We’ve seen diy shutter remotes before. Canon’s digital SLRs allow control of the camera over USB. Unfortunately they limited the exposure time to 30 seconds via USB control on some of them. To get around it, several (amateur) astronomers have built a serial interface to exploit the remote shutter control port normally used for accessories.
Month: September 2006
Hack-A-Day Mini-extra
Eric sent in his aux-in jack for his factory oldsmobile radio. We seen similar stuff before, but the implimentation is clean and simple.
I can’t read Czech, but [Dzinn] sent in some interesting looking lens mods for a Gsmart LCD3 digital camera. The mod is clean and allows SLR type lenses to be used in place of the original (fixed?) lens.
[Dheera] sent in the latest in uses for blue LEDs – a classic building window 6×6 matrix display.
I dug up some more cool tube projects. The Altoobs – a altoid tin based ham transmitter. Too bad the power supply is freakin huge.
I was looking for one of these the other day. This hybrid (solid state + tube) headphone amp is portable, running off of 12V. The site is loaded with headphone amp designs.
Ion System Cooling
Jared sent us his latest inventgeek project. We love their work, and this one’s really unique. By combining the ion cooling, lots of heat sinks and ram drives, the machine is truly silent. Ion buildup isn’t just a problem for space ships anymore.
Tube Headphone Amp
I built a chu moy headphone amp a while back, but tube amps are getting my interest. Chu Moy released a nice writeup of a tube based headphone amp. Ironically, tubes are easy, getting the right transformer is the issue these days.
More Keyboard Lighting
[sfriswolker] sent in his progressing black keyboard lighting mod. The first version used a CCFL. When that burnt out, he rebuilt it with LEDs. [google english transations – part 1 and part 2]
CD Spectrometer (bonus)
Allright, the keyboard light thing was a bit weak. Check out this el cheapo cd light spectrometer. The refractive properties of a CD are exploited to break up visible light into it’s components. Definitely an unexpected use of a CD. Of course, if you’re going for substance detection, you can use your CDROM as a spectrometer to identify uh, suspicous substances.
USB Flash Drive On A Ti84+
Another memory hack today. The TI calcs have gotten quite a following. (I’ll admit to writing blackjack for the 85 back in the day.) Michael, Brandon and Dan wrote a complete driver to let them use usb flash drives with the TI-84+.
