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May the Phorse be with you

Posted: May 31st, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

The PhorsePOV by [Julian Skidmore] almost slipped by, but we thought it was a nice easy hack for your Memorial Monday. The gadget uses an ATTINY25 to drive 6 LEDs aren’t standard characters 7 units high? Which when waved in the air produces a readable message. What we were really interested in is the use [...]

Beginner Concepts: Cascading shift registers

Posted: May 31st, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

There’s a million tutorials out there describing how to use shift registers. If you’re just getting into embedded systems you should know how to use them as they allow you to take three microcontroller pins and expand them virtually without limits. This is due to the serial-in parallel-out nature of these integrated circuits. A key [...]

Bluetooth boombox

Posted: May 31st, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Nathan] took this boombox and outfitted it for Bluetooth streaming. He took a Motorola DC800, which is meant to make headphones wireless, and connected it to the stereo inputs. The controls for the Bluetooth module were routed to the stock tape deck controls and a little bit of frosted spray paint adds a blue glow [...]

LEGO pick and place

Posted: May 31st, 2010, 10:28am MDT by Mike Szczys

Turn your volume down and take a look at the brick sorting robot in the video above. It’s built using LEGO and powered by four different NXT modules. It sorts differently colored bricks on the intake conveyor and places them on three output conveyors. The build is solid and was [Chris Shepherd's] impetus for starting a [...]

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Flight simulator but you’re the plane

Posted: May 31st, 2010, 8:38am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rafael Mizrahi] built a flight simulator that lets him fly like Ironman. As you can see in the video after the break, the hardware involves an automotive crane, hang gliding harness, plus the wings and tail from a UAV. A giant fan pointed at the wearer allows him to use the wings and tail to [...]

Child-sized cocktail cabinets

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

[Sam Seide] dropped us a line about his new arcade creation. We loved his Punch-Out build that used a punch dummy as a game controller. This time around he’s made some mini-cocktail style MAME cabinets. He removed the screen from a netbook and placed it face-up underneath the acrylic bezel. There are controls on either [...]

Crossfade curve tweaking

Posted: May 30th, 2010, 12:29pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Tired of the disappointing performance from the crossfader on his Numark MIXDECK, [dj JD] cracked it open and made the crossfade curves adjustable. It’s a super-simple hack that just introduces two 100k trimpots to the crossfade slider. The change led to a higher volume level on the current channel until the slider was much nearer [...]

Brighten up your PCB drilling station

Posted: May 30th, 2010, 11:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

Being able to see what you’re doing can be the hardest part of drilling the through holes in those freshly etched printed circuit boards. We don’t know why we didn’t come up with this, but [Markus Gebhard] solved his shadowy woes with his 20-LED Dremel light ring. Honestly, how many times have we seen lights [...]

Moving speakers to mix audio tracks

Posted: May 30th, 2010, 9:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

These speakers play different audio tracks depending on which orange square the sit atop. They’re RFID aware and the orange tiles are tags. If you get tired of a track just move the speaker to a different one, or place the speakers next to each other to play the same song. We’re sure there’s a [...]

Parallax RFID Reader for Ten Bucks

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 7:33pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

We received a tip about Radio Shack putting Parallax’s RFID reader on clearance for around $10. The only reference we could find that indicated Radio Shack sold the reader was a review page. The reader originally sold for around $50 in the stores, so getting it for $10 made it worth a curiosity trip to [...]

SPRIME controlled AC outlets

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 10:47am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Reader [Tim Upthegrove] sent in a novel take on powering and monitoring AC outlets and devices called SPRIME, or Simple Powerline Remote Interactive Monitor and Enforcer. Compared to previous hacks, such as 120v switching or Quick cheap remote outlets, that only turned an outlet on or off; SPRIME allows not only control over outlets via [...]

Hoverboard comes to life

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 8:10am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This installation by artist [Nils Goudagnin] is a recreation of the hoverboard from Back to the Future II. We would like to see inside that plinth. We’ve seen levitating magnets before, but this is particularly stable. He says he is using lasers and a control system of some kind to stabilize it. Just to guess, [...]

Home DNA lab tools

Posted: May 28th, 2010, 2:20pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jeri Ellsworth] stopped by Pearl Biotech’s booth at Maker Faire and took a look at their open source DNA sequencing work. It is by no means a grab-and-go solution for anyone, but from what we’ve seen in the video they’re breaking down those laboratory walls and letting us in to dabble at this work (assuming [...]

2010 sees new lock impressioning speed record

Posted: May 28th, 2010, 1:20pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jos Weyers] tipping us off about this lock impressioning video. It shows his final round of the lock impressioning championship at this year’s SSDev conference. Even though he shaved about fifteen seconds off of his 87-second single-lock record from last year he came in third overall because the competition averages times over several rounds. This [...]

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Quadcopter acrobatics like nothing we’ve seen

Posted: May 28th, 2010, 11:20am MDT by Mike Szczys

The University of Pennsylvania has churned out some impressive moves with a quadcopter. Perching on a vertical landing pad with some help from Velcro is impressive, but single and double flips combined with navigating through tight spaces at an angle makes this just amazing. We expect to see it in the next Bond film if [...]

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Russian Roulette… for EEPROM

Posted: May 28th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

There’s a loaded gun but its got only one bullet. Spin the cylinder, point at head, and pull the trigger. The game’s not over until the bullet is used and a player is done. This game’s got a twist though, the cylinder has at least one million chambers. The Flash_Destroyer is testing the limits of [...]

Embedding an accelerometer and XBee in a guitar

Posted: May 28th, 2010, 7:41am MDT by Mike Szczys

[JP Carrascal] hacked his guitar by adding motion control while removing the need for wires. He’s using a dual-Arduino system with an Mini Pro inside the guitar and a Duemilanova for the receiver connected to a computer. Wireless is provided by the XBee module seen above and a gutted Wii remote accelerometer is in there [...]

Adding SCART to a cheap CRT television

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 2:31pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[133MHz] cracked open a cheap tube television to add a SCART connector. He knew he had a chance at success when he discovered all of the knock-outs on the back of the connector panel because one of them was exactly the right size for the connector. But it wasn’t quite as easy as soldering in [...]

Commercial webcam multi-touch coming soon

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 1:31pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It looks like Toshiba has a webcam-based multi-touch display on the way. The video shows an iPod-esque photos album interface where the user stands in front of the display and manipulates it with both hands. The difference between this and some of the other multi-touch displays we’ve seen is that there is no touching necessary [...]

GSoC takes on XBMC on the Beagleboard

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 12:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Imagine a tiny little device that you velcro to the back of your TV that delivers all of the media found on your home network. We’ve been dreaming about that since we saw early working examples of XBMC running on a Beagleboard. We’ve heard little about it since then but now there’s cause for hope. [...]

BAMF2010: Look sir, droids!

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

Ask any engineer what originally sparked their interest in technology, and almost universally the response will be a Hollywood film or TV robot — Star Wars’ R2-D2, the B9 robot from Lost in Space, or Short Circuit’s Johnny 5, to name a few. Engineers need a creative outlet too, and some pay homage to their inspirations by building elaborate reproductions. At [...]

USB morse code keyboard

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 9:31am MDT by Mike Szczys

Looking for motivation to practice morse code [BenB] built this morse code keyboard. It uses USB and is recognized as a standard keyboard thanks to the V-USB stack running on the ATmega168. The project is rounded out with a clean look thanks to the chewing gum container that serves as an enclosure. His design is [...]

BAMF2010: DIY electroluminescent displays

Posted: May 27th, 2010, 7:32am MDT by Phil Burgess

In this video from Maker Faire, [Jon Beck] of CLUE — the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics — demonstrates the unexpected ease of creating custom electroluminescent (EL) displays using materials from DuPont and common t-shirt screen printing tools. Eagle-eyed reader [ithon] recognized the Hack a Day logo among the custom shapes, which escaped our notice at the time. Sorry, Jon! Very cool [...]

Unlocking the crippled potential of an unmanaged switch

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Sprite_TM] outgrew the features of the cheap unmanaged TL-SG1005D switch he was using on his home network. Instead of buying a new and much more costly switch he cracked the cheap one open and found that the RTL8366SB chip inside possessed the ability to work harder but was crippled for sale as a low-end model. [...]

PLCC replaces Game Boy cartridge ROM

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

[Gerry] sent us pictures and a few details on replacing the Game Boy cartridge chip with a flash chip. For the prototype he used a PLCC and a little wire porn to interface a flash chip with the cartridge’s PCB while still having access to it for programming. In retrospect he plans to use a [...]

One-armed coding using a half-qwerty hack

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Matthew Daughtrey] is going to have one of his paws out of service for a while following some hand surgery. Making a living as a coder seems a bit harder with one hand but he was able to find some solutions online only to balk at price tags reaching $600. He came up with a [...]

Sound card driven servo motor

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

[Darrell] is using a sound card to drive this servo motor. The motor draws power from a cellphone battery with the control signal coming from one of the audio channels. It’s not too surprising that this works since the motor just needs a PWM signal to operate and that’s what is used to create the [...]

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32-bit ARM7 gaming rig

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Are you hardcore enough to build your own 32-bit ARM powered gaming console AND use point-to-point soldering to accomplish this? [Craig Bishop] did just that when building his GameSphere console project. First thing’s first, click through the jump and watch the game play video. He wrote that game in the C language in less than [...]

The story of Mr. Stabby

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Mr. Stabby was once a broken down bum, sitting on the curb, waiting for an eternity in the city dump. Luckily, someone found him and brought him to the NYC Resistor hacker group. They promptly performed some modifications and brought him back to life. He’s now a happy go lucky stab-bot with a twinkle in [...]

Bay Area Maker Faire 2010 video

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 7:52am MDT by Phil Burgess

Since the previously-posted stills can’t quite convey the chaos of last weekend’s Maker Faire, here’s some video from the event to help get you through hump day. It’s like three liters of Jolt Cola in a two liter bottle. One thing even video can’t adequately capture is our gratitude toward our readers at the show who took [...]

Head mounted camera tracks with your eyes

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The EyeSeeCam is a rig that attaches to your noggin and points a camera wherever your gaze falls. There’s actually four cameras involved here, one to track each eye via a reflecting piece of acrylic, one as your third eye, and finally the tracking camera above that. There are some legitimate medical uses for this [...]

Cool yourself with a CPU cooler and beer fridge

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

We have arrived once more at the time of year when penniless (or bored) hackers try to figure out how to keep the place cool without buying an air conditioner. [Paul Stacey] sent us his solution of pairing up a CPU cooler kit with a beer fridge. The CPU heat sink is cut out of [...]

Mass storage business card

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 11:09am MDT by Mike Szczys

Just snap off the corners and this business card can be used as a mass storage device. Well sort of. The tab left over has four traces on the back to make it USB compatible. The PIC 24FJ64GB002 microcontroller on the card registers as a storage device and launches [Ramiro's] resume and a cover letter [...]

Aircraft carrier is moving target for autonomous quadcopter

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Karl-Engelbert Wenzel] developed a UAV capable of taking off and landing on a moving platform autonomously. The platform operates aircraft-carrier-style by driving around the room in circles. The quadcopter tracks a grid of IR LEDs at the front of the landing deck by using the IR camera from a Wii remote. The best part is [...]

Poor MABEL

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 7:52am MDT by Caleb Kraft

At first, watching this video of MABEL, a bipedal robot for studying dynamic gaits, we didn’t know if we should be scared or feel sad. By the end, we know that sadness prevailed. Poor MABEL, forced into a grueling routine, is not even allowed to rest when her leg breaks. To be serious though, MABEL is [...]

Bay Area Maker Faire 2010 in pictures

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 3:57pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any bigger and crazier, they manage to outdo themselves again. The Bay Area Maker Faire wrapped up Sunday evening, but we have so many story leads that we’ll probably be busy until next year’s event. In the meantime, here’s just a tiny, random sampling of the countless delights that greeted visitors this [...]

Maple R3 now shipping

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Leaf Labs is now shipping the Maple R3 boards. [Phil Burgess] gave the platform a look just before launch last fall and the high-powered prototyping board is now even better. New features come in both hardware and software varieties. The bootloader can now be upgraded without additional programming hardware, there’s hardware SPI and I2C interfaces, [...]

DB9 form factor USB-RS232 replacement

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

If you’re attached to that favorite DB-9 interfaced device you should look into this part. FTDI is selling a USB-RS232 adapter as a replacement for DB-9 connectors. They come with USB male or female connections depending on the application and have the same serial footprint and pinout to which you’re accustomed. Using converter cables is [...]

Build HAL into your kitchen

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Instead of building a $500 iPad into a cabinet [Gojimi] used the old hardware he had lying around to building this kitchen computer. He did buy a few items such as a used touchscreen and a bar code scanner but the 2 GHz computer was just collecting dust. It’s running Windows XP, talks to you [...]

Prison tattoo machine made from PlayStation

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 11:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

Prison inmates have a history of being gruesomely resourceful hackers. The toothbrush shiv comes immediately to mind. One such inmate in the UK wanted to offer tattoos to his fellow convicts so he came up with a tattoo gun using a PlayStation for parts. The crude setup involves a sharpened ballpoint pen and the use [...]

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BAMF2010: Spy TRAKR – no lasers, $14,861 cheaper

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Phil Burgess

Maybe $15K for an elaborate balancing telepresence robot is a bit out of one’s league. In that case, another Bay Area Maker Faire exhibitor — Wild Planet — has you covered. Faire attendees got a hands-on sneak preview of the upcoming Spy Video TRAKR, a video-transmitting radio-controlled toy that’s programmable and extensively hackable. The TRAKR [...]

Sun tracking solar panel

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 8:25am MDT by Caleb Kraft

As we all know, a solar panel must be exposed to the most amount of sunlight possible to reach full efficiency. A solid mount limits the amount of time that the panel is fully exposed to direct sunlight. The solution is to build a pivoting mount that automates the process of aiming at the sun. [...]

BAMF2010: QB goes to meetings, shoots lasers from eyes

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 7:14am MDT by Phil Burgess

No, it’s not an extra from Wall-E. “QB” is the latest telepresence robot from Silicon Valley firm Anybots. QB combines two-way videoconferencing with a Segway-style self-balancing platform. The idea is to provide mobility and more natural interaction than desktop-tethered conferencing can provide. The 35 pound robot’s battery runs for six to eight hours, and the [...]

BAMF2010: CMT 380X Blackbird

Posted: May 23rd, 2010, 4:03pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Okay, we lied, we totally want one of these too. The CMT 380X Blackbird is one wicked hybrid car! Looking like it just rolled off the set of the next Batman film, the Blackbird is the brainchild of Electronic Arts Chief Creative Director [Richard Hilleman]. Starting from a kit car base — the Factory Five [...]

Spark plug music

Posted: May 23rd, 2010, 2:20pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

This is (video above) perhaps the most abstract way of playing sounds…ever. Yes, we’ve heard Hard Drive music and Obsolete technology bands, but [DJ Sures] brings us the first ever, spark plug instrument. Much like Velcro and Teflon, the musical spark plug is claimed to be an accident. After testing energy use vs. spark power with [...]

BAMF2010: SolarPump Charging Station

Posted: May 23rd, 2010, 12:39pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Amidst the noise of a bazillion robots and Tesla coils at the 2010 Bay Area Maker Faire, we located a bubble of usable WiFi, and got a nearby power charge to boot. If nothing else here, we want this: The SolarPump Charging Station is a self-contained oasis of free power for laptops, cel phones and [...]

Talking clock sounds just like you

Posted: May 23rd, 2010, 10:28am MDT by Mike Szczys

We’d bet a large portion of our readers don’t remember when you could call the phone company and get the time of day. Gadget Gangster is bringing back the tried and true method with this talking clock. Just press the button and the ‘operator’ will read the time of day to you. Record your own [...]

Composting to create hot water

Posted: May 23rd, 2010, 8:28am MDT by Mike Szczys

Want nature to supply you with 130-150 degree hot water? [Onestraw] shows you how to get just that by building a compost heap that heats water. Finding himself the proud owner of a dump truck of green wood chips [Onestraw] went about building his own version of Jean Pain’s thermal compost pile. The idea is [...]

Open Source STM

Posted: May 22nd, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We hope you paid attention in advanced theoretical and quantum physics classes, or making your own Open Source Scanning-Tunneling Microscope might be a bit of a doozy. We’re not even going to try to begin to explain the device (honestly we slept through that course) beyond clarifying it is used for examining the molecular and [...]

Z80 emulated on PIC hardware

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

[Jaromir Sukuba] built a very portable, low power consumption Z80 emulator using a PIC microcontroller. Looking through his build photos we love the clean and resilient construction which includes a breakout board for the PIC 32MX795F512H that interfaces with the main board via pin headers and sockets. He’s using a home-built keyboard and a 4×40 [...]

Hack a Day store now open

Posted: May 22nd, 2010, 8:17am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Since the beginning of the universe we’ve been getting requests for stickers, shirts, coffee mugs, etc. Well, several of the writers have the ability to produce this stuff in their homes. The boss liked that and gave us his blessing to start selling Hack a Day stuff. In the interest of keeping the cost as [...]

Bay Area Maker Faire blasts off Saturday

Posted: May 21st, 2010, 3:36pm MDT by Phil Burgess

It’s crunch time at California’s San Mateo Event Center, where crews are busily assembling rocket ships, singing Tesla coils and animatronic giraffes and dragons in preparation for the 2010 Bay Area Maker Faire, taking place this weekend. Returning for its fifth year, Maker Faire, if you’ve not had the pleasure, could be described as 50 [...]

Power drill solder spooler

Posted: May 21st, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Scott] over at curiousinventor.com has posted an instructable detailing how to use an Arduino and a power drill to spool solder. The Arduino senses the speed that the drill is going via an opto interrupter and a laser and adjusts with a servo hooked to the trigger. While we don’t think many people will be [...]

Ubuntu on the ClarionMIND MID

Posted: May 21st, 2010, 8:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

[DeadHP1] has been rolling and optimizing his own Ubuntu distributions for the ClarionMIND. He calls his work Mindbuntu and he’s squeezing out quite a bit of performance from the mobile Internet device. The video is running at 800×400, as well as wireless, sound, Google Earth with GPS support, and even compiz. Install the image using [...]

Automatic fish feeder

Posted: May 20th, 2010, 2:16pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This automatic fish feeder didn’t take long to put together and it allows you to adjust how much food is dispensed. [Gagandeep Singh] built it around an Atmel AT89C2051 microcontroller. Like many of the automated feeding systems we see, this uses a character display and a few buttons for the user interface. We’re always curious [...]

Urine a candidate for energy independence

Posted: May 20th, 2010, 1:15pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We thought we were supposed to have fusion-power for our DeLorean by now but it perhaps urine-power is just around the corner instead. [Gerardine Botte] has been working on creating hydrogen from urine, the world’s most abundant waste product. The voltage needed to break apart the urea atoms is less than half that of water, [...]

Personal pencil production plant

Posted: May 20th, 2010, 9:07am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Robb Godshaw] put together a pencil production line for home use. The whimsical assembly line starts with a graphite rod and extrudes clay polymer around it. From there it’s down a conveyor belt to get stamped and then into the oven made from a hacked toaster. The final step is to cut out a plug [...]

Keyboard input for PlayStation

Posted: May 20th, 2010, 7:47am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Anyone who has tried their hand at RPG Maker 1 (or any text input with a controller) knows how difficult it can be typing long paragraphs into the console. [Thutmose] is here to save the day with Kupid 1.0 (2.0 in production). A PICAXE takes ps/2 keyboard input and converts it to a series of [...]

Balancing cube looks more like a star

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

This art-meets-robot has the grueling task of standing on one foot all day long while other robots get to bend to their heart’s content. It balances on that single point by adjusting its center of gravity with six pendulum-like appendages. To make the system more like the Borg, each of those six modules shares sensor [...]

Arduino based EATC replacement

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The Electronic Automatic Temperature Control Module on [Dan Mattox's] 2000 Ford Taurus bit the dust. The junkyards in the area didn’t have a matching replacement and a new one is pretty hard to come by so he built an EATC replacement from an Arduino Mega. It includes a solenoid controller board for the vent selector, [...]

Shredding to Street Fighter

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Strumming to punch and changing frets to move, [Alan Chatham] plays Street Fighter using his guitar. It’s been modified to use OpenChord, an open source guitar controller package he developed. This was originally meant to be used with Guitar Hero and the like but as he mentions in the video after the break, it is [...]

Cramming more pixels into a Thinkpad

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

Not willing to settle for 1400×1050 on his Thinkpad, [Lawrence Sheed] set out to upgrade the LCD screen. He ordered a 15″ replacement screen that brought the eye candy up to an impressive 2048×1536 QXGA format. The replacement fits perfectly for a nice factory look. Other than some delicate disassembly you might need to flash [...]

Solder station hack adds temperature control

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Take that cheap fire stick you call a soldering iron and turn it into a real tool. [Giorgos Lazaridis] turned his 30 watt soldering iron into a temperature controlled soldering station by adding a thermistor just above the tip to monitor how hot things are getting. A MAX6675 takes care of the thermocouple and shoots [...]

32 LED POV globe

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a slick version of a POV globe(google translated). Created by [Riko], this globe has 32 LEDs and is powered by a rotating coil. The layout looks fairly solid in operation, with the POV effect showing up very nicely on camera. You can get the schematics and source code from the project page. We found [...]

Mister Gloves, gesture input

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 8:05am MDT by Jakob Griffith

This two handed glove input setup, by [Sean Chen] and [Evan Levine], is one step closer to achieving that [Tony Stark] like workstation; IE, interacting with software in 3D with simple hand gestures. Dubbed the Mister Gloves, the system incorporates accelerometer, push button, and flex sensor data over RF where an MCU converts it to [...]

Cathode ray tube leads the way on this bot

Posted: May 18th, 2010, 1:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Daqq's] latest creation is this little robot with a CRT mounted on the front. Obviously ‘why?’ is the wrong question here, but we know this is right up his alley considering his propensity for the less common like this plasma ball Nixie tube. The solidly-built bot uses two stepper motor controlled wheels and an omni-wheel [...]

Composing music with the Force Trainer

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

In the ongoing quest to make the Force Trainer useful [Hunter Scott] developed a music composition platform for your mind (channel Jack Black’s voice for the last half of that sentence). Using the Force Trainer’s serial port [Hunter] feeds the data stream into a computer via an FTDI cable and uses Processing to make the [...]

Command line video processing using FOSS

Posted: May 18th, 2010, 11:05am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Daniel Paluska] is getting away from the point-and-click by editing videos from the command line. Using the free open source software packages FFmpeg, Imagemagick, and Sox he produces new clips from multiple videos with effects like overlaying, slicing, and assigning each video to a different quadrant. The last option would be useful for displaying different [...]

Modern car data systems lack security

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

Tomorrow a team of researchers will present their paper on Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile (PDF) at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy. Much like the racing simulators we’ve seen they’re exploiting the ODB-II port to get at the vehicle’s Controller-area network, or CAN-bus. We’re not surprised at all that they can [...]

Super quick and cheap trackball

Posted: May 18th, 2010, 8:53am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Elgatoandaluz] has posted this guide on how to tear apart a standard optical mouse and build a custom trackball. He’s using a ping pong ball , mounted above the laser as the trackball itself, which seems like it would be a little lite, but functional. The case is scrap cardboard. We really like that you [...]

Magically repair AVR chips

Posted: May 17th, 2010, 4:34pm MDT by Mike Szczys

If you’ve ever spent time working with AVR microcontrollers you’ve probably set the fuse bits incorrectly at least once. The ATmega fusebit doctor will automatically repair the fuse bits and get you back in business until your next mishap. The ATmega8 that powers the device has the chip signatures for the ATmega family stored inside [...]

Old school vending machine learns new tricks

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

Thanks to craigslist [Chris] got his hands on a soda vending machine circa 1977. It still worked just fine (because things were still built to last back then) but he wanted to add some super-secret upgrades to the beverage dispensary. Two capacitive touch sensors were added to override the need for coins for those who [...]

Building an oak telescope

Posted: May 17th, 2010, 12:44pm MDT by Mike Szczys

You might not think about the finish of your homemade telescope but if it’s build from solid oak you probably should. [Gregory Strike] built this 8″ telescope a few years back but just posted about it a few days ago. The optics are quite expensive but the rest of the build was done dirt cheap [...]

Tweet-a-Watt now speaks to Google Power Meter

Posted: May 17th, 2010, 10:59am MDT by Mike Szczys

Hackaday’s own [Devlin Thyne] has been working with Adafruit to come up with a way to use the Tweet-a-Watt along with Google Power Meter. Back in March we put out the word that Google had unveiled the API for Power Meter and [Devlin] is the first we’ve heard of to come up with a way [...]

Final Projects: WiFi coil gun turret

Posted: May 17th, 2010, 8:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Chris Farnell] and [Michael Helms] are the brains behind this scary looking piece of machinery. It is a Coil gun, mounted on a turret, that is controlled over WiFi. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have rigged it to their iphone/ipad for remote shooting. Though it looks bulky, you can see that it is surprisingly [...]

Lunkenheimer steam whistle, doorbell

Posted: May 16th, 2010, 2:30pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’re going to straight out agree with [Pete] on how surprisingly quiet doorbells are now a days, and if we had it our way we would put his Lunkenheimer train whistle doorbell in every home*. The setup he uses is surprisingly simple, opting for a pre-built wireless doorbell that signals a microcontroller which in turn [...]

Kaossilator on the cheap

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 5:00pm MDT by James Munns

We recently stumbled on a way to turn a regular laptop into a poor man’s Kaossilator. Using the touchpad of your laptop, some PureData software, Touchpad2MIDI and a couple custom patches, [zenpho] has set everyone up to create that crazy electronic music that kids listen to these days. But what was that? You cant afford [...]

A Black Box Mystery

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 4:00pm MDT by James Munns

One of the members of the SomethingAwful forum recently found a black project box on the street (as seen above), with no idea what the thing did. After (hopefully) making sure there were no explosives, [noapparentfunction] posted a picture online to see if someone could figure it out. According to them, this is what the [...]

Human Tetris: object tracking on an 8-bit microcontroller

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Elaborating on an item previously mentioned among last weekend’s Cornell final projects list, this time with video: For their ECE final project, [Adam Papamarcos] and [Kerran Flanagan] implemented a real-time video object tracking system centered around an ATmega644 8-bit microcontroller. Their board ingests an NTSC video camera feed, samples frames at a coarse 39×60 pixel resolution (sufficient for simple [...]

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Hack a Day’s Dictionary of Questionable Utility™

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

We frequently receive inquiries from eager readers asking how they can best get started in electronics and computer projects. Countless great books have been written on these subjects, and of course now there’s our answers.hackaday.com site. But there’s a difference between being “book smart” and being “street smart.” What are the terms that you really need to know [...]

Minimalist AVR programmer is just fab!

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

Whether you’re burning a new bootloader to an Arduino board, or doing away with a bootloader to flash Atmel chips directly, an in-system programmer (ISP) is an indispensable tool for working with AVR microcontrollers. If cost has held you back, it’s no longer an excuse: FabISP is a barebones USB-based AVR programmer that can be pieced together [...]

Button mapping for all

Posted: May 15th, 2010, 8:02am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tim] came across a Kotaku story about a handicapped gamer who’s starting an Internet petition for button mapping features in all games. First of all, watch this guy play Modern Warfare 2 with a stock control, he’s got some mad skills. We’d normally be looking for a hardware solution like this PS3 Frankenstein controller or [...]

Using iPad SIM with an iPhone

Posted: May 14th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Aaron Nelson] tipped us off about a simple hack to use an iPad SIM with an iPhone. You won’t be able to use the iPhone as a phone, but the relatively cheap $29.99 for unlimited Internet was his goal. He used an old plastic gift card to cut out an adapter for the iPad’s micro [...]

Cat door unlocks via facial recognition

Posted: May 14th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Faced with critters trying to get in and a cat that loved to show them her latest kill, the folks at Quantum Picture came up with a system that unlocks the cat door based on image recognition. As you can see above, it uses a camera to capture the profile of anything approaching the cat [...]

Electromechanical game: Running with the bulls

Posted: May 14th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[vime0 =http://vimeo.com/11700747] We’ve been watching the progress of this build for a while on Flickr. It looks like they’ve finally completed the electromechanical game, Running with the bulls. Based off of the event by the same name, you have to keep your guy from being trampled by the bulls as the charge. The entire bull [...]

Biopunk watch: time, temperature, gaming

Posted: May 14th, 2010, 7:36am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Matthew Garten] built this watch based on an Arduino. The face is a small color display which allows you to choose to show time in digital, binary, or analog formats. In keeping with the recent trend here on Hackaday he has a glove-based add-on that has temperature sensors in the fingers; for Firefighters or those [...]

Wii remote connectivity for Android devices

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 1:06pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Pikipirs] developed an app that lets you connect a Wii remote to an Android phone. After the break you can see it used with a Sega emulator. The button presses seem very responsive, making for a nice gaming addition if you care to carry around the Wiimote in addition to your phone. It certainly seems [...]

OpenGL on the Didj

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Losinggeneration] managed to get a homebrew OpenGL application working on the Didj. It’s nice to see the community driven work advance on this device but something else also caught our attention from the forum post. Another poster pointed out that [losinggeneration] has files in one of his directories called “glquake-didj” and “glquake-didj.dbg”. We hope that [...]

Transistor fabrication: so simple a child can do it

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

If manufacturing printed circuit boards has become too easy you should try your hand at producing transistors. [Jeri Ellsworth] put together a collection of videos outlining the process. These go way beyond the IC fabrication we saw from her in the past. It doesn’t take much, a 1000 degree oven with steam option, silicone wafers, [...]

Nike + iPod as a tracking device

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 9:48am MDT by Mike Szczys

Enclosure: [download]

[Thomas] found a paper from 2006 that describes using the Nike + iPod system as inexpensive tracking devices. Yep, it’s old as dirt but we think it’s fascinating reading! [Scott Saponas] and his fellow authors take a hard look at the lack of security in the system in a twelve-page PDF. They cover several different [...]

Ghetto repairs: Desoldering with a candle

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 7:59am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Yes, that picture you are seeing is serious. [Roland] needed a chip for a damaged piece of electronics. He was lucky enough to find one on an old board at a local shop. The problem was, he didn’t have the hot air gun to remove the chip the correct way. Instead, he simply cooked the [...]

Point and shoot in a classic camera body

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 2:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

If you think there’s a gun inside that camera you’ve been fooled. We just like the juxtaposition of the 1940′s era camera with the iconic sidearms. What you see is a point-and-shoot cameras inside of the classic Leica II body (this is actually a Zorki 1 knockoff). It is much like the Canon AE-1 hack [...]

Midi gloves

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 12:10pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’re being inundated with glove-based peripheral hacks. This is another final project from Cornell, keyboard out of the equation by adding 8 piezo sensors to a pair of gloves thereby shunning the pinky finger. We like this one because it’s easy to build and the midi interface implementation is well documented if you want to [...]

Monitor UV exposure with your sunglasses

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 11:06am MDT by Mike Szczys

Tired of those awful sunburns? [Nikko Knappe's] UV sensing glasses will warn you before you become crisp and red as a lobster. The bump added to the bridge support hides a TSL230R light frequency sensor. The device automatically switches on when the arms are unfolded and starts tracking cumulative exposure. If it detects a rising [...]

Building air variable capacitors

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

In keeping with our opinion that radio operators were the original electronic hackers here’s a guide to building your own transmitting air variable capacitors. Using some roof flashing, Plexiglas, and various fasteners [David Hammack] was able to make it work. It’s not a perfect solution but he has some ideas to make the next one [...]

Nerf sentry gun build in progress

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 8:53am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[John Park] is documenting his build of a Nerf Sentry gun. So far, he’s rigged the trigger and set up the motorized base. He’s documenting the process in fantastic detail with great photos along the way. If you want to see what it will be like when it is finished, check out these other Nerf [...]

Digikey sort by price script

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 5:45pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Does anyone else find it a little ironic the electronic retailer SparkFun is advocating scripts to help Digikey have a Sort By Price function? Regardless, to reiterate now Firefox (and we hear Google Chrome too) users with the Greasemonkey plugin can sort Digikey items. Personally, some of us here are just Mouser fans at heart. [...]

Maze solving

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Mitchel Humpherys] and his fellow developers didn’t just develop a maze-solving algorithm, they also built a ping-pong ball maze platform that is computer controlled. Using a webcam the computer picks up the high-contrast maze by peering down from above, calculates the solution, and moves the ping-pong ball to the goal using two different tilt servos [...]

PS3 patch allows Linux installation

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

[Geohot] came up with a patch that allows OtherOS on 3.21 PS3 firmware. You’ll remember that Sony released version 3.21 specifically to prohibit OtherOS which allows the installation of Linux for which they were subsequently sued. Well, now their “fix” doesn’t work on people willing to flash patched firmware which means they’re only punishing those [...]

Original NES plays Game Boy games?

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Bunnyboy] pulled off some wizardry with this custom NES cartridge. Inside is the mainboard for a Game Boy as well as his own custom PCB with the comb connector needed to interface with an original Nintendo Entertainment System. In his own words it’s “a Super Game Boy without the Super”. The expansion port to for [...]

Open3DP looks at 3D printing in common materials

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 8:18am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Buddy Smith] sent us a link to Open3DP which he calls “REAL 3d printing hacks”. Open3DP showcases the projects of the Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory at the University of Washington. They’re working on 3D printing in materials that can be commonly acquired and to that end they publish recipes for powder printing in materials such [...]

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Hack Your Crystal’s Frequency

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 2:18pm MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Drone] tipped us off about [Joachim]‘s efforts to alter a crystal’s frequency. Through a process called penning, a crystal’s resonant frequency is lowered by painting the crystal with an indelible ink marker. Our curiosity piqued, we went off and found more information about penning crystals. It turns out this technique has been around for nearly [...]

Color a Sound

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This is an interesting take on a music box. [Blair Neal] is using an overhead projector with a roll of transparency to make a synthesized music box. A camera watches the projected image and feeds data to Max/MSP to produce the sounds. Customization merely requires creative image analysis. In this case, different colored pens or [...]

More glove-based interfaces

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

You may remember seeing the golf glove air guitar hack last month. Here’s two more uses for gloves with sensors on them. On the left is a glove interface with flex sensors on each digit as well as an accelerometer. The VEX module reads the sensors to detect sign language as a command set. A [...]

FPS controller hacks getting easier

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

It used to be a major production to build a gun-form-factor FPS controller but commercial tech has adopted many of those traditional hacks over the years. Now, [Nirav Patel] is playing Cube with a Wii zapper and a SpacePoint. All that was really required to make this happen is a patch to Cube, the open [...]

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TOBY: reel mower bot evolved

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

[Grayson Sigler] rolled out a new version of his robotic mower which he calls TOBY. The previous design added motors to a reel mower but he had trouble with traction. The new design is more of a utility robot platform that is used to tow the reel motor behind it. With better wheels, a much [...]

Making a bluetooth SNES controller

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 8:34am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[MODDEDbyBACTERIA] has posted this instructible on how to make a bluetooth SNES controller. The bulk of the parts come from a bluetooth MSI game pad, so this isn’t a scratch build, but the amount of modifications required definitely qualify this as a hack. We were quite surprised that he managed to stuff all of that back into [...]

Twilio adds touch tone telephone control for Arduino

Posted: May 9th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

An Arduino with an Ethernet shield, nothing new right? Not quite, [Chris] is showing us how to use Twilio to control an Arduino via a touch tone telephone. We saw Twilio used before in a cellphone video game but this time around an audio menu system comes into play. You can make your own menus [...]

Multiple material 3D printing

Posted: May 9th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It’s no surprise that we’re wild about 3D printing, especially [Devlin]. Now we’re absolutely out of our minds for this multi-material polyjet machine that is featured in the video above. Before we go any further it’s worth mentioning that this post is not advertising, we just think this machine is unbelievable. It is capable of [...]

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Manual transmission gear sensor

Posted: May 9th, 2010, 9:50am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ben] bought a remote starter for his car but needed a way to make sure the manual transmission was in neutral when starting. He built this infrared sensor frame to detect the position of the stick. It uses four beam paths which will tell him the exact gear or neutral position of the shifter. For [...]

Nimbus, portable N64

Posted: May 8th, 2010, 12:51pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We love a beautiful and successful N64 portable mod, (In case that fact wasn’t already obvious). And today we would like to add [cndowning's] Nimbus N64 to our list of favorites. The base is made from vacuum formed plastic while the buttons come from a modified superpad and the screen is a Zenith 5inch. We [...]

XKCD takes a swipe at the Arduino

Posted: May 8th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This XKCD comic takes a playful swipe and almost everything, including the Arduino. We’ve heard people claim that we have some sort of favoritism toward Arduino, and we don’t. People just submit a LOT of projects with them. But there is one point that we’ve seen a few times that should be addressed. In our categories [...]

Making magnetite nanocrystals

Posted: May 8th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Unlike many chemistry projects we post here, making magnetite nanocrystals doesn’t require anything that can’t be found in a local grocery store. All that is required is oil, vinegar, crystal drain opener, and rust. We don’t recognize the specific brand of drain cleaner that they are using, but we’re sure that you could find one [...]

Cornell final project list

Posted: May 8th, 2010, 7:29am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Looking for an interesting project to do using an Atmel Mega644? Students at Cornell University have got you covered. They were required to choose, design, and build a project using the microcontroller; and this year is quite promising with video object tracking, the always popular theremins, helicopters, Potentiostats, even Pavlovian conditioned mosquitoes, and more. Of [...]

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5×2 patch board

Posted: May 7th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Sometimes we want to sit on the back porch, crack a beer, and do some prototyping. Other times we’d like to do the same but on the couch in the livingroom. To that end we added a 5×2 pin to 10×1 pin patch board to our solderless breadboard. The 5×2 pin form factor is pretty [...]

Reuse that PDA as a WRT terminal

Posted: May 7th, 2010, 1:56pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Michu] used his old Palm IIIc to make a serial interface for his OpenWRT router. It’s a matter of cracking open both the router and the Palm device, then connecting the TTL lines from the router to the MAX 3386e level converter chip inside the Palm. From there, Pocketterm can connect to the router’s serial [...]

Toner transfer explained step-by-step

Posted: May 7th, 2010, 1:02pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tanjent] send us a link to his tutorial on the toner transfer process for fabricating circuit boards. We’ve seen a lot of these in the past, but we liked how his is straight to the point while also sharing several tips and options along the way. Notably, he ”tints” the copper clad before trying to [...]

Hand made manipulator arm

Posted: May 7th, 2010, 9:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

We’re pretty used to seeing CAD used in the design process for most things. It’s a bit of a shocker to come across a project this involve, and this well executed, that didn’t use CAD. [Anton] spent 100 hours building this manipulator arm by hand. He made the parts by drawing them on styrene and [...]

Peltier cooler based cloud chamber

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

[Rich] shares with us his build of a Peltier cooler based cloud chamber. This nifty little tool allows him to see the paths that radioactive particles take through alcohol vapor. The system he has come up with is fairly cheap at roughly $100. He’s using Peltier coolers from computers and a cheap ATX power supply. [...]

DSLR Shoulder holster with follow focus

Posted: May 6th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

and [Jonathan Bergqvist] built this shoulder mount for a Canon 7D camera. It’s made from wood and it hooks over the top of the photographer’s shoulder with a handle for each hand. The left handle also controls the focus, using a similar method to the hardware store follow focus we looked at in January. Like [...]

Building removable epoxy mounting brackets

Posted: May 6th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Jykazu] wanted to use an external lens with his Kodak Zi8 but he didn’t want to alter the camera or glue something onto it. His solution was to build a bracket out of epoxy dough. He first covers the camera in scotch tape to protect the finish, then he kneads the dough to mix the [...]

PC side IM-ME hacks

Posted: May 6th, 2010, 10:30am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Paul Klemstine] is working on some PC-side software hacks for the IM-ME. We’ve seen a lot of hardware hacks for this device, such as controlling the display, firmware flashing, and using it as a spectrum analyzer, but if you don’t want to alter the device right away you can try [Paul's] collection of hacks. Working [...]

Build your own Wikipedia reader

Posted: May 6th, 2010, 9:25am MDT by Mike Szczys

One part inexpensive uC, one part touch-screen, one part Internet knowledge-base all come together to make up this Wikipedia reader. It functions in a very similar way to commercial versions by parsing XML dumps from the popular website to an SD card for use on the device. This is not limited to Wikipedia, but could [...]

Vehicle information display hacks

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve had a few folks send us info about their vehicle display hacks after seeing [Will O'Brien's] motorcycle computer a few days ago. On the left we have a display for an electric vehicle. [S1axter] is using a 4.3″ TFT screen to display charge information for each battery cell in the car. An ATmega88 collects [...]

Mad machinist masterpieces

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 1:12pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

If a picture is worth 1000 words, by our count, [Ryan Commbes] has said 1.68×10^6 different things about his custom robot, airsoft, and monster truck builds. While we’re not ones to pick favorites, we agreed his Alpine TPG-1 (picture at the top) build is a step above the rest. Sadly, the forums with his build [...]

Classic Canon AE-1 gets a digital upgrade

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Shots of this Canon AE-1 camera-gone-digital have a lot of people scratching their heads. Originally there were a lot of “that’s been photoshopped” cries but the video after the break shows that it physically exists. This particular model of camera hasn’t been manufactured since 1984 so there’s little chance that the company’s bringing it back [...]

Custom PS3 controller: software emulation version

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Matlo] posted a tutorial that will walk you through setting up a six-axis controller emulator. In April he developed a hardware solution using the Teensy but this version just needs a Linux computer with a Bluetooth adapter. If you don’t mind adding a computer to the mix you can use any peripheral controller that will [...]

Adding RAM to the Nexus One without soldering

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Want 21 megabytes more ram in your Nexus One? [Coolbho3000] worked out a way to tweak the kernel and remap memory usage to free up some resources. That means this comes as a custom kernel image requiring no hardware alteration. Try it out and share your experiences in the comments. But if you don’t need [...]

Possibly the most beautiful piece of hardware

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

I’m going to break from the typical Hackaday article format for a moment. I’m smitten, captivated by this wondrous new discovery. Forgive my ignorance for having never seen one of these before, I didn’t go to school for electronics. For those, who like myself wondered, what is this beautiful glowing thing, it is a mercury arc valve [...]

When multimeters go boom

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 8:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Ever wondered how expensive versus cheap multimeters hold up to abuse? [Dave] gives us a pretty good idea by, well, blowing them up. He’s using a capacitor bank to put roughly 4.2 KiloVolts into the poor little meters. If you absolutely must skip to the multimeters, go to about 5:00. You really will miss out [...]

Remote operated underwater vehicle

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 7:10am MDT by Jakob Griffith

PVC hull, SLA batteries, Bilge Pumps, sounds like a good start to [Jimmy's] ROV project. Paintball gun (as a BCD), dual live cameras paired with an Arduino making it internet controlled, all tethered with a fiber optic cable, sounds like [Jimmy's] ROV got a whole lot more astounding. While some very important parts have yet [...]

Answers.hackaday.com is LIVE

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 2:51pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Quick, go to answers.hackaday.com and sign up for an account. Ages ago, we announced that we would be bringing a community driven question and answer system to Hackaday. We eventually got tired of waiting for the feature to be provided and improvised. Well, the wait is over. You can now post your own questions and [...]

Paintball graffitti

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 1:01pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Paintball as a large format printer? That’s exactly what facade printer is. A paintball gun was mounted with two controllable axes of movement. A computer reads in the image data and prints it out by shooting paintballs to form a dot-matrix display. There’s a couple of wins here, the paintball paint can be washed off, [...]

Laser Command game uses laser for control

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Eliji Hayashi's] project for a class at Carnegie Mellon University is absolutely delightful! It is a game he calls Laser Command because a laser pointer is used as the gaming controller. An 8×8 LED matrix serves as the display, but is also used as an 8×8 light sensor, much the same way as the LED [...]

Print toner directly to a PCB

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

We use the toner transfer method to fabricate printed circuit boards. The most difficult part of this is printing, ironing, and removing the paper from the toner that is used as an etchant resist material. [Mark Lerman] is developing a method to apply toner directly to the copper clad using a laser printer. Each of [...]

QFN or MLF soldering without solder paste

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Take a few minutes to watch this amazingly informative video on how to solder QFN or MLF components without solder paste. The quality of the video and the information within is quite nice. Even if you don’t intend to work with these parts, you could pick up some tips for soldering with hot air.

EMG controlled prosthesis

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 8:10am MDT by Mike Szczys

This prosthetic arm is the result of a student project. [Amnon Demri] and his classmates built it with below-the-elbow amputees in mind. It uses electromyography to actuate the fingers and wrist. Four stick-on sensors are placed around the elbow to sense electrical activity there. These signals are interpreted by a PIC 16f877a microcontroller which then [...]

POV LED sphere

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 7:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Csaba Bleuer] has built this really nice POV LED sphere. Looking at the hand drawn schematic, it appears that he’s using an Atmega8 as the core. The resolution is pretty decent, and even shows fairly well on camera despite the refresh issues. Although much cleaner, it looks like a similar implementation to this one that [...]

iPhone 3.1.3 unteathered jailbreak

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 4:19pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A method to Jailbreak the new 3.1.3 iPhone rom is here and it does away with tethering. Tethering is the problem that arose from the blackra1n exploit requiring a computer to reboot the iPhone. Although we saw a hardware workaround for that, it’s much nicer to do away with the issue completely. The new exploit [...]

Automated chicken coop door

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 2:43pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a pretty cool implementation of an automated door, built for a chicken coop. The electronics are fairly standard, an Arduino and a used cordless drill. The end product will be not only wireless, but automated based off of ambient light as well. We also found the locking mechanism quite elegant. He also supplied a [...]

VirtualBox beta runs Mac OS X

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 11:42am MDT by Phil Burgess

A new beta build of VirtualBox, Sun’s Oracle’s free x86 virtualization software, makes it possible to run Mac OS X as a guest operating system…no shenanigans or flaming hoops to jump through, just pop in the $30 retail Snow Leopard upgrade disc and go. This had previously only been possible with some awkward Hackintosh-style maneuvering, or [...]

Wyvern quadcopter

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 9:13am MDT by Mike Szczys

[William Etter] and his classmates built a quadcopter as a class project. We love the details of these builds and they came through with some thorough documentation. Some highlights that we enjoyed were reading about ABS body design and construction, their analysis of two versus three blade propellers, and their breadboarded control mechanism. You can [...]

Remote control reel mower

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 8:11am MDT by Mike Szczys

Challenged by hot days and steep turf [Grayson Sigler] modified his reel mower to use electric motors. The end product will be radio controlled but he lacked the necessary parts to make it wireless right now. Not to be deterred, he used a wired controller for prototyping and testing that should be easily replaced once [...]

Headphone tube preamp kit

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 6:59am MDT by Mike Szczys

If you’re curious about tube amps but don’t have a firm enough knowledge base to dive right in you might want to try a kit. [Mark Houston] reviewed one such kit and we enjoyed reading about his experiences. It comes with everything you need save soldering tools, an enclosure, and the final connectors ([Mark] used [...]

A more powerful boost charger

Posted: May 2nd, 2010, 4:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Meseta] built a powerful boost charger to top off his portable devices. He was inspired by the Minty Boost but wanted to overcome the rather limited capacity provided by the two-celled product. He ended up building his own DC to DC boost circuit rather than using an all-in-one IC. As you can see, the result [...]

DIY pulse oximeter

Posted: May 2nd, 2010, 3:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This pulse oximeter turned out very nicely. It is based around a Freescale microcontroller and detects pulse as well as oxygen saturation in your blood. The sensor is made of two wood pieces and allows two wavelengths of light to be shined through your finger. A sensor picks up the light on the other side [...]

Motion sensing light module

Posted: May 2nd, 2010, 2:17pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Muris] is pumping out the home lighting hacks. He developed this motion sensing module as an add-on to the IR switch we saw last week. There’s some kind of fuse box above his entry door and its white cover, which you see above, is where he mounted an IR distance sensor to detect movement and [...]

Custom headphones solve wire tangles

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

One complaint we hear about often is ear-bud’s cables getting tangled within backpacks. [Andrew] was having this “spaghetti” wire problem, and also wanted to listen to his music with ear protection on – where ear-buds are usually uncomfortable. The latter problem is fixed by placing speakers inside of folding ear protectors, and the cable is [...]

Phasor A/V PAL demo uses ATmega88

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Above is a new demo video called Phasor developed by [Lft]. It is run from an AVR ATmega88 and a few passive components, and the result is pretty amazing. [Lft] goes into detail about the tricks he used to get this up and running. The chip is clocked at 17.73447 MHz which is exactly four [...]

DPAC put your alarm clock to shame

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 12:20pm MDT by Mike Szczys

DPAC, the Dynamically Programmable Alarm Clock, goes far beyond what you would expect an alarm clock to do, yet we find all of its features useful. You can see there are four buttons at the bottom that control the menu scrolling. The second from the left currently reads “Sync”, a feature that the clock uses [...]

CPU as a heat sink

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve noticed that wireless routers pump out a bunch of heat. [Jernej Kranjec] wanted to make sure that he didn’t fry it once he started adding more load to his router using OpenWRT. What he came up with is the idea of using an old CPU as a passive heat sink. He applied a bit [...]

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Motorcycle computer

Posted: May 1st, 2010, 8:57am MDT by Mike Szczys

Hackaday writer of yore [Will O'Brien] has been working on this hardware for his motorcycle. Speed, voltage, gear, and temperature data is displayed on a 16×2 character LCD. The speed is pulled from the bike itself and the gear is calculated by comparing engine RPM to wheel RPM. He’s using the popular DS1820 1-wire temp [...]

BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » May 2010