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Hack A Day (45 unread)

Hopefully Detect Trolls Before They Devour You

Posted: November 25th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

In the cold and mysterious wilderness of Norway, it pays to be ready for anything–especially heavy-walking trolls. The team at [nullohm] decided to prepare thoroughly for their trek into the woods to witness the Leonids meteor shower by putting together an Arduino-based “troll detector”. The device is based on the superstition of hammering a steel [...]
Elder Robots

Posted: November 25th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

It’s always nice to show our appreciation for our elders. Today’s young robots may be whippier, snappier, and go-gettier than their forbears but you have to admit that few of them have the moxie to dust themselves off after 45 years and have a walk around town (although it still wouldn’t qualify for a senior’s [...]
Making music with tech stolen from Predator

Posted: November 25th, 2010, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

This is a second generation Manta, a touch-based controller with visual feedback made to use with Max/MSP. The hexagonal size and the patterns seen in the video after the break remind us of the arm-based computers the Predators sport in the movies. Like the previous generation, this controller can tell not only which of the [...]
Thanksgiving with thermite

Posted: November 25th, 2010, 8:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

For those in the states, Happy Thanksgiving. Whether or not you celebrate the traditional holiday, you might still want to take a moment to think of what you are thankful for. We are thankful for our readers, who drive us to keep posting projects and challenge us to improve our skills. The Hackers, who supply [...]
The quest to build a better Stairmaster

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Eric Feldman] likes to use the Stairmaster in his exercise routine during the winter months. But apparently the exercisers that are designed for mere mortals don’t satisfy his need to climb stairs really, really, quickly. After mastering the upper speed limits of some top-of-the-line equipment he contacted the company asking if there was a way [...]
Double the Hertz, Double the Pleasure

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

[tinhead] has opened up a Tekway DST1102B oscilloscope and doubled its bandwidth to 200MHz, sharing his work in the eevblog forum. This is great news to anyone who is looking for a faster sampling rate but can’t afford the high-end models. Mind you, for a lot of us even these Hanteks and Tekways are hard [...]
Building a bandwidth meter

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s an analog bandwidth meter made to look like an old pressure gauge. It’s actually new, but the paper showing the graduated scale was stained in a bath of black tea, then dried in an oven to give it an aged appearance. We think it’s quite effective. The dial itself is a volt meter driven [...]
Interface up to 12 servos using Arduino

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Brian] is using an Arduino to control multiple servo motors. This is nothing new and has been happening since the earliest days of Arduino. But rather than develop a project and share it, [Brian] did a fantastic job of making the code scalable, readable, and even explained how the different parts work. His code listens [...]
SparkFun free day 2011: now with gambling

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 10:02am MST by Mike Szczys

SparkFun has just announced a Free Day for 2011. Last year was the first time they decided to give away $100,000 in the form of $100 credits that melted down their servers and made the rest of the world (you know, the non-geek sort) ask what SparkFun was when it started trending on Twitter, Google, [...]
MeggyCade: when handheld pixel gaming isn’t enough

Posted: November 24th, 2010, 8:46am MST by Mike Szczys

[Bomber Punk] built his own arcade cabinet, but you won’t find any MAME games here. He made the enclosure to house a Meggy Jr. 8×8 pixel graphics game console. Proper coin-op buttons and a joystick replace the stock tactile switches that come with the kit. [Bomber Punk] has also added a lighted coin slot. A [...]
VGA interfacing AVR microcontrollers

Posted: November 23rd, 2010, 11:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Lucidscience] is back again, this time showing us how to push data to a VGA monitor from your AVR project. It turns out that it is pretty simple, requiring only n open port and a few resistors and diodes. Well, it is that simple for the most basic version which gives you 56×60 pixels. Of [...]
Timelapse circuit for point and shoot cameras

Posted: November 23rd, 2010, 9:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Andyk75] has done some fantastic work documenting his timelapse addition to his digital camera. Most of the more expensive models of cameras have a remote shutter release, but the point and shoot jobs usually don’t. He decided to add the ability to turn the camera on, then shoot a picture, then turn it back off. [...]
PR2 + Kinect

Posted: November 23rd, 2010, 7:45am MST by Caleb Kraft

Willow Garage, the makers of the PR2 robot have been playing with the Kinect. You might be a little tired of seeing every little new project people are doing with it, but there’s something here we couldn’t help but point out. When we posted the video of the guy doing 3d rendering with the Kinect, [...]
Hacking together a bedbug exterminator

Posted: November 22nd, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We’ve seen so many stories in the news about the growing plague of bedbugs. It kind of infuriates us because the spin of these “news” pieces is always that we’re going to have to live with these insects and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Bullcorn! [Ed Nisley] was dealt a bum hand [...]
Anaglyphic photography made easy

Posted: November 22nd, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[ProfHankD] came up with a pretty easy way to take 3D photos using a single lens. He’s making Anaglyph images which use color filtering glasses to produce stereoscopic 3D effects. We’ve seen stereoscopic imaging hacks that use two cameras or a clever combination of mirrors, but this one uses a special filter and post-processing. [ProfHankD] [...]
Excuse me, my pinky is ringing

Posted: November 15th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We get a lot of email challenging us to hack things. Sometimes we ignore them, other times we send some words of encouragement. But this time around we thought [Tait] had really come up with a great hack; to build a Bluetooth handset into his prosthetic finger. He hasn’t done much hacking in the past [...]
Rendering a 3D environment from Kinect video

Posted: November 15th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Oliver Kreylos] is using an Xbox Kinect to render 3D environments from real-time video. In other words, he takes the video feed from the Kinect and runs it through some C++ software he wrote to index the pixels in a 3D space that can be manipulated as it plays back. The image above is the [...]
In-button display for your car’s dashboard

Posted: November 15th, 2010, 11:05am MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s an interesting take on augmenting a car’s dashboard. [Daniel] is using a button blank to house a 1″ OLED display in his Jetta. It shows auxiliary data such as boost pressure and several sets of temperature readings. The display itself has a tiny little circuit board with a PIC 24 to drive it. A [...]
Girltech. Sugar Cubes. Monocrome LCD

Posted: November 15th, 2010, 9:00am MST by Greg R. Jacobs

We’ve seen these little toys called “sugar cubes” by GirlTech around for a while now. They are a toy block, with an LCD on the front and they respond to movement, button presses and they interact with each other if you stack them up. We’re just as curious as anyone else about their internals, but [...]
C# Portable Settings Provider

Posted: November 15th, 2010, 7:47am MST by Greg R. Jacobs

We live in a world where everything must be portable, ranging from mobile applications to making an application able to run on Linux, Windows and OS X. Making a C# application to be completely portable across all windows computers is a problem that Microsoft knows about and willingly admits they will not fix. [Mike] from [...]
Breadboarding RAM

Posted: November 14th, 2010, 1:30pm MST by Chris Nelson

If you’ve ever wanted to dive in and take a look at how memory hardware is implemented here is a good example of how to implement some latching circuits with ether BJT or CMOS transistors. BJTs require biasing resistors which increases the complexity and power consumption when compared to CMOS. If power consumption isn’t an issue you [...]
Direct to PCB inkjet printing

Posted: November 14th, 2010, 10:42am MST by Mike Szczys

[Rhys Goodwin] has been working on a system to print resist onto copper clad using an inkjet printer. This is a toner transfer alternative as it still uses toner, just not quite as you’d expect. The first step is to modify an inkjet printer, separating the carriage from the feed rollers in order to increase [...]
Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

Posted: November 14th, 2010, 9:00am MST by James Munns

When [Dave] installed hardwood flooring in his house, he needed a solution to help automate the monotonous task of routine sweeping. Rather than go out and buy one of the many existing automated sweep robots out there, he decided to use his passion for LEGO Robotics to design and build a NXT based Swifferbot he [...]
Renesas RX Design Contest: $110K+ of Cash and Prizes

Posted: November 14th, 2010, 7:00am MST by James Munns

It seems that we have caught Design Contest Fever here at Hackaday. After covering some other design contests, and asking readers to send in more, we heard from a couple tippers about Renesas’ challenge. Like many of the other contests, entrants can submit their ideas, and possibly receive a free development board to get them [...]
Debug mode lurking inside AMD chips

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

Looks like some hardware enthusiasts have worked out a method to enable debug mode within AMD processors. The original site isn’t loading for us, but the text has been mirrored in this comment. Getting the chip into debug mode requires access passwords on four control registers. We’ve read through the writeup and it means very little [...]
Final Take on the Machine: winners

Posted: November 13th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Jakob Griffith

It’s finally here, the last episode of Scion’s Take on the Machine with Mitch Altman. In this episode all the teams are given a recap over their success and failures, and the clear winner is placed on top. We’re not ones to spoil the surprise so you’ll just have to click the link and watch [...]
Kinect and TISCH combined for multitouch

Posted: November 13th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Florian] sent a link to his proof of concept in creating a multitouch display using the Kinect. He’s the one behind the libTISCH multitouch package and that’s what he used to get this working along with the recently released Kinect drivers. He did this on an Ubuntu machine and, although it’s not a turnkey solution [...]
Lots of spinning POV goodness

Posted: November 13th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Retrobrad's] spinning POV display has long been our favorite. When it popped up on our radar again this morning we were surprise to see we never ran a feature on it! But now there’s so much more to share. Hit the projects icon at the top of his page and you’ll not only get the [...]
Nixie tubes live in a cool box

Posted: November 13th, 2010, 9:54am MST by Mike Szczys

This set of four Nixie tubes display the number of people following bildr on Twitter. That’s neat; it uses an Arduino and some open source driver boards. But what caught out eye is the enclosure. The image above shows only half, but when assembled it’s a nice little cube that keeps the insides safe. This [...]
Lessons in Electric Circuits

Posted: November 13th, 2010, 7:06am MST by Devlin Thyne

Are you looking for a good source of information to get started into making and hacking electric circuits? We would like to refer you to Lessons in Electric Circuits. Even if you have good knowledge of electronics, this is another tool you can use. The book is a work in progress and will have some [...]
Swapping speedometer needle for LEDs

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Ah2002] didn’t like the shaky needle in his car’s speedometer so he replaced it with a ring of LEDs. The old speedometer had a cable which rotated along with the gearbox for mechanical speed measurement. By connecting the stepper motor from a printer instead of this cable, a voltage is generated that fluctuates with the [...]
Build a confetti cannon for your next party

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Scott] built a confetti canon to spice up the party. It’s pneumatic and re-purposes a fire extinguisher as the air tank. He had a refillable extinguisher that used water instead of chemical retardant. After emptying the water and ensuring all of the pressure had been release he swapped the hose and nozzle for a sprinkler solenoid valve. [...]
Czech Discovery Ressurects PS/2 Keyboard

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

Like us, you probably have piles of old PS/2 keyboards occupying strategic positions in your house and causing all sorts of trouble with the neighbours. As luck would have it, there is a way to put those lazy peripherals to work! Our friends in the Czech Republic have successfully interfaced a PS/2 keyboard to an [...]
V4Z80P: The 8-bit laptop

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by James Munns

[Phil] over at Retroleum has cobbled together a clean, well put together laptop based entirely around a Zilog Z80 microprocessor and a pair of Spartan II FPGAs. These FPGAs allow him to reduce the number of devices on his board, and therefore cut his production cost as well as device size. He even managed to [...]
Swiveling arms replace Laptop LCD hinges

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

This swivel arm LCD screen is [Ben Heck's] latest hack. It replaces the hinges that normally only allow one point of rotation on the screen. You can still use the laptop like normal, but when space is at a premium a second adjustment, both in rotation and linear position, has been added using the slots [...]
CNC machine from PC parts

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Mike Rankin] built a small CNC machine using some PC parts. He repurposed two optical drives and a floppy drive to create the plotter seen drawing the Hackaday logo above. The X and Y axes use the stepper motor controlled read heads from two optical drives. The Z axis is built using the read head [...]
Win Big: American Design Style

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 9:00am MST by James Munns

Last week we announced a Germany based design contest only accepting applicants from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Unfortunately, this left out one of the larger segments of our readers. After doing some scrounging around (and a helpful tip from [Flash Gordon]), we managed to find a similar contest run by STMicroelectronics, the makers [...]
Make a knitting machine print pixel art

Posted: November 8th, 2010, 7:14am MST by Mike Szczys

[Becky Stern] shows how to take an old electronic knitting machine and interface it with a computer. After seeing the Brother KH-930E knitting machine in the video after the break it looks like the controls function quite like a CNC milling machine. Patterns can be programmed in and stored on a floppy disk. Since we [...]
Project enclosures the right way

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

[Stephen Eaton] created an enclosure and shared his process in a pair of blog post. We thought is was amusing that he remarks on how rarely his projects get the to point that you’d want to make an enclosure for them. We’ve certainly got a lot of bare-PCB creations lying around. But when it does [...]
IM-ME plays music in preparation for gaming

Posted: November 7th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Emmanuel Roussel] is coding a version of Tetris for the IM-ME. Before you get too excited, he hasn’t actually written the game yet, but instead started with the familiar theme music. The IM-ME has a piezo speak on board so it’s just a question of frequency and duration. [Emmanuel] developed an Open Office spread sheet [...]
Water use feedback changes behavior

Posted: November 7th, 2010, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

How much water do you use when showering, or washing your hands, or washing the dishes? Not how much does the average person use, but how much to you use? That’s what the team over at Teague Labs set out to find with this water usage feedback system. The sensor used is a Koolance flow meter [...]
Exploit Bait and Switch

Posted: November 7th, 2010, 11:00am MST by James Munns

When a new virus or other piece of malware is identified, security researchers attempt to get a hold of the infection toolkit used by malicious users, and then apply this infection into a specially controlled environment in order to study how the virus spreads and communicates. Normally, these toolkits also include some sort of management [...]
Your mobile phone, now with 100% more RFID

Posted: November 7th, 2010, 9:00am MST by James Munns

More and more today, it is becoming harder to avoid having some sort of RFID tag in your wallet. [bunnie], of bunnie:studios decided to ease the clutter (and wireless interference) in his wallet by transplanting the RFID chip from one of his subway cards into his mobile phone. Rather than the tedious and possibly impossible [...]
The Transistor Takes on the Machine

Posted: November 7th, 2010, 6:13am MST by Jakob Griffith

It only took 4 hackerspaces, but we finally get to see a zombie movie inspired project; hackerspace The Transistor Takes on the Machine with a Dawn/Shawn of the Dead movie theme. Race cars disguised as zombies swarm toward the players, who then use laser tag like guns to “shoot” down the approaching undead. The whole [...]
Hacking together a Sous Vide cooker

Posted: November 6th, 2010, 11:01am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Those amongst you that are cooks won’t need this explanation, for the rest of us, lets just get this out of the way. Sous Vide is when you cook things at a temperature lower than normal, for a period of time longer than normal to attain specific results in texture. A chef can tell you [...]