Month: February 2006

Hack-A-Day Extra

February 17, 2006 by 10 Comments

phoney

The tip line has been pretty dry lately. Not really a lack submissions, just a lot stuff I can’t use because it has been covered everywhere else, like the multi-touch display. I’m not going to dedicate an entire day to something that’s already been on Engadget, Make, or Slashdot because you guys would be seriously pissed off. Reader tips drive this site and I would like to thank everyone that sends them in. You’re the reason this site stays fresh and original.

The Team Hack-A-Day folding team is looking for ways to boost production (being #47 is pretty good though). If you don’t know what the team is about, [Billy the Impaler] has a Valentine for you: The New & Improved Illustrated Folding@home Guide.

The #hackaday channel is still alive and well on EFnet. More links after the break.

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RC Car Telemetry

February 16, 2006 by 5 Comments

telemetry

Meghan Desai and Yiling Li built this radio controlled car telemetry system for their “Designing with microcontrollers” class. They had looked at several other RC projects and decided it would save a lot of trouble if they didn’t attempt to work with the car’s on-board microcontroller. They built separate boards to house the four IR sensing pairs, temperature sensors, accelerometer, and an Atmel Mega32. All of the collected data is transmitted at 433MHz. On the receiving end is another Mega32 that processes the data and formats it for display on a TV. They’ve done an excellent job documenting their project.

If you have to do a design project this semester, we’d love to see it. Just get some free hosting from Blogger and post your project. I’m using Blogger as an example since they don’t crash and burn when we link to them.

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Underwater Living

February 16, 2006 by 4 Comments

divester

Willy Volk interviewed Lloyd Godson for Divester’s latest podcast. Lloyd is building a self-sustaining underwater habitat: the BioSUB. It will hold at least 15 square meters of engineered wheat to convert CO2 to oxygen. He also plans on testing Alon Bodner’s Like-A-Fish tankless SCUBA technology. The system works by lowering the pressure of the seawater to extract the oxygen. The BioSUB project is sponsered by the Australian Geographic Society and Lloyd plans on launching this August.

A quick note: if you caught my friend’s dance/electronica radio show last week, it’s on again tonight 7-9PM CST. Click for the live stream.

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Maker Faire

February 15, 2006 by 8 Comments

maker faire

I’m going to be attending Make magazine’s Maker Faire April 22-23rd, San Mateo, CA. It should be a lot of fun.

This is my event schedule for the rest of the year. Feel free to suggest events I should be attending.

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RepRap: The Replicating Rapid Prototyper

February 15, 2006 by 11 Comments

The RepRap project hopes to build a universal constructor; a machine that can replicate itself and make a number of useful products. The machine is open source and uses fused deposition modeling (FDM) to layer melted material into parts. One of the key technologies in self-replication is the ability to lay conductive circuit paths. The RepRap machine is able to lay down conductive material and an insulator. For a conductor they are using Wood’s metal, a fusible alloy that has a melting point of 158degF. To demonstrate this conductor laying ability they built the FDM head pictured in a commercial FDM machine. The project makes some reasonable compromises; it doesn’t attempt to make common items like brass bushings, microcontrollers, stepper motors, self-tapping screws, and power supplies.

UX50 Long-life Battery

February 14, 2006 by 19 Comments

UX50

The Sony PEG-UX50 was an impressive package when it was released in 2003. It had a 480×320 screen, keyboard, convertible screen, built-in camera, WiFi and Bluetooth. As with most portable devices, the short time the battery stayed charged left much to be desired. Sony sold an EB40 battery pack that piggy-backed the device, but reader [JAmerican] wanted to extend its charge even further. It took a little dancing around with the charging circuit, but he was eventually able to combine 4 batteries to construct a 3880mAh battery that keeps the UX50 running, even after 9 hours of use. Here’s a site with a decent photo gallery of the UX50 (at the bottom).

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