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120v switching

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Kenneth] built a 5v controlled power outlet inside of a junction box. We’ve seen plenty of projects that can switch 120v outlets using 5v logic for refrigerator controllers, lighting controllers, or grow systems, but they almost always use solid state relays to facilitate the switching. This iteration uses mechanical relays along with the necessary protection [...]

Hacking a digital bathroom scale

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 12:04pm MST by Caleb Kraft

[Micah] was inspired by projects he had seen of people using the Wii balance board as an input. He realized the balance board was overkill, and pricey for many applications. Since it is basically just 4 weight sensors, he thought, why not just use a scale? Often, only one sensor is needed and they’re really [...]

Recycled cat feeder

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

I find that I do a lot of fun projects but I’m very bad about documenting them when I’m done. Holidays are for hacking (in my mind) so I usually plan ahead and do something cool during my time off. This project, which I loving call the Autodine-2009, was a spontaneous event over Thanksgiving that [...]

Add a Bluetooth terminal to your Kindle

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 9:03am MST by Mike Szczys

This is an Amazon Kindle DX with a Sparkfun Bluetooth Mate stuck in it. [Darron] hacked the two together in order to have a wireless serial terminal on the device. There are three big pads in the middle of the Kindle PCB labelled GND, RX and TX, making it easy to figure out those connections. [...]

Hackaday links: January 31st, 2010

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 7:26am MST by Mike Szczys

Marble Junker Here’s a quick and dirty kinetic sculpture. It’s a track for a steel marble to roll around in with a magnet on a rotating wheel to pick it up and start it over again. Not every hack has to be a beautiful masterpiece, they just need to be fun. Of course, if this were [...]

Hybrid analog/binary clock, the MK2

Posted: January 30th, 2010, 5:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[Kieran] let us know about his hybrid analog/binary clock. The circuitry behind the clock is nothing too new. An Arduino combined with a Chronodot to produce an accurate clock. What we really enjoyed however was the creative implementation of an old British Telecom Linesman’s Multimeter as the case. The analog meter acts as the seconds [...]

The UltimateSIMON

Posted: January 30th, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Simon Inns] designed a circuit board to retrofit an original Simon electronic game. This hack is immediately a win because he made sure that his design required no modification of the original case. The new PCB has many improvements. It moves the device from using 2 D-cells over to a 9 volt battery, the incandescent [...]

Robot band gives us so much to make fun of

Posted: January 30th, 2010, 2:40pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Pat Metheny] has a robot armada backing him up when he performs on stage. They’re going on tour and he’s done an interview explaining his mechanical band. Like the auto-drummer, this setup uses multitudes of solenoids to play the percussion instruments, each getting commands from a computer. It’s pretty wicked to see him use his [...]

Ask a winner updates day 2: Answers

Posted: January 30th, 2010, 7:43am MST by Jakob Griffith

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. The Haptic Guide team took a moment of their time for us today. Their N900 [...]

Our thoughts on the iPad

Posted: January 29th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

The iPad, announced earlier this week, has been a massive media extravaganza. Some people were elated, and some let down. We’ve been asked over and over what our thoughts on the device are. Join us after the break to find out. [Caleb]–My grandma would love this. I really think that she is their target. It is [...]

Another take on roasting those beans

Posted: January 29th, 2010, 1:54pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Andrew] takes his coffee very seriously and like any hardcore aficionado he wanted to do the roasting himself. The coffee roaster design uses a heat gun for the roasting and sources an old bread maker as a vessel. As part of the automatic bread making process there’s a little agitator arm inside which keeps the [...]

Salty LEDs

Posted: January 29th, 2010, 12:24pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Davross] pulled off an LED lighting build for his coral aquarium. The module consists of a wooden body holding a 3×16 grid of LEDs. They are mounted to heat sinks which themselves have cooling fans to help keep those puppies from melting. The system is controlled by an Arduino which allows for almost limitless lighting options. [...]

Permalink for 'Hack_A_Day/2010/01/29/And_we%e2%80%99re_back'

And we’re back

Posted: January 29th, 2010, 9:45am MST by Jakob Griffith

Several of you were rather angry with us yesterday for our competition. Those not in the loop, our email competition@hackaday.com was not correctly configured and no body could send in their entries! But have no fear, we have fixed the problem and now you can send in your guesses. To remedy the situation we have decided [...]

Ask a winner updates: Answers

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 4:44pm MST by Jakob Griffith

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. Todays team interview is KAPing with the N900. They’re N900 hack is the high flying [...]

Contest: win Push Showcase tickets

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 3:05pm MST by Jakob Griffith

Who is ready to win some tickets to the PUSH N900 Showcase? The showcase is an event where all 5 teams from the Push N900 competition are going meet up in London and present their N900 hacks. Including N900s that fly, skate, Etch a Sketch(TM), and more. We also hear there is going to be a [...]

Happy meal toy scavenging

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 1:39pm MST by Mike Szczys

We’re sometimes shocked at the electronics included in ‘disposable’ items. For some reason (our tech inclinations?) we’ve been getting those audio greeting cards from relatives and it kind of kills us to see the PCB, batteries, and speaker in what would have otherwise been a fully recyclable card. Now we’ve got several sets of those [...]

Drill-powered go cart

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 12:38pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here we have a toy car modified to use a drill as the powertrain. [Hans] has thrown a 12v 4.5 amp battery in to power the motor and it tops out around 9 miles per hour. This is similar in concept to the trash-based go cart from last week but this time there’s video. He’s [...]

Adding a netbook keyboard light

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 11:37am MST by Mike Szczys

[Vikash] was having trouble using his netbook in the dark so he added a keyboard light. He’s got a Dell Vostro A90 which is the same hardware as the popular Dell Mini 9. We agree that the condensed keyboard layout makes it hard to type without looking; just try to find the quotation mark, brackets, [...]

10,000 watt fluorescent array

Posted: January 28th, 2010, 8:40am MST by Mike Szczys

This is an array of flourescent tubes that form a display. The video above is just two modules of a ten module installation that [Valentin] and his team are showing at an exhibition in Berlin tomorrow. The connected modules form something of a scrolling 16-segment display (similar to the 17 segment display modules of the [...]

5 legged locomotion

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

When designing legged robots, we generally see an even number of legs. Mainly, we think, it is due to us modelling things after nature. But with robotics, you’re free to do whatever you want. [Iketomu-san] has built this unsettling 5 legged robot out of parts he had lying around. The gait is fairly interesting. He [...]

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NES lovers grew up and now they’re coding for Palm

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 12:01pm MST by Mike Szczys

In case you missed it back in June, the Palm Pre was rooted by extracting the Root ROM from a Palm tool used to reset a device with damaged software. A lot has been learned from examining the code inside that ROM but we’re most amused by one thing in particular. If you grew up [...]

HDD actuated acoustical instrument

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

This is the multichord, a one-string musical instrument built by [Christopher Mitchell]. The string is a 20 pound mono-filament thread stretched between a wooden bridge and the read/write head of a hard drive. The idea is that the vibrations of the string are picked up and amplified acoustically by the sounding box that serves as [...]

Nanotouch: a tiny AVR media thing

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Rossum] is at it again. This time, he has created a super tiny media device to get us drooling. You might recall him from the 8-bit device we showed you before. The Nanotouch is roughly the dimensions of a 96×64 OLED screen(slightly larger than a quarter), with about 1/3 to 1/2 of an inch of [...]

PS3 exploit released

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 7:37am MST by Mike Szczys

You can now download the exploit package for the PlayStation 3. [Geohot] just posted the code you need to pull off the exploit we told you about on Sunday, making it available on a “silver platter” with just a bit of explanation on how it works. He’s located a critical portion of the memory to [...]

Building a bigger, better laser engraver

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 7:04am MST by Mike Szczys

[Bart] built a giant laser etcher from scratch. One of his first test engravings included the Hackaday skull-and-wrenches on a polished granite floor tile (we love it when people do that). He used an XMOS controller and Mach3 CNC software to handle the device. With just two axes to worry about this seem like an [...]

Powering a switch via PoE

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Kajer] was doing some work with IP phones that use Power over Ethernet. While trying to get this to work with a network switch he decided to use PoE to power the switch itself. The best thing about this is he managed to shoehorn all of the necessary bits into the stock case. Those bits [...]

Palm-sized Atari 2600

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[The Longhorn Engineer] is working on a portable Atari 2600. Instead of taking the old gaming system and cramming it into a portable form factor he’s designed his own circuit board in a new-hardware initiative he calls Project Unity. The handheld will include everything you need to play, including video, audio, controller buttons, paddle control, [...]

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Why aren’t we building our own printers?

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We’ll ask it again, why aren’t we building our own printers? We’re building 3d printers, CNC mills, and hacking the ink cartridges on commercial printers. What does it really take to build say a 300 dpi black and white printer? Something that lets you clean and service the print head rather than throwing it out [...]

Repair or improve your NES

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 12:27pm MST by Mike Szczys

There’s a warm place in our hearts for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s too bad we don’t have that hardware sitting around anymore. But if you do there’s a chance it needs some TLC and there’s always room for a blue LED mod. [Raph] has a wonderful collection of NES hardware repairs and hacks [...]

St. Louis Hackerspace: Arch Reactor

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 8:58am MST by James Munns

Here at HackaDay, we are always a fan of a group of hackers coming together to create a place to share ideas, tools, parts, and stories. A group from St. Louis called Arch Reactor have managed to secure a new location, and are having their grand opening this Saturday. From 4-10pm on the 30th, they [...]

Gorgeous portable N64 built to order

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Hailrazer] is at it again with a new portable N64 build. He’s done the impossible by improving upon his last design. The LCD screen is now mounted flush for a cleaner and smaller case. The controls draw from a lot of different sources; a gamecube stick for durability, a 3rd party N64 controller for buttons, [...]

Unlocking multitouch for Droid and Nexus One

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We’re fans of pinch-zooming and that means multitouch. Although the interface is natively supported by both the hardware and operating systems of the Nexus One and Droid phones, it is locked out of the stock installation. You can make multitouch work on both handsets if you’re willing to do a little firmware alteration. The coding has [...]

Foul-mouthed game will get you in trouble

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Fridgehead] modified his Simon Says game to include a dirty word for each lighted button. This is a real good way to teach kids to swear and to get child protective services to pay you a visit all at the same time. The hardware has been modified to use an Arduino in tandem with an [...]

Things that kill you, hacked for clean energy

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Tobacco and E coli can wreak havoc on your body causing serious damage if not death. Some researchers from the University of California at Berkley have found a way to take these potentially dangerous organisms and make them do our bidding. By genetically engineering a virus they have shown that the two can be used [...]

Android G1 serial to Arduino

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

With the ability to get root access to some of these new powerful pieces of hardware we call cell phones, we’re a bit surprised we haven’t seen more interfacing with external hardware. Here’s an example of some rudimentary connections between an Android G1 and an Arduino. To do this, you must have your G1 rooted, have the [...]

Face tracking with x10

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

If you are looking to do some face tracking and don’t know where to start, this explanation of how to do it with X10 modules could be pretty helpful. Aside from having, what some could consider to be, the absolute most annoying website ever for a company, X10 also makes modular systems for home automation. [...]

Automated Super8 film scanning

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 8:41am MST by Caleb Kraft

For those of you who have been dreading the day that you have to dig out those old family films in Super 8 format and take them to get digitized, dread no more. Now you could turn it into a cool project. [Photobsen] has posted pictures of an automated system for scanning and compiling the [...]

Rotary encoding with your soundcard

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 7:16am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Stefan] sent in this project writeup to show us how he used a stepper motor as a rotary encoder. Using a stepper motor as an encoder isn’t really that new, as [Stefan] points out, we’ve seen it several times before. He wanted to use this in the quickest simplest way with his computer though. Instead [...]

PS3 hacked!

Posted: January 24th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

There is very little information out at the moment, but [geohot] has successfully hacked the PS3 to have full read and write access, bypassing the Hypervisor. At the moment he’s not revealing the exploit, but with this knowledge it wont be long before the PS3 finally gets whats coming. Keep track of [geohot's] progress on [...]

Hackaday links: Sunday January 24

Posted: January 24th, 2010, 1:44pm MST by Jakob Griffith

Everyone Remembers Free day right? [The Ideanator's] Bus Pirate came in such a nice red box – he decided to make it his permanent case. [Chico] is in the middle of making a CNC, but decided to make some music with the steppers in the mean time. What looks like an old wooden box is actually [Ludvig's] [...]

Trashplane

Posted: January 24th, 2010, 7:52am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Flyboy258] shows us that hobby R/C airplanes can be built from trash relatively easily. A bit of old tarp and a simple frame work as the body. The rudder is made from old foam packaging. It seems to fly pretty well considering the lack of official design, or aerodynamic features. [via Makezine] [...]

iPhone look-alike on your kitchen wall

Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 11:50am MST by Mike Szczys

[Ryan] and his wife wanted to have a touchscreen interface in the kitchen to store their recipes and for various music, video, and Internet entertainment. We know where they’re coming from, we’re quite tired or cleaning flour (or worse!) off of our palm pilot screen after baking. The display you see on the wall is [...]

C64 interface for your computer

Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 9:06am MST by Caleb Kraft

Before we get started, lets just point out that this C64 was broken. He did not take a functional C64 out of operation for this. What he did do, was to build a hardware interface for for his VICE system. For those unfamiliar, VICE is a cross platform C64 emulator. [Simon] points out that the [...]

Ideas based on photo frame clock

Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 7:45am MST by Mike Szczys

[Mahto] bought a digital picture frame but the image quality turned out to be terrible. He decided to turn it into a clock in a unique way. He loaded up 720 images, one for each minute in a twelve hour period. He then used an Arduino to simulate a button once a minute, cycling to [...]

LCD backlight repair

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 2:14pm MST by Mike Szczys

Another broken LCD TV came [Steve DiRaddo's] way. This one had a broken backlight that he wanted to fix. He scrapped his LCD light table in order use the inverter. The two televisions were not the same size, nor made by the main manufacturer, but backlights all operate under the same principles. Using an inverter [...]

Hardware store follow focus

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 1:14pm MST by Mike Szczys

Want to do quick and accurate focus change with your DSLR? Here’s a discussion thread covering dirt-cheap solutions. It starts with a broccoli rubber-band and a couple of zip ties. That being a bit chintzy, the more popular build seen above uses a hose clamp, rubber band for padding, a drawer pull, a nut, and [...]

Hack together a Coffee Roaster

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 11:35am MST by James Munns

For most people, making coffee entails taking a couple scoops out of a can of pre-ground coffee, adding water, and pressing “Go” on the drip machine. To others coffee brewing is an artform, and want as much control over the process as possible. For those without an overflowing bank account for a home roasting machine, [...]

Electric go cart from trash

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 10:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

A quick lesson on being a good parent. If you make an awesome electronic cart out of trash that may not necessarily be stable, or even fully capable of stopping once it gets going, you MUST put your children on it and insist that they drive. Did we mention that the system is full acceleration [...]

Simple laptop conversion

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 8:45am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Jakob] sent in his method of dealing with broken laptop hinges. Broken hinges are a plague. We have no less than 4 laptops lying around that are beyond repair with broken hinges. Some are just propped up against things, some have had box hinges glued to them and some are just waiting to die slowly [...]

Arduino programmer for Arduino

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 6:49am MST by Mike Szczys

Wow, that title is flamebait… but give us a chance to explain. [George] wrote some code for the Arduino that allows it to program another Arduino. You may be thinking to yourself “this has already been done”. In a way it has, with the AVR ISP programming shield. But once the code has been uploaded [...]

Frustromantic Box, a reverse Geocache

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 3:52pm MST by Jakob Griffith

One of the best feelings in the world is when one of our posts inspires a fellow hacker to plan, create, and execute his or her own project. [Russ] let us know about his Frustromantic Box which he gained inspiration from the original Reverse Geochache we posted about. For those out of the loop, the box [...]

SpiderBot prompts laser envy

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Daniel's] horrifying hexapod makes us wish we were sitting next to a laser cutter. The parts are cut from 4.9mm plywood and include laser-sculpted sections to allow the twenty servos to properly seat in their mounting spaces. We would suggest that you build it in secret so as not to ruin the surprise when your [...]

Adafruit Eagle library

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We love it when a PCB comes out right the first time. We’re careful enough with our designs that if something is wrong it’s usually a footprint problem, like we picked the wrong package for the components. Adafruit is helping to make the design process easier by sharing their Eagle library. Like the Eagle library [...]

Turntable light sequencer

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Stephen] built a sequencer that uses a turntable and light sensors to lay down a funky beat. If you like creepy videos with repeated gratuitous corderoy-clad rear-ends we’ve got you covered after the break. Art film aside, he’s got an interesting project. Four light sensors are mounted below the turning record with LEDs hovering above. [...]

Coded entry using your wristwatch

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Ziyan] and [Zach] built a door entry system that uses a code entered from your wristwatch. They’re using the TI eZ-430 Chronos that we saw in November. There is a project box mounted over the deadbolt lever. Inside, the wireless fob waits for the watch to connect. When a watch has connected and the correct [...]

Buzzle: a morse code puzzle box

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 8:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

[lucasfragomeni] built the Buzzle after being inspired by the reverse geocache puzzle. The Buzzle was built as a gift to a friend. It’s a tricky gift too. His friend can’t open it until he decodes the words being displayed in morse code via an LED. A word is chosen at random, so you would have [...]

Robots in space

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 7:05am MST by Caleb Kraft

SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites) are experimental robots made at MIT for the purpose of testing robot locomotion in space. As you can see in the video above, they are capable of maneuvering pretty well. They seem to hold formation fairly tightly. They are using compressed CO2, through 12 different thrusters for [...]

Live high altitude balloon launch

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 6:10am MST by Jakob Griffith

[Terry] is planning to launch his high altitude balloon within the next few days. As we’ve seen before he has gone for a general setup – GPS tracking, environment sensors including temperature and humidity and pressure, and 2 on board cameras – all with an expected height of about 100,000 feet. What makes this project [...]

Billy Bass with selectable clips

Posted: January 20th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Will] enjoys giving hacked items as Secret Santa gifts and this year he decided to augment a Billy Bass. These gag items have become a popular hack to use as a prop or to read your Twitter updates to you. Right of the bat he scrapped the original PCB and sent it to the gift’s [...]

NES console to cartridge security in depth

Posted: January 20th, 2010, 1:43pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Segher] has reverse engineered the hardware and command set for the NES CIC chips. These chips make up the security hardware that validates a cartridge to make sure it has been licensed by Nintendo. Only after authentication will the console’s CIC chip stop reseting the hardware at 1 Hz. The was no hardware information available [...]

NXT hacks: tanks and heaters

Posted: January 20th, 2010, 11:48am MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s a double-dose of Lego NXT goodness; a robotic tank and an automatic aquarium heater. The image to the left is a robotic tank powered by the popular Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. The brains rest inside of a tube, including the controller brick, ultrasonic range finder, a gyroscope, and a compass. Two sets of treads surround [...]

Hey man, SSH to my guitar and setup the multitouch

Posted: January 20th, 2010, 10:20am MST by Mike Szczys

The Misa Digital Guitar is a digital music controller like we haven’t seen before. The body, machined out of ABS, looks like a guitar. The player puts theirs hands in the same places you would on a guitar but the lack of strings make it something different. The left had manipulates inputs in the form of [...]

SheevaPlug PBX

Posted: January 20th, 2010, 6:28am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Greg] has been working on a version of Debian/ FreePBX/ Asterisk for people to be able to drop onto a SheevaPlug. If you haven’t seen it, the SheevaPlug is a tiny computer housed in a wall plug. They made some waves when they were announced last year, and we’ve spoken of them several times. [Greg] [...]

Servo hacked linear actuator

Posted: January 19th, 2010, 5:41pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[AntonB] has modified a servo into a powerful linear actuator (think: changing rotational motion into linear motion). The process is simple enough, modify a servo for continuous rotation and then add the custom built actuating shaft. You do of course lose the precision of the servo, but a small price to pay to be able [...]

Cell phone based car starter, another take

Posted: January 19th, 2010, 8:25am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Dave] Had been working on a cell phone activated remote start for his car for a while when we posted the GSM car starter. While both do carry out the same job, we feel that there is enough good information here to share. He’s gone a pretty simple way, by connecting the vibrator motor leads [...]

Polymorph in practice

Posted: January 19th, 2010, 7:15am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Leesam] tipped us off to this cool tutorial for shaping Polymorph. For those who haven’t, it is pretty cool stuff. It is a plastic that comes in little pellets. You can melt it down at relatively low temperatures and mold it to the shape you need. We’ve seen it used on several projects, most notably [...]

The most complicated, and simplest binary clocks.

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 1:11pm MST by Caleb Kraft

We were going to take a break from posting clocks. Really we were. This one came in the tip line today though, and we just couldn’t pass it up. [Alex] has built, what might be the most complicated clock we’ve seen. At least, it would appear that way initially. This Binary clock shows Hours, Minutes, [...]

The Pololu 3 servo hexapod

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 12:15pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a great tutorial on how to make a tiny hexapod walker. While this was written specifically for a kit that is sold by pololu, we like the simple layout. You could implement your own electronics if you prefer something else. If you want to follow along with their components, you’ll end up with a [...]

Wii Nunchuk train controls

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 11:08am MST by Jakob Griffith

While we’ve been told all of our lives Wiis and trains just don’t mix, they never said anything about Wii Nunchuks. One terribly abused joke later, [Ken] tipped us off about his Wii Nunchuk controlled train set. By utilizing Digital Command Control (think pulse-width modulation) with an Arduino, he is able to have full control over [...]

Robot waits for no man when recharging

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 9:05am MST by Mike Szczys

Yikes, that power connector certainly wasn’t designed by Apple. Ugly as it may be, it’s the charging cable for a robot and acts as a sensor that allows the robot to properly align and plug into a power receptacle. We’re going to go off on a tangent for just a second. We often think of the [...]

More AVR Tetris

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 8:03am MST by Mike Szczys

[Ben] built an AVR based Tetris game that uses a TV as the display. He linked his project in a comment from the AVR Tetris project featured last week. His work taps the power of his own tvText library to handle the composite video out. Using a TV takes all of the hardware work out [...]

Multichannel music generation for Arduino

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 6:56am MST by Mike Szczys

[Drew] wrote a library for playing multichannel music on an Arduino. The project connects multiple piezo buzzers to the popular prototyping platform and handles the dirty work involved in modulating multiple buzzers at the same time. The video above starts with an explanation for the first three minutes but if you’re impatient you can jump [...]

XBMC on Xbox keeps going and going

Posted: January 18th, 2010, 5:16am MST by Mike Szczys

It’s no secret that XBMC just saw a major release with version 9.11 Camelot. What many don’t know is that development for the X in the name (Xbox) stopped two releases ago. That is to say that Team-XBMC no longer officially develops for the platform because of its inability to handle true-HD and many types [...]

RGB display development

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[SeBsZ] tipped us off that he’s working on a display using RGB LEDs. He’s etched some nice surface mount controller boards to carry the ATmega8 microcontroller and NXP PCA9635 drivers. This setup uses the I2C bus to address each expansion board of 5 LED modules. Theoretically this hardware would allow for 638 RGB modules but [...]

Guerilla theater hits two wheels

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Tom] wanted to take the show on the road so he added lights to his bike using theater grade control hardware. The picture above shows three tail lights comprised of 195 LEDs. Built on perf-board, a DMX512 controller can display several patterns on each module. The lighting technician (bike pilot) controls the patterns through a [...]

CNC brought to you by zip ties

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[lucassiglo21] let us know about his finished 3 axis CNC (Translation via Google). While home CNCs are nothing new, we really liked this masterpiece. The CNC is entirely custom, from the electronic control boards (connected to a PC via parallel port) to the physical mill (with an end result of 30×30x15cm workable area). Our favorite [...]

Editorial: Fear of the Unusual

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by James Munns

As an engineer and as a writer for Hack a Day, I am used to seeing hardware in all kinds of states; from looking professionally done, to artfully constructed, to downright hackish. Unfortunately in today’s society of manufactured goods, most people just don’t have any experience with homemade electronics. Furthermore, because of a frenzied fear of terrorists, [...]

Hackaday links: January 17th, 2010

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

Apple Magic Mouse on Windows Looks like some folks snooped around the latest Bluetooth update from Apple and managed to extract the Magic Mouse drivers. Now you can use them to take this complex peripheral for a spin on Windows. [Thanks Juan] Component jewelry: From geeky to gross [Nikolaus] made a pair of 300k Ohm earrings for his [...]

Free day recap video and book recommendation

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 8:30am MST by Mike Szczys

SparkFun’s free day came and went as entertainment for some and an infuriating event for others. They filmed some video in their office during the madness to give us a look at how it went on their end. We find it amusing that Solarbotics, one of their competitors, sent them flowers [...]

Developing physical controllers for the uninitiated

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Dave] hosted a one day seminar at the Illinois Institute of Technology which focused on rapid electronics prototyping for those with little prior experience blinking those LEDs. As the defacto standard for novice prototypers it’s no surprise that he gave an Arduino to each team to use as the controller-computer interface. He started the day [...]

iPod peripheral: iSee360i hacking

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[James] has done some work reverse engineering the protocols for the iSee360i peripheral. This iPod addon is a media player housing that features a 3.6″ screen. It can be used to play video on iPods that don’t otherwise have the capability because it just uses them as a hard drive. He picked up the device [...]

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Russian billboard includes a “happy ending”

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

It seems someone hacked into one of LED billboards and added porn video clips to the rotation of advertisements. We caught a glimpse before YouTube yanked it. We’ve pixelated the shot above which already had some blackbox censorship from the OP but we assure you, it was hardcore porn. The 9-by-6 meter billboard is in downtown [...]

Wine glass time keeper

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 1:26pm MST by Mike Szczys

We’ve seen a glut of time-keeping projects lately. We guess time was the original motivator for technology so we’re okay with it (but we’re not calling ourselves Clockaday quite yet). This clock, or more appropriately this timer, is a homemade hourglass that [Andrei] put together. The finished look is simple but he put some real [...]

Volt meter clock

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 8:11am MST by Caleb Kraft

The Volt meter clock continues our recent slew of interesting clock projects. Though considerably easier to read than the resistor clock, it is in the same frame of mind. Set up to look like the face of an analog volt meter, it almost looks like something official or scientific. Since [Jon] couldn’t simply drop a [...]

Animatronics reference

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Anyone who is familiar with animatronics or even most robotics knows that almost every build is a hack if you don’t plan on reproducing it. This gallery is to show off the work of [John Nolan]. However, instead of just posting the final product, he has posted several galleries that show, in detail, the internal [...]

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Know your resistors… tell the time

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 1:08pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Darren] built a clock that uses a resistor to display the time. Well, it really uses a model of a resistor. This extremely tardy entry in the Hackaday design challenge houses all of the electronics on a PCB the size of a business card. Four RGB LEDs shine up through holes in the wooden base [...]

Phaser-to-laser mod puts out 465mW

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 12:08pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s another Star Trek phaser toy with a laser added. [Jay] started with a 1994 Star Trek phaser and added a 12X Blu-Ray diode. The sound effects of the toy still work, a nice touch that you can check out in the video after the break. That video shows him popping balloons with the laser, [...]

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AeroQuad – build your own quadcopter

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 11:07am MST by Mike Szczys

It hurts us to look at this quadcopter, agonizingly so when we watch the video after the break. That’s because we feel the unstoppable compulsion to build one. This four-rotor helicopter has a lot to be proud of; it features Gyro stabilization, Xbee remote control for very long distance operation, and computer interface for data [...]

GSM car starter

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 9:33am MST by Mike Szczys

It’s just starting to warm up around here but it was very cold for a long time. We’re not fond of going anywhere when it’s way below freezing but those professional hermit opportunities never panned out so we’re stuck freezing our butts off. Fed up with his frigid auto, [Aaron] installed a remote starter to [...]

A day at the lake for the disabled

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 8:00am MST by Mike Szczys

We do a lot of useless hacks just for the fun of it so when we see something with purpose it’s pretty exciting. This hack turns any kayak into a motorized vessel that can be controlled by a quadriplegic person using a sip & puff interface. After the break you can see some clips of [...]

Home made small form factor LED projector

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 7:02am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Newtonn2] dropped a tip in our inbox this morning that made us quite happy. This is a step by step build of a small form factor LED based projector. While the size may not get some of you too excited at first, those of us who have built projectors before know that home made ones [...]

Spherical and stereoscopic photography

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Ryubin's] experiments with spherical video continue. This time around he’s using two cameras, both with fisheye lenses, to capture 360 degree by 360 degree video. The two cameras mount back to back and each record a 360 degree vertical view in a 180 degree horizontal range. By stitching the two recordings together and synchronizing them [...]

Start the car with a wave of your hand

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Jair2K4] likes his RFID almost as much as he likes his chaw. Ever since his car was stolen he’s had to start it using a screwdriver. Obviously this is not a good way to leave things so he decided to convert his starter to read an RFID tag. He installed an RFID transponder he picked [...]

Engineering with magnetic spheres

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We would imagine these experiments were spawned by a devastatingly boring day at the office. [Sparr] found himself the proud owner of one thousand rare-earth magnets and decided to see what geometric shapes he could build with the spheres. These are gold-plated N35 Neodymium magnets that measure just 6mm across. He discovered that every structure [...]

Hackaday links: January 14th, 2010

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

We saw this home made beekeepers hood posted and actually mistook it for an art piece. We thought it was a Super Mario squid. You can see an example on this image, which is located on a site dedicated to cross stitching video game characters. In an odd coincidence, not related to the 8 bit textiles above, [...]

AVR Tetris

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 9:38am MST by Mike Szczys

Tetris, the timeless classic, is one of those concepts that someone will try to run on every conceivable hardware platform. I took on the challenge of programming a Tetris clone from the ground up using hardware I had on hand. At the heart of the build is an ATmega168 microcontroller. The game displays on a [...]

Google bike hack, quick and dirty

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 8:01am MST by Caleb Kraft

Many of the projects we post are so well thought out and engineered, they could hardly be called “hacks”. This one, however, falls neatly into the hack category. [Dave] wanted his very own exercise bike hooked to Google maps. Instead of setting up a control system and writing software to control Google maps, he simply hacked a USB game [...]

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ProtoDeck – MIDIBOX based controller

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 6:12am MST by Jakob Griffith

[Julien] let us know about his ProtoDeck. A MIDIBOX based controller for Ableton Live using a Big Max for live patch interface. One thing that we have seen is less and less hacks for are MIDIbox projects. It is no wonder, considering now a days we have touch screen and multiple other interfaces and sound creation [...]

Tricking an iPod into trusting your dock

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Thijs] has an iPod dock with an LCD display in it that allows you to watch videos without having to squint quite as much. Unfortunately, the iPod classic wouldn’t play videos on it because it’s not an Apple approved product. He figured out that an authentication chip is included in docks and cables that Apple [...]

MythNetVision to cure borked MythTV hacks

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Enclosure: [download]

Another group of developers has stepped up to the plate in the never-ending attempt to integrate online streaming video with MythTV. The new plugin is called MythNetVision and aims to bring streaming and downloading video functionality both easily and legally. That means without violating the terms of service of the providing website. We’ve seen so many [...]

Bike controller for Xbox 360

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 12:02pm MST by Mike Szczys

ProjectExciteBike is on its second iteration of an exercise bike controller for Xbox 360. The controller takes pedal input from the cranks of the exercise bike. The sensing is handled by a ring of five hall effect sensors that detect a passing magnet attached to the crank. The sensor data is collected and processed by [...]

Vacuum tube tesla coil

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 11:02am MST by Caleb Kraft

[xellers] may have been in 8th grade when he built this vacuum tube tesla coil, but he did a fantastic job. Unlike most of the tesla coils we have shown, this one doesn’t use a high current transformer from a neon sign. Instead, he’s gone the direction of vacuum tubes. He spent a total of [...]

LEGO router case bests factory finish

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

Stare at [Luke's] LEGO router case; STARE AT IT! The router is nothing special, a WRT54GL that is fun to hack. We’ve seen it used as a robot, turned into a war driving box, and obviously this is where dd-wrt custom firmware started. [Luke] designed the case in MLCAD and found a seller for the parts [...]

Neon lamp and other crazy clocks

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Jakob Griffith

Enclosure: [download]

Quick quiz, what came before transistors? Why vacuum tubes of course. If this clock doesn’t make you thankful for the luxury of integrated circuits, nothing will. We had never heard of using Neon Lamps as logic circuits, and they definitely produce a much cooler effect when counting. [Thanks Philippe] And finally, we’re just suckers for a good Nixie [...]

Cubicle-dwellers rewarded for reflexes

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 7:15am MST by Mike Szczys

[StudioJooj] is trying to torture or test his colleagues in his office. A lot of folks leave a candy jar on their desks for all to enjoy but he’s making his friends work for their reward. Like cubicle-dwelling lab subjects, they must successfully navigate his maze to be rewarded with chocolate. The game piece is [...]

Makita battery pack repair

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Rob] grew tired of his Makita power tool battery packs dying so he figured out how to repair them himself. The video after the break walks us through the process which starts by cracking open the case. Inside there is a controller board and a battery of ten cells. [Rob] has pinpointed these battery failures [...]

Bike trainer computer: Speed, Cadence, Heartrate, Trainer temp

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Kurt] was using a bike trainer to get in shape for warmer and dryer biking months. Unfortunately it’s pretty hard to train if you don’t have reliable data concerning how hard you’re working. There’s commercial solutions for trainer computers but he’d read some rough reviews about them and decided to build his own trainer computer. [...]

How To: Make a Printable CES Badge

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Devlin Thyne

We figured we put you through enough posts about our CES badges without telling you how we did it or how to get one. This how-to will walk through the process of creating a badge from a dxf file for a logo. Then we will tell you where to get one. To start with, you will [...]

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Don’t put that EPROM in your mouth!

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 10:53am MST by Mike Szczys

[Jeremy] had some chips on hand that included EPROM. We’re not talking about EEPROM, we mean EPROM that need a UV light source to erase. Most people don’t want to drop a few hundred dollars on a dedicated EPROM eraser, there must be another way. Boy, EPROM really suck. But so do pacifiers and he already [...]

Stroke to unlock

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 9:32am MST by Mike Szczys

If you’re into embedded clothing this stroke sensor is for you. As demonstrated in the video after the break, stroking the threads in a particular direction will create a circuit that senses and, in this case, turns on an LED. The concept uses two conductive buses on the back of a piece of neoprene. Conductive [...]

Arduinome with many pots

Posted: January 12th, 2010, 5:35am MST by Mike Szczys

[Aggaz] added 16 potentiometers to his Arduinome.The Arduinome is a monome clone based around the Arduino as a microprocessor. We seen some Arduinome builds in the past but [Aggaz's] work augments the physical interface. Potentiometers used in circuit bending allow for manipulation of the sounds coming out of the circuits. In this case the pots are [...]

Weather clock

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 4:35pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Sean_Carney] build this clock that tells the weather instead of the time. The two hands display the current conditions and the temperature. Forty below zero seems amazingly cold if you’re on the Fahrenheit scale but [Sean's] from Winnipeg so he’s operating on the Celsius side of things. Two servos move the hands to match the data [...]

Amazing chassis hacks

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 3:34pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Crabfu] pulled off some great chassis work on top of a remote control drivetrain. His most recent build turns the tiny traveler into a lunar rover complete with passenger and a communications array. For this he’s sourced the parts from a toy but boosted the realism with hand-painted details that leave us in awe. His [...]

Steampunk Nixie clock

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

This single-digit Nixie clock is a thing of beauty. You might hate Steampunk or you might love it, but you have to respect projects where the design gets equal (or more) consideration compared to the function. The electronics used in the project build upon an existing single Nixie design. Instead of hiding the guts inside [...]

Kodak digital frame vulnerability

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Kodak managed to release a product with a big fat security vulnerability. [Casey] figured out that the Kodak W820 WiFi capable digital frame can be hijacked for dubious purposes. The frame can add Internet content as widgets; things like Facebook status, tweets, and pictures. The problem is that the widgets are based on a feed [...]

LEGO robot lays dominoes not eggs

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Mattias] brings the awesome once more with his LEGO robot that sets up dominoes. You’ll remember his work from the wooden keyboard case and the mechanical binary adder. This time around he’s still exercising those woodworking skills by making his own domino tiles, but it’s the robot that makes this interesting. In the must-see video [...]

CES: Guts Guts Guts

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 10:11am MST by Caleb Kraft

We knew going into CES that we had to find some pictures of guts. It didn’t matter what it was, if there were guts showing, we snapped a picture. We were a little let down that the guts we found were basically consumer goods like cameras, TVs, and tons of amplifiers. The amplifier guts were [...]

194 Transistor Clock will blow your mind

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 8:37am MST by Jakob Griffith

It’s nice to have tip put on our desks that we think everyone, yes everyone can enjoy. The Transistor Clock is just as its name implies, A clock that doesn’t rely on ICs. 194 Transistors, 400 resistors, 566 diodes, and 87 capacitors are all that makes this clock tick – no programing, and most importantly [...]

Cold climate solar water heater

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 7:35am MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s a solar water heater setup that augments your home’s water heater instead of replacing it. The system monitors a solar collector panel on the roof for temperature. If the temperature is warm enough, a photo voltaic cell powered pump circulates cold water through the system. The heated water returns to the top of the [...]

Fujifilm 3D Camera

Posted: January 10th, 2010, 3:16pm MST by James Munns

There have been a couple companies that have shown off full-sized 3D displays, but Fujifilm had a couple of products that caught my eye. The first was a stereoscopic camera called the Finepix Real 3D W1 that not only functioned as a 3D Camera, but also featured a glasses-free 3D display on the back. The [...]

CES Update: Atmega128RFA1

Posted: January 10th, 2010, 1:17pm MST by Devlin Thyne

After posting about our visit and interview with [Vemund], the Atmel rep at CES. We got the feeling you needed to know some more. The thing that has got us pretty excited is the ATmega128RFA1(pdf) single-chip microcontroller and Zigbee radio module. It can be found in the ATmegaRFA1-EK1 development board. We look forward to seeing [...]

CES: HackaDay Fans

Posted: January 10th, 2010, 12:31pm MST by James Munns

Sure, we’ve talked about some internet celebrity fans, but we also met a lot of great fans around the show and at events we’ve covered. In the future, we are looking to cover more live events and cons, as well as starting coverage of hackerspaces. Keep an eye out at your local hacking event for the [...]

CES: Caleb gets Tased

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 3:39pm MST by Nick Caiello

As were wandering around South Hall, we just so happened to stumble upon Taser International’s booth. Being the adventurous guy that he is, [Caleb] decided to volunteer to get tased. Not being able to pass up such a great opportunity, we instantly broke out our cameras and recorded the video above. Enjoy, we know we [...]

CES: Augmented Reality

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 2:30pm MST by James Munns

I got my hands on a set of augmented reality glasses that were displayed with a Monkey-Ball style game. This wasnt anything too new as far as the augmented reality goes, however the glasses that were used with the game featured stereo cameras on the center of the outside of the lens, which allowed a [...]

CES: HackaDay interviews ATMEL

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by James Munns

We got to talk to an ATMEL representative showing off the RZ600 Zigbee system for AVR systems. The system was also displaying the QTouch slider and wheel devices, all combined to create a wireless controller for a tetris game running on the development board. It was great to talk to a representative with a lot [...]

CES Update: CES Badges

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 1:30pm MST by Devlin Thyne

In a previous post we had given one of our badges out to [Bre Pettis] at the MakerBot booth. We have been called the “Skull Guys” around CES and were stopped multiple times by people that did not know of this site. [Bre] got an extra of the size we are wearing around. [Leo Laporte] [...]

CES: 3d laser projection system

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

We really really wanted to see this system. It supposedly created a 3D projection in the air. They didn’t have a system on the floor, but invited us to their hotel room for a private showing. We did manage to find the room and were welcomed in to the sight of a smaller unit that made [...]

CES: Famous People at CES

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 12:38pm MST by James Munns

So far, HackaDay has managed to find a couple recognizable faces, so we thought we would share.

CES: Haier Wireless TV

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 12:30pm MST by James Munns

We received a couple requests via email to get a look at Haier’s wireless TV. They used both wireless power and WHDI to show off a zero wire concept. Sure, the giant 2001: A Space Odyssey looking monolith behind it is a bit imposing, but for something that could be embedded into a wall, we’re pretty impressed. [...]

CES: Glove input

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 11:48am MST by Caleb Kraft

The peregrine looks like it could actually be a useful tool. We’ve seen several people make glove input devices over the years and this looks like a quick and easy way to get one going. It touts over 30 touch points that are user programmable. Really, it works more like a keyboard wrapped around your [...]

CES: Day 2 Recap

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 11:18am MST by James Munns

Greetings from CES day 2!

CES: 3d tv, without glasses

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 10:27am MST by Caleb Kraft

We were hoping to get to test drive some of the 3d televisions that don’t need glasses. We had speculated about how they worked, and we were mostly right. It appears to be some type of lens that works similar to those little printed holograms. The strange thing is that we haven’t seen any of these TVs [...]

Ask a winner…

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 7:00am MST by Jakob Griffith

We’ve been given the honor of interviewing each team from the Nokia N900 PUSH competition one on one. However, rather than be selfish, we thought it would be fun and informative if the readers got to ask the teams some questions too. Just post your question in a comment and we will be sure to ask. Avoid [...]

CES: Meet the Mini Hexapodinno

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 11:50pm MST by Nick Caiello

While we were browsing around the show floor, we saw a pretty cool little robot called the Mini Hexapodinno. As the name suggests, it’s a hexapod robot that utilizes sonar and can be programmed using BASIC. Although its not as cool as some of the other robots that we’ve seen, we still have a special [...]

CES: Keepon keeps on

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 6:55pm MST by Caleb Kraft

We could not walk past KeepOn without checking it out. Not only did we get to check it out, we got to control it. [Caleb] picked up a wiimote and started tapping out a beat and KeepOn started dancing. It was as adorable in person as it is in the videos. We think it is [...]

CES: Pleo shows its guts.

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 6:33pm MST by James Munns

We reported that Pleo was given a second chance a while back, but it was great to see it in person. We got to pet a stock one, and it seemed very responsive like we’ve heard, and turned its head whenever it was pet, but as hackers, we enjoyed seeing it with the skin ripped [...]

CES: Hack a Day meets Revision3

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 6:20pm MST by James Munns

We managed to spot some of the Revision3 team at CES, and its good to know that we have fans in high places! We took this shot with [Caleb], [Patrick Norton], [James], and [Veronica Belmont]. Unfortunately [Roger Chang] was a little camera shy, so he took the photo for us. Hi-Res Shot is available, as [...]

CES: Laser instrument

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 6:20pm MST by Caleb Kraft

This instrument caught our eye. It is a Laser device that looked like it could do midi input of some type. We played a little bit, but really weren’t too impressed. You know why? We’ve seen better. [James] – Way to be hackers.

CES Update: MakerBot Gets a Badge

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 4:14pm MST by Devlin Thyne

We visited the MakerBot Industries booth to give them one of our badges (post pending), say what’s up and meet the creators behind the creators of our lapel-sticking creations. They were excited to see us, so excited in fact that they gave us a small spool of the PLA they are about to carry in [...]

CES Update: A Visit to the Zigbee Booth

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 1:11pm MST by Devlin Thyne

We visited the Zigbee Alliance booth yesterday and talked to Atmel and TI reps. The very knowledgeable Atmel rep showed us a new development kit for Zigbee radios and gave us some of these modules above. We will be getting more information about this kit later on. The TI rep pointed us to the TI [...]

Beginner Concepts: Binary-coded decimal

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

A rudimentary understanding of digital logic and simple integrated circuits is critical if you’re ever going to pull off some really gnarly hacks. [Daniel] put together an explanation about the use of 4511 BCD 7-segment drivers. These chips take binary data in and output decimal data to a 7-segment LED display. In short, they can [...]

CES: update Friday Jan8, 2010

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 12:58pm MST by Caleb Kraft

[Nick] finally made it in, we got some sleep and we’re ready to rock and roll. We are now all officially wearing our custom 3d printed badge holder (stay tuned for more on that). We finally got our twitter feed sorted and intend to be posting updates there as well on small things and locations. [...]

CES: PS3 Gun Controller

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 12:42pm MST by James Munns

Yesterday we spotted a PS3 gun controller at the CTA Gaming Accessories booth. We have covered home made solutions like this before, like the WeeP5 zapper, and it is great to see alternative controllers spreading to other consoles. Now all we need is some force feedback, and we’ll really be able to feel in the [...]

CES: Parrot AR Drone update

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 12:08pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a small update on the AR Drone from Parrot. We finally got this video uploaded. It isn’t anything fantastic, but you get a good view of the board on the bottom of the device. You can clearly see a tiny camera in the middle and what looks like sonar range finders toward the front [...]

CES multitouch

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

Here, [Devlin] can be seen playing with a multitouch setup. We inspected it and found 4 lasers, located in the corners. We are pretty sure we have seen this exact setup before. There wasn’t really much of a booth there, so we played with the TV and then kept moving. We also ran into a reader [...]

CES Update: x86 Processor Module in a DIP

Posted: January 8th, 2010, 9:55am MST by Devlin Thyne

While walking through the halls of CES yesterday, we came across this one booth that had a bunch of cool stuff, like a robotic hand. [iCOP] makes a cool set of x86 processor modules with dual 0.100″ spaced headers. This allows for easy prototyping on a breadboard so you can quickly put together your latest [...]

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CES: Parrot’s AR Drone

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 10:53pm MST by Caleb Kraft

We hadn’t been here long when we stumbled upon the Drone tent. The AR Drone is a wifi controlled quadcopter that has been making waves recently. We actually got to play with one a little bit. Well, sort of. There was too much interference inside for us to fly it manually, but we did smack [...]

CES: RoBoard Robotic Hand

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 6:57pm MST by James Munns

Today while walking around the booths, we saw a robot hand sitting out with a couple of exposed boards. This of course attracted our attention, and we thought we would share. The hand is based on a RoBoard Vortex86DX board, which is an x86 control board. We even got the pinouts and datasheets, and we will post [...]

CES: USB 3.0 Behind the scenes

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 6:24pm MST by James Munns

We know a couple of you have been asking about the tech behind the show, and we managed to spot an FPGA (in this case, the Xilinx Virtex 5) serving as the core of a demo between two SuperSpeed USB Solid State drives. It was used as both a USB 3.0 hub, as well as [...]

2-axis motion timelapse photography

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Milapse] picked up a motorized telescope base a few years ago. He’s using it to add motion to time-lapse photography. The base provides two-axis rotation controlled with a handheld keypad. Custom firmware and a bit of software allow for computer control. [Milapse] is pretty well-known in the time-lapse photography circles of the Inter-web. He’s posted [...]

Suska open source Atari ST

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Got a special place in your heart for Atari computing? Now you can quench that need using new hardware. The Suska project has achieved complete hardware emulation of the Atari ST using an FPGA. The project’s progress tracker shows implementation of the major chips at 100%. They are running EmuTOS, an Atari emulator, as the [...]

CES update: We made it!

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 1:07pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Left to right [Caleb], [James], [Devlin]. We made it! We have barely gotten our feet wet, but already got to play with some cool toys. Expect some video soon.

Spy on your office

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[Garagedeveloper] sent us his custom surveillance system, part 1, part 2, and part 3 after needing a way to find out why some cables at work were becoming unplugged (spoiler, the cleaners were messing up the wiring). At the base of the system is a web cam glued to a stepper motor. However, it gets [...]

Version control for Eagle

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 12:11pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Jeff] set up version control for Eagle libraries and projects. He mentions that Eagle has become the standard for open source hardware projects and he’s absolutely right. We use it for our projects, and we’ve grown to expect that the posts we feature have Eagle files available in most cases. But Eagle falls short in its [...]

Fun Theory grant is 25k for a fun project

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

First the bad news, it’s too late for you to apply for this grant. The good news is that you can vote for the projects you think deserve money to do some good. The Fun Theory is the group that produced the musical subway stairs and the bottle bank arcade. Now they’ve put out the call [...]

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SparkFun’s Free Day is nearly upon us…

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 8:50am MST by Nick Caiello

As I’m sure many of you already now, today is January 7th. While that might not have any real significance normally, today this means that our favorite hobby supplier, SparkFun, is giving away up to $100,000 of electronic goodness. We know we have our shopping carts filled to the brim, and we’re sure that most [...]

Max/MSP accelerometer beat control

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 8:08am MST by Jakob Griffith

let us know about his Max/MSP Controller. Inside the device is an ADXL 335 accelerometer and 6 push buttons wired to an Arduino. The input data is sent to Max MSP, a sequencer controlling 5 audio tracks, correlating to 5 of the buttons. The 6th button controls delay. What we really liked was how [...]

Pong, for real

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Over at EvilMadScientistLaboratories.com they’ve asked a question that many of us have never thought to ask. What exactly is Pong supposed to be? Instead of assuming it was ping pong like the rest of us, they decided to build a literal physical interpretation. They may have taken some liberty, using solenoids as the paddles, but [...]

Reverse engineering the Telly Terminator

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Oliver] received the Telly Terminator as a gift and decided to take a closer look at it. This key fob has two buttons; one shines an LED like a flashlight and the other turns off televisions. Sound familiar? Yeah, it made [Oliver] think of the TV-B-Gone as well. He cracked open the case to find just [...]

CES update: January 6th, 2010

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 12:48pm MST by James Munns

It’s just about time for CES (as we’ve mentioned once or twice), so we thought we would update you on our latest goals and ideas for the show. This year [Caleb Kraft], [Nick Caiello], [James Munns], [Devlin Thyne], and [Brett Haddock] will be covering CES. We are currently looking for some good places to go if we [...]

Pulse Oximeter

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 11:25am MST by Mike Szczys

[Mike] is building his own Pulse Oximeter which uses light to measure the oxygen saturation in blood. One collateral benefit of this measurement is that pulse rate can be calculated from the same data. The parts used for the detector include a red LED, infrared LED, and a TSL230R light intensity measuring chip. As explained [...]

Update: more pink wireless-terminal hacking

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Dave] poked around inside of an IM-ME wireless toy and compiled his findings. He read about the device when we covered it in November and picked up a couple to see what he could do. He patched into the debug port in the CC1110 processor and enabled it by performing a chip erase. He then [...]

Arduino I/O Speed Breakdown

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 7:32am MST by Devlin Thyne

[Jee Labs] has worked out how long it takes for an Arduino to perform various I/O operations. Predictably, analogRead() takes the longest, followed by analogWrite(). Arduino really falls behind when it comes to digital pin I/O: digitalWrite() takes a whopping fifty times longer than a direct bit write to a port register! This is something [...]

CES update: January 5, 2010

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 1:57pm MST by Caleb Kraft

As you already know, we’ll be attending CES this year. We’re still looking for ideas on what you, our loyal readers, want to see. We’ve gotten some good feedback, and came up with some ideas of our own. Keep sending in your ideas. Remember, it doesn’t even have to do with CES. Are there any [...]

RepRap acrylic extrusion using hotbed

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Nophead] started the year off by successfully extruding acrylic using a RepRap machine. The problem when working with this material is that when the hot ooze hits the cold air the printed material tends to warp, badly. [Nophead] raised the ambient air temperature around the part being extruded by replacing the bed of the RepRap [...]

Generate electricity with a candle

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

What you see above is a generator that converts heat to electricity. [Reukpower's] thermoelectric lamp is one of those hacks that makes you scratch your head even though you understand why it should work. The heart of the system uses a Peltier cool, just like the thermoelectric solar generator. When there is a temperature differential [...]

Record player display sans POV

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

At first glance we thought this record player had been modified to serve as a persistence of vision device. The device looks very much like an unmodified turntable but it has four tracks worth of display space in it. The messages are actually glowing and don’t depend on a POV effect. Instead, the table has [...]

Missile hack taunts your cat

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Atlantageek] sent in a missile launcher project that he threw together. For Christmas he received a Chumby One and a ThinkGeek USB Rocket Launcher as gifts (lucky dog). Neither of these toys are “played with” in the traditional sense as much as they become centerpieces of your next hack. In that spirit, [Atlantageek] immediately wrote [...]

Arduino traffic light

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Rockwell] sent us an update on his traffic light hacking. Dedicated readers will remember seeing this legally attained traffic signal controlled through a parallel port from back in 2005. The new update swaps the old port for USB and adds several autonomous functions which are demonstrated in the clip after the break. The update includes [...]

Nokia PUSH competition update

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 7:42am MST by Jakob Griffith

A couple of readers weren’t too thrilled when the winners were announced a while back for the Nokia N900 competition. And to be honest, we even wondered on some ideas (like what does skateboarding have to do with hacking?) However, The teams have been hard at work and a picture video is starting to form [...]

360 degree video for next-to-nothing

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Luis], a regular Hackaday reader, sent in some info about his 360 degree video experiments. He wanted a cheap device to use with a video camera, producing video that can be displayed using a free Flash software library. The hardware consists of a mirrored light bulb, a square of glass, and some threaded rod. The camera [...]

Double clutch transmission model

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Alan] did an extraordinary job building a computer controlled model gearbox. His project from several years back is based on a dual-clutch Direct Shift Gearbox that was developed for VW and Audi vehicles. His design uses a gear head motor to provide the locomotion to this transmission. Shifting is computer controlled through serial cable, with [...]

NES RAM Replacement

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 12:50pm MST by Devlin Thyne

[Spatula Tzar] Turned on her NES one day to find it no longer working. Off went the case and out came the oscilloscope. After probing around for a bit, she found that one of the RAM chips was very hot. She hot aired off the bad chip implementing an “Impenetrable Aluminum Heat Shield of Science” [...]

Step-a-sketch

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 11:08am MST by Mike Szczys

[Chris] is getting his feet wet with Computer Numerical Control starting with an Etch-a-Sketch interface. This is a great way to start out because the really tough parts of the project are already inside of the toy. He’s replaced the two white knobs with stepper motors and connected them through a mosfet network to a [...]

TOBI the tool bot

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 9:30am MST by Caleb Kraft

[TheGrue] has put together this great writeup on how he built TOBI, the tool carrying robot. Inspired by a story he read about a robot that could follow people around, using heat sensors, he decided he wanted to do something similar. His robot would carry his tools, in this case, the tools of an IT [...]

BT phone is much more than retrofit

Posted: January 4th, 2010, 8:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Santiago] turned his Ericfon into a Bluetooth phone. This is completely different from the handset retrofits we looked at last month. This is because he didn’t simply crack open a BT headset and cram it into his phone. He developed his own hardware for full functionality. This is an open source project with available hardware details [...]

Laser-cut puzzle box

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

One of our fondest memories from the 1980’s is watching Magnum P.I. on television. Higgins, Magnum’s employer, had a puzzle box that Magnum could never figure out how to open. Now you can laser cut a puzzle box for yourself and recreate some scenes from television’s glory days. The design for the box pictured above is [...]

Powder coating at home

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[j_tenkely] wanted to do his own powder coat painting at home so he built everything he needed, including a coating booth and baking oven. The oven is double walled and built around a frame of steel building studs. Electric oven elements are controlled by a digital control panel and thermostat. A spray booth is fashioned from [...]

Qube, not an Arduino clone

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

What allows the everyday user to tinker with microcontrollers, IO, interrupts, serial communication, and even analog readings? How about individual modules that add the ability to communicate over bluetooth or add LCD support? If you were thinking Arduino, you would be wrong. It’s actually [Nilok's] Qube, which at first seems like another Arduino clone however [...]

RFID emulator

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Alexander] built an RFID emulator. It uses a wire coil (not pictured here) and an ATmega8 to represent any tag that is EM4001 compliant. This iteration requires connection to a computer to send the tag ID information to the microcontroller. In the video after the break it looks like he’s using a DIY RFID reader [...]

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Arduino security with frickin’ laser

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[over9k] used his Arduino to set up a laser trip wire. The laser is mounted along side the Arduino, reflects off of a mirror, and shines on a photoresistor that interfaces via a voltage divider. The signal from the voltage divider is monitored for a change when the laser beam is broken. [over9k] set things [...]

Arduino Headed for One Point Oh

Posted: January 2nd, 2010, 11:00am MST by Devlin Thyne

In a recent blog post, [Massimo] stated that there will be some stabilizing changes coming for the Arduino platform. The API, IDE, and even the website are targets for the Arduino team’s New Year’s resolutions to bring Arduino to 1.0. This platform is often seen at the core of projects we cover and many that [...]

9 most popular of 2009

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 3:17pm MST by Mike Szczys

Happy New Year and happy hacking to all. We had a great time last year exploring the creativity in the hacks that make the Internet a better place. Below you’ll find the nine most popular posts of the year here at Hackaday. Now’s the time to get working on that great project you’ve had in [...]

More CNC goodness

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[Jerry] retrofitted a Supermax Mill that he purchased from a friend. The main problem consisted of the original controller failing so he used some Pixie boards and a PC to get the system back up and running. But thats not all. [Jerry] also retrofitted his Monarch lathe (yes, not a CNC, but are you really going [...]

Lighting Rod: keeps you safe from dirty Flashers

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

A new open source package called Lightning Rod will help to close security exploits in Adobe’s dirty Flash code. A presentation made at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress showed that the package does its job by reviewing incoming code before the browser executes it. Heise Online is reporting that this method can block over 20 [...]

FPGA keyboard synthesizer

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

This synthesizer relies solely on an FPGA for key detection and sound synthesis. [Chris] and [Joe] built it for their final project at Cornell. The hardware implementation includes velocity sensing for the keys. While at rest, each key contacts a strip of copper foil. A matching strip of foil contacts the key when it is [...]

Old equipment repository

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Swake] tipped us off about a collection of old equipment. The site is packed full of various hardware that was used for electrical and chemical testing, metering, and experimentation. You could use this to identify the dinosaurs found in backrooms of college science departments, or draw inspiration from it. The next time you’re laying out [...]

Hey man, you seen my turntable around here?

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 10:13am MST by Mike Szczys

It’s all fine and dandy to have a turntable that sounds great, but [Mike] wanted one that looks great too. He build the transparent record player above and loved it for a little while. When his interest in it waned he built another, then several more. They all have some element of transparency to them, [...]

Making a rail gun (again!)

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 8:00am MST by Jakob Griffith

[Rp181] is at it again with version 2 of his rail gun project. The original did have some power with 18 400V 3900uf capacitors, but he’s ramped it up to now using 40! Reaching more than double the amount of joules of energy, 12kJ vs. the 5.6kJ! Some other changes include a new injector solenoid [...]

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