BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » March 14, 2011

Hack A Day (7 unread)

Pi phone lulls you to sleep with the digits of Pi

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 4:00pm MDT by Mike Nathan

As you well know, today is March 14th – aka “Pi Day”. Celebrated in math classrooms around the country, this truly is a celebration that belongs to the geeks. Here at Hack-a-Day, we too love Pi day, though we might not outwardly celebrate it with as much gusto as expressed by some of our readers. [...]
Battery capacity tester lifts the veil on manufacturer capacity claims

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 3:00pm MDT by Mike Nathan

[Nick] was tasked with building a battery capacity tester by one of his teachers in order to test some aftermarket batteries that were purchased for their Vex robotics lab. The batteries were cheaper than the official version, but boasted more than twice the capacity. Fairly skeptical of the rating, he got to work designing his [...]
Guide for working with AVR microcontrollers

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 2:15pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Q] wrote in to let us know about the AVR-Guide he’s been working on. It looks like he’s finished posting about 80% of the content he planned for in his initial draft outline. We read through several of the sections and found them to be concise, yet able to present information in a way that’s [...]
DIY Digital pinball console plays hundreds of games

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 1:30pm MDT by Mike Nathan

Pinball machines, while likely considered pretty retro technology by most, are still a fun and engaging way to waste a little time. The problem with pinball machines is that they take up a lot of space, making the hobby of collecting them pretty prohibitive unless you have tons of spare room in your house. [tbarklay] [...]
Beginner Concepts: 595 shift register simulator

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 12:45pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Aaron] just finished building an online 595 shift register simulator. These inexpensive chips let you extend the number of devices that can be controlled by a single microcontroller. You see them in quite a few LED multiplexing projects, included the Ping Pong Clock that we recently built. But they can be a bit tricky to [...]
Commandeering public video screens: real or fake?

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It’s time for everyone’s favorite comment thread game: Real or Fake? This week’s edition comes in from a tip that [Phil] sent about a way to take over video screens in Times Square. Watch the video after the break to see the hackers using a two-part solution to rebroadcast video from an iPhone onto a [...]
Frequency counter for $10 worth of parts

Posted: March 14th, 2011, 10:55am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Scott] built this frequency counter using less than $10 in parts. It’s set up to meter frequencies in megahertz which is fitting since he’s planning to use it with his radio hardware experimentation. But we would find it useful too because our cheap multimeter only reads up to around 4 MHz. He’s using an ATmega16 that he [...]