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Hack A Day (45 unread)

Building linear amplifier prototypes

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We know way too little about this subject but hopefully [Bob4analog] helped us learn a little bit more this time around. He’s building his own linear amplifiers on what looks like sheets of MDF. This is an evolving design and the two videos after the break show two different iterations. He’s salvaged several components, like [...]
The OpenServo Project

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 1:00pm MST by James Munns

When it comes to using servos in projects, there is a definite distinction between the cheap ones and the expensive high power and precision models. The OpenServo project gives you a couple options for enhancing your servo experience. By replacing the control board with a new one based on a familiar microcontroller, a whole new [...]
Simple sensors to calculate RPM

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Ever wonder how to calculate revolutions per minute using a microcontroller? This project shows you how by purposing an IR emitter and detector and a computer fan. As the fan blades spin they disrupt the beam of infrared light between the emitter and the receiver. This results in a waveform on the receiver’s circuit which [...]
Take your PS3 on world tour

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Lossfresnos65] must be planning to do a lot of travelling because he’s entombed his PlayStation 3 in a Pelican case. Inside you’ll find some diamond-plate bezel to cover the console itself and used to surround the 19-inch high-definition television that is mounted to the lid of the case. In the picture above you see the door that [...]
SIM card carrying traffic lights

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

Apparently some of the traffic lights in Johannesburg, South Africa have SIM cards in them to help maintain the network without a physical connection. Now that’s some and not all, but apparently thieves have learned that the SIMs can be used in cell phones to make anonymous and unlimited calls. Officials are convinced that the [...]
Patching into an optical mouse with a PIC

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[MikyMouse] cracked open a couple different optical mice (or is it mouses?) in order to play with the data communications coming off of the chips inside. Once he figured out the protocol, it wasn’t too hard to grab the data for use in his own projects. The chip that controls the mouse is one of [...]
Reminder: Santa-Pede challenge ending soon

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 8:30am MST by Caleb Kraft

This is just a friendly reminder that our Santa-Pede challenge will be ending soon. Please send your submissions to us by emailing them to bbb@hackaday.com or by posting them in the projects section of our forum (did we mention we have a forum now?) by the end of January to be considered. We don’t care [...]
Monitoring the Engine Control Unit

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 8:10am MST by Mike Szczys

Is there a place in the dashboard of your high performance automobile for this Engine Control Unit feedback panel? There’s several methods of showing information at work here. The row of LEDs at the top of the bezel provide RPM feedback. The two red LEDs with chrome bezels are alarm indicators. But that big OLED [...]
Touch screen jukebox

Posted: January 28th, 2011, 5:39am MST by Caleb Kraft

We went “live” with our forums less than 24 hours ago and we already have our first project ready for the front page. [Elementix] has shown us his touch screen jukebox build. Using an assortment of car audio speakers and amplifiers hooked up to an old Pentium 4 PC with 120 Gigs of storage, he [...]
555 based balancing bot

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 3:30pm MST by Caleb Kraft

This post on Reddit by [superangryguy] caught our attention today. He’s put together a video explaining the basics of how to build balancing robots, focusing on a 555 timer based one. He’s got two main versions, the 555 based one and another that is based off of two transistors. He says the 555 based one [...]
2600 magazine runs a sale for the 20th century back issues

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 2:30pm MST by Caleb Kraft

In an effort to clear out some warehouse space, 2600 magazine has dropped the price for issues from 1984 to 2000 down to $2.50 each. If you haven’t read 2600, the Hacker Quarterly, shame on you. Pick some up and get reading. They are a resource beyond any other magazine out there for hacking and [...]
Xbee controlled, granite-wrapped clock travels into future

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 1:30pm MST by Mike Szczys

From the looks of it this clock is a couple of months ahead of its time. [Oscar] built the clock (translated) taking time to add a lot of goodies into the mix. First up, the parts you see include six large 7-segment displays for hours, minutes, and seconds as well as an LED marquee which [...]
5/8″ ball bearing playground

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 12:30pm MST by Mike Szczys

This kinetic sculpture is a ball bearing’s paradise. Not only do they get a cushy ride around two lift wheels but there’s a variety of enjoyable obstacles they can go down. The first is a vortex made from a wooden flower pot which sends the balls randomly down one of two possible exits. From there [...]
Mitch Altman hosts a tour of Noisebridge

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 11:23am MST by Mike Szczys

[Mitch Altman] just popped up once again (seriously, this guy is everywhere!) in a video tour of Noisebridge, and hackerspace he co-founded in San Fransisco. The space is 5200 square feet and they’ve managed to cram a lot of different uses into it. There’s areas for computers and electronics, crafting and sewing, a dark room , [...]
Conways’ wall of life and whiteboard emporium

Posted: January 27th, 2011, 10:31am MST by Mike Szczys

White board beats chalk board, LED marquee beats white board, and an LED white board trumps them all. This hybrid lets you draw on the surface with dry erase markers while Conway’s game of life plays out underneath. [Bert] sent us this tip after seeing yesterday’s office marquee. This version is quite similar in appearance but [...]
Abusing HTTP status codes

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 4:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

Concerns over privacy online are an ever growing theme. Every day we see people complaining about the policies of facebook and the like. [Mike Cardwell] points out another method of gleaning a bit of personal data from you that you may not have seen yet. By embedding a hidden image or using some really simple [...]
Wireless Sniffing and Jamming of Chronos and iclicker

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 3:00pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

The ubiquitous presence of wireless devices combined with easy access to powerful RF development platforms makes the everyday world around us a wireless hacker’s playground. Yesterday [Travis Goodspeed] posted an article showing how goodfet.cc can be used to sniff wireless traffic and also to jam a given frequency. We’ve previously covered the work of [Travis] [...]
Inaccurate Breathalyzer is still quite nice

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Sure, [Hunter Scott's] Breathalyzer can only differentiate between hammer and sober, but look how nice it came out. He’s using an MQ-3 alcohol sensor which, from previous projects, we know is very difficult to accurately calibrate. But if you want to monkey around with embedded systems you’ve got to have a goal. [Hunter] chose a gorgeous aluminum [...]
Monocrome to Magnificent: computer display chronology

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Remember when CGA came out and made monocrome monitors look horrible? Well CGA is crap, VGA is where it’s at. Wait… weren’t there a couple of standards in between those two? Take a walk down memory lane and relive the evolution of computer display technology. You’ll start with displays that are more or less CRT [...]
Jamming gripper completes robot drug dealer

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 12:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s an inexpensive way to build your own jamming gripper. [Steve Norris] combined a robot arm with a few inexpensive items to achieve similar results as the original. Much like the last DIY version he started with a balloon and some coffee grounds, but instead of using his own body as a vacuum pump he [...]
Sparkfun free day recap

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 11:00am MST by Chris Nelson

It looks like the dust has finally settled with sparkfun’s free day. They managed to give away $150,541 to users and $22,988 to charity. The general idea is you could ether take $10/year you’ve been a sparkfun customer, or take a 10 question quiz and earn $10/correct answer plus some money for charity. It looks like some technical [...]
Radios without power sources

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Goodhart] is sharing his process for building a couple different AM radios. It’s surprising how few components he’s using; the first build is just a germanium diode, some wire, and a piezo earpiece. But it strikes us that both of the radios he gives build instructions for have no power source. We’re also amused by [...]
Jeep-uter adds push button control to your vehicle

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 9:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Ed Zarick] built a module to control his vehicle which he calls the Jeeputer. The name’s a mash-up of Jeep and Computer; the device itself is a combination of Arduino, character LCD, and a collection of shift registers and relays for interfacing. Watch the video after the break to see what this can do. We were surprised [...]
VR! now with more kinect, wiimote, and vuzix

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 8:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

Those of us that remember when you could actually go to a mall and play on a VR game machine, tend to remember it fondly. What happened? The computing horsepower has grown so much, our graphics now days are simply stunning, yet there’s been no major VR revival. Yeah, those helmets were huge and gave [...]
Refurbishing a refrigerator for fermenting

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 7:00am MST by Caleb Kraft

[Mikey Sklar] wrote in to show us how he refurbished a neighbors useless refrigerator as a fermentation chamber. [Mikey] is a fan of making breads, kemchi, yogurt, and tempeh. To make these, it helps to have a completely controlled temperature for them to ferment in. [Mikey] developed a temp controller for this in the past, but had [...]
555 Design Contest, Win $1500+ in prizes!

Posted: January 25th, 2011, 5:06am MST by James Munns

Sure, microcontrollers are useful, easy to apply, and ubiquitous, but where is the fun in the easy route? Well, for those of you out there with a little imagination and a 555 timer sitting around, there could be rewards in store. Brought to you by such famous personalities as Jeri Ellsworth and Chris Gammell, the 555 [...]
AVR: the facts about flash memory

Posted: January 24th, 2011, 5:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s a nice little discussion about reading and writing AVR flash memory that [Windel] put together. He’s using an In System Programmer to read the flash memory from an ATmega328 using AVRdude, the programming software which we used in our AVR Programming Tutorials. He covers the particulars of the commands, how this might be useful, [...]
Building a creepy doll army

Posted: January 24th, 2011, 4:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Want your very own Chucky doll to scare the crap out of the roommates? [Gzip] shows you how to make this happen by adding servo-based animatronics to old dolls. In the video after the break you can see the doll throw up her arms and turn her head thanks to a motor in each shoulder [...]
Keyless entry via SMS

Posted: January 24th, 2011, 3:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Billy's] work got new keys which he didn’t want to carry around with him. Instead he built this system to unlock the door via text message. It is based around a Spinneret Web Server which drives a servo motor. He’s rigged up a pipe hanger to add some leverage to the lock’s knob. We’re surprised [...]
Amarino makes Android controlled robots a snap

Posted: January 24th, 2011, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Lucas Fragomeni] is controlling this robot using the accelerometer on his Android phone (translated). He could have gone through our Android tutorials and developed a custom application but he took the shorter route and used Amarino, an ‘Android meets Arduino’ toolkit, to do it for him. [Lucas] combined an Arduino, a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem, and two servo [...]
CES: Microsoft Hacks Up Next OS as SOC

Posted: January 6th, 2011, 1:32pm MST by Greg R. Jacobs

With the Pre-CES Keynote made by [Steve Ballmer], the announcement came that the next iteration of their operating system being available in SOC specific form. This will lead to windows being able to run a very diverse hardware set in a much more efficient manner than it does right now. Microsoft displayed 4 different versions [...]
Drill-based Kinect camera

Posted: January 6th, 2011, 12:24pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Brett Graham] and [David Cox] are taking the Kinect out into the world thanks to this handheld hack they call the Drill of Depth. Apparently, the Kinect wants 12V at 1A which is quite easy to provide with a rechargeable power tool like this Ryobi drill. The setup features a 4.3″ touchscreen display, connected to [...]
Making punch card programming a snap

Posted: January 6th, 2011, 9:20am MST by Mike Szczys

About thirty years ago [H. P. Friedrichs] pulled off a hack that greatly improved the process of programming with punch cards. At the time, his school had just two IBM 029 keypunch machines. One of them is shown in the upper right and it uses a keyboard to choose which parts of each card should [...]
Kitchen island makes a mean cocktail

Posted: January 6th, 2011, 6:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[John Creswell] built a heck of an automatic bartender in a kitchen island. The image on the left shows a top-down view of the inside of the cabinet. There’s a mini-fridge where the liquids are stored, and around the perimeter of the cabinet [John] mounted sixteen pumps to get the beverage up into your cup. Drinks are [...]
Quiet Dust Extractor from Scavenged Materials

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 3:30pm MST by Joseph Thibodeau

As with many of the projects covered on hackaday, [bongodrummer]‘s Dust Sniper came about because of a lack of effective commercial solutions, in this case to the problem of quiet dust extraction. Workshops are generally full of dust and noise, both of which take their toll on the human body. This is why safety regulations [...]
Make the wedding ring speak to her

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 2:14pm MST by Mike Szczys

It’s a nice touch to engrave a heartfelt message on a wedding band, and my couples choose to do so. But you can say a lot more with a 20 second audio message. That’s exactly what [Luke Jerram] did by etching an audio track into this ring. He uses his custom-built hardware to playback the [...]
Rovio headlight hack looks stock

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 12:28pm MST by Mike Szczys

Even the most thorough inspection may not raise the alarm that this Rovio has been hacked to include LED headlights. [Adam Outler's] super clean work puts the two light sources on either side of the camera for maximum effect. It may not provide as many Lumens as our external headlight hack, but we were never [...]
CNC cake decorator

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 10:49am MST by Mike Szczys

The AutoFrost CNC cake decorator is the result of a student project a Olin College of Engineering. [Tara Krishnan] and her classmates designed and built the hardware, as well as a Python interface that is used for drawing the design you want printed in frosting. The X and Y axes are controlled by stepper motors, [...]
Hacking a hack: electric hybrid Geo Metro

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 7:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Ben Nelson] turned his electric Geo Metro into a plug-in hybrid. But wait, where’d he get an electric Geo Metro? It seems that we’re one hack behind [Ben], who converted the vehicle to all electric back in 2008 using a forklift motor and some batteries. This time around he’s following the Chevrolet Volt’s example by [...]
Flaming guitar hero

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 6:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Chris Marion] knew he wanted to play with fire, or more accurately with fireball spewing valves, but he need a good project in which he could use them. Inspiration finally struck and he built this controller that matches fireballs to the fret buttons on a Guitar Hero controller. There’s quite a lot that goes into [...]
Solar monsters… you know… for kids!

Posted: January 4th, 2011, 2:07pm MST by Mike Szczys

Teaching kids to solder using kits is a fun time, but most of these beginner kits are a bit mundane. Not this one, it’s a solar-powered monster project. The components and their wiring connections are printed on a sheet of paper along with a background for that particular monster. The base of the paper is [...]
Broken laptop recovered using an Arduino

Posted: January 4th, 2011, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

We see Arduino boards used in a lot of projects but we’ve never thought of using one as a USB crossover cable. That’s basically what [Jack the Vendicator] did to get his broken laptop running. When his video card stopped working he found himself unable to access the laptop. Newer machines don’t have a serial [...]
Getting started with the Parallax Propeller

Posted: January 4th, 2011, 12:11pm MST by Noah Dunker

The folks at [gadget gangster] have been working on an excellent set of tutorials for getting started with the Propeller chip itself, the open-source Propeller Platform Modules and the Spin programming language that’s used to control things. All of the basics and a growing selection of more advanced topics are covered in gorgeous detail, with [...]
Foldaway photo booth

Posted: January 4th, 2011, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

For his wedding [Dave] wanted to have a photo booth but the $1k rental price was really getting him down. Instead, he decided to build his own. This cost less money and he gets to keep the booth once the festivities have concluded. He started by designing the assembly in Sketchup, taking into consideration the portability requirements [...]
Dome light LED retrofit

Posted: January 4th, 2011, 10:00am MST by Mike Szczys

One of the bulbs in the dome light of [Pete's] car burnt out. These were a bit hard to get at for replacement so he thought he’d try something that would last longer, and have no problem standing up to the vibrations that go along with automotive electronics. But plug-in LED replacements cost more money than [...]