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Hack A Day (6 unread)

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 [...]