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Cameras perch on power lines, steal electricity

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 2:29pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tim] let us know about a video outlining some covert camera devices the Air Force is developing. The video takes a lot of time to explain induction to those who’ve never heard of it but we liked to see the bird-like concept animations. They’ve already developed cameras that will clamp on to power lines in [...]

Touchscreen scooter computer

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

[Kurt's] scooter computer started off as a way to use a couple of LEDs to show the battery charge on his hog. It was based on a Arduino and used a voltage divider to judge how much juice was left. But then he ran across a touch-screen OLED shield for the Arduino and the project [...]

Houses to go from leftover scraps

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 12:27pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Derek Diedricksen] builds nomadic houses from left over building materials. Some are large enough to haul behind a vehicle or, in the case of the one above, small enough to tote around like a wheelbarrow. We love them because not only do they reuse material that might commonly hit the landfill, but they look good. [...]

Tank drone with automatic targeting and tracking

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 10:44am MDT by Mike Szczys

Humankind is making some great advances toward our own destruction with this tank drone. It’s got a powerful set of treads with an Airsoft rifle perched atop. Thanks to the cameras and the laser this thing can accurately target based on color. The hardware is controlled by a collection of Arduino boards connected via XBee so that [...]

Sonoluminescence

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Sonoluminescence is one of those strange phenomenon that many would never encounter outside an academic environment. For those who have never heard of it, Sonoluminescence is when tiny bubbles suspended in a liquid emit light while being vibrated at certain frequencies. We were pleased to see that some plans are out there on how to [...]

Interview with Steven Levy about Hackers

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Dale Dougherty] interviews [Steven Levy] about the history of hacking. [Levy]‘s book Hackers has been released in a 25th anniversary edition. The interview alone is fascinating and the book is a must read for any hacker. If they offered a course in hacker culture somewhere, we’re positive that this book would be the textbook. The 25th anniversary [...]

Links expanded: Snake on LED matrix

Posted: June 28th, 2010, 6:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Yosh] came through with a link to the Snake playing LED matrix that he read about in our links post from yesterday. It seems that [Arty Fart] actually built three of these in green, yellow, and red. You can see him throw one together (an 8-10 hour job) in the video after the break. In addition [...]

DTG using a stock printer

Posted: June 27th, 2010, 2:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Here’s a Direct-to-Garment device that uses a stock printer. [Jeff German] used an Epson R1900 with the stock firmware to get the results seen in the video. His hardware modifications involve adding two buttons to the printer’s circuit board. For DTG beginners this certainly lowers some of the obstacles to getting started. [Jeff] is working [...]

Audible tuner for the blind

Posted: June 27th, 2010, 1:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Lain Sharp] modified this guitar tuner so it can be used by his blind friend. In the picture above you can make out a small white project box that houses the additional electronics. Inside is another battery and an ATmega168 providing a connection for an earphone. The AVR chip connects to each LED on the [...]

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Now you see me, now you don’t, face detection scripts

Posted: June 27th, 2010, 12:10pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Straight out of Ghost in the Shell, the Laughing Man makes his appearance in these security camera shots. [William Riggins] wrote us to let us know about his teams Famicam scripts. After taking a screen shot, faces are detected and counted, ‘anonymized’, and the final image is uploaded to Twitter. The process is rather simple, [...]

Hackaday links: June 27, 2010

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

Precision CRT manufacture Here’s a great video from Tektronix about building a precision cathode ray tube. The tube manufacture method was developed to use in oscilloscopes and we’d guess it dates back to the early 1960′s. [Thanks Bill] Snake on an LED matrix We would have done a full post o this beautifully built LED matrix but [...]

CD controlled lawn mower

Posted: June 26th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Oliver Nash] was enlisted by his parents to fix their robotic lawn mower. They owned a Robomow which happily navigated their yard to keep the grass at a nice level. These robots rely on a perimeter wire with a special signal running through it to ensure they are inside of the mowing area. Confronted by [...]

Portable Atari the size of a Game Boy

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

This portable Atari is the result of [Mario's] toils. The core system is an Atari Flashback 2, an embedded system released in 2005 with several built-in games. The stock titles weren’t enough so [Mario] added a cartridge slot in order to play whichever games he wishes. The case was originally the packaging for an iPod [...]

Cat hacking

Posted: June 26th, 2010, 8:02am MDT by Caleb Kraft

After a gruesome accident involving a harvester, [Oscar] lost his legs. [Noel Fitzpatrick] a mad scientist veterinary surgeon came to the rescue. [Oscar] now has leg implants prosthetic feet. It is pretty amazing that a cat would even function in this manner. Have you ever seen one try to walk with tape on its feet? [...]

Multitouch using water

Posted: June 26th, 2010, 5:55am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Taichi Inoue] is back again, this time with a multitouch system that uses water as the touch surface. The setup consists of a tank of water placed atop an LCD, a lamp, and a web cam. The web cam pics up the light that is reflected when something breaks the surface of the water. It [...]

Jumping robot looks like a product of Doctor Wily

Posted: June 25th, 2010, 12:34pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We love it when footage of a robot prompts a “holy crap” response from us. This little guy, a product of the Chiba Institute of Technology, uses four rods as a suspension system for jumping. The bulk of the bot can be moved up or down, using its momentum to raise the wheels and jump to [...]

Selective Laser Sintering rig on the cheap

Posted: June 25th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Peter's] been hard at work designing an affordable Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printing platform. We first saw his work on this back in April when he was working mostly with acrylic. Now he’s moved on to a design that relies on hardboard which has resulted in a build that comes it at around $20 [...]

SOAP compatibility for SQLmap

Posted: June 25th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[_coreDump] was doing some database vulnerability testing using SQLmap to automate the process. To his dismay, the package was unable to test using the Simple Object Access Protocol. Faced with having to manually test all of the SOAP vulnerabilities he decided to work some Python magic and add support. His solution allows SQLmap 0.8 to [...]

Adding motion control to an RC transmitter

Posted: June 25th, 2010, 8:36am MDT by Mike Szczys

If your soldering skills are up to snuff you can add a motion control feature to your radio controlled transmitter. [Starlino] used a combination accelerometer and gyroscope module as an alternate source of analog control information. He built a filter to dial in the analog voltage range to match that of one of the sticks [...]

Yukikaze, music visualizations

Posted: June 25th, 2010, 7:34am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Taichi Inoue] put together this beautiful visualization system called Yukikaze, japanese for “snow wind”. Basically a spectrum analyzer, Yukikaze is delightful to watch. We would love to see what kind of response he gets, as most of the footage shows very slowly changing smooth jazz. While we don’t think he gets crisp EQ visualizations out [...]

Machining a horizontal Stirling engine

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Satisfy your need to view some quality machining by looking through this Stirling engine worklog. We’ve seen these engines used a few other times in creating electricity from solar energy, powering a car, and even built from aluminum cans. [David Morrow] built this rendition to push the limits of his machining skills. We’d say he [...]

Adding a serial port to the Zipit

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

[Geordy] added a serial port to his Zipit. It uses a 3.5mm jack as the connector. He managed to include an RS232 level converter inside the case. Both components were hard to fit into the cramped quarters but he did it and he kept the hacker-friendly device looking nice too.

Unwrapping 360 degree video

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 12:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Golan Levin] found a way to unwrap the 360 degree images he created with his camera. He’s using a Sony Bloggie HD camera which comes with a 360 degree attachment for the lens. This produces a donut shaped image (seen in the upper left) that was not all that palatable to [Golan]. He used Processing [...]

Multi Multimeter clock

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 10:57am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Alan Parekh] built this clock to look like a Multimeter using analog multimeters for the three displays. A PIC does the timekeeping and feeds a specific amperage to the three displays which show hours, minutes, and seconds. We’ve seen clocks that use analog meters before. [Alan] took the concept to the next level, replacing the [...]

Mushroom terrarium automation

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Like many specialty plants, growing mushrooms requires that you keep a fine balance between humidity and temperature. this can be fairly tedious at times, so many opt for automated systems. [Anthony_p1234] has chosen to build his own. Using an Arduino, he controls power to two heating pads, a sonic humidifier, and an air pump to keep his [...]

Mr. Burns prevents sun burns

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 8:16am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[nmcclana] wrote out this very detailed instructible on building Mr. Burns, a sun burn alarm. Enter your skin type, sunscreen type, and UV levels for the day and Mr. Burns will let you know when it is time to go seek shelter or re-apply that sunscreen. Built on a Propeller platform, he’s using a blue [...]

Fusion, in my backyard?!

Posted: June 24th, 2010, 7:35am MDT by Jakob Griffith

Here is the 32nd amateur fusion reactor built in a basement. [Mark Suppes] is right behind [Will Jack], the (then) 17 year old [Thiago Olson], and [Mileiux] in engineering a homemade nuclear reactor. By taking two light elements and colliding them under extreme speed and pressure, a heavier element and energy are produced. [Mark's] goal [...]

Working with the AT90USBKey

Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 12:13pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The Genearic HID tool is meant as an easy way to create your own human interface devices. The project has the added benefit of showing us how to hack the hardware on the AT90USBKey developement board. The AVR-based device, which we saw used to make an SNES cartridge reader, comes in at just over $30 [...]

Live fire Half-life

Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 10:39am MDT by Mike Szczys

We don’t know how we missed this when it first came out, but there is a hack out there that combines a .22 caliber pistol with the video game Half-life. Simple is best and that motto is in use here. A wall was built down range to use as a projection screen. Accelerometers mounted on [...]

Giant LED matrix

Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We all love blinky lights. What we love even more than blinky lights is a very detailed tutorial with great photos. [Richard Kline] has written this fantastic tutorial on how to build a large 5×7 LED matrix and control it with a PIC processor. The bulk of the body is a foam insulation board, covered [...]

iPhone 4 teardown

Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

iFixit traveled all the way to Japan to bring you this iPhone 4 teardown, only to be shipped the device unexpectedly two days early! We were surprised that the A4 processor (its naked body displayed for the world this past April) contained within the iPhone 4 had 512MB of ram, compared to the 256MB of [...]

Another take on a bicycle built for two

Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

We normally advocate wearing a helmet when biking in case you get hit by a car. In this case the guy on the bottom of this double-decker bicycle should wear a helmet to avoid a boot to the head. When we started watching the video after the break we thought that [James] had just built [...]

Next HOPE badge hacking primer

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

[Travis Goodspeed] is taking a look at the attendee badges for this year’s Next HOPE conference. He’s given us a pretty good look at what is on the board, what it means to you, and how you can get at it. Of course the final hardware specs are a secret until conference time, but this [...]

Update: Atari pause button

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

The Atari 2600 pause circuit is now available in a kit form. We saw this pause method back in February and the kit uses the same circuit. We don’t really need a kit for this, the board is very simple to throw together. But we do appreciate the detailed installation instructions (PDF) that accompany it. [...]

PlayStation 2 portable

Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Raizer04] just completed his PlayStation 2 portable build. He feels that the PS2 hardware has much more to offer than the PSP and that’s why he chose to cram the PS2 slim hardware into a portable case. He started with an electronic toy to serve as a case donor and used bondo to form openings [...]

Morse code clock

Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Johnny Carlo] put another spin on clock displays with his Propeller-based Morse Code clock. He repurposed a tap light, using the tap function as a switch input and actuating the bulb inside with the help of a transistor. If you want to know the time just give it a tap and the device will transmit back to [...]

TI makes a big bid for the hobby market

Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

This morning Texas Instruments unveiled Launchpad, a development platform for their low-cost MSP430 line of microcontrollers. We’ve seen these chips before, most notably in the ez430 Chronos sports watch. We see this as a bid for the hobby market currently enjoyed by Arduino, PIC, AVR, and others. TI’s biggest selling point is price, but we’re [...]

PSP homebrew using the Half-Byte Loader

Posted: June 21st, 2010, 2:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Rich] tipped us off about the Half-Byte Loader which lets you run homebrew on late-model Sony PlayStation Portables. Above you can see a PSP Go running Doom (a screenshot from the video after the break), which is a prerequisite for any cracked device. HBL uses an exploit in the game demo of Patapon 2, which [...]

Audio breakout box for MacBook Pro

Posted: June 21st, 2010, 1:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Billy] wanted to use the audio connector on his MacBook Pro for input and output at the same time. He knew it could be done because Apple sells headphones with built-in microphones that work with the computer. He set out to build a breakout box so that he could connect the components of his choice [...]

Inductive charging for the HTC Evo

Posted: June 21st, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Danny] added wireless charging to his HTC Evo. The hard work was already done for him by Palm, it was just a matter of adding that hardware to his phone. A Touchstone induction charging kit for the Palm Pre will cost you just over $40 for the base station and a replacement back cover. [Danny's] [...]

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Gaming’s newest accessory: headbands

Posted: June 21st, 2010, 10:31am MDT by Mike Szczys

These aren’t terrorists, they’re electrical engineering students. For their final project they developed a headband and rifle input system for the NES. The controllers send data to a laptop which then maps out the inputs to NES controller commands and sends them to an original NES console, no emulation here. The controllers in the headband [...]

$100 CNC mill

Posted: June 21st, 2010, 8:41am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This final project at MIT turned out quite nice. It is a CNC mill that cost under $100 to make. The tolerances are pretty tight as you can see in the pictures of the PCBs he has milled. He shows that he can even mill mild steel. It is a pretty brief writeup, but you [...]

Swarm Light at Art Basel

Posted: June 20th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

What has 9000 LEDs, 3000 MSP430 processors, six XMOS XC-2 Ethernet modules, and goes blinkity-blink-blink? It’s Swarm Light, an art installation shown at this year’s Art Basel exhibition. [Fredrik Petrini] worked on the hardware that went into building the group of three 3D cubes of LED light modules. Unlike so many art pieces we see [...]

Tetris code theory explained

Posted: June 20th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Graham] designed this PIC based Tetris game on a single board. The hardware is quite nice but we enjoyed his explanation of the graphics algorithm that he used. Having coded Tetris from the ground up ourselves we understand how difficult it is to explain how the program works. Tracking pieces already on the board as well as [...]

Reverse GeoCache puzzle gets downsized

Posted: June 20th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Markus] built his own reverse geocache puzzle box but on a smaller scale than the original. His is based around a PIC 18F2520 and powered by two AAA batteries. The user interface includes one button, a 16×2 character LCD, and a piezo speaker. The box unlocks itself when the GPS module inside detects the proper [...]

Hackaday links: June 20, 2010

Posted: June 20th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Nixie Voltmeter Clock [Gmglickman] built a clock out of an old digital voltmeter. The Fluke 8300A came out in 1969 and is featured in their 60 years of innovation slideshow. What makes it a cool clock? The Voltmeter’s display is made up of Nixie tubes. Easy optical encoder wheel generator If you need to print [...]

Building a SuperMacro lens

Posted: June 19th, 2010, 12:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Lozzless] has a steady hand and plenty of confidence in his hacking skills. The video above is worth watching for the full eight minutes. In it you’ll see him convert a lens into what he calls a SuperMacro lens with a working aperture. The process involves fashioning a connector ring from a lens cap, modifying [...]

Coachella lamp

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

This little art piece might be just the thing to add that mad scientist look to your room. It’s called the Coachella lamp and it makes use of several throwback display devices. At the top an Argon discharge lamp puts out ultraviolet light. Protruding from each of the four sides you can see a set [...]

Arc Reactor replica

Posted: June 19th, 2010, 9:40am MDT by Mike Szczys

This Arc Reactor is a great re-creation of the fictional source of Iron Man’s power. It’s really just a holder for a bunch of LED’s, but it exhibits some fine craftsmanship which we enjoy in any project. This rendition is much more true to the movie than the last look-a-like we saw. These might end [...]

Nerf sentry turret

Posted: June 18th, 2010, 1:12pm MDT by Mike Szczys

With exams behind him [Adam Greig] had time to make a Nerf sentry gun. It’s actually quite easy to pull everything together. He’s got a netbook running Motion, an open source motion sensing program for use with a webcam. When movement is detected an Arduino, connected via a USB cable, actuates a servo to pull [...]

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Candle stop motion: how’s it done?

Posted: June 18th, 2010, 11:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Ollie] tipped us off about a stop motion video that uses a grid of tea candles to animate some classically pixellated game graphics. The image above is obviously a game of pong in progress. It’s interesting to watch but for us the fun is trying to decide how it’s done. Click through the break to see the [...]

Velosynth annoys those around you as you ride

Posted: June 18th, 2010, 9:28am MDT by Mike Szczys

We’ve always put stock in ‘the quieter the better’ when it comes to road bikes. You’ll find this truth if you spend 100k on the back wheel of someone with a sqeaky rear derailleur. But apparently the folks at Effalo never learned this lesson as they’ve produced a bike computer that generates noise as you ride. [...]

Talking poker timer

Posted: June 18th, 2010, 7:25am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This interesting box of buttons is a talking poker tournament timer. Full of useful tools like a binary time display, words of wisdom, countdowns to the end of the game, and even good old “bicycle built for two” mode (around 1:20). While we find it fairly difficult to understand, we applaud the feature list, especially [...]

X-Band linear rail SAR imaging

Posted: June 17th, 2010, 1:03pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Greg Charvat] really wanted high resolution X-Band linear rail SAR imaging system. He wanted it bad enough to scrounge through parts at HAM radio swap meets until he had the bits to build one himself. The unit is used to take high resolution radar imaging. For example, the image above is constructed of push pins [...]

Student Soaker, wireless water gun

Posted: June 17th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

As far as pranks go, [Austin Shaf's] wireless hidden water gun is a real treat. The video above goes over a brief explanation and shows the setup in action. The prankster holds onto a wireless AVR remote, and when the unsuspecting victim walks by, he activates a second AVR controlling a pump; spraying water everywhere. [...]

The PR2 calls the shots

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

Can you beat this robot at pool? This sparks something of a “let the wookie win” attitude for us, but we still love to watch the video. This is the PR2 playing pool thanks to the folks over at the Willow Garage. It uses a laser sensor to detect the legs of the pool table, [...]

Replacement speedometer

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

[Howard] built his own replacement speedometer for his truck after the original speedometer cable broke. He’s using surface mount components and produced a two-board design that is quite nice. When he tipped us off he mentioned that this is Arduino powered and uses a hall effect sensor. There’s not talk of this in his writeup but we [...]

Building a cluster of iPaq PCs

Posted: June 17th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Steven Pigeon] got his hands on ten iPaq computers that a friend acquired through an eBay auction. The older machines were in good condition but the march of technology had left them behind as casualties. He’s given them new life by assembling a cluster. The first order of business was testing the hardware to make [...]

No nonsense mbed development demo

Posted: June 17th, 2010, 8:14am MDT by Mike Szczys

This tweeting RFID reader is a great working example for the mbed. When an RFID tag is read it is matched with the name of the owner and a Twitter message is sent out. This is very similar to the RFID cat tracker that used an Arduino. The code is short and simple due to [...]

Adjustable Tesla coil build

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This coil has no trouble shooting sparks across four meters of empty air. [Finn Hammer] has been putting in some long hours on this labor of love, and we put in some time reading through his progress thread. He started down this path about a year ago and every step of the way he produces [...]

Most useless machine loses carbon footprint

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Clayton Boyer] took the electricity out of the useless machine, making one that runs like a clock. To this point, we’ve always seen these useless machine use electric motors. [Clayton's] clever design uses a wind-up spring and a series of wooden gears to bring the fun, making it a great companion for the binary adder [...]

Joojoo alternative OS installations

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Joojoo hacks are starting to trickle in as non-fanboys get their hands on the iPad alternative. The custom OS forum for the device tells the tale of successful installs of Windows 7, OSX, Android, and Jolicloud. So far the only one to have a how-to is Windows 7, but we’re sure that will change quickly. [...]

Careful! That gas pedal is a Nexus One

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Indeed, the gizmo above is meant to be used as a gas pedal. [Grant Skinner] came up with the idea to control slot cars using an Android phone as a gas pedal. He coded the software for the handset and a computer using Adobe AIR. Once connected, the computer is sent the accelerometer data from [...]

Win at Hangman, gain entry

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Do not put anything in this box that you will need in a rush. You’ll have to successfully guess the word in a game of hangman to gain entry. He’s using an Atmega328 as the brains of this project with a rotary dial and an LCD for input and display. If you win, the box [...]

Simple shutter speed tester

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Pablo] likes to buy and repair broken cameras. When he was in need of a way to test the shutter speed, his brother came up with a great idea. Harvest the photo transistor from an old ball mouse. It turned out to be just as easy as it sounds. He plugs the circuit into some [...]

Using iPod docks with Droid via an adapter

Posted: June 16th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Standard connectors in portable devices would be great for the consumer, but then you wouldn’t purchase separate peripherals for ever portable you buy (lining the pockets of the companies licensing said peripherals). [Thijs] isn’t taking it lying down any longer. Realizing that the shape of the connector is one of the only things standing in the way, [...]

(Real) Stargate built in backyard

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

PVC, wood, and some creativity bring this Stargate duplicate to life. [Mango] and his father started with AutoCad drawings taped together, and ended with the Stargate you see before you. Sure it’s not 22 foot in diameter and not made of Naquadah, but its inner ring rotates and dials like the real thing and it [...]

Great ball contraption

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The idea of the Great Ball Contraption is to take modules from many builders and combine them into one large machine. The modules need to find some way of moving LEGO soccer balls and basketballs from an input point to an exit are that passes them onto the next module. Some of them sort the balls, but [...]

Preparing your PCB design for manufacture

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 12:03pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Colin] has cut his teeth with about fifteen PCB orders. He wrote a tutorial describing the process and sharing his tips on avoiding common problems. You may remember our own How-To prepare designs for manufacture early last year. In that post, [Ian] shared his veteran knowledge by outlining BatchPCB’s board design process. This time, [Colin] is [...]

Recharging AC with propane

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 11:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

As the summer heats up an air conditioning system is a necessity in many climates. [Grayson's] system suffered some damage over the winter that caused it to vent its refrigerant, avoiding an explosive situation. Before he can chill out inside he’ll need to recharge it and he’s chosen to use propane in his cooling system. According [...]

iPad hacked to include a Verizon MiFi

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Finally, some hardware hacking on an iPad. Finding the 3G connection that came with the iPad lacking, this industrious hacker yanked it out and replaced it with the guts from a MiFi. At the cost of his GPS, he’s gained a better connection and is now a wifi hotspot. It wasn’t horribly complex, but he [...]

Vuvuzela removal

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We’re hearing complaints everywhere about the noisemakers called Vuvuzelas during the world cup. Whether you are a fan of the sport or not, you can appreciate when a fellow hacker gets annoyed and start hacking. [Tube] has created a software filter that manages to remove the sound of the Vuvuzela from the videos. He shares [...]

Android meets Arduino

Posted: June 15th, 2010, 7:18am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This new toolkit, called “Android” meets Arduino, allows you to connect an Arduino to your device and communicate back and forth. You could trigger external events at the Arduino end when an event happens on your phone, or even trigger things on your phone side when something happens at the Arduino. We can’t wait to [...]

Unbricking with the help of Arduino

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A This bricked Eee PC came to [Janzo] for about $50. Everything was fine with it, except for the failed bios update that rendered it useless to the last owner. [Janzo] set to work with an Arduino on a quest to repair the bios. He looked up the datasheet for the EEPROM that stores the [...]

Update: Flash_Destroyer final destroys EEPROM

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 2:17pm MDT by Mike Szczys

The Flash_Destroyer finally succeeded in rewriting that EEPROM until its demise. When we originally looked at the device it had already recorded 2.5 million successful rewrites. The first appearance of corrupt data occurred at 11,494,069 but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The chip kept working for another 200,000 rewrites before finally showing repeated data [...]

Monster Chess

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 1:05pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Over 100,000 Lego pieces, 4 people a year to create, and a 12 foot by 12 foot chess board make this the largest most awesome Lego hack we’ve ever seen. Take that Lego Printer. For a mere $30,000 you too can have such a setup. Not a lot of information is out yet, but we [...]

Distance measurement input device

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

[Larry] put a different spin on a television remote control. He used an Arduino and an IR receiver to learn the codes from the factory remote. Now that he can use an IR LED to playback these signals he worked on an alternative to pressing buttons as the input. The ultrasonic range finder seen above [...]

Radio-Walkman-megaphone hybrid

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 10:54am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Erich] rethought the use of a megaphone and ended up with this Mega-Tape-O-Phone. His first move was to ditch the megaphone’s amplifying circuitry in order to add his own based on an LM386 chip. From there a radio receiver joined the party followed by the guts of a tape player. He relocated the head of [...]

Ground your car to make it go

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 9:43am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This security system called G-spot requires that you touch a special place on the car prior to attempting to start it. This is pretty slick as it could be completely un-obvious and doesn’t require any special fobs or minor surgery. With the right placement, no one would ever notice that you had touched it. [via [...]

Electro Luminescent fun with Jeri Ellsworth

Posted: June 14th, 2010, 7:56am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Jeri] got her hands on some of the DuPont Luxprint EL ink and had some fun conducting experiments. She tried different materials for the base and the display itself. Not only does she just play with materials, she also tears apart a VFD and an LCD to see if she could use them for parts. [...]

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World’s slowest Porsche, still faster than my car

Posted: June 13th, 2010, 5:10pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Well, maybe the title is not so true. This “Porsche” GT3‘s construction is a bit unorthodox, the chassis looks to be aluminum tubing, with bicycle tires and other man-powered parts for propulsion. The body is entirely plastic and tape, yeah…gold…foil…tape. Hey, when you really really want to turn someones head. Regardless, the car even comes [...]

Toddler android

Posted: June 13th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We came across a couple of videos of this toddler android. It sits up, rolls over, and responds to humans around it using visual, audio, and sensor inputs. After the break you will see that the movements are quite like that of a young child. The giveaway is the weight of the robot which is [...]

Gaming system for less than three bucks

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

[Rossum's] latest project just hit and as usual, he doesn’t disappoint. Using an ARM cortex M0 he built a gaming system for less than $3 in parts. The M0 is a bit underpowered for this but at $1 it can’t be beat in price. He worked some video generation voodoo to get the signal he [...]

Hackaday links: June 13, 2010

Posted: June 13th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Painting with light [Jo0ngle] wanted a fun toy and an easy conversation piece. He painted a square on the back of his door with some glow-in-the-dark paint. Now he can draw on it using a blu-ray laser or a UV flashlight. Either way, the effect is quite pleasing. [Thanks Justin] Resistor decoder rings This resistor [...]

Wireless accelerometer project

Posted: June 12th, 2010, 2:40pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

[Jerome Demers] sent us his extremely detailed semester project. The two part system consists of PICs connected to XBee modules and accelerometers. By using the device a coach can monitor an athlete and correct their minute mistakes. Did we mention [Jerome] was very detailed? He also goes into the particulars of designing the circuit, using [...]

LEGO hand controller

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

[David Hyman] built this device to control a LEGO claw. One one end of things is the part you wear, that measures movement of two fingers and your thumb. On the other end of things is a LEGO claw with three opposing digits. You move, it moves. The claw uses light sensors and a gradient [...]

Massive MIDI station ditches the monitor

Posted: June 12th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Who need’s a touch screen when you’ve got 800 inputs each backlit with an RGB LED? This impressive controller was built by Ander for use in his performances. He did it with the intent to get rid of the computer monitor in his setup. We think there’s something to be said about that. It seems [...]

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Wiimote controlled Ruben’s tube

Posted: June 11th, 2010, 3:29pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

While we could be content following our “kiddie d-day” as [Caleb Kraft] suggested. We know you can’t continue such an awesome Friday without trying to blow yourself up first. This Wiimote Rubens’ tube caught our eye. A PVC Aluminum irrigation pipe is drilled with holes and propane is pumped through. A speaker on one end [...]

Cockroach pimps a sweet ride

Posted: June 11th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This giant Madagascar hissing cockroach rides proudly atop his three-wheeled robotic platform. This project from several years ago is new to us and our reaction to the video after the break is mixed. We find ourselves creeped out, delighted, amazed, and saddened. The cockroach controlled robot uses a trackball type input. A ping-pong ball is [...]

Printed circuit board minus the printed traces

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

Reader [Osgeld] is a board-layout ninja. He populated this 4×4 LED matrix board without having a layout plan to start with. Watch it develop in slideshow format to see the art work he performs. The display is driven by a shift-register and he’s included all the proper parts like resistors and transistors, yet he makes [...]

Pressurized PVC water gun

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

Hackaday’s [Caleb Kraft] has branded today “kiddie d-day” after seeing this PVC water gun follow close on the heals of the LEGO sniper rifle. This is a great summer project if you don’t mind letting the kids use the quick connect on your air compressor. It’s really just a ‘T’ made of PVC with two [...]

Intelligent battery charging

Posted: June 11th, 2010, 8:30am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Razor] shares with us the plans for an intelligent battery charging circuit. Instead of blindly charging your battery into oblivion, this one shuts off once the battery is fully charged. It is a nice clean circuit that can be adjusted and fine tuned to your specific needs via some trim pots and dip switches. [via [...]

Seven-six-two millimeter. Full plastic jacket.

Posted: June 11th, 2010, 7:27am MDT by Mike Szczys

Minifigs beware, something’s afoot. This LEGO sniper rifle is in talented hands to clean up those problem areas. [Jack Streat] put together this fascinating build as well as the delightful demo after the break. The bolt pulls a 1×4 block out of the eight-round magazine and loads it into the chamber. A pull of the [...]

Dingoo A320 RAM upgrade

Posted: June 10th, 2010, 12:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Stephanie] beefed up the hardware on her Dingoo A320. She enjoyed the features that the A320 handheld gaming system offered, but wanted the 64mb of RAM available in its bigger brother, the A330. A comparison of the two led her to believe a swap might be possible and after sourcing a pair of replacement chips [...]

Making liquid nitrogen at home

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

If you’ve got some time to scour eBay and $500 sitting around you can build your own liquid nitrogen plant. [Ben Krasnow] figured it all out for you and estimates he can produce a liter of the stuff for around $1.15. The process depends on a membrane to separate nitrogen from the other materials in the [...]

DMX keyboard display

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

This keyboard display has an RGB LED for each key that is addressable through the common stage lighting protocol, DMX. The project video, seen after the break, does a good job of walking us through the concept. By using a MIDI to DMX converter box [John] can show MIDI signals coming from a keyboard on [...]

Rotary display uses VCR head and LEDs

Posted: June 10th, 2010, 9:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Daniel Daigle] is developing a rotary display that uses persistence of vision to graph data. The hardware he used includes a spinning head from a VCR, some LEDs, and a timing circuit to display 360 degrees of data. His timing input uses a waveform so this will work with any application where you can generate [...]

(mini)How-To: Refill your DTG inks

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 2:15pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

The number one and number two things asked after presentation of our DIYDTG were… “How does it hold up in the wash?” and… “How did you change out the inks?” While we’ve explained the first several times (regular ink washes out, DTG ink gets a little lighter but survives) we can hopefully answer the second [...]

Building a glue stick flashlight

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 12:10pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Building an LED flashlight is simple, right? Take a battery, connect it to an LED by way of a resistor. Alright wise guy, now make one that steps up the voltage for multiple LEDs and don’t use a boost-converter IC to do so. [fede.tft] shares a flashlight built inside of a used glue stick case. [...]

Linux tablet built around a BeagleBoard

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 11:09am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Justin] shows us how to make a Linux tablet out of a BeagleBoard. You may remember [Justin's] work at liquid cooling an Arduino. For this one he moved past the AVR hardware but took the idea of shields along for the ride. The device above is something of a Linux tablet, with a touchscreen shield [...]

Resurrecting ISA hardware

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 10:09am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Alex] had an old FM radio tuner card come his way. It used an ISA connector, a standard that went the way of the dodo in the mid-nineties. With the challenge of implementing an ISA-bus to configure the card he set out on his mission. What he came up with is a working radio using [...]

Preserving old stuff with the Library of Congress

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 9:02am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Take a few moments and browse this gallery from the Library of Congress. Tasked with the job of preserving the roughly 150 million historical items, they are constantly developing new methods using bleeding edge technology. There is an odd balance of some of the oldest documents in tandem with some of the newest technology evident [...]

Baxter the ButlerBot and RoboFridge

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

[Steve Norris] has been devoting his time, effort, and knowledge to the most noble of causes; cool beverage acquisition. Baxter the ButlerBot and RoboFridge work in tandem to deliver cold ones when needed. As you can see in the video, this possibly over engineered system works quite smooth. Though the details on his site are pretty [...]

Distributed Flight Array

Posted: June 9th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Though it is in the beginning stages of development, the Distributed Flight Array is already looking very interesting. Each unit can scuttle across the ground using the down force from its prop, but when 4 or more join forces, they can take off and fly. The documentation shows that they should be smart enough to [...]

DUO 128 Elite, 4 bit CPU

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 5:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

We’re not sure how we missed [Jack Eisenmann's] 4 bit TTL CPU when we were tipped off the first time, but we’re glad it was sent in again for us to feature it. 41 different ICs (mostly TTL) come together to comprise the DUO 128 Elite. While the architecture is a little different than what [...]

An Arduino Watch you would actually want to wear

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 4:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Leather work, copper tubing, small easy to use package. Now that is a beautiful Arduino Watch. [Matthew Garten] has retrofitted his old Arduino Watch and given us the details that we crave. Previously, all we had was a video and a few pictures of a quite uninviting watch. But now we know it has temperature, [...]

Getting your message across at commencement

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Yomagaocho] is graduation from Northwestern University on June 18th (wow that’s late in the year… they must be on quarters). He decided to spice up his mortarboard for the commencement ceremony. A normal message wasn’t good enough, and even a solar-powered diorama wasn’t going to suit him. Instead he added 256 addressable LEDs to the [...]

WiMax antenna with auto-positioning system

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Andrew] certainly brings a bit of a James Bond feel to connecting to your WiMax base station. He built this antenna along with an auto-positioning system to get the strongest signal possible. The device, which appears a bit fragile, breaks down into a nice little case. When you get to your next checkpoint you can [...]

Simple way to fix that broken Ethernet cable

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 12:20pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Chances are you’ve come across an Ethernet cable where the small plastic tab that holds the plug in place has broken off. We have a crimper on hand and usually just throw on a new RJ45 connector but [Laxap] found a simple alternative to fix Ethernet plugs. By using a couple of correctly sized cable [...]

Windows 7 tablet in a carbon fiber case

Posted: June 8th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

If you’re not one of Apple’s devoted following the iPad means little more than new hardware you won’t use. Tired of being left out in the cold, [Slampana] built himself a Windows 7 tablet. He grabbed the motherboard and 13.4″ screen from an MSI X320, added a resistive touch screen, USB hub, internal WiFi and [...]

Nexus one as USB host

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

[Sven Killig] Has managed to get his Nexus One into USB host mode. This allows him to plug in all kinds of peripherals such as web cams, keyboards, even a displaylink unit. This is fantastic as it really opens up the possibilities of this device. You can see that he now has an amazingly functional [...]

Compound eyes for your robot

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

In this writeup, you can see how to build a cheap compound eye system for your robot. Using 4 IR LEDs and 4 phototransistors, [oddbot] gave “Mr General” the ability to follow movement in objects fairly well, assuming that they are within 200 mm. Being IR, it has the typical drawbacks such as sensitivity to [...]

Augmenting a cheap Android MID

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

We’ve been on the prowl for a low-cost Android MID that, you know, works well. We were originally excited by the Eken M001 but early reports about poor battery life, coupled with the fact that it only runs Android 1.6 soured our interest. [Carnivore] didn’t let those things turn him away, instead he modified the [...]

Furniture bots, transform

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

This mechanized table automatically expands from seating for six to seating for twelve. We tried to capture the action with the three images above but don’t miss the transforming goodness in the video after the break. Alas, we’ll never see something like this in real life because it resides on a yacht worthy of Robin [...]

Did that table just move?

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

A table and chair that can move around by themselves? What’s next, suicide booths, self-replicating robots, and Star Trek styled tablet computers? It seems that [Adam Lassy] is moving in that direction. He took this furniture from Ikea and made some neat modifications to give it mobility. Each of the four legs has wheels on them [...]

USB hub used for In System Programming

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 10:14am MDT by Mike Szczys

Did you order that 4-port USB hub because it was almost free but now it’s just sitting in your junk box? Why not turn it into an In System Programmer for AVR chips? [Paul] came up with HUB ISP as an answer to the chicken-or-egg problem we’ve seen with other diy programmers. It uses the [...]

HaD store update: New stickers, Shirts, New logo

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 7:45am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The Hack a Day store is still going strong. We’re really enjoying the fact that when you buy a Hack a Day item, it was made by one of us. We hope we can keep this up. It makes our merchandise mean so much more, we think. We’ve been getting tons of requests for other [...]

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition 2010 Day Two Report

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 7:17am MDT by Gerrit Coetzee

Culture Shock II, a robot by the Lawrence Tech team, first caught our eye due to it’s unique drive train. Upon further investigation we found a very well built robot with a ton of unique features. The first thing we noticed about CultureShockII are the giant 36″ wheels. The wheel assemblies are actually unicycles modified to be [...]

Color clock makes telling time impossible

Posted: June 7th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Bogdan] set out to build the all-too-familiar binary clock. But, he didn’t want to be ordinary, and set the goal of making the clock as hard to read as possible. What he ended up with is a clock that is almost impossible to read correctly. He’s using colors to tell the time. We immediately thought [...]

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Drawbot produces portraits… very slowly

Posted: June 6th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

This robot artist, the Drawbot, produces images using an Arduino and Processing. A piece of paper is attached to a wall as a stylus connected to a couple of stepper motors scribbles out patterns that gradually become the image seen above. Each drawing is different and can take several weeks of constant operation to finish. [...]

Fake Nixie clock

Posted: June 6th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Barry] didn’t want to deal with the voltages involved in using a Nixie display so he built this clock to look like it has Nixie tubes. He’s made 7-segment LED displays using some channel material, and mounted them so they look like they’re hovering above the clock base. Once everything was hooked up he added [...]

How-to: DIYDTG

Posted: June 6th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

For those unaware, the little acronym above stands for Do-It-Yourself-Direct-To-Garment printing. In layman’s terms, printing your own shirts and designs. Commercial DTGs can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 which for the hobbyist who only wants a few shirts is ridiculous. So you would think this field of technology would be hacked to no end, [...]

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition 2010 Day One Report

Posted: June 6th, 2010, 12:36am MDT by Gerrit Coetzee

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) is the precursor to the DARPA Grand Challenge, and in many ways it is just as difficult. We have the pleasure of being at the competition this year with the Tennessee Technological University Autonomous Robotics Team. The teams at the competition pull off some amazing home-brew robotics, so we’ve decided to do a [...]

Adding Compact Flash to an old sequencer

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

[Shoji] has a beloved sequencer that went out of production ten years ago. Unfortunately the storage options are also 10 year out-of-date as SCSI is the stock option for storing his loops. Using a series of adapters he added Compact Flash storage to his Akai MCP-2000 Classic. The board has a connector for 25-pin SCSI [...]

3D Printed MakerBot

Posted: June 5th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Webca] has made a 3D printed MakerBot with his MakerBot. Using five pounds of plastic, the design replaces all of the plywood used to create a regular MakerBot. This complements the existing designs for the 3D printed extruders, dinos, and other parts already on Thingiverse. An interesting mile marker in the history of 3D printing. [...]

BP oil blunders

Posted: June 5th, 2010, 7:00am MDT by Jakob Griffith

We received a very interesting “hack” today from our good friend [Jonny Dryer] that really got us thinking, but first a little background. For those that live only inside of a box on top of a mountain (we know who you are), there was an explosion of a British Petroleum oil rig about 40 miles [...]

Motorcycle current gear indicator

Posted: June 4th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Vassilis Papanikolaou] just finished building a gear indicator for a motorcycle. This quite a simple implementation compared to some of the other vehicle information displays we’ve taken a look at. You should be able to build and install your own without breaking the bank. An ATtiny25 microcontroller reads data from a couple of hall effect sensors [...]

1000W induction heater

Posted: June 4th, 2010, 12:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tim Williams] likes to heat things up with this induction heater he built. At peak it can use 1000W and as you can see in the video, that’s more than enough power to heat, burn, and melt a plethora of different objects. The case design uses a center divider to isolate switching noise from the [...]

Superprobe

Posted: June 4th, 2010, 10:30am MDT by Mike Szczys

The Superprobe is a logic analyzer, multimeter, and much more rolled into a fun to build project. [Ben Ryves] didn’t come up with the original idea, but he definitely took a good thing and made it better. You can use it to test logic, inject logic into a circuit, read capacitors and resistors, test frequency, [...]

Printing with pressure

Posted: June 4th, 2010, 8:43am MDT by Mike Szczys

The video of [Thibault Brevet's] printer makes it look like he’s actually designed a vinyl cutter (watch it after the break). But at the end of the printing process you see that the top layer was actually a piece of carbon copy paper and the magic was happening underneath. The print head applies enough pressure [...]

USBasp: AVR programmer based on ATmega8

Posted: June 3rd, 2010, 2:22pm MDT by Mike Szczys

We love our AVR Dragon programmer but it can be nice to have a cheap and simple in system programmer on hand too. The USBasp is one such programmer that uses and ATmega8 as its only IC. It requires just a handful of components and can be purchased as a kit, or etched and assembled [...]

Nixie-display brings more wiring madness

Posted: June 3rd, 2010, 10:01am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tim Anderson] whipped up this nixie tube display using epoxy-coated wires. He’s certainly giving the wire-wrapped LED display a run for its money. He ground the epoxy off the end of each wire using a Dremel before soldering them. We thought you could solder right through the epoxy but maybe not. Was this easier than [...]

Wire-wrapping an LED matrix

Posted: June 3rd, 2010, 9:03am MDT by Mike Szczys

Regular reader [Osgeld] built a 1024 LED display matrix. This is a proof-of-concept design and he admittedly has overloaded the components. Most notably, the 595 shift registers (featured over the weekend) are sourcing too much current if all eight pins are active. That’s easy enough to fix in the next design by moving up to [...]

HID crafting with a PIC and a joystick

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Amr Bekhit] converted his gameport joystick to use as a USB joystick. Much like a universal USB joystick interface, this uses an additional microcontroller to talk to the serial bus while monitoring the controls on the stick. [Amr's] discussion about creating HID descriptors is clear and easy to understand. What he’s laid out can be [...]

Easy data input for LabVIEW

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 2:00pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Props go to [Michael Nash] for establishing an interface between National Instrument’s labVIEW and an Arduino (an example video using a potentiometer is above). Personally, from the one time we were forced to use labVIEW, we hated every second of it. One reason it’s so terrible, is the Data Acquisition Modules cost well into the [...]

PartKAM produces CAM related files online

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

PartKAM is a Flash-based CAM production package created by [Jack Qiao]. There are a ton of computer aided manufacturing suites out there, this one is simple and requires nothing more than having your browser open. We played with it for a few moments and found it useful but still a bit buggy. Most notably, it lacks a ‘undo’ [...]

Six digit LED clock

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 11:32am MDT by Mike Szczys

Got a bag of LEDs handy? Why not build a display with them? We’ve seen a lot of clocks that make use of LED modules but soldering your own is a fun pastime. [Vadim Suhovatih] did just that using 130 LEDs to build this clock. Each segment of the 7-segment digits consists of three LEDs [...]

LEGO printer built without NXT parts

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Squirrelfantasy] built a printer using LEGO pieces. It’s not a Mindstorm project but instead depends on some type of development board and some auxiliary components on a protoboard. We couldn’t get a good enough look to tell exactly what makes up the electronics so start the debate in the comments. We feel this is a [...]

HDSPs and Playstation 2 controllers on Arduinos

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

There were a couple short Arduino tips in the mailbox this morning. We’ve combined them in this post since both are fairly short and sweet. Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, they’ve posted a quick breakdown of how to interface those neat little HDSP LED displays with an Arduino. This specific instance is for Mr. [...]

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RC car taunts man’s best friend

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 8:02am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Arkos] gutted an RC car from his childhood and made it into a dog-taunting remote platform. An Arduino replaces the original circuitry with a Bluetooth module for connectivity. He uses an Xbox 360 controller and has added a small speaker to act as a siren. But for our money it’s the camera that makes this [...]

Modern recordings on wax cylinder

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

If you thought you’d never have a chance to release your hit single on the wax cylinder think again. A band obsessed with the Victorian era did just that, having a DIY’er produce the cylinders for them. The story was covered by the BBC and includes a lousy attempt to build a phonograph to play [...]

Stomp box synthesizer

Posted: June 1st, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Brian McNamara] fed the output of his guitar pedal back into its input creating a looped synthesizer. He started with an effects pedal he made but now we think he’s ended up with an electronic stomp box. Check out the results in the video after the break. Now he needs to make the knobs foot-friendly so [...]

JTAG programming over a network

Posted: June 1st, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Matt Evans] was running up against the common programming gotcha caused by disappearing parallel ports. For years he had used a JTAG parallel cable when working with FPGAs but recently realized he no longer owned any machines with that interface available. Instead of shelling out $50 for a USB programmer he a programming interface from [...]

iRobot gets awesome exploding rope thingy

Posted: June 1st, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The iRobot Warrior 710 is shown here touting a new toy called an APOBS or Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System. The system is comprised of an explosive rope pulled by a rocket. We know that sounds pretty awesome, and you can see in the video that it is, in fact, pretty awesome. We don’t condone violence, [...]

Switchmode LED flashlight upgrade

Posted: June 1st, 2010, 7:42am MDT by Caleb Kraft

When [Neelandan]‘s cheap flashlight’s internal rechargeable battery died, he scrounged for a replacement. Ultimately, the brightness of the light suffered with his new battery, taken from an old cell phone since he had dropped the voltage a bit. Upon inspection he saw that he would have to swap the individual resistors for each lamp to [...]

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