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Items by Caleb Kraft

Home made BlinkM units

Posted: May 15th, 2011, 9:16am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Stephen] wrote in to show us this fun LED wall he constructed in his house. He says he was inspired by this project, but found the cost of the BlinkM units from sparkfun to be out of his price range. He really liked how they worked though, so he downloaded the schematic and firmware and [...]

Japanese maid mods a furby

Posted: May 14th, 2011, 10:42am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This video has been floating around the web recently and we thought that some of you might enjoy it. After a quick google search, we found out that this is [Julie Watai], a singer/model who also enjoys hardware modification. In this video, she’s doing a tutorial on how to circuit bend furbies. No, we have [...]

Bluetooth media remote in an N64 controller

Posted: May 14th, 2011, 8:40am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Phik] wrote in to share his very first microcontroller project with us. He built a bluetooth remote in an old Nintendo 64 controller to control an audio application on his computer. He had been building up the individual modules with the controller in mind for some time, but initially had no idea what kind of [...]

LED dog collar, Christmas edition

Posted: February 11th, 2011, 1:25pm MST by Caleb Kraft

[Aaron] says in our comments that he also made an LED dog collar. This Christmas themed dog collar uses an ATTiny13a and a hand full of red and green LEDs (28?). While the animations aren’t as complex as the collar we posted earlier today, we though you might enjoy this one as well. From the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Perfect shots every time

Posted: December 28th, 2010, 11:58am MST by Caleb Kraft

A shot is a shot right? Well, not really. Usually we see a sloppy shot poured of a single type of alcohol and, depending on our current standing with the bartender, may or may not be full to the brim. The Pousse-Cafe makes an art out of your drinks by perfectly layering several liqueurs. Not [...]

Build a fusion reactor in your home

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

At first we were pretty skeptical of this home made fusion reactor instructable. However, we’ve seen home made fusion reactors before, so it is technically possible, we guess. The construction alone is interesting enough to warrant a few moments of looking. We’re not experts, so pardon us if we can’t tell you exactly what is [...]

Santa-Pede Challenge: Take Two

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 11:53am MST by Caleb Kraft

We are going to give the Santa-Pede Challenge another try. This time, you have till the end of January to do something (make it walk/crawl/scoot) with a dancing santa (or dancing musical holiday toy). As you can see in my example, it doesn’t have to be complicated or efficient in any way. Here are some [...]

Nook color rooted: Hands on

Posted: December 12th, 2010, 10:44am MST by Caleb Kraft

Nookdevs have released information on how to root your nook color. So naturally, I had to run out and get one. Who doesn’t want a multitouch android tablet for $250? The instructions for rooting are extremely simple. You really only need microSD card and a Linux/Windows/Mac computer to connect to. After rooting, your nook will work [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

The polyplasmic archophone

Posted: October 16th, 2010, 8:03am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The polyplasmic archophone is a fresh approach to high voltage “arc music“. They are using an Arduino clone to convert signals for the ignition coils. It is still unfinished, but the effect is decent. In the end it will have 2 tiers of voice coils for a total of 13. They are using different materials [...]

Adafruit industries opens a job board

Posted: October 15th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Adafruit industries is doing their part to help the hacker community with their latest addition, a job board. It just went live today so there aren’t many jobs posted, but we expect that to change in the immediate future. you can also post your services offered there, if you’re looking for work. We really appreciate [...]

Adding a microphone jack to a HAM radio handset

Posted: August 8th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[dajjhman] wrote in to show us how he added a microphone jack to the handset of his Yaesu radio while retaining the DTMF functions. He states that there were some adapters available on the market, but they are non standard and didn’t really fit his needs. The modification itself is pretty simple, especially with his [...]

Chainsaw/flashlight overkill

Posted: August 8th, 2010, 8:19am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Robbtoberfest] has earned our admiration with this crazy chainsaw powered spot light. It looks horribly dangerous, extremely inefficient, and woefully under engineered. We absolutely love it. This could be plucked from a video game or a movie and seems to be one UV bulb away from being the ultimate post apocalyptic zombie vampire Armageddon weapon. [...]

Solar panel charger analysis with Ladyada

Posted: August 7th, 2010, 9:18am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Phillip Torrone], one of the original crew of HackaDay, now working with [LadyAda] tipped us off to this video of her explaining the device they built for configuring the charging circuits to be used with their solar panels. Unlike most of their tutorials, this one is not intended to be a final product sold on [...]

Release the Kraken: Open source GSM cracking tool released.

Posted: July 22nd, 2010, 1:58pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Open source GSM cracking software called “Kraken” has been released into the wild. You may recognize some of the information from back in December when we announced that they had cracked GSM encryption. Well, now you can participate as well. You’ll need a pretty beefy Linux machine and some patience. They say that an easier [...]

Complete the Hack A Day survey, win a shirt

Posted: July 21st, 2010, 7:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Take our reader survey. Do it. Do it right now. Do you think we should run more articles on the dietary needs of Llamas? Here is your chance to let us know. We got a lot of great feedback from [Jason]‘s post, and now we’re ready for more. We’ve put together 10 quick questions that [...]

Foam board servo driven arm

Posted: July 15th, 2010, 8:06am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Lucky Larry] posted some pictures to the Hack a Day flickr pool that caught our eye. He made a quick and cheap servo driven arm. Constructed from foam board and some hobby servos, he’s using an Arduino for the brains. You can download the pattern for the arm pieces as well as the code on [...]

Fankart and the HolyF***k!ted fan

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

Inspired by a ducted fan project to simulate lunar landers he had seen recently, [Charles Guan] decided to do the next logical thing and make a ducted fan driven shopping cart. The first iteration had a bare prop mounted to the front of the cart. Steering was done by mounting a servo to the front [...]

DelFly2 and DelFly micro

Posted: July 13th, 2010, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The video you see above is the on board footage of the DelFly2 autonomous ornithopoter robot. Weighing 16 grams, it carries a small camera and can provide a live feed. If you’re amazed at the tiny size and weight of the DelFly2, check out the DelFly micro, video after the break, that weighs 3 grams. [...]

Meter clock

Posted: July 9th, 2010, 7:26am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This analog meter clock was built by [Len Bayles]. Its 3 meters are controlled by an AT89c2051. The circuit itself is very simple, and available on the site. The meters are powered from a DAC, with a quad amp in between to keep the meter from drawing too much current. [via HackedGadgets]

Introductions: 3 new writers

Posted: July 8th, 2010, 8:12am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We would like to introduce our new writers [Rachel Fee], [Greg Jacobs], and [Jacob Nahin]. They will be focusing on software reviews and tutorials in response to the daily requests for posts that don’t require that you be an electrical engineer to understand. The Hack a Day community is growing very fast and we are [...]

Humble Homes, Simple Shacks

Posted: July 7th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Derek] puts the “hack” into the word shack. We really enjoyed his “little yellow house” videos and shared them with you. After that, we discovered that he has published a book. No, he didn’t have it published, he published it. This guy is DIY through and through. “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

$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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Hoverboard comes to life

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 8:10am MDT by Caleb Kraft

This installation by artist [Nils Goudagnin] is a recreation of the hoverboard from Back to the Future II. We would like to see inside that plinth. We’ve seen levitating magnets before, but this is particularly stable. He says he is using lasers and a control system of some kind to stabilize it. Just to guess, [...]

The story of Mr. Stabby

Posted: May 26th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Mr. Stabby was once a broken down bum, sitting on the curb, waiting for an eternity in the city dump. Luckily, someone found him and brought him to the NYC Resistor hacker group. They promptly performed some modifications and brought him back to life. He’s now a happy go lucky stab-bot with a twinkle in [...]

Poor MABEL

Posted: May 25th, 2010, 7:52am MDT by Caleb Kraft

At first, watching this video of MABEL, a bipedal robot for studying dynamic gaits, we didn’t know if we should be scared or feel sad. By the end, we know that sadness prevailed. Poor MABEL, forced into a grueling routine, is not even allowed to rest when her leg breaks. To be serious though, MABEL is [...]

Sun tracking solar panel

Posted: May 24th, 2010, 8:25am MDT by Caleb Kraft

As we all know, a solar panel must be exposed to the most amount of sunlight possible to reach full efficiency. A solid mount limits the amount of time that the panel is fully exposed to direct sunlight. The solution is to build a pivoting mount that automates the process of aiming at the sun. [...]

Hack a Day store now open

Posted: May 22nd, 2010, 8:17am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Since the beginning of the universe we’ve been getting requests for stickers, shirts, coffee mugs, etc. Well, several of the writers have the ability to produce this stuff in their homes. The boss liked that and gave us his blessing to start selling Hack a Day stuff. In the interest of keeping the cost as [...]

Power drill solder spooler

Posted: May 21st, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Scott] over at curiousinventor.com has posted an instructable detailing how to use an Arduino and a power drill to spool solder. The Arduino senses the speed that the drill is going via an opto interrupter and a laser and adjusts with a servo hooked to the trigger. While we don’t think many people will be [...]

32 LED POV globe

Posted: May 19th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a slick version of a POV globe(google translated). Created by [Riko], this globe has 32 LEDs and is powered by a rotating coil. The layout looks fairly solid in operation, with the POV effect showing up very nicely on camera. You can get the schematics and source code from the project page. We found [...]

Super quick and cheap trackball

Posted: May 18th, 2010, 8:53am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Elgatoandaluz] has posted this guide on how to tear apart a standard optical mouse and build a custom trackball. He’s using a ping pong ball , mounted above the laser as the trackball itself, which seems like it would be a little lite, but functional. The case is scrap cardboard. We really like that you [...]

Final Projects: WiFi coil gun turret

Posted: May 17th, 2010, 8:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Chris Farnell] and [Michael Helms] are the brains behind this scary looking piece of machinery. It is a Coil gun, mounted on a turret, that is controlled over WiFi. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have rigged it to their iphone/ipad for remote shooting. Though it looks bulky, you can see that it is surprisingly [...]

Electromechanical game: Running with the bulls

Posted: May 14th, 2010, 10:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[vime0 =http://vimeo.com/11700747] We’ve been watching the progress of this build for a while on Flickr. It looks like they’ve finally completed the electromechanical game, Running with the bulls. Based off of the event by the same name, you have to keep your guy from being trampled by the bulls as the charge. The entire bull [...]

Ghetto repairs: Desoldering with a candle

Posted: May 13th, 2010, 7:59am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Yes, that picture you are seeing is serious. [Roland] needed a chip for a damaged piece of electronics. He was lucky enough to find one on an old board at a local shop. The problem was, he didn’t have the hot air gun to remove the chip the correct way. Instead, he simply cooked the [...]

Nerf sentry gun build in progress

Posted: May 12th, 2010, 8:53am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[John Park] is documenting his build of a Nerf Sentry gun. So far, he’s rigged the trigger and set up the motorized base. He’s documenting the process in fantastic detail with great photos along the way. If you want to see what it will be like when it is finished, check out these other Nerf [...]

Making a bluetooth SNES controller

Posted: May 10th, 2010, 8:34am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[MODDEDbyBACTERIA] has posted this instructible on how to make a bluetooth SNES controller. The bulk of the parts come from a bluetooth MSI game pad, so this isn’t a scratch build, but the amount of modifications required definitely qualify this as a hack. We were quite surprised that he managed to stuff all of that back into [...]

XKCD takes a swipe at the Arduino

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

This XKCD comic takes a playful swipe and almost everything, including the Arduino. We’ve heard people claim that we have some sort of favoritism toward Arduino, and we don’t. People just submit a LOT of projects with them. But there is one point that we’ve seen a few times that should be addressed. In our categories [...]

Making magnetite nanocrystals

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

Unlike many chemistry projects we post here, making magnetite nanocrystals doesn’t require anything that can’t be found in a local grocery store. All that is required is oil, vinegar, crystal drain opener, and rust. We don’t recognize the specific brand of drain cleaner that they are using, but we’re sure that you could find one [...]

Peltier cooler based cloud chamber

Posted: May 7th, 2010, 7:13am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Rich] shares with us his build of a Peltier cooler based cloud chamber. This nifty little tool allows him to see the paths that radioactive particles take through alcohol vapor. The system he has come up with is fairly cheap at roughly $100. He’s using Peltier coolers from computers and a cheap ATX power supply. [...]

Possibly the most beautiful piece of hardware

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

I’m going to break from the typical Hackaday article format for a moment. I’m smitten, captivated by this wondrous new discovery. Forgive my ignorance for having never seen one of these before, I didn’t go to school for electronics. For those, who like myself wondered, what is this beautiful glowing thing, it is a mercury arc valve [...]

When multimeters go boom

Posted: May 5th, 2010, 8:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Ever wondered how expensive versus cheap multimeters hold up to abuse? [Dave] gives us a pretty good idea by, well, blowing them up. He’s using a capacitor bank to put roughly 4.2 KiloVolts into the poor little meters. If you absolutely must skip to the multimeters, go to about 5:00. You really will miss out [...]

Answers.hackaday.com is LIVE

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 2:51pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Quick, go to answers.hackaday.com and sign up for an account. Ages ago, we announced that we would be bringing a community driven question and answer system to Hackaday. We eventually got tired of waiting for the feature to be provided and improvised. Well, the wait is over. You can now post your own questions and [...]

QFN or MLF soldering without solder paste

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Take a few minutes to watch this amazingly informative video on how to solder QFN or MLF components without solder paste. The quality of the video and the information within is quite nice. Even if you don’t intend to work with these parts, you could pick up some tips for soldering with hot air.

POV LED sphere

Posted: May 4th, 2010, 7:29am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Csaba Bleuer] has built this really nice POV LED sphere. Looking at the hand drawn schematic, it appears that he’s using an Atmega8 as the core. The resolution is pretty decent, and even shows fairly well on camera despite the refresh issues. Although much cleaner, it looks like a similar implementation to this one that [...]

Automated chicken coop door

Posted: May 3rd, 2010, 2:43pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a pretty cool implementation of an automated door, built for a chicken coop. The electronics are fairly standard, an Arduino and a used cordless drill. The end product will be not only wireless, but automated based off of ambient light as well. We also found the locking mechanism quite elegant. He also supplied a [...]

Ball inverted pendulum

Posted: April 30th, 2010, 1:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

We’ve seen several different balancing bot styles over the past few years, but this one is new to us. The BallP, short for Ball inverted Pendulum, balances on top of a ball. We’re not sure what the advantages are to this layout though. Anyone care to enlighten us? Even though we hadn’t seen this style, [...]

9 digit pulse counter

Posted: April 30th, 2010, 7:20am MDT by Caleb Kraft

At roughly $20 to build, this 9 digit pulse counter is an excellent example of home built tools. The builder, [Josh] found himself repairing a device and in need of a pulse counter. With the components cheaply available, he just built his own. He says that it has a few limitations, like display brightness, but [...]

Ithacka BOJ challenge

Posted: April 29th, 2010, 2:02pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

The NY based hacker group named Ithacka has posted an interesting challenge. Buy a box of junk and build something with it following their guidelines. Document it and submit it for voting. There are some rules that allow you to use a few pieces that don’t come from the box, but the list is short. [...]

Chumby One becomes a 3g router

Posted: April 29th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[bunnie] has taken a few moments to show us how to turn our Chumby One into a 3g router. As it turns out, there is an easter egg that allows it to communicate with certain models of 3g dongles. There’s no GUI for this trick, so you’ll be doing most of your configuration via SSH. [...]

Forget the Rovio, drive a taxi with your mind.

Posted: April 29th, 2010, 8:06am MDT by Caleb Kraft

While browsing through flicker this morning, we spotted this interesting image. Two radio controlled cars hooked to Arduinos. What was going on? What is [knolleary] doing with them? We couldn’t find any information so we clicked through to his personal site. What we found was a quite interesting story about how he set up a [...]

Mind controlled rovio

Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Robert] at Extremetech was going to write a review of the Emotiv EEG headset but found the bundled software lacking. He decided to write something to really show off what could be done with an EEG in your home. He is now controlling his Rovio with his mind. He had already written a new control [...]

Puppet Circuits

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

This isn’t a specific project, so much as a pointer to a budding new site. Puppet Circuits is the project of [Raphael Abrams], one of the co founders of NYC Resistor. As you can probably guess, he has been posting about the circuits he uses in his animatronic puppets. I faces all kinds of problems [...]

RFID immobiliser

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

[andrew_h] has put together this slick anti theft device for his car. The RFID immobiliser is used to keep the car from starting unless you swipe an RFID tag. Depending on how well you hide it, and how well the person stealing the car knows you, they would have no reason to suspect that they [...]

Apod, an update

Posted: April 27th, 2010, 1:06pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Apod walks! If you recall, last year we discovered Apod, the creepy lifelike hexapod creation made by [Zenta]. At that point in time, it basically just shifted around nicely but didn’t do much walking. Well, [Zenta] has been hard at work since then and now Apod is fully active, walking, running, and serving drinks with [...]

Lawnmower converted to Hoe/scraper

Posted: April 27th, 2010, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Torx] wrote this instructable on how to convert a lawnmower to another useful tool. We’re not sure what language he natively speaks, but we doubt it is english, so you might be better off just looking at the pictures to figure out what he’s doing. To summarize, he has lowered the mower and reversed/bent the [...]

IEE clock

Posted: April 27th, 2010, 8:24am MDT by Caleb Kraft

The IEE clock looks somewhat un remarkable at first glance. Upon closer inspection though, you’ll find out that there are 12 light bulbs crammed in there for each digit. The bulbs sit behind a curved lens with the numerals on it. When the appropriate one is lit, it projects the number on the front of [...]

Midi piano instructor

Posted: April 26th, 2010, 3:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

The MIDI piano instructor is a tool aimed at those who wish to learn to play piano, but don’t want to take lessons. The LED bar mounted above the keys lights up to show you exactly what key to press and when. We’ve seen this available in some electronic keyboards for some time, but this [...]

Biosphere lighting

Posted: April 26th, 2010, 11:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Sometimes, sitting in a windowless office can drive you crazy. Adding a little bit of life and color can really help. [Gripen40k] did this by building a biosphere. He didn’t have any windows though, so he made an LED light on a PIC based timer. What is interesting is what he did with a thermistor. [...]

Performance meters for your PC

Posted: April 26th, 2010, 10:06am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We always enjoy a good performance monitor here. Especially when it includes some nice meters to watch jump and bounce as we thrash the system. This particular one is based on a PIC18f2550 pushing a regular old analog VU meter and an RGB LED. There’s a great writeup there, including schematics, PCBs, and massive amounts [...]

Spinning ball of LED awesomeness

Posted: April 26th, 2010, 8:52am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Take a few moments and watch this 3 axis rotating LED light display fire up. The final effect of being an RGB glowing ball is nice, but we’re fascinated with the structure. There are tons of great detailed pictures of the assembly on the forum thread to feast your eyes on. Just getting power to [...]

Victorian styled nixie tester

Posted: April 16th, 2010, 9:12am MDT by Caleb Kraft

While building some nixie clocks,[Blue_Metal] ended up destroying a few tubes. He found that having a tester sitting around would have been most helpful. Taking some pride in his tools, he put some major effort into building his nixie tube tester. It is quite visually pleasing, featuring hand cut brass framing, custom etched information panels. [...]

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Stanford’s stickybot3

Posted: April 15th, 2010, 12:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

Stickybot has gone through a pretty radical upgrade. You may recall the gecko looking glass walking bot from all over the net. While it was pretty cool, the technology has gone much further. Not only is it designed to look like a gecko, the feet are actually made to adhere to surfaces in the same [...]