT connected to an unnamed AVR microcontroller. Right now, he’s controlling the unit with his iPhone. It has three modes of control; a manual “slider” mode, an accelerometer controlled “dance” mode, and a programmable [...]

Ps3 laptop courtesy of Ben Heck

Posted: October 21st, 2009, 7:13am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Ben Heck] may be the coolest person ever (take that [Adam Savage]). You would think that after producing so many laptop versions of gaming consoles he would grow tired or we would be bored of them. But no! We love each and every new production – including his latest laptop-ified Ps3. Not too much in [...]

well engineered diy Segway

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Mark] wanted a Segway but why buy something if you can have more fun building it? His end product is an amazing homemade version of the self-balancing transportation package. We’ve seen several projects that include auto-balance, but this one is large enough to ride on and has a bit of an advantage in the design. [...]

freeBOOT gives the Xbox 360 JTAG hack new life

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

There has been another development in the never-ending battle that is Microsoft trying to keep its gaming system closed to unauthorized use. Xbox-scene reports that a new hack called freeBOOT v0.01 allows the Xbox 360 to upgrade to the newer kernels, but allows the option of rebooting to an older kernel in order use the [...]

Boombox warns construction ahead

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Sam] built himself a boom box using salvaged parts and a car stereo. The case was cut using a CNC router he had access to at his school. The front panel is cut from a “Construction Ahead” road sign. The size of the case is based roughly on the rotting enclosures from which he pulled [...]

Brain control for the Arduino

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

When we hear about a brain controlled Arduino project we immediately think about a coding nightmare. As always, the simple hacks are the best hacks. [Joel] and [Akshay] used hardware from a kid’s game as a brain interface for an Arduino. We came across the video (embedded after the break) of their work and asked for [...]

MIT rethinking popup books

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We know the folks at MIT are the cutting edge scientists of tomorrow right? We’re always impressed by the stuff coming out of their labs. Well, almost always. This rethinking of pop-up books does not let us down. We’ve seen some pretty complicated pop-up books. Some that made us really wonder how they pulled it [...]

Two-factor authentication using a hardware token

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 9:21am MDT by Mike Szczys

We ran into a friend a while back who was logging into her employer’s Virtual Private Network on the weekend. She caught our attention by whipping out her keys and typing in some information from a key-fob. It turns out that her work uses an additional layer of protection for logging into the network. They [...]

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RepRap – in space! (sorta)

Posted: October 20th, 2009, 7:20am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We aren’t exactly sure how or even why you would need to RepRap in space, but we guess their team needed something to do while designing and printing their next version. They figure that if they can print completely upside down in -1G and then upside up in 1G, that 0G hopefully wont be a [...]

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Dresser tool chest isn’t as ghetto as you’d think

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

A dedicated rolling chest for one’s tools is among the most indulgent yet worthwhile acquisitions. Having everything mobile and organized for quick access improves efficiency and keeps the shop tidy. But holy living crap, have you priced these things? Even a mediocre setup costs more than the gross national product of some small nations! Here’s a project that tarts [...]

CNC hot wire cutter from scanners

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Raul] built a CNC hot wire cutter that he uses for cutting shapes out of foam. His device uses two flat bed scanners to provide two planes of motion. One scanner arm has the foam mounted on it and provides the Y-axis movement. The other scanner has the hot wire mounted on it and provides [...]

10gui: multi-touch for all ten digits

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The race for the next revolutionary input design is an ongoing event. [Clayton Miller's] newest offering in the contest is a multitouch concept that separates the display from the screen and is meant to utilize all fingers. His video explanation includes a description of the physical input device, a software implementation, and a demonstration of [...]

DSO nano oscilloscope reviewed

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 12:09pm MDT by Phil Burgess

We’ve been eyeing Seeed Studio’s DSO nano digital storage oscilloscope with a mix of intrigue and skepticism. A pocket-sized $89 storage ’scope? This is a joke, right? Hack a Day reader [Blair Thomson] has written a thorough review based on his experience with one of the beta test units, and it might be a winner [...]

Awesome robots love Fanta

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

What you are seeing above is not a commercial for Fanta, though we think it would have been a good one. It also isn’t being played at an accelerated speed. That is a real time demonstration of the accuracy and speed the ABB robots achieve. We were surprised, even shocked, when we clicked play. We don’t know [...]

Shift powered pumpkins

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 10:08am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Garret] and a couple of friends totally stole our idea wanted to light up their pumpkins a bit differently this year. They used some ShiftBrites and all the corresponding shift hardware (who knew there was so much shift out there) to bring their carved orange minions to life. Yes, this could be done a lot [...]

Build your own wristwatch

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 9:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

[rgbphil] has done a great job detailing how he built his Microdot wristwatch.This project is a lot more approachable than the pong watch we saw last month. If you’ve made a few printed circuit boards, but haven’t yet tried working with surface mount component, this is a great way to give it a try. The parts [...]

Lunar auto repair depends on the sticky stuff

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 8:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

When you’ve got problems with your lunar rover you can’t just “trust the Midas touch”. Every unexpected repair that happens outside of the Earth’s atmosphere is a hack and it seems the common ingredient in each one is Duct tape. If you’ve seen the movie Apollo 13 you know it was used in making a [...]

Reverse geocache puzzle

Posted: October 19th, 2009, 7:00am MDT by Zach Banks

[Mikal] wanted to create an awesome electronic wedding gift for his friend who was moving to France. After experimenting with a few things, he settled on creating a puzzle box that would only open in a certain location. Since his friend introduced him to the Arduino, he fittingly used one in the design, along with [...]

3D Magnetometer mouse in processing

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Zach Banks

[etgalim] works in Solidworks extensively and wanted a more intuitive way of rotating objects onscreen. To do this, he created a mouse that responds to rotation. He put a 3D compass module inside an old mouse and wired it up to an Arduino. The Arduino then relays the I2C sensor data to the computer. So far, [...]

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Alzheimer’s victims fitted with LoJack

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 3:01pm MDT by Mike Szczys

First it was for finding stolen cars, then keeping track of criminals, now Alzheimer’s sufferers are being fitted with tracking devices. This has been going on for some time now, but unlike the old tracking devices we’re seeing an update in technology to take advantage of the cell network for communications. The person wearing the [...]

Samsung TV firmware hacking

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Erdem] is leading up the efforts to reverse engineer Samsung TV firmware with a project called SamyGo. Official Samsung firmware uses the Linux kernel, making it a familiar system to work with for many developers. So far they’ve implemented NFS and SAMBA for sharing files over the network, improved playback from USB devices, and unlocked [...]

Cheap and flimsy PC case provides no protection

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 9:24am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rafael] tipped us off about a “case mod” he completed for his PC. The email he sent provides no details and the link just shows five pictures of his computer in a “dead file” container (we’re guessing he doesn’t want to be an Internet sensation). What we get out of this is that he took [...]

Laser raygun boasts 300mW, hunts Klingons

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 8:23am MDT by Mike Szczys

Phasers come with two settings: stun and kill. [Luke] took this seriously when he put two Blu-ray lasers into a toy raygun. He picked up the toy from Amazon for about twenty bucks and set to work. The laser diodes are both pulled out of a 6x BD-R burner, which we think is a pretty expensive [...]

1480W scooter motor guarantees head trauma

Posted: October 18th, 2009, 7:22am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jerome's] been working on some improvements to an electric foot scooter he picked up from a friend. He ordered up a powerful brushless motor and some lithium batteries. His system uses a belt drive and at 33 volts it can reach 25 miles per hour. He had some problems with too much torque when the motor [...]

NES processor cloned on a FPGA

Posted: October 17th, 2009, 5:09pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Bradley] decided to tackle the challenge to recreate the original Nintendo Entertainment System’s processor in a Field Programmable Gate Array. Say what? The original NES is a Legacy System, still used but no longer manufactured. If a system breaks, it becomes more and more difficult to repair or find replacements parts as time passes. By [...]

Radio cabinet media center

Posted: October 17th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jon] picked up an old Philco radio from a pawn shop for $81. The electronics were shot and the controls had seen better days. So he set to work giving this old beast a makeover, turning it into a beauty of a media player. The face plate for the controls had seen better days. His solution [...]

The glass recycling game

Posted: October 17th, 2009, 3:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Operating under the premise that glass bottles were not being recycled as much as plastic or aluminum because there’s no payment for the effort, the team at The Fun Theory set out to add a non-monetary incentive. Here is the fruit of their efforts, the Bottle Bank Arcade. Now recycling glass bottles comes with a [...]

Polycarbonate fish uses three servos to swim

Posted: October 17th, 2009, 12:49pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Amnon] is learning the hard way that water and electronics don’t always like to play nicely together. He’s been working on creating a swimming fish that uses three servos to flex a sheet of fish-shaped polycarbonate. This photo doesn’t really do the project justice but you can get a better idea of what he’s accomplished [...]

Easy touch capacitance

Posted: October 17th, 2009, 8:24am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Humberto] from NerdKits is one of our favorite tipsters. We like how he can take a concept that seems so extremely complicated, in this case touch capacitance sensing, and present it in a clear and concise manner thats impossible to not love. As previously mentioned the most recent NerdKits hack is on touch capacitance; by [...]

Tying the knot with MakerBot

Posted: October 16th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

De Beers would have you believe that only diamonds will do, but hackers are hardly ones to follow convention. How better to say “I love you” than with a MakerBot-extruded black ABS engagement ring? [Adam Elkins] did just that, creating the design with a combination of GIMP, SketchUp and Blender, then producing the final output on [...]

Mouse runs through VR maze

Posted: October 16th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

In an effort to determine the brain of animals during movement, scientists have built this contraption. It is a VR pod for a mouse. While we’re pretty sure/hopeful that none of you need a mouse VR system, we think the rig is interesting enough to stand on its own. It appears to be a convex [...]

Skittles, The Robotic Blimp

Posted: October 16th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by James Munns

Funky Shiitake Mushrooms, a high school design team from Fremont, CA, have created a low cost airship they call Skittles the Second. Skittles is a remote control robotic blimp, complete with 4 reversible propellers, wireless video, and 2.4 a GHz remote control. Somewhere between a regular RC blimp and a Predator Drone, Skittles and FSM [...]

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RFID-enabled robot…mood…tail…thingy.

Posted: October 16th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

Furries: is there nothing they cannot do? Well okay, “shower” remains an elusive concept, but wearable technology seems to be in, as evidenced by this robotic mood tail. [Wei-Chieh Tseng]’s adorable Arduino-driven fashion accessory operates either via Wii Nunchuk or a set of RFID cards tagged with specific emotions to depict. Details are scant. It appears to have been a [...]

Animatronic winged demon terrorizes local garage

Posted: October 16th, 2009, 7:13am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Halloween is on its way, and if you’re going to do it right, you’re going to overdo it right. A few days ago we showed you [Jake's] flying Crank Ghost, the idea is simple and creates lovely motion that is sure to scare some small children. But what if you want people leaving your little [...]

Sphere bots get some new skills

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Spherical robots , or in this case RC vehicles are pretty versatile. They travel about the same on most terrains, including water in some cases. That’s not to say that they travel particularly well on those terrains though. The common problem is that they can’t really climb over bumps very well, until now. We’ve seen a [...]

72 LED persistence of vision globe

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ben] told us about his POV globe yesterday. We took a look and saw just one photo and the code with no real explanation of his project. He certainly set to work over night and now we see all the goodies we look for in a great build log. He even threw the Hackaday logo [...]

Halloween prop: DIY fog machine

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Reader [Daniel] told us about a video detailing how to make your own fog machine. This project uses two disposable roasting pans to create a fog chamber. Inside you will find an upside-down clothes iron to convert fog liquid into a gas. The liquid is gravity-fed from a water-bottle reservoir on top, converted to smoke [...]

Morphing robot demonstrated at IROS

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

A morphing robot was demonstrated at the IROS conference this week. This orb has no rigid structure but uses some type of “inflation” system for locomotion. This robot concept is offered up by the iRobot company as part of a DARPA initiative they’re working on. The “inflation” is really a substance in the skin that [...]

Turntable sequencer scratches with coins

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 10:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

[tvst] has an interesting take on a sequencer. His design uses coins on a turn table to trigger midi events in a loop. There are four tracks available, each having its own sensor above the spinning platform. The sensors consist of an IR transmitter and receiver setup as a voltage divider. When something passes below [...]

NES guitar

Posted: October 15th, 2009, 8:27am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Dave] set out to build the ultimate NES guitar. He’s apparently done a pretty good job, this thing is pretty remarkable. Every detail is covered in NES goodness. The body is a console, the head is a cartridge, his knobs are even replaced by goofy little heads of Mario and friends. We think he should [...]

Finally, a keyboard for the iPhone

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 5:29pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We can’t say we’ve had problems typing on our iPhones here at HackaDay, must be the elfin fingers, but for [Ben Kurtz] it was a real pain. The obvious solution is to carry around an Arduino, 9 volt battery, iPhone breakout board, a ps2 keyboard, and of course the iPhone itself. Well, maybe it could [...]

Snega2usb preorder now available

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 3:21pm MDT by Gerrit Coetzee

We’ve been watching the development of the snega2usb since it’s debut on Hackaday. Now it’s grown up and is ready to be manufactured. In the low quality video above [Matthias] shows some of the latest high quality additions to the board. It now has a case, shiny new firmware, production made PCB, and game pad ports. The snega2usb is shipping [...]

Online chip reference trims the fat

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 1:25pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Quick: which pins are used for I2C on an ATmega168 microcontroller? If you’re a true alpha geek you probably already know the answer. For the rest of us, ChipDB is the greatest thing since the resistor color code cheat sheet. It’s an online database of component pinouts: common Atmel microcontrollers, the peripheral ICs sold by SparkFun, and [...]

Add a key-fob opener to your door

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 12:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It seems like creating an automatic dorm room door opener is a rite-of-geek-passage each fall. [Adam], a student at Vassar, passed with flying colors by creating this clean setup. We’ve got video, more pictures, and a description after the break. Above we see the device mounted on the inside of the door. The larger box houses [...]

Dell mini9 tablet

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Rob928] has done a fantastic job converting his Dell mini9 into a tablet. He has done several updates, such as an SSD hard drive and touchscreen. The final product looks quite nice. From a few feet away, we wouldn’t have noticed that it was a home made one. We’ve seen several tablet conversions before from [...]

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It has blades: Dyson’s little white lie

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 9:45am MDT by Mike Szczys

‘There’s a sucker born every minute” -P.T. Barnum This morning we’ve been having a heated discussion at the Hack a Day offices (read: legion of doom) over Dyson’s new offering, a “bladeless fan”. At first this seemed extremely exciting, but how is the air being moved? We were hoping for a device operating via ionic wind [...]

DASH: clever construction and resilience in robotics

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 9:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

Behold the Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH). The video above was presented at the 2009 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. In it we see the toils of a team from UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. They’ve developed a robot propulsion system that mimics some of the best aspects of cockroaches and other insect [...]

LED Pocket Watch

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by James Munns

Today, it is not difficult to find all kinds of watches with LED displays. After [Paul]’s grandfather, a master horologist and pocket watch collector, passed away, he decided to retrofit a broken watch left to him with a custom LED face. Starting from scratch, he designed a PCB complete with 133 (hand soldered) LEDs, room [...]

CNC router on the way

Posted: October 14th, 2009, 7:21am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We love CNC hacks, so when [Jonny] sent in his nearly complete CNC router we were ecstatic. There are only a couple of posts thus far, and it takes some digging, but its pretty easy to understand his mindset and overall plan while making the CNC. It currently has full 3 axis movement and he [...]

$100 portable Wikipedia

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 4:50pm MDT by Zach Banks

OpenMoko, the company behind the FreeRunner open-source phone, released their latest product today: WikiReader. It’s a small mobile device for browsing Wikipedia. Rather than use a wireless network to pull data off of the web, it has local copy of the database on a 8GB microSD card. This approach has been used before, and it [...]

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Jamin’ to Bach, Commodore 64 style

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[thrashbarg] missed the sounds of the Commodore 64 and longed to hear the great masters in 8-bit glory. To get his fix, he created a midi device using the original Sound Interface Device from those long-dead systems. He’s interfaced the MOS6581 SID with an Atmel AVR ATmega8 microcontroller. The receiving pin for the AVR’s UART [...]

OLPC pedal power

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A One Laptop Per Child group out of Afghanistan have come up with a way to power the XO using pedals. The system interfaces a set of pedals with the Freeplay hand-crank charger, freeing up both hands for typing. Although not as compact, using both legs makes power generation much easier. Apparently a child as [...]

Halloween props: flying crank ghost

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jake's] projects have become regular features here on Hack a Day. He keeps the Halloween hack-fest rolling with his Flying Crank Ghost. For the ghost he used a store-bought skull but sculpted some hands himself out of Styrofoam. The body is fashioned from coat hangers with a bit of creepy fabric draped over the hole [...]

Binary adder will give you slivers

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A while back we looked at [Matthias'] one-pin dot matrix printer. Now we’re jumping over to his woodworking website to feast on his wooden binary adding machine. His creation uses glass marbles as the data for this device. A resolution of up to six bits can be set on the top of the adder, then [...]

Robot Einstein could save humans from killbot destruction

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Earlier this year we saw the Einstein robot that is being developed to facilitate human facial emotions in robots. [David Hanson], the man in charge of this project, has given a TED talk on his work that includes a show-and-tell of his most recent progress. We’ve embedded the video after the break for your enjoyment. The [...]

Daft Punk replica helmet

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

For all their varied and entertaining uses, circuits and code comprise only part of the complete hacking experience. To really put your project over the top, sooner or later you’ll want to possess some physical fabrication skills. Consider the works of [Ben Heckendorn]: He’s always done a fantastic job with the electronics, but it’s the fit and finish of [...]

Haptic Halluc 2

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We can not express the childlike glee that we experienced watching this video. We want so badly to have one of these setups. What you are seeing is a half dome projected cockpit with two haptic controllers in the style of a delta robot. This is controlling the Halluc robot which is a hybrid wheeled [...]

How to populate a surface mount PCB

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 9:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

Let’s face it friends, everything is moving toward surface mount components. We’ve seen quite a few features here that cover using stencils to populate boards and using ovens to reflow. [Oleg] has put together a tutorial on the process he uses to populate and reflow his own boards. [Oleg] is the creator of the USB Isolator [...]

DIY Dyson vac hack

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

[James Dyson] may have built eleventy billion prototypes to perfect his famous cyclonic vacuum, but sometimes just one will do the trick. A cyclonic separator is used in workshops to keep larger cruft out of the dust collection system. The airflow inside a separator creates a vortex that flings heavier bits and particles to the periphery [...]

A different breed of camera controllers?

Posted: October 13th, 2009, 7:25am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’ve covered almost every way possible to remotely control a camera setup, from lasers, to Lego, to doorbells, and even having a Nintendo DS run the show. But at the end of the day, what if you want something that’s small, simple, has amazing flexibility for future additions, and most importantly doesn’t take away your [...]

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iTunes LP: there’s a hack for that

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

One of the most-hyped features of iTunes version 9 is the addition of “iTunes LP,” which aims to recreate the classic record album experience with artwork and photos, lyrics, and liner notes — provided, of course, that you can pony up the purported $10,000 for production and you’re not one of those filthy indie labels. Almost [...]

Take the python challenge

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It’s hard to believe that we haven’t covered this one before. If you enjoyed out Barcode challenges from last week, perhaps now is the time for you to take the Python Challenge. We made it through the first 18 levels about a year back but with a total of 33 levels we’re not even close [...]

Easter Egg Challenge

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by James Munns

Often, hardware designers include nonfunctional additions into designs to make them feel more personal. Commonly known as easter eggs, these additions can often go unnoticed by the public for years. While taking apart an Atari San Francisco Rush: The Rock sound board, reader [Jason] noticed a hidden message on the PCB (see above). Other more [...]

Underwater laser, just add shark

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[iskor12] put together a blu-ray laser that is waterproof and packs quite a punch. At 182 mW there is enough power here to pop dark colored balloons (see the video after the break). To make this happen, he found an LED flashlight that has rubber o-rings for waterproofing. Although small, there is enough space in [...]

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Emulator in NES cartridge – so clean it looks factory made

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 11:19am MDT by Mike Szczys

We extend our congratulations to [airz] over at the ben heck forums. He put together a mod that fits an emulator into an original NES cartridge and utilizes a butchered original NES controller; and he did an amazing job! He is using a cheap but full featured emulator board. It comes with 4 gigs of memory [...]

Halloween props: The honking pumpkin

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We see a lot of Halloween projects attempt to scare people. Many of them work with the element of surprise, jumping or flashing lights when triggered. We’ve noticed though, people have come to expect those things. This project is a real sleeper. No one expects a couple car horns to blare in their face when [...]

Home made rollerbar mouse

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Judyofthewoods] has hacked together this rollerbar mouse. We’ve heard people talk about these in a positive way, going on about how comfortable they are. We haven’t really experimented with one much to verify. This one looks surprisingly nice considering it is made from scrap. The image above is showing it without the cover that hides [...]

Cheap and easy top-down camera quadpod

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 7:20am MDT by Mike Szczys

We keep waiting for evolution to give us that third arm but in the mean time, this may be the solution for holding the camera while you document your projects. [DHagen] has made a four legged tripod (quadpod) for his camera in order to use it as a digital copy machine. We’ve spent many a [...]

Analog Space Invaders with human controller

Posted: October 11th, 2009, 4:46pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[fidepus] put together a pretty nifty version of the game Space Invaders. This is an analog version that involves an ink and paper based display system. He printed out one piece of paper for each different enemy, mother ship, laser beam, and player vehicle. The human-based controller is used to move the pieces in all directions. [...]

Stove built from beer can. Hobos rejoice.

Posted: October 11th, 2009, 10:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Charles] sent in a tip about an alcohol based stove built from beer cans and a penny. The burner is efficient, lightweight, and tiny all while still packing a pretty big punch. It can boil water for sterilization, cook some rice for your meal, or make a spot of tea. The penny is used as [...]

Hack together some science stuff, win money

Posted: October 11th, 2009, 9:18am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Ok hackers, it is time to show what you are made of. [Michael] has issued a challenge. He is willing to pay for hacked together science tools that meet some accuracy and price requirements. You could win money for doing what most of you are already doing. He needs a few specific things, so go [...]

Nes controller storage with security

Posted: October 11th, 2009, 7:43am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Joven] wrote in to show us his unique NES controller mod. He initially thought of just putting some flash storage in his controller like so many others. Then he got the idea to a security feature. You must first enter a code to access the memory. What code? Yes, that one. He chose the Konami [...]

Multi-touch LCD from LEDs

Posted: October 10th, 2009, 7:23pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Thomas] promised nearly a year ago he would give the community code and schematics of how he made his LED Multi-touch panel, but we would have to wait for his next version first. Well its finally here, bigger and better then we could ever have imagined. His new version is organized as a 48 by [...]

DIY cell phone alti-variometer

Posted: October 10th, 2009, 12:57pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Vlad-Andre] used some of his free time to build an alti-variometer. He does some para-gliding near restricted air space and wanted a backup altitude warning that would help keep him below the mandated altitude. His solution uses the SparkFun Weather Board in conjunction with their BlueSMiRF dongle to measure altitude and transmit it via Bluetooth. [...]

32GB solid state Zune upgrade

Posted: October 10th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Andrew] wrote in to show us how he upgraded a broken Zune to solid state. He had one that was giving the Error code 5 when it booted. This means the hard drive is bad. He was able to find a compatible solid state 32Gb drive that, with a little bit of case modification, he made fit. [...]

IR air conditioner timer

Posted: October 10th, 2009, 7:51am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Tom] has an office job in China. His office is cooled by a small single room air conditioner. In an effort to make his office a little more comfortable, he built this IR timer unit. It cools his office down before he gets there so he doesn’t have to wait for it in the morning. He [...]

External GPS for iPod and iPhone

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Ever wish your iPod touch or older generation iPhone had GPS capability? Now it can by using a Bluetooth GPS module along with the roqyGPS app. In April we saw a pretty creative way to add GPS to an iPod by using a homebrew accessory. The new app is a better solution because it utilizes the [...]

POV fan EEPROM hack

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Hacking with Gum got their hands on one of the persistence of vision display fans that Cenzic was giving away at Blackhat this year. It’s not the biggest fan-based POV display we’ve seen but it’s still a fun device to tinker with. They hacked into the EEPROM on the device in order to change the [...]

Safelock: biometric typing security

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve seen some ways to bypass biometric security measures but here’s a new offering that we think will be hard to fool. The Safelock system is used in conjunction with a password to identify a specific user. This software records your typing style including the time between keystrokes, the time keys are held, and key [...]

Portable, digital stereoscopic image viewer

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[madaeon] couldn’t find a digital viewer for his stereoscopic 3D images. He felt that he could probably build one, so he did. He found two identical digital picture frames and made a custom rig to hold the two frames. The method he is using involves polarized lenses, so you do have to put glasses on [...]

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$4500 book about a car you can’t afford

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

The folks over at Kirkham Motorsports have turned out two things of beauty. The first is a sky’s-the-limit milled aluminum car. The second is a book about the making of the car that runs $4500 per copy. Why so much for a book? The binding is milled out of a 35 pound aluminum billet. The project [...]

Metal Race combines operation and calculator game

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Greg] was feeling nostalgic about the game RACE for to TI-83 graphing calculator. In the game, your car is stationary with controls to move the scrolling maze from side to side in order to avoid a crash. He set out to build a physical version of the game with a don’t-touch-the-side concept that reminds us [...]

Adding a keypad to a key card lock

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

[Colin Merkel] had a little problem: he was continually forgetting his electronic key card, locking himself out of his own dorm room. Like any normal Hack a Day reader, rather than getting in the habit of always carrying his card, the natural impulse of course is to build this elaborate rig of electronics and duct tape. Right? The result [...]

Hulu Desktop for Linux . . . finally

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Brett Haddock

The folks over at Hulu Labs have been busy it seems, as they have just released a version of their desktop client for Linux. Windows and OSX versions of the desktop client have been out for some time now, but Linux has been left in the dark. Functionality wise, it operates and plays videos identically [...]

Beauty in Destruction

Posted: October 9th, 2009, 7:04am MDT by Phil Burgess

This is not a hack. In fact it’s a promotional montage for a collection of scientific equipment that few of us could likely afford. But like yesterday’s giant marionettes over Berlin, sometimes even a costly and delicately-orchestrated achievement transcends its own not-a-hack-ness, fulfilling our brains’ lust for wonderment all the same. Kurzzeit of Germany produces ballistics measurement equipment. The [...]

Maggy, locked and loaded

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 5:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Some readers may remember [Paul] from his project Jak, the blackjack robot; but his interests have moved toward coil gun creation. Maggy, his latest weapon, may not be the prettiest of coil gun we’ve seen, or the most environmentally friendly, but does look to be promising. Featuring a triple stage, logic based accelerator instead of [...]

Giants roam Berlin

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

I can hear the comments now: “Not a hack.” Yeah that might be true, but it’s still enormous puppets running around Berlin – that in its own right is pretty cool. The show, put on by the street theater group Royal De Luxe, is part of the 20th anniversary for the fall of the Berlin [...]

A Stirring Hack

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Oleg] of Circuits@Home and maker of the USB Isolation Board and the USB Host Shield has a new, two-part hack for his chemistry set. In Part 1 of this hack, [Oleg] discusses the method he uses to make a stir bar spin and what types of stir bars work the best. Part 2 discusses the [...]

A modular Halloween with grid beam

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 1:41pm MDT by Phil Burgess

The fantastic Creatrope blog has a great article on quickly assembling animatronic Halloween gags using salvaged electric motors, pvc pipe, and “grid beam” construction. Grid beam is a prototyping and building medium that’s like a giant hippie Erector set. You can’t buy grid beam, but with a drill press, a jig, and some square stock you [...]

Installing a starscape ceiling

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Mike Galloway] set out to install a lighted starscape in the ceiling of the baby room. We remember first coming across this type of thing at a Planet Hollywood restaurant at least 10 years ago. We’ve always wondered how difficult this type of thing is to install. This setup involves an LED based illuminator and bundles [...]

ik-a-sketch collaborative scribbling

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 11:35am MDT by Mike Szczys

At this year’s PICNIC conference [Neil Mendoza] and [Edwin Dertien] built a giant Etch-a-Sketch to help bring attendees together. The drawing area is a rear-projection screen, rather than a physical powder based setup, and is surrounded by the familiar red frame with vertical and horizontal control knob. Because the two knobs are too far apart [...]

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Barcode Challenge – Part 2

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Yesterday we issued a barcode challenge in honor of the Barcode’s birthday. Congratulations to [The Moogle] for winning this challenge. His submission offers a very detailed explanation of how he solved the puzzle using Photoshop, OpenOffice Calc, and some web resources. We’ve got a detailed writeup on it after the break. Honorable mentions go to [nex] [...]

William Kamkwamba talks windmills with Jon Stewart

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Last night [Jon Stewart] interviewed [William Kamkwamba] on The Daily Show. [William] is the young man from Malawi who at the age of 14 built a windmill generator out of discarded items. Now at 22 years old, [William] is working on his SAT scores in hopes that he can attend college in the US. We [...]

Nokia: destroying phones for fun and profit

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

No matter how grumpy you are in the morning, this video should make you smile. This is one of the jobs many of us dream of. Take a tour around Nokia’s product testing facility with Engadget. Watch in the video as phones are squashed, pinched, smacked, baked, shaken, dialed, slid, opened, and closed repeatedly. Sure, [...]

Software Auralization

Posted: October 8th, 2009, 7:20am MDT by Phil Burgess

Have you heard the latest track by gzip? Maybe it’ll end up on a “Greatest Hits” album alongside Philip Glass. Visualization techniques such as animated algorithms can help programmers better grasp the abstract theories that make software work. Could auralization, the sound equivalent of visualization, provide similar insights? Postgrad student (and J. S. Bach fan) [Cessu] developed a [...]

Hack a USB port into your 2010 Prius

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rosenberger31] did a nice job of adding a USB port to his 2010 Toyota Prius. He removed the access door on the console where the traditional “cigarette lighter” 12 volt port is located. A Dynex 12-volt to USB adapter was piggy-backed onto the power lines and the USB connector was then fit into the blank [...]

Center speaker amp for an iPod

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A few weeks ago we saw [Jaroslaw's] universal credit card spoofer. Now he’s sent in a project that incorporates an amplifier into a center speaker for use with an iPod or any device with an audio jack. The build has two main components; an LM4950 audio amplifier and a center channel speaker he picked up for [...]

The subway never sounded so good

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Reader [Philippe] tipped us off about this video showing a set of subway steps being turned into a piano keyboard (english translation). The creators wanted to make taking the stairs rather than riding the escalator a bit more fun. They added pressure sensors to each step, then covered them with white and black keys to [...]

TV-B-Gone-zilla! Rar!

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

TV-B-Gone: antisocial nuisance or harmless prank? Whatever your feelings, there’s no denying this device has become a staple of the DIY hacking crowd, as evidenced by the countless derivatives since hatched. This latest mutation crushes them all. [manekinen] from the Polish electronics blog Elektroda (“Electrode”) wasn’t satisfied with high-power TV-B-Gone designs using multiple 5mm infrared LEDs, so he [...]

Hardware HD decoder in a netbook

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[banzai] wasn’t happy with the performance he was getting out of his Samsung netbook. He decided it was time to do something about it. He noticed that Dell and HP both sell an optional HD decoder card for their netbooks. After a short search, he found one on ebay for only $24. He had to [...]

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Scare ‘em silly with a moving pumpkin

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Halloween is a scary time for the little ones. It’s dark, they can barely see through their injection molded Spiderman masks, but it’s all worth it for the candy. Our friends over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have produced a pumpkin that moves on its own. The little pumpkin was disemboweled from the bottom and its [...]

Barcode challenge

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

This morning we logged into Google to find a Barcode instead of the normal logo (how strange that Google would change their graphic!). Apparently today is the anniversary of the Barcode. This method of easily labeling items for computer scanning is used for every type of commodity in our society. But do you know how [...]

eD, the electric DeLorean

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Who wouldn’t want a DeLorean, honestly it has to be the one of the coolest cars around, what with its gull wing doors and stainless steel siding. Joking aside [Tom Neiland] and [Dave Delman] went even further, creating eD, the electric DeLorean. It contains around 910 pounds of deep cycle lead batteries, custom transmission adapter [...]

Record eight 1seg stations at once

Posted: October 7th, 2009, 7:23am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Aaron] tipped us off about a project over at mobilehackerz. They built something of a PVR for 1seg broadcast stations (Google translation). The 1seg broadcast standard is aimed at mobile video service and available in countries like Japan and Brazil. Their terrestrial TV signals (ISDB-T) are divided into 13 segments per channel but the HD [...]

Exploding processors for real

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

After we posted the “High explosives pc case” earlier we saw a resounding outcry in the comments for combustible destruction. Oddly enough, we got a submission of something along just those lines. [tazzik] has taken the heat sink off of his athlon 1400+ and covered the poor processor in potassium chlorate. As you can see in the [...]

Halloween prop: Bigmouth billy bass

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Back in 2001, the Bigmouth billy bass was still relatively new. Hacking one to record and play back both audio and movement was quite a new feat. You can read all about how they pulled it off. Though most of us agree that this could be done easier now, with off the shelf microcontrollers, this [...]

Five concept mice add multi-touch control

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Microsoft is showing off five concepts for added mouse functionality. All of them seek to replace traditional move-and-click with touch sensitivity through either capacitive sensing, video recognition, sensor articulation, or laser scanning. We’re excited about the prospects of some of these features but at the same time wonder what this does to the price of [...]

PSP plus second stick, camera, 32 gigs

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[JoblessPunk] recently finished his what-a-psp-should-be mod. He’s internalized a camera and added a switch in the body to toggle between using the camera or using the USB port. There’s an additional analog stick, and added charging functionality via the USB port. He’s also packed in an additional 32 GB of flash memory. The device is [...]

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj (teardown)

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by James Munns

Earlier this year, Nikon released the Coolpix S1000pj, a 12 megapixel point and shoot with the usual features, including image stabilization, face recognition, etc. However, the S1000pj features a built in projector into the usual diminutive point and shoot footprint, and also comes with a remote for controlling the projector in display mode, or for remote shooting. [...]

High explosives PC case

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ilias] let us know about his new HTPC case mod. He took a surplus Ammo-case and with a bit of work turned it into a livingroom eye-sore masterpiece. His build has some nice touches, including a slot-fed DVD player, switch-based fan control, and key-and-button “nuclear launch” type power-on controls. A few things to learn from this [...]

Robot security patrol brings Skynet closer

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

The students at the University of Oklahoma have put together a robot that will surely join the other drones in our future robot overlord regime. This autonomous vehicle was produced to replace human security patrols which can be both boring and dangerous. Intent on delivering surveillance to most locations, an all terrain vehicle was used [...]

How to crack a Master lock

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Long, long ago we covered a method to crack a Master lock in about 30 minutes or less. Here’s a revival of the same method but now the instructions to retrieve the combination are in info-graphic format created by [Mark Edward Campos]. If you didn’t get to try this the first time around, here’s how it [...]

There I Fixed It: A blog about hacking, poorly.

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Gerrit Coetzee

Thereifixedit.com is a site filled with dubious innovations. Some of them are cool, some of them are clever, and most of them are terrifying. Anyone who has ever stood in front of a broken household appliance with a roll of duct tape, one screw driver with a bit chipped off the flat part, and determination will [...]

Doom on a picture key chain

Posted: October 6th, 2009, 7:02am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Alright, so Doom isn’t actually running on the key chain itself, but rather a BifferBoard: a small 150MHz x86 containing ethernet, serial, and even USB with only one watt of power consumption! The project is to show how easy it is to program the BifferBoard and getting it talking to other hackable items – such [...]

Thermoelectric Solar Power

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 3:40pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Colin] has put together an instructable for a solar power generator that uses the thermoelectric effect instead of the photovoltaic (PV) effect. We have seen Peltier devices used in cooling cans, solder paste, backs, and hacked hard drives. This is the first hack we have seen where a Peltier device is used to generate electricity [...]

Vocoding with a piano

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

This really cool project allows a grand piano to “speak”. We don’t know any details about its construction but we had to share. The keys are being hit by solenoids in a manner to replicate human speech. Click through to the video, it’s worth it. You may have to allow the popup to see the video, [...]

Pocket multimeter review

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 11:56am MDT by Mike Szczys

Reader [Mikey Sklar] told us about a review he wrote covering 3 different models of pocket multimeters. We’re sure that you’ve had the same experiences we have being the go-to-guy or got-to-gal for all things electrical. For our sort, having a multimeter on hand at all times has become an expectation. [Mikey] looks at a model [...]

Jump start your car with Sega parts

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jenn's] family is a single-car household. Because of this, it’s a little more difficult to get a jump start when the headlights run down the battery. Not wanting to ask the neighbors for help, her husband [Richard] decided to come up with his own solution. Rummaging through the parts on hand, [Richard] went with his old [...]

Halloween props: Low cost popup

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Backroads] has put together this nicely detailed writeup explaining how to make a low cost popup prop. He’s using a single pneumatic valve and a home made PVC piston to raise and lower a scary mask. He’s using an off-the-shelf 110v AC valve controller to control the valve. A flickering light, a “screamer” and a [...]

Building an IR receiver for the popcorn hour c-200

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Linuxworks] has posted a writeup on how to build an IR module for the popcorn hour c-200. We weren’t familiar with the popcorn hour c-200, so we had to look it up. It seems to be a media center pc sort of thing. We’re not reviewing the unit itself, since we’ve never used one, so [...]

Monome case mod: vintage radio

Posted: October 5th, 2009, 7:57am MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve seen a lot of the Monome, a USB based controller often used as a sampler, here at Hack a Day. This is one of the more creative hacks. [brothernigel] took a Monome 40h kit and fit it inside the case of a vintage radio. The faceplate was a custom order to fit his purposes [...]

CN Tower synced with techno

Posted: October 4th, 2009, 12:51pm MDT by Jacob Woj

As part of Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s annual community art event, the CN Tower’s lighting system got put to some creative use. Installed 2 years ago, the RGB LED-based system is composed of 1330 individually addressable lights lining the glass elevator shafts. It costs just under $1000 to run almost every evening for a month. Named ‘Bright Lights Big City’ (not [...]

Toronto embraces 4-letter words

Posted: October 4th, 2009, 11:59am MDT by Jacob Woj

This year was not the first in which the City Hall of Toronto was lit up in a unique way. However, it was the first time that the government building was used to project 4-letter words. Brainchild of [D.A. Therrien], the 4LWM represents something that he imagined for a long time. [Therrien] built the huge sign in Scottsdale, [...]

RGB laser

Posted: October 4th, 2009, 7:22am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Last month we had the pleasure of bringing you [FireMyLaser's] green laser spirograph. Just green is great for a while, but why not add red and blue for a full spectrum of color! [c4r0] steps in at this point to bring us his red green blue laser. He dug around inside Blu-ray players and DVD [...]

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Dance of the… (construction) cranes

Posted: October 4th, 2009, 3:00am MDT by Jacob Woj

Hacking is all about using parts and resources in an unconventional way. If stringing a pair of high-rise cranes with LED Christmas lights and making them move to a piece of classical music isn’t unconventional, then we don’t know what is. For nearly a quarter of every hour last night, 2 crane operators, along with two ‘choreographers’, [...]

A bright way to cycle

Posted: October 4th, 2009, 2:00am MDT by Jacob Woj

Want to be visible when cycling at night? [Neon Dean] came up with this possible solution, which he cruised on at Nuit Blanche. Its a bicycle with neon lights mounted on every surface possible. [Dean], who gave a similar treatment to his car, explained how it worked. All of the tubes take their power from a 12VDC battery he carries in a [...]

Google Wave breaks the email mold

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 5:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

By now you’ve probably heard something about Google Wave which saw a private preview release last week. The video above is an eight minute overview of the core functionality that the Wave offers. Wave development was based on the premise that email, invented 40 years ago, has not kept pace with our working needs as [...]

Quoth the Raven: hack some more

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

There are people who buy a cheap sack of candy and dutifully answer the door on Halloween. Then there are people like [Peter] who spend the whole year planning for the next year’s Hollywood-style front yard theatrics. He added an animatronic raven to his show a few years back. It has been wildly popular and it’s [...]

Office warfare

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

a Ruler, rubber band, and a pen make a bow and arrow? How about tape, a ping pong ball, and a lighter coming together to make a ‘Zooka. We didn’t think such destructive weapons could possibly be made from office supplies, but the famous [John Austin] is here to prove us wrong. He’s been miniaturizing [...]

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Garage door… packet sniffer

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Jacob Woj

Some type of logger or sniffer exists for almost every form of electronic communication. Your keystrokes, phone conversations, and wireless networks could all be monitored. In this awesome proof-of-concept project, [James] expanded that array to include garage door openers. After receiving a piece of chain mail which stated that criminals have the technology to record any remote [...]

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Sony’s wireless electricity offering

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

In August we covered a wireless electricity presentation from the TED conference. Now Sony has put out a press release on their wireless flat panel television prototype. The device is capable of operating without audio, video, or power cables connected to it. This is possible at distances up to 50cm at efficiencies as high as [...]

Ubuntu 9.10 beta now available

Posted: October 3rd, 2009, 11:48am MDT by Mike Szczys

The latest version of the world’s most popular Linux distribution is now available. Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala continues the six-month development cycle of this free OS. We’ve used Ubuntu since 2005 and, after a short adjustment period, never looked back at those other operating systems. Never used Linux? This distribution is for you but we recommend [...]

Growing algae with an Arduino

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Matt Schultz

We’ve seen automated grow boxes of all shapes and sizes, but all were for growing plants. [Jared] over at Inventgeek wanted to do something similar for his algae. He started off with an Arduino-based solution that allows the controlled pulse of LEDs connected to his standard bioreactor as a prototype. Once he determined his proof [...]

How to build your own lathe

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[bongodrummer] wanted to use a lathe to make some gifts for his family. Instead of buying one, he decided to make one and recycle some parts in the process. More info after the break. [bongodrummer] scavenged a motor from a washing machine which is a great choice because these motors are capable of generating plenty of [...]

Pickle lighting for fun and profit

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

The fantastic people at MIT have taken it upon themselves to explain how an OLED works. Their visual aide in this explanation is an electrocuted pickle. This helps describe how OLEDs are actually constructed from organic material. Many of you probably already know how they work, but for those who don’t this video will clear [...]

Halloween prop: portable black light

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Joshua] wrote in to show us this great Halloween tip. He wanted to take his 4 foot long black light along with him on Halloween. You can buy portable versions, but he realized he had enough parts laying around to slap together a portable one himself. He pulled the inverter from a scanner light and [...]

Arduino DMX controller

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This Arduino powered DMX controller came along at just the right time. We had shown you a project earlier that involved the DMX system and several commenters remarked on the price to get into DMX hardware. If you happen to have an Arduino around, you can build a DMX controller. He found a schematic for [...]

Clock knock block full of puns

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

This Clock Knock Block has a bit of everything; milling, Arduino, sensing, solenoids, and plenty of dirty puns. Just knock on the box or on the table right next to it and the time of day will be played back to you in a series of crisp, clean knocks. A big part of the fun [...]

SMD LED matrix

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Everyone loves a good LED matrix hack, and we’ve seen our fair share, but never a 16 by 24 hand soldered SMD one. [bear24rw] and his team needed a project reflecting the interests of one of his classes, being an EE major, an LED matrix was just the ticket. Based on this instructable, he was [...]

Hacker rewarded for creating electricity

Posted: October 2nd, 2009, 6:58am MDT by Mike Szczys

[garhol] tipped us off about a self-taught hacker who brought a little light to his tiny home. [William Kamkwamba] dropped out of school because his family lacked the $80 per year for tuition. At the age of 14 he read books from the library and gained the knowledge he needed to built a 12 watt [...]

Machining Gets Wet and Wild

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 4:00pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Tyler] has had his electrochemical machining hack up for a while now. His final version uses a pump to move electrolyte out through the etching head and onto the workpiece. This keeps fresh electrolyte in the etching region and clears out the insoluble material. We see how this could be attached to a CNC system [...]

Power generating backpack

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

In the military, you have to carry tons of stuff. This is something we hear and see all the time. They are always trying to come up with ways to reduce the weight or quantity of the things that you bring into the field. This power generating backpack harnesses the natural up and down motion [...]

TV hack bypasses HDCP

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Reader [GRitchie] wrote in with an interesting find in his new TV set: with just some minor soldering it was possible to tap into an unencrypted hi-def video stream. HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), used by Blu-Ray players and cable or satellite receivers, normally ensures a DRM-protected link between the device and a compatible display. Any [...]

See through walls via wireless network

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 12:46pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Researchers at the University of Utah have been able to detect movement in a room based on variations in wireless signals. Accurate to about a meter, they are using a 34 node wireless network to do their sensing. As a person moves, they change the signals, and can therefore be detected. They state one possible [...]

Skip Vegas with this BS slot machine

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 11:18am MDT by Mike Szczys

We caught a glimpse of this Basic Stamp 2 controlled electronic slot machine on YouTube. We’re very grateful that [Mike Donahue] was willing to share more about his project with us. He uses tactile switches instead of dropping coins in a slot, and a lever-style switch sets the one-armed bandit in motion. The action is displayed [...]

Microsoft unveils Open Source multi core OS

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

A new operating system, code named Barrelfish is being developed by Microsoft research labs and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. This operating system is being built with multi core operations foremost in priority. It is supposed to be extremely scalable and able to function on a very wide range of hardware. You can download the current snapshot [...]

Coil Gun speed meter

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

One of the best parts of building a coil gun is seeing just how fast you can get that slug to move through the air. [Daniel] built this speed meter to be able to see exactly that. It is comprised of two optical sensors, one at each end of a barrel. As the projectile passes [...]

Solar tracking, without overkill

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We saw this pretty smooth solar tracker run by an Arduino. There aren’t many details, but we can see that it works well, and is in fact, run by an Arduino. We knew if we posted this that people would be commenting that the Arduino is overkill. We agree. So this post is to ask, [...]

Homemade Bokode

Posted: October 1st, 2009, 7:32am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’ve recently been getting a lot of new comments on our Bokode post from a while back, and with good reason. [M@] has managed to find a way to replicate Bokode at home, using $0 worth of equipment (before the price of microprint). To accomplish Bokode at home, it seems all you need is and [...]

BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » October 2009