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Hack A Day (7 unread)

LiveLight is an expertly crafted ambilight clone

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 5:01pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[SunWind] developed his own version of the Phillips Ambilight system (translated) which he is calling LiveLight. We’ve seen more than a few of these hacks, many of them are based around Arduino, and most use LED strip lighting. [SunWind] is using strip lighting as well, but his design is clean and polished quite a bit more [...]
Washing machine mechanical timer replaced with microcontroller

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 3:01pm MDT by Mike Szczys

After the electromechanical timer on [Paul Canello's] washing machine broke for the third time he decided he needed to stop repairing it and find a more permanent fix. He decided to build his own microcontroller-based system for washing his clothes (translated). Caution: The image links on [Paul's] page seem to be broken and will unleash a never-ending [...]
Faking high-speed video photography of repetitive events

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 2:01pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Destin] has been doing some high-speed and high-resolution video photography using a standard DSLR. He accomplishes this using a bit of ingenuity to capture images of repetitive events at slightly different points in time. The banner image above shows a bullet travelling through a set of matchsticks. [Destin] uses the sound of the gun firing [...]
A big transformer, because it’s cool!

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 12:43pm MDT by Nick Schulze

[Grenadier] Had some spare wire, electrical tape, and a giant ferrite core laying about and decided to create a massive and pretty snappy looking disk shaped flyback transformer. Dubbed the Fryback, he claims that it will “revitalise your health and bring wondrous wealth and prosperity to your family”. He chose a disk shaped transformer because [...]
How to Make a Hand Drill out of a Pencil Sharpener

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 11:38am MDT by JeremyC

Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say. [Jason] was in such a situation where he needed to install some safety railing at his grandmother’s house. He didn’t have the necessary tools available, like a drill, so he fashioned one himself out of a pencil sharpener and some fittings and wire that he [...]
Vocera B1000A teardown

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 9:36am MDT by Mike Nathan

[Gray] over at Geek Chique had a bit of an eBay mishap and was suddenly the proud owner of 16 Vocera B1000A badges. If you are not familiar, these badges are small, lightweight communications devices similar to the famous Star Trek communicator, which allow users to talk to other individuals via VOIP. He was working on [...]
Putting the flex back into the RDS 80 soldering station

Posted: June 5th, 2011, 8:37am MDT by Mike Nathan

[Markus] was looking to upgrade his soldering station, and having had good luck with Ersa in the past, opted to purchase one of their new stations, the RDS 80. Once he got the iron home however, he was very disappointed to see that while his previous Ersa model used a silicone cable to connect the [...]