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CNC plotter from old parts

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 5:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Get a quick fix of CNC for the day with this plotter. [Francisco Dulanto] grabbed the cartridge carriage from an old inkjet printer and turned it into a gantry by mounting it on two drawer sliders. The optical head assembly from a cd-rom provides the Z-axis movement with the whole thing controlled by three RepRap [...]

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Sony removes PS3 Linux support with an update… errrrr, downgrade?

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Sony is rolling out a firmware update for the PS3 on April 1 but we’re pretty sure it’s not a joke. What we’re not sure about is that you can call it an update. It removes features rather than fixing or adding them. In this case, it is removing the “Install Other OS” option that [...]

Home fabricated boards in any color

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:21pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Tired of every printed circuit board you etch coming out brown? Take a page out of [Dane's] book and dye your PCB to just about any color you want. One hour submerged in a 200 degree bath of Rit dye turned his brown FR4 substrate to the desired dark green. We give him points for [...]

Update: 50MHz to 100Mhz scope conversion

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 1:12pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Changing this 50MHz Rigol oscilloscope into its larger, more expensive brother just became quite a bit easier. When we originally looked at this hack it required pulling some capacitors off of the board. Now all it takes is three commands over a serial terminal connection. Take a look at the walk through video after the break. [...]

What input device? Just use your arm

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 7:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

This one could be a game changer. [Chris Harrison] and a team of researchers are showing off a method of using your arm as an input device. An arm band worn by the user picks up acoustic signatures created by tapping on your arm with the other hand, or taping your fingers and thumb together [...]

ZeroPlus logic cube modification

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 1:51pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

the folks over at OpenSchemes are at it again. This time they’ve cracked open a low end ZerPlus logic analyzer and modified it to function the same as the higher end model. The 16 channel version they purchased appeared to be fully capable of handling the 32 channels of the more expensive model. The installation [...]

CNC egg decorating

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 11:14am MDT by Mike Szczys

Lacking the patience to do it by hand, GeekPhysical built a CNC machine to decorate Easter eggs. We do mean eggs from chickens used to celebrate the Christian holiday of Easter, not hidden nuggets in technology used to amuse geeks. The results seen in their video (after the break) are quite impressive considering that the [...]

Nixie tachometer

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

A Nixie tachometer is new to us. We’ve seen tons of various displays, but not a tachometer. After having extensive annoyances with the factory ignition timing system in his totally awesome Holden Gemini, [Brett] installed a MegaJolt electronic ignition system. To top things off and add that extra bit of flair, he built a nixie [...]

(the) FIRST Robotics competition

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

What weighs 120 pounds, can fly at you near 20mph, score soccer balls, climb 90inch tall towers and more all while remotely controlled? If you said a robot from this years FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, competition congrats you’ve won one internet. This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (March 25-27 respectively) the [...]

Analog tape playing glove

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 7:19am MDT by Mike Szczys

The magnetic tape found in audio cassettes can be fun to play with. This installation, called Signal to Noise, relocates the heads from cassette players to the tips of your fingers in the form of a glove. An accompanying wall has vertical strips of tape which you run your fingertips along in order to play [...]

Add USB playback to some European LG televisions

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 5:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s a pretty simple hack to enable playback from a USB drive on LG televisions. It only works on European hardware, the LH, LF, and some LU models. The hack consists of downgrading the firmware to version 3.15, then navigating through some service menus. It’s not quite as hardcore as the Samsung firmware hacking, but the [...]

DTMF and SelCall signal generator

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 3:12pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rogal] wrote a cell phone application called ToneTool that generates audio tone sequences. It can be used to output DTMF and SelCall sequences which are used by telephone systems and radio-telecommunication hardware. The software is written in J2ME so if you have a cell phone that can run Java apps it will probably work for [...]

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Microchip’s PIC development for iPhone and iPod

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 12:57pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It seems a bit late to the party, but Microchip has just announced a family of PIC development boards for Apple products. The three offerings include a digital audio development kit, 8-bit accessory development and charging kit, and a 16-bit accessory development and charging kit for iPhone or iPod. We’ve seen a lot of homebrew Apple [...]

Trash heap projector

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Being hackers, sometimes we just want to hack something together, not engineer it. This projector is a great example. Made mostly out of cardboard and duct tape (or duck tape if you prefer). He picked up a 12v LED array, a cheap fresnel lens, an LCD from a “back up monitor” and a focusing lens [...]

Flash animations on Peggy2.0

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 8:26am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The LED display toy known as the Peggy2.0 just keeps getting cooler and cooler. [Leonard] is now sharing with us how we can stream flash animations to one. It requires some Java and an Arduino, but the final effect is quite fluid and responsive. We’ve seen the Peggy grow from basically an electronic litebright to [...]

Leapfrog DIDJ

Posted: March 28th, 2010, 11:00pm MDT by James Munns

Since we first mentioned the Leapfrog DIDJ, a lot has happened. A number of avid readers of Hack a Day teamed up with a couple hackers experienced with the DIDJ, and have managed to make some huge progress into making a linux based game console on the cheap. For all the readers who missed out [...]

Guitar echo pedal built with mbed

Posted: March 28th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Vsergeev] built an echo pedal for a guitar or with other audio manipulation applications. He used an mbed microcontroller for the project. You may remember Hackaday writer [Phil] labeling the mbed an ‘Arduino on steroids’, and it certainly handles this audio processing quite well. We’ve included a clip of the echo effect after the break. [...]

Hackaday links: March 28, 2010

Posted: March 28th, 2010, 10:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

Cardboard record player [Yen] tipped us off about this cardboard record player. It’s a marketing tool that you receive in the mail. Inside the cardboard packaging is a record and the packaging itself can be folded into a player. Hackable handheld The NanoNote is a tiny handheld housing a lot of power for a small price. It ships [...]

Automated rain barrel watering system

Posted: March 27th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Dmritard96] built this automated watering system to keep his garden growing while he’s out-of-town. It uses rain barrels, which capture and store rainwater, as a source. These barrels provide very low water pressure so he’s added a battery-powered pump along with a solar array for recharging. Don’t worry, if the rain barrels run dry there’s [...]

Swapping coins cells for capacitors for noise filtering

Posted: March 27th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s an interesting idea: replace a disposable coin cell battery with a capacitor in order to filter the noise from an external power supply. [David Cook] is taking advantage of the falling costs of digital calipers. He’s mounted one on his milling machine but noticed that with an external power supply the readings would sometimes [...]

Beginner concepts: LPT instead of uC

Posted: March 27th, 2010, 9:41am MDT by Mike Szczys

We see it all the time, a post based on an Arduino board with multiple comments calling it overkill. How exactly should you control your homemade peripherals if you’re not using a microcontroller (uC)? [JKAbrams] and [Tim Gremalm] answered that question with this printer port (LPT) adapter. They wanted an indicator light when someone in [...]

Turing machine a masterpiece of craftsmanship

Posted: March 27th, 2010, 9:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

Everything about this Turing machine is absolutely brilliant. A Turing machine uses a strip of material to record, calculate, and change data. [Mike Davey] built this one using servo motors, a Parallax Propeller, felt-tipped pen, and 1000 feet of film leader. The machine writes characters to the leader, reads them using a grayscale camera, and [...]

8-bit game console with wireless motion controller

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Luis Cruz] built a gaming console with motion control. The circuit above connects via composite video to a television and communicates with a wireless controller. The controller is on a smaller breadboard which includes an accelerometer for the input and the infrared circuitry necessary for wireless data transmission back to the home system. Take a [...]

LEGO automatons

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 12:39pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s a collection of little LEGO oddities. Some of them exhibit a purpose, such as this interesting take on a line-following robot. Others, like the four seen above, are just automatons built to bring a smile to your face through their motion. There are dozens to choose from, with several pictures and a video of [...]

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That’s a big flashlight

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Going camping? You’ll need an extra backpack to carry this flashlight along the way. On the business end you’ll find 500 five millimeter super-bright white LEDs, on the opposite end there’s ten times the number of controls you’d expect on a flashlight. At full power, the LED array pulls down 50 Watts, making us question [...]

Heated aluminum bed for MakerBot

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 9:28am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Keith] built this aluminum-plate heated build stage for his MakerBot 3D printer. We just saw a different MakerBot heated build stage yesterday that relied on glass as the printing surface. Keith’s design is similar to the aluminum RepRap bed but scaled down for the MakerBot. He had a piece of aluminum machined the to correct [...]

Lawnbot 400: an update to an update

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 8:30am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Driven by the relentless nagging encouragement of the Hackaday commenters, [Johndavid400] has improved the Lawnbot 400. No longer does it just sport a makeshift wooden shelf. he now has a wheel barrow attachment. It looks quite sturdy as long as that front hinge holds out. There is an actuator coming in the near future for [...]

Robots from dolls

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 7:13am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here at Hackaday, we may be somewhat divided in our opinions of Anime and Manga. We were all pretty impressed by this robot build(translated) though. We’re not totally clear on who actually did this build, but we can see a few pictures and a video on the site. The original doll looks to be roughly [...]

Lawnbot400 saves wheelbarrow trips

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 1:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We may be good at soldering but when it comes to hauling topsoil our scrawny arms quiver. [Johndavid400] did the smart thing here by letting the machine do all the work. Instead of hauling an entire truckload of dirt across the yard one wheelbarrow at a time, he built a shelf on the top of [...]

Heated MakerBot build stage

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This heated build stage seeks to make 3D printing with the MakerBot a little easier. When hot ABS or PLA meet the cold, cruel world they have a tendency to warp. This was concern for [Devlin Thyne] when he was developing our Hackaday badges. What you see above is 10 Ohm nichrome embedded in clear [...]

Polaroid instant film, reborn.

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 9:15am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The impossible has happened. While that may sound a bit over dramatic, the project itself was titled “the impossible project”. What is it that is so impossible? The revival of Polaroid instant film. This is not a newer, digital alternative, this is film you can actually buy and plop into your old Polaroid camera. What’s the big [...]

Fan-powered skateboard

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 8:14am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Chris Neal] is starting his hacking career young. He built this fan-powered skateboard for his fourth grade ‘Invention Convention’. The ideas were his own but he had some help with the construction from his uncle who owns a repair garage. On the back of the board there’s a motorcycle battery that powers the fan. We’re [...]

$500 Craigslist car competes against $400,000 race car…

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 7:11am MDT by Jakob Griffith

…and wins. Well, 3rd in class, but still surprisingly well for such a cheap entry. This is truly a show that with enough elbow grease and headlight fluid anything can be accomplished money just makes it a ton easier. Everything from the roll cage to the 5 minute gas tank fix was fabricated by [Bill Caswell]. [...]

Update: Samsung TV firmware hacking

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 12:09pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Erdem] sent us an update on his work with the SamyGO project. You may remember this Samsung TV firmware hacking initiative from our post back in October. Since then many more TV models have been added to the compatible list. They have also worked out a way to defeat the AES encryption and RSA signature [...]

ARM-based CNC mill needs no computer

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 11:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Fedeortiz12] and his team are nearing completion of their CNC mill (english translation). They set out to build a standalone machine that takes G-code in the RS274/NGC format from an SD card and machines parts accordingly. At the heart of the system is an ARM LPC2148 controller with a character LCD and control pad for [...]

Theo Jansen: like the professor from Gilligan

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 10:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Theo Jansen] is building lifeforms that will live and thrive on the beach. He calls them StrandBeest and uses PVC electrical conduit, plastic tubing, and lemonade bottles as building material. The many-legged creations are amazingly advanced, able to count steps, sense and flee from the water’s edge, and protect themselves from high wind. He gave [...]

Didgeridoo, now does real time video

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 4:38pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Some of you may remember when we introduced you to [Kyle's] Electronically Modified Didgeridoo. Those same members will have their hearts warmed knowing he’s still playing and advancing on his Didgeridoo, now including real time video processing. There isn’t too many details aside from it being controlled by an ATMega168 and an unknown analog switching [...]

Floppy disk augmented reality is a head-scratcher

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 3:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Iain Gildea] tipped us off about a drill-powered coffee grinder he made but it was the floppy-disc augmented reality display a few paragraphs down that caught our attention. He’s taken 36 white floppy discs, sprayed one side black, then mounted them each with a center pivot into a 6×6 grid. Through a convoluted system of [...]

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Die bloodsuckers – pew pew

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

In a bid to combat malaria, Intellectual Ventures is developing a method of killing mosquitoes with lasers. The system is called a Photonic Fence and identifies the beasties by the frequency of their wing flapping (hey, that’s exactly how we know when they’re dive-bombing our heads). Once locked-on, it’s death to the filthy blood-suckers. This story [...]

XBMC hiding in an SNES controller

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 12:49pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s another SNES controller converted to house a USB system. The one we saw last time used a kit as an adapter for the controller but this version uses a home-built PCB and an ATmega8 microcontroller with the latest revision of an open source adapter for NES and SNES controllers. As you can see after [...]

All terrain Roomba

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 11:48am MDT by Mike Szczys

This little rover gets around on rough terrain pretty well. [Dean Segovis] built it using parts from a Roomba. The Roomba uses wheels in conjunction with gearboxes that handle a lot of the dirty work in getting this prototype going. [Dean] grabbed four of them, as well as the motor controller board and batter, and [...]

Massive no-touch physically-interfaced display

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 8:30am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Daniel] wrote in to show us the project his group has been working on. It is a massive display wall consisting of 28 projectors and 30 computers. With a resolution of 7168×3072, viewing a 13.3 gigapixel image is a treat. That treat is made even stronger by the fact that navigating the image is done [...]

1-Wire LAN with an LCD

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 7:10am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Viktor], one of our favorite avid hackers, has been playing around with 1-wire systems all this month. What started out as a MicroLAN Fonera has turned into an iButton interface, to a 1-wire powered hub, and finally a 1-wire character driven LCD. Anyone looking at 1-wire systems or OWFS could surely benefit from his testing. However, [...]

PC cooling using 1000 ft^2 geothermal

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Are you still using heat sinks and fans to cool your computer? Lame. Tearing up your property to bury geothermal coils is definitely the way to go. [Romir] has been working on this for about a month and is just getting back data from the first multi-day tests. Take some time to dig through his [...]

snega2usb changes name, learns new tricks

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Matthias Hullin], the creator of the snega2usb let us know that its name has been changed to the Retrode. We watched this device go through the development cycle and learn to read SNES and Sega Genesis cartridges via a USB connection. Now it’s seeing some hacking to extend those capabilities. [Jon] managed to rig the [...]

GPU cooling to fix RRoD

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rbz] fixed his friend’s Red Ring of Death stricken Xbox 360 by improving the GPU cooling. Because an overheating GPU is a common cause of the failure, he first tried to replace the thermal compound for better heat conductivity between the chip and the heat sink. This helped a bit but within two hours the [...]

Light up your ride with an LED mohawk

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 10:54am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Garrett Birkel's] weekly ride usually features some pretty wild costumes. He wanted something to step up his own look so he make this LED mohawk bike helmet. He had an LED strip to start with and found a way to use acrylic and clear plastic tubing to fold the lights into the appropriate shape. From [...]

More functional GPS in minutes

Posted: March 21st, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Sparky] notified us of his hack to allow interaction with the core of an Aldi GO Cruise 4300 GPS Windows CE OS. All that’s required is a few programs and registry edits to the GPS, which anyone can accomplish within a few minutes. But we suggest you go slow and double-check your work; nobody wants [...]

PIC based USB input devices

Posted: March 21st, 2010, 1:40pm MDT by Mike Szczys

USB is convenient and that makes it desirable in many many projects. [Simon Inns] has the process down and is sharing it with his recent PIC based USB tutorial. Prompted by requests for help on the matter after having published a post about his Commodore 64 interface, he set out to detail the particulars when [...]

Ask Hackaday: Now a regular occurrence

Posted: March 21st, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

A while back, we announced that we would be bringing new features to Hackaday. One in particular that garnished a lot of interest was our question answer type thingy. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, that has not happened yet. Without divulging too much into the secret machinery that lies underneath Hackaday, I’ll just say [...]

Balancing skateboard/segway

Posted: March 21st, 2010, 10:20am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[XenonJon] got a lot of attention for a skateboard/segway style balancing platform he took to the Makerfaire in Newcastle. He decided to try to build it the cheapest and easiest possible way in an attempt to help others build their own. The build is documented very well, however you have to email him to request [...]

POV clock inside acrylic block

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 1:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This gorgeous persistence of vision clock was built a couple years back by [mb1988]. The housing is made of acrylic with a hard drive motor mounted in the center of the back panel to spin a PCB. The two-sided circuit board is home-made and includes a battery for power, ATmega32 for the brain, 32 LEDs, [...]

By popular demand: the OK Go Rube Goldberg machine

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 12:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve received many tips regarding the OK Go video that features a Rube Goldberg machine. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out their video after the break. This is the rare instance when a YouTube video features an audio track with the full endorsement of the artists that recorded it. Our first thought when watching [...]

RoBo Blower sure to become Stephen King novel

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 11:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

Snow removal ranks right up there with laundry as one of the least-enjoyed chores. [Herb Spencer] sought to automate the process while terrifying his neighbors as the same time by building a robotic snow blower, the RoBo Blower. The heavy lifting is still handled by a gas motor which propels the snow auger. Two batteries [...]

DIY Super Soaker

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 10:07am MDT by Mike Szczys

With summer just around the corner you should try out a build like this constant pressure water gun that [JLspacemarine] put together. Similar to the commercially available Super Soaker toys, this isn’t just a squirt gun but includes a water reservoir as well as a pressurized air chamber. Pumping up the air chamber allows for [...]

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Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor’s dream ride

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 9:06am MDT by Jakob Griffith

While surfing one of our favorite websites, we came upon this little jewel. We can’t really tell if this is hack-worthy, or just a deathtrap, so to help decide… Mechanics crawler + 80cc motor – safety concerns = deathtrap It’s really that final “Brakes? Why would I need to stop?” that puts this project over the edge. [...]

Flip-book style digitization

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This method of book digitization allows you to scan an entire book by fanning through the pages. It uses a high-speed camera that captures 500 frames per second to get a good look at each page. Processing software isolates each pages, analyzes any curve in the paper due to the flipping, and smooths out the [...]

Graffiti machine sprays for you

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 12:38pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ben's] father was a metalworker and the combination of being around metal fabrication for most of his life and getting a couple of art degrees brought together a satisfying combination of hacking skills. Above you can see a Graffiti Machine that he built, which we’ll look at in-depth after the break.. This isn’t the first [...]

Laser cutting solder stencils

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Do you have access to a laser cutter? If so, you can use [Riley Porter's] method to cut your own solder stencils. He starts with the Eagle files and exports the Dimension and tCream layers to a PDF. That file is then processed using Ghostwriter, Gview, and finally, Corel draw. The result is a 1200dpi [...]

Motion sensing camera hack

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 9:27am MDT by Mike Szczys

Researchers at the University of Liege have developed an algorithm to separate movement from background. They call it ViBe and this patented piece of code comes in at under 100 lines of C. Above you can see the proof of concept shown by hacking the code into CHDK, a Canon PowerShot alternative firmware. The package [...]

Arduino based multiboot cable for Game Boy Advance

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Steve] wanted to do some ARM development and set his sights on the Game Boy Advance as a development package. In order to get his code onto the device he build an Arduino-based communications cable. It is necessary to have a microcontroller involved because the GBA uses a peculiar 16-bit serial communications protocol. This cable [...]

Ditch the LPs and build your own 3D scanner

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Find yourself an old record player, a laser level, and a digital scanner and you can build a 3D scanner. That’s what [Rob] did. The camera and laser level are mounted on the turntable for steady rotation. The camera captures the vertical laser line traveling around the room by recording 30 fps at a resolution [...]

Google Summer of Code 2010

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Today’s the day the Google announces this year’s participant organizations in the Google Summer of Code. If you’re not tied down to a job this summer we hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to learn by doing and contribute code to a great open source project all at the same time. A lot of our [...]

LED lighting, a learning experience

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 9:09am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Joel] has a very specific color temperature of lighting he wants in his home. So specific, he’s decided to build his own LED lighting to get it. Actually, he’s still searching for that perfect shade of white, but doing so has learned a lot. He initially made some very pretty PCBs, but then found that [...]

PCB drill press on a budget

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 8:09am MDT by Phil Burgess

An accurate drill press is an essential tool for making your own through-hole printed circuit boards at home. Reader [Josh Ashby] offers up a solid design using scrap bin materials. A major issue with PCB drilling is that even the slightest horizontal play will snap the delicate carbide drill bit. Hobbyist-grade tools such as Dremel’s drill [...]

Woot How-to: Let there be Light! (for your Rovio)

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 11:00pm MDT by Nick Caiello

Before we get into the how-to, we felt it would be appropriate to explain a little bit about how this came to be. As many of you may remember, a couple of months ago we attended CES 2010. While there, we also attended the It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger party and ended up meeting [...]

ARM cortex-M3 prototyping on a budget

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

NGX Technologies sent us this Blueboard LPC1768-H to play with. It’s basically a breakout board for an NXP LPC1768 ARM cortex-M3 microcontroller (datasheet). The board adds a few extra goodies, such as a choice of mini-USB connector or barrel-jack to provide regulated power to the chip. There’s also a clock crystal for the internal RTC [...]

Arduino balloon tracking

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 12:42pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The Ferret is a high-altitude balloon tracking hardware package. Created by [Adam Greig] and [Jon Sowman], it uses an Arduino to gather NMEA data from a GPS unit, format the data into a string, and transmit that string on narrow-band FM. The project, built in one afternoon, is a tribute to the prototyping simplicity the [...]

Quad-copter controlled with voice commands

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

In the video above you’ll see two of our favorite things combined, a quad-copter that is voice controlled. The robot responds to natural language so you can tell it to “take off and fly forward six feet”, rather than rely on a cryptic command set. The demonstration shows both an iPhone and a headset used [...]

IM-ME spectrum analyzer

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Michael Ossmann] rolled out some firmware that makes his IM-ME into a Spectrum Analyzer. He met up with [Travis Goodspeed], who authored the IM-ME flashing guide, at SchmooCon and spent some time hacking wireless doo-dads in the hotel bar. Once he arrived home the new firmware was just a few coding sessions away from completion. [...]

Make your own OLEDS

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 8:38am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The University of Wisconsin is hosting a tutorial on how to make your own Organic Light Emitting Diodes. This is so amazingly awesome. We want you guys to make some. Someone make your own matrix and display some patterns on it and submit it. Please. Though we’ve seen lots of uses for OLED screens, we never really [...]

Bill Paxton pinball

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 7:25am MDT by Caleb Kraft

No, your eyes do not deceive you, you are looking at a [Bill Paxton] pinball machine. [Ben Heck], commonly known for his portable gaming system modifications has finally finished his pinball machine build. We’ve had our eye on it ever since [Jeri Ellsworth] challenged him to see who got theirs done first. As you can see, he’s [...]

Adding an automotive cold air intake

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 4:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Thomas] and a buddy were sucking down a few brews when they decided to hack their 2001 Chevy Cavalier for a bit better performance. If they could find a way to bring cooler air to the engine they speculated that they’d see an increase in efficiency. Instead of routing the air intake to a hood [...]

Electric-assist bicycle uses LiFePO4 batteries

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 3:05pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This bicycle add-on uses an electric motor to help you out. This way the motor takes advantage of the gearing normally available to the cyclist. What interests us most about the system is the DIY battery work they’re doing. The cells are using Lithium Iron Phosphate technology. The li-ion cells you’re used to seeing in [...]

Pure TTL based clock

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’ll just say, [Kenneth] really likes clocks. His most recent is a pure 7400 series TTL based one, ie no microcontroller as seen in the past, here, here, and here. The signal starts out as a typical 32,768 crystal divided down to the necessary 1Hz, which is then divided again appropriately to provide hours and [...]

Xbox 360 Laptop more laptop-y than ever

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 1:03pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[TheTwoJ] and his friend built a laptop-form-factor Xbox 360. Their extensively documented process was inspired by [Ben Heckendorn's] work. The result is a brick when folded up but a good-looking (albeit loud with 8 fans) gaming rig. There’s everything you would expect; LCD screen, integrated WiFi, camera, optical drive, and a full keyboard. These poor [...]

Tax-exempt Geek Group hit with huge tax bill

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 12:02pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Non-profit hackerspace The Geek Group has been hit with a hefty tax bill despite their tax-exempt status. We featured a boom camera built by the organization back in November. It is the goal of The Geek Group to fulfill the thirst to explore and create by providing facilities, peer group, and camaraderie that make knowledge [...]

Follow-up: Hacking OnStar

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 9:07am MDT by James Munns

Reader [regulatre] has provided us with his furthering of hacking the OnStar system in GM cars. Previously, we wrote about some initial attempts to gain access to the system that OnStar uses to monitor and control cars called GMLAN. [regulatre] has managed to create an adapter between the GMLAN connector and a standard OBD2 plug, which [...]

Keep tabs on your car without OBD-II

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 8:06am MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Steve] let us know about his MultiDisplay car monitoring system. Unlike traditional systems that rely on interfacing with the OBD-II protocol and existing car computer, the MultiDisplay uses an Arduino and custom shield with a combination of sensors; including temperatures, pressures, throttle, Boost, and etc. The data collected can then be displayed on a 20×4 [...]

Mondo Spider

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 3:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This vehicle is aptly named the Mondo Spider. It’s not from some apocalyptic movie, but seen here at Burning Man. Like a lot of Burning Man exhibitions, it was built for the joy of the build and with a rather extreme budget: $15,000. We’ve embedded one of the many videos after the break, as well [...]

Thermos temperature meter

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 2:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’re always a little surprised by how well a vacuum thermos works, but eventually the contents will cool down (or warm up depending on what’s in there). [Gamesh_] added a temperature meter to his thermos using an Arduino and a temperature sensor. The original post is in Portuguese but [Bruno] republished it in English. The temperature [...]

3D printing on a much larger scale

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 12:05pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The end goal of this giant rapid prototyping machine is to print buildings. We’re not holding our breath for a brand new Flintstones-esque abode, but their whimsical suggesting of printed buildings on the moon seems like science fiction with potential. The machine operates similar to a RepRap but instead of plastic parts, it prints stone [...]

Eat your heart out iPad

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 11:04am MDT by Mike Szczys

We don’t remember where we read it, but our favorite criticism of the iPad is that is does the same things a lot of other Apple devices do. So why wait until April to get your hands on that functionality? [Alexbates] built his own iPad clone using existing hardware and software. This started with an [...]

Soil moisture sensing

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

These plugs are cheap, easy to make, and work well for measuring the moisture content of soil. The Cheap Vegetable Gardener came up with this method in order to add automatic watering to an automated grow system. Plastic tubing is used as a mold for Plaster of Paris. Once the plaster has been poured, two [...]

JeeNode development platform

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 8:16am MDT by Caleb Kraft

It is basically a nice compact layout for an Atmel Atmega 328 with a wireless module. Fully compatible with the Arduino IDE. The JeeNode is available in kit form, but also all schematics and CAD files are available to download. It looks like they are mainly using it for home monitoring and control. So far we’ve seen [...]

Intense kit turns Wacom tablet into Cintiq clone

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 2:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Lesa Wright] just started selling enclosure kits used to convert a Wacom tabet into a Cintiq clone. You need to start with your own Wacom tablet, there are kits for four different models. You’ll also need to track down some other parts: a compatible laptop LCD screen, controller kit, and some cable extenders. From there, [...]

Flip-top GameCube portable

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 1:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s another home console made into a portable. [Techknott] built this shiny GameCube handheld. You may remember him from his work on a portable Dreamcast and the wireless Xbox 360 interface. This time around he’s mirrored the finish; a good idea in concept but even his demo images are already plagued by smudges. But if [...]

RFID reader for iPhone

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 12:34pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Benjamin Blundell] built an RFID reader for the iPhone. A jailbroken iPhone connects to this project box by patching into a standard iPhone USB cable. Like in past iPhone serial projects, [Benjamin] is using openFrameworks for the software interface. Right now this reader only detects low-frequency tags but he’s working on the code to read [...]

Storage for your hacking needs

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Sometimes your project needs a lot of non-volatile ROM, right on cue [Matthew] let us know how to not only connect, interface, read, and write to SD cards with a PIC over serial, but also how to do the above mentioned with an old PATA HDD. For those without a PIC/serial connection don’t fret, [nada] [...]

Beach stereo

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Adam] wanted a stereo that could stand up to rain and keep sand out. He ended up building this beach stereo out of a cooler. The cooler’s already made to be water tight. He cut holes in the front and back for marine speakers and added a water-tight bezel and cover for the controls on [...]

Easy IM-ME flashing

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

[Travis Goodspeed] wrote a guide to firmware flashing for the IM-ME. He’s using a GoodFET open-source JTAG adapter that he designed to do the programming. This is really taking [Dave's] work on the device and running with it. The end goal being to develop an operating system for the device. If you haven’t read the [...]

Steam powered tank

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 12:30pm MST by Mike Szczys

This steam-powered tank is really something of a steam-electric hybrid. Steam provides the locomotion, but an electrical system provides the remote control and steering. A full boiler will provide 10-15 minutes of operation which you can see in the video after the break. Before you leave a nasty comment: Yes, we realize this project is [...]

Sponge music

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 11:32am MST by Mike Szczys

[Aaron] calls this project “Stochasticity”. It uses two sponges as a musical interface. The performer wears a wrist strap and then draws on the table with water from the sponge to play different notes. You really need to watch the video to fully understand what’s going on here. We’re guessing that this is Arduino based since [...]

Low Cost Killer Robot

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 1:12pm MST by James Munns

One of our most prolific commenters, [mrgoogfan], shared with us his working BattleBots style robot. Built for under $500, it is capable of zipping around at 25 miles an hour under load. Chances are, this robot would be just as much fun as a Bar Stool Racer as it is with all the weapons attached. [...]

DIY scratch controller

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

There’s something viscerally pleasing about simple solutions. [Kip] came up with one in the form of a scratch controller. The spindle from an optical drive is used to hold a CD in place, which acts as the LP for scratching. The sensor from an optical mouse is mounted upside down below the CD and detects [...]

Update: Nintendo DS camera control

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

All of the juicy details needed to control a camera from your Nintendo DS are now available at the Open Camera Control project. This is the descendant of [Steve Chapman's] setup from a few years ago. The system has been polished up and has seen many feature additions. It’s been used in movie production and [...]

Hardware jailbreak eases reboot pains

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 9:35am MST by Mike Szczys

This device can jailbreak an iPhone. It doesn’t require a computer and it can either reboot a phone that was one-time-boot jailbroken using the blackra1n exploit, or jailbreak a factory fresh unit. We wouldn’t say this solves the tethering problem caused by blackra1n (needing to return to a computer to reboot the phone), but it [...]

Coffee powered Car-puccino

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 3:29pm MST by Jakob Griffith

We can only imagine how amazing this coffee burning car smells at it speeds down the highway at a maximum of 60mph. Don’t jump out of your seat so quick to get your own, while the idea sounds fantastic, the mileage will bring you back to earth rather quick. At 3 miles per kilo of [...]

50MHz to 100Mhz scope conversion

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Ross] is the proud owner of a 50 MHz Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope. He’d like to have the 100 MHz version but the $400 difference in price puts it out of his reach. After some extensive poking around on the PCB and pouring over datasheets, he managed to reverse engineer the design and upgrade to a [...]

Jeri makes integrated circuits

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 12:25pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Jeri Ellsworth] made this silicon inverter at home, by hand. It took her two years to get the process figured out and achieve something we didn’t think was possible. The complexity of manufacture, and the wide range of tools and materials needed seem insurmountable but she did it anyway. Her home chip fab Flickr set [...]

Noisy Super 8

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 11:25am MST by Mike Szczys

[Matt Kemp] remade this super 8 film camera into a synthesizer. Inside you’ll find a light sensor pointed through the lens. This way, zooming, focusing, and pointing the lens elsewhere will change the sound. He also refit the original controls to monkey with the output. Turn your speakers up when you watch this, your co-workers [...]

Game glove learns your weakness

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 8:43am MST by Mike Szczys

[Steve Hoefer] pulled together a great hack for the friendless. This glove will play a heated game of rock-paper-scissors against you. [Steve] realized that the middle and fourth fingers are all that need to be monitored to decide which of the three signs you are making. He used flex sensors on the back of these [...]

R2D2 build video

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 7:30am MST by Caleb Kraft

Follow along with [Victor] through the journey of building a life size replica of R2D2. While you may not be able to scrape too many specific details from the video, it is still great to see the project progress from his first cut to the finished product as well as some fun little outings. His [...]

Will this mouse get me kicked out of the coffee shop?

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 5:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

This [Dwight Shrute]-esque project will let you try out your taxidermy skills. Apparently you can acquire a ‘wetware’ mouse fresh or frozen from pet stores. We just need to wait until fall when our pantry is visited by the less-domesticated variety. A travel-sized optical mouse acts as the replacement guts. Some creative dremeling brings the plastic [...]

One minute review of your wasted time

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

It’s easy to throw around the accusation that you waste time throughout the day. Now you can prove it by reviewing everything you did on your computer, all in just one minute. [Dan Paluska] ground out some code to take screenshots and assemble them into a video. His script ties together the open source tools FFmpeg, [...]

Add a clean room to your workshop

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 2:34pm MST by Mike Szczys

I Heart Robotics has posted a guide for building your own clean room. They’ve been clever with their materials, starting with heavy-duty shelving to provide the framework. We like that idea, it allows you to position your workspace at whatever height you desire. The side walls are MDF painted with white enamel. Light, power, and tools [...]

LEGO sequencer builds sound in 3D

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 1:35pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Yoshi Akai] built a sequencer that is part steampunk, part injection molded plastic. The LEGO sequencer MR II has eight steps in a loop that is manipulated by adding the colorful blocks to a green base plate. Each color corresponds to one particular sound which can be modified by building skyward. On the other side [...]

Tube clock database

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 8:17am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Brian] wrote in to show us a site he’s been working on for a while. He’s been building a tube clock database. We didn’t realize there was actually a big enough draw for such a site, but we have to admit that we spent more than a few minutes browsing through the different clocks. There [...]

Cardboard Androids

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 4:50pm MST by Jakob Griffith

Who needs expensive acrylic based, microcontrolled robots with only a few sensors available when cardboard and an Android cellphone will work much better for much less in cost! The team over at Cellbots have done just that. While they did cheat a little by using a laser cut cardboard for exact measurements and including an [...]

LEDs invade coffee table crevice

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 2:44pm MST by Mike Szczys

That’s a lot of LEDs, and a little bit of glass cleaner. [Tobias] spiced up his IKEA coffee table by adding 6144 LEDs. This is a larger realization of SparkFun’s LED coffee table which used 64 8×8 modules. [Tobias] sourced three display boards from Sure Electronics for a total of 96 8×8 modules. These boards [...]

Permalink for 'Hack_A_Day/2010/03/08/Dr._Boardman%e2%80%99s_Color_Conundrum'

Dr. Boardman’s Color Conundrum

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 1:14pm MST by Mike Szczys

We feel like trumpets should be sounding. Someone took the overused project of connecting RGB LEDs to a microcontroller and produced something useful. [Paul] created Dr. Boardman’s Color Conundrum which works much like a simple mechanical coin-op game you might find at a carnival. When switched on, a random color is displayed by the ping-pong [...]

Give 1984 Mac a Leopard makeover

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 11:33am MST by Mike Szczys

[Jake Howe] brought his 1984 Mac up-to-date by cramming new guts inside of the classic case. The goal from the start was to run OS X Snow Leopard on the machine without altering the externals. He heated and formed acrylic around the original CRT screen to make a bezel for the replacement LCD screen. The [...]

Lava lamp centrifuge

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 9:06am MST by Caleb Kraft

Like many projects, this one started with a harmless question. “Will lava lamps work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter?”. Well, as it turns out, this harmless question was not so easily answered. The only real solution was to test and prove for sure. To do this, [Neil Fraser] built a centrifuge in his [...]

Permalink for 'Hack_A_Day/2010/03/07/Don%e2%80%99t_worry_occifer__there_is_no_blood_in_my_alcohol_'

Don’t worry occifer, there is no blood in my alcohol!

Posted: March 7th, 2010, 4:37pm MST by Jakob Griffith

[Daniel] wrote up a quick tutorial on interfacing with the MQ-3, or better known Breathalyzer from SparkFun with Arduino. While we would have used perhaps an op-amp/comparator based system and kept it in a much smaller package, the idea was so quick and simple and enjoyable we hoped an article might keep some hackers from [...]

137 years of Popular Science online free

Posted: March 7th, 2010, 9:22am MST by Caleb Kraft

137 years of the magazine Popular Science are now being hosted online by Google. You can peruse at your leisure, though you’ll have to search by keyword. We don’t see a date or issue browsing option. The cover art alone is worth your time, even if you’re not a fan of the articles. Many of us have fond [...]

Time delay door alarm

Posted: March 6th, 2010, 5:38pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Ever accidentally left your front door ajar and had a pet escape? [BlackCow] came up with a simple solution to this problem. The circuit is fairly rudimentary but a great example of using the basics to get the job done. Now, instead of having an alarm that sounds as soon as the door is open, he has [...]

Strobeshnik, an HDD clock

Posted: March 6th, 2010, 4:37pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Strobeshnik is a somewhat different twist on the hard drive clocks we’ve seen in the past. Though still technically using a POV effect, the Strobeshnik displays the numerals instead of a line. By altering strobe timing of an LED behind a platter with the numbers cut into it, he can display whichever number he wants. [...]

Lucid dreaming

Posted: March 6th, 2010, 8:08am MST by Jakob Griffith

When we saw [merkz] use of an Arduino to produce lucid dreaming we were quite shocked. Unlike typical setups that just flash a light through sleep, his system monitors eye movement through electrodes and is able to send the data to a computer for graphing and analyzing. The only problem being we couldn’t find a [...]

DIY Diodes

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 4:01pm MST by Devlin Thyne

[H. P. Friedrichs], the creator of the Static Bleeder has created his own diodes. Using household chemicals, a film of cuprous oxide was made on a copper pipe cap. Cuprous oxide has been one of the first known semiconductor substances, has a low forward drop but is an otherwise asymmetrical conductor, odd V-I curves, and [...]

RC truck source for robotics platform

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 2:15pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Michael] sent us a link to his RC robotic platform. He started with the same RC toy as the iPhone Robot (CAR) but ended up with a blank slate waiting for more features. What he has is an Arduino with a motor driver, three bump switches for the front and rear, and a XBee module. [...]

USB oscilloscope

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 1:15pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s a USB oscilloscope project from a few years back. It’s easy to build on a single-sided PCB and very cheap because it uses just a handful of parts. At the center, an ATtiny45 microcontroller uses its ADC capabilities for the two traces and also handles the USB connectivity. The internal oscillator is used and [...]

Space Invaders clock 6 years ahead of Pong Clock

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 12:44pm MST by Mike Szczys

Space Invaders came out in 1978, six years after Pong. That means this Space Invaders clock uses newer technology, right? Nope, it’s the same hardware as the Adafruit Pong Clock with some updated firmware. Still, as you can see after the break, the effect is pretty nice. Pong was cool, but having a clock that [...]

A VU meter for your PSP

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 12:07pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Christian Doran] wanted some blinky goodness to go along with the tunes on his PSP. He built a VU meter circuit around a couple of LM324 op-amp chips and fit it into the UMD space on the back of the PSP. Using surface mount LEDs and some fine wire he lined up a string of [...]

Google your home with a roomba

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 8:57am MST by Caleb Kraft

Meet GåågleBot. GåågleBot is a modified roomba that will not only vacuum your home, but collect data while it does it. While it is carrying out its normal duties as a floor cleaner, it will take pictures, collecting and analyzing all the data for later searches. With built in OCR, you can actually search for things using [...]

Is GEK a modern-day Mr. Fusion?

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

[Nanomonkey] spent the weekend building generators that run off of syngas. All Powers Lab produces Gasifier Experimenter Kits to convert raw material to energy. The kits use Gasification to make a “natural gas like” fuel from materials such as wood chips, walnut shells, construction debris or agricultural waste. So is this the Mr. Fusion that powered [...]

DIY projector collection

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Reader [Jan] came across a website all about building your own video projector. We’ve linked to five of the best projects for 2010 but there’s a ton more information if you dig a little deeper. Our favorite so far is the GohtanBox v3 and it’s giant LED panel that serves as the projection light. [...]

Google unveils API to PowerMeter

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Google’s tentacles continue to wrap around every portion of our lives with the addition of an API for their PowerMeter software. The PowerMeter tool works with smart electricity meters to monitor and display power usage in the home. This will allow manufacturers (and hackers alike) to design new devices with the Google interface in mind. We’ve [...]

Using Mindflex to shock the heck out of people

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 11:10am MST by Mike Szczys

We love to see eloquent hacks but this isn’t one of them. [Aaron] and his fellow sadists are using a Mindflex game with an electric shocker. If your brain is idle you’ll be fine, but too much activity inside the noggin and you’re in for nasty shock to the arm. Take a look at the [...]

Home cinema 3D (or just tick off theatergoers)

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 10:23am MST by Jakob Griffith

After a visit to the local theater and discovering the use of IR 3D glasses (for films such as Avatar), the team over at Furrtek wondered how they worked, and more importantly, how the glasses could be manipulated to tick off audience members. While the original intentions seem a bit childish, they did mention that [...]

Monocle fixes webcam farsightedness

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

[Vik Oliver] came up with a webcam focus fix that is so quick and simple we never would have thought of it. He received the webcam as a gift and mounted on an articulated lamp so that it could easily be positioned around his projects. The problem is the camera lacks a focus adjustment so [...]

Build your own lightweight flash tripod

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 12:58pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Peter Karlsson] is a commercial photographer who wanted some ultralight, portable supports for multiple flashes. What he came up with meets those goals; measuring 16 inches long when folded and weighing just 14 ounces. They set up just like a tent because they’re made from tent poles. Like the portable habitats, the tripods have bungee [...]

iPhone case rehabilitation

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

[Richard Cabrera's] iPhone was scratched from years of use. A big part of the appeal of Apple products is the dose of sexy that comes with them, so he set out to remedy this abomination. His iPhone case rehabilitation guide walks you through the miraculous transformation. One of the tools he uses is a headlight [...]

LED and fan controller

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

Needing a front fan to keep his hard drive cool, [CalcProgrammer1] found he was unhappy with a single LED color for the fan. He swapped them out for a set of four RGB LEDs and whipped up his own controller board for the unit. It is based around an ATmega168 and patches into the COM2 [...]

Vacuum pick and place for SMD parts

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 8:39am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Pete] has written up this in depth how-to on building a vacuum pick and place from an aquarium pump and a pen. The pump conversion to vacuum is extremely simple, with a slight modification to a valve being all that is necessary. The pen is only slightly more involved, but still extremely simple. This entire [...]

Automatic telephone recorder

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 3:19pm MST by Mike Szczys

[James Bond] types and those suffering from a hefty dose of paranoia can now record all telephone conversations. [Trax] built this module that monitors the phone line and starts recording when a handset is picked up. A computer does the actual recording, triggered by the microcontroller via a USB connection. We like the use of an [...]

FanWing is like a harvester in the sky

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 2:19pm MST by Mike Szczys

The FanWing aircraft concept has been around for a while but this is the first time we’ve seen working models. It gets rid of the propeller and adopts a rotating cylinder for propulsion. The look reminds us of a combine harvester and in a way it does reap the air, pulling the craft through the [...]

Hacking space without profit or secrecy

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 12:17pm MST by Mike Szczys

Reader [Jacob] tipped us off about a project the aims to make the final frontier open source. The mission of the Copenhagen Suborbitals is to launch a man into space. What they’re not interested in is turning a profit, carrying hazmat or weapons, or keeping what they learn to themselves. Surprisingly enough, isn’t this the next [...]

Smart flash synchronization

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 11:01am MST by Mike Szczys

[Max] designed this circuit to add smart flash synchronization to his photography arsenal. He did this because ‘dumb’ TTL based flashes won’t play nicely with more sophisticated systems like the Nikon Advanced Wireless Lighting. By building a microcontroller into the mechanism, he’s added functionality for several different scenarios, ensuring that he’ll never again have problems [...]

Portable Squeezebox with serial

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 7:00am MST by Jakob Griffith

The Squeezbox media streaming systems are compact Linux WiFi enabled radios that let you stream your collection anywhere,so long as you have an AC or USB outlet nearby. But [Achim Sack] wanted to stream his collection from anywhere with no wires attached (translation). Some poking and prodding revealed a connector actually designed for a battery [...]

Steampunk sequencer

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Moritz Wolpert] built this gem of Victorian hardware by hand. It is a sequencer and features beautiful detail work as shown in its MySpace gallery. Other than that we don’t know a lot about it. You can also take a look at [Moritz's] main page, but prepare to be annoyed by the hideous web-styling that [...]

Hacker finds better use for a Windows machine

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Patrick Becker] had an ancient PC on his hands with a blown PSU. He converted this into a stylish home for his Betta splendens. The aquarium itself is fashioned from a piece for construction glass block with the top cut off. This allows for a window that looks through the tank and shows off the motherboard [...]

doomBox: Classic keys meet tiny screen

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

The doomBox is a dedicated gaming rig for lovers of ID Software’s classic title. [JJ] built this from an old Kodak DC290 camera that had a broken lens. Since this runs the Digita OS, he was able to use the Doom port that already exists. But the camera’s factory buttons were not well suited as [...]

Phone/webapp written in ploy to appear more popular

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

That title’s not really fair to [Evan], but he did write a cellphone tetris game that causes your handset to automatically telephone him if you win. He’s using two applications that we’re not very familiar with, Twilio and Tornado. The former handles control input from the cellphone via their simple API. The latter is a [...]

BatchPCB Pays You

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 11:48am MST by Devlin Thyne

SparkFun’s BatchPCB has been a well-known service to get your PCBs fabbed, and now it is sporting a new feature. It has just come out of its downtime chrysalis with the ability to pay you for making your designs. If you have designed a PCB and want people to pay you to use it, BatchPCB [...]

Biped walks with eight servos

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 7:37am MST by Mike Szczys

This tiny biped shows a lot of coordination in its movements. As you can see, eight servo motors account for the locomotion with an ATmega8 as the brains of the operation. Posts for the first and second generation of this little guy feature several videos. We gather that a spreadsheet is being used to tweak [...]

BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » March 2010